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Dread.
It’s gone in an instant, but I saw it. What could he possibly be dreading? There’s nothing to be afraid of. Not anymore.
“Are you going to let me come?”
“Do you want to?”
“Yes.” He won’t let me circle my hips over the brush. Won’t let me get used to it.
“Only if you keep painting.”
“Okay,” I agree. I’d agree to anything right now. I’ve been invaded by my own paintbrush, by the man I love, and I can hardly breathe for how hot it is. My thighs are going to give out. I’m not strong enough for all this desire. “Okay. Please.”
Emerson pulls me closer, taking some of my weight. The brush keeps us apart. Hatred flashes over me. I don’t like to be apart from him. Emerson must feel it, because he tightens his grip and uses his other hand to brush circles over my clit.
“I want to watch you come like this,” he says.
It feels too good to keep painting. Pleasure builds in layers. The hard push of the paintbrush. Emerson’s body beneath mine. His skin under my fingertips. An aching wash of want and need and yes that comes together over my clit. It gets tighter and tighter and tighter until it snaps.
The muscles in my thighs have had enough. Emerson holds me up so that I have to ride the orgasm until it’s done. Ride the paintbrush. Fucked. With a paintbrush. So bad. So right.
As soon as the feeling crests, Emerson takes the paintbrush and tosses it into a corner of the room. The next moment, my face is in one of his pillows. He yanks my hips up and drives himself in.
I thought I was done coming.
I’m not.
I scrabble for the pillows as my vision blurs. Emerson’s a machine. A god. He finds my clit again and forces me to a rough peak. My body’s shudders draw him in deeper. I feel an answering tremble in him, and then I’m up, his arms wrapped around my chest, my thighs spread wide while he pumps himself into me.
He’s stronger than I thought, to be able to do this. It makes me hot for him again. Emerson holds me there and lets me circle my hips mindlessly until I come a third time, his heat painting the insides of my thighs.
Now that he’s fucked me, now that I’ve had him, a new energy hums in the room. “I need to paint,” I tell him.
He makes me let him clean me up with a washcloth before he sets me free to the studio. I don’t bother with clothes. Emerson follows me in a pair of low-slung sleep pants.
I’ve been so confident about the two of us. How else can I be? But there’s more. I was focused on him yesterday. Making sure he was okay. My other thoughts stirred in the background. They got louder and louder and even sex with him couldn’t drown them out.
It enhanced them, actually. Because this is what I’d be missing if Emerson ends this. If I can’t show him that I love him. That I want this. If, God forbid, some other disaster happens.
I get a new canvas, anxiety beating in my hands and my chest. I pull open drawer after drawer in the studio. Most of these paints are new. Unopened. They’re not colors I usually use. Brushes—I need new brushes.
No time for gesso. I add a thin layer of yellow. This painting might not be salable, in the end. I don’t care. I need somewhere for the rush of sex and feeling to go.
Not just any feeling. The prickling cool of his urgency this morning. That heartbeat of dread in his eyes. As if he knows something that I don’t.
Emerson stays close, watching me find my place at the easel. At least the paints are right. The bright, hot colors look how I feel. I choose one at random and load my brush. Oh—it’s not random after all. As soon as the brush is near the canvas, I have a plan.
Red on the canvas. Orange. Familiar shapes, because whenever I come to the canvas, the ocean appears. This time, I don’t hide my feelings in blues and white. I let them burn across the yellow wash.
I feel better as soon as I’m painting. I would have done this on Emerson, but I wasn’t willing to admit it yet. An orange wave splits across the sky like the red sea is tossing it out.
“My parents don’t love each other,” I say. How is it that painting makes it easier to turn my thoughts into words? I’ve never known exactly how that happens. “I mean—I think on some level they do. But they’re not in love with each other. My mom said something about it when I was at home.”
“What did she say?”
Emerson’s voice comes from my right side, a little behind me. I wish he would touch me. As soon as the wish is made, his hand is on the small of my back.
“Read my mind,” I say, under my breath, even though he didn’t. He saw something about me and knew what I wanted. He always does that. “She said there was something worse than having a man who was obsessed with you.”
