by Maisey Yates
CHAPTER TEN
VANESSA HAD NO idea what was driving her right now. What was possessing her. She prided herself on being a very reasonable person, and somewhere in the last couple of days she had lost all of that.
Obviously, the act of thrusting a paintbrush in a man’s face and demanding he paint to prove he wasn’t a coward was not the act of a reasonable human.
So maybe she wasn’t a balanced person. For all that she had always imagined she might be.
It was good to know that she had always been just a drive down the long highway home away from being an absolute crazy person.
But it wasn’t just her. Or this place.
It was him.
Something about Jacob had her on edge. Something about her family had her on edge, in truth, but that was to be expected.
Jacob wasn’t expected. Nothing about him was. Not her curiosity about him, not how compelling she found him. Not how infuriating she found him.
“Really?” He raised his brows. “You’re daring me to paint.”
“It’s becoming a thing,” she said, “so it just makes me wonder, if you’re so adamantly opposed to doing it, there must be a reason. And given that you are a stereotypical alpha male, I would suggest it’s fear. Which masquerades as anger. Because that’s what testosterone does.”
His expression went hard. “You want me to paint, Vanessa, is that it?”
“Yes,” she said, “I want you to paint.”
“And then you’ll be happy?”
She could hear the challenge in his voice, but she refused to be intimidated by it.
“Yeah,” she said, smiling so wide she thought her face might break. “Then I’ll be happy. So, so very happy.”
“Great,” he said. “I’ll oblige you, then.”
He took the paintbrush out of her hand, but then he set it down on the counter. He walked over to an open container of paint and dipped his fingers in it. The blunt, calloused tips coated in bright orange. Then he approached her, his blue eyes full of the devil and a challenge that she knew she had to either run from now or face head-on and accept whatever consequences came along with it.
She decided to stand up against the consequences.
He reached out and pressed those fingertips against her cheek, dragging a line of paint from there down the side of her neck. “I’m not drawn to traditional canvas,” he said. “I’m very avant-garde.”
Rage hit her in the stomach. At least that was what she assumed all this heat had to be. Utter fury. And her nipples were tight in her bra, her entire body on fire, she couldn’t decide if it was arousal or anger or some mixture of them. Couldn’t decide if she wanted to punch him in the face, or grab him and kiss him.
“Oh, is that how you’re going to do it?” she asked. “You’re going to act like a child?”
Except he so clearly wasn’t a child. The broad muscular six feet plus of cowboy standing in front of her could be nothing but man.
She dipped her own fingers in the blue paint just next to her, and then she put her hand on his face, on those rough whiskers, and left three streaks from his cheekbone down to his chin. His whiskers were prickly, and his skin was hot, and being in a petty, ridiculous fight with him should not be sexy.
“Care to guess what any of this means I might be feeling?” she asked.
“Petty,” he said. “At least, that’s my guess.”
“Petty,” she said. “And willing to give better than I got.”
And then she reached into the blue paint one more time and got more, this time dragging her fingertips down the side of his neck.
Very quickly, she found herself being pulled up against his hard body, her breasts pressed right against his chest. He held her steady, as he reached for the blue himself and painted another swath of color over her face.
She wiggled, and he released his hold on her. Then she reached for the red, dipping her fingers in but letting the excess coat her palm before slapping it directly over his chest, onto his black T-shirt.
“Now, see,” he said, “I was going to be nice, and I wasn’t going to ruin your outfit. But now you’re screwed.”
He took some red and got it on his fingertips, flicking it over her blouse.
“This is a nice shirt,” she said.
“Well, that’s too damn bad.”
She launched herself at him, reaching out and getting the orange paint and dumping it over his shoulders.
Dimly, she realized that they were being ridiculous, just like they had been last night. But she wasn’t sure that she cared enough to stop it.
She had five years of some kind of controlled existence.
And before that, she’d been out of control in an oblique, tragic way. And the only way she’d ever been able to see color was with the help of a substance.
She saw color now. Brilliant, bright anger and no small amount of excitement.
She didn’t know why being with Jacob seemed to push everything over the top.
Except...
Except there seemed to be something about the way she could let go when he was around.
A sense of safety.
Like she had felt that night she lost the baby.
He was tied to that, linked inextricably, whether either of them wanted him to be or not.
He might not feel like a hero, but—for an hour or so of her life—he had been one.
He had reached down when she had fallen.
He had been there when she needed it.
He had been there when her chimney caught fire too.
Okay, so maybe he didn’t feel like a hero. And maybe Vanessa didn’t feel like she deserved to have a hero.
But she had him now. A solid wall that she could throw herself against.
He wiped at the orange paint, getting his hand covered before he dragged it down the center of her chest, painting her entire top.
Her heart began to pound faster, a sick kind of slick friction building between her legs.
A steady beat of her pulse that echoed in her head, her neck, the center of her body.
And she was the one who escalated it. Again.
With a fresh coat of blue paint on her fingers, she pushed her hands beneath his shirt, pushed until the garment was up over his head, and she had left a trail of blue across his abs, across his chest.
He ripped the shirt off the rest of the way, but then she found her own shirt going the same way.
“If you have any attachment to that bra, I’d take it off if I were you.”
She did. God help her, she did, and quickly. Goose bumps raised up over her skin, her heart racing.
“Now,” he said. “You’re a work of art all on your own. But it wouldn’t hurt you to have a little color added,” he said.
This time his movements were much more deliberate, his hands knowing as they went for the blue paint, as he pressed them against her stomach, tracing a line up through the center of her breasts.
Her nipples went impossibly tight. But he didn’t touch her. Not there. No, he wouldn’t give her the satisfaction.
Because he was mean.
He was mean, and what was happening between them was inevitable. She didn’t know why she felt that way, only that she did.
This man was everything that she feared about coming home. He was tethered to her trauma. Tethered to one of the most difficult events in her life. To her secrets. To all of the reasons that she’d left in the first place. And she couldn’t seem to stay away from him. He was her deepest and darkest fear in that regard. A bad decision made flesh, after so many years of not making any bad decisions at all.
He’s a normal bad decision.
Something about that realization washed over her like a wave. Relief. Utter and stark. This was the kind of bad decision that normal girls made.
And her life, from here on out, could not be about perfection. The desperate, yawning void inside her that she knew could never find perfect, had been the reason she had lost herself in the first place.
No, perfect wasn’t her goal.
Not now, not ever. To live. To live and to feel, when it was hard, when it was messy, when it was real, that was the goal.
This was living. Here and now. Living and wonderful, and crazy and maddening.
And whatever lay on the other side of it, she wasn’t going to worry.
Because this was what she needed.
She pushed the button on the wall that lowered the blinds and, after that, twisted the lock on the door.
Because she didn’t want an audience for her insanity. That was certain.
“Is that how it is?”
“Just finish,” she panted.
He didn’t do what she expected. He didn’t tear her skirt off. He didn’t get naked immediately and climb on top of her and make it quick and hard like he had last night.
No. Instead, he went for the paint again. Then with one arm he lifted her up off the ground and set her on the counter in the center of the room. Starting at her collarbone, he traced her body. Traced a line down to the tip of her breasts, circling her nipple achingly slowly, leaving a trail of paint behind.
He was magic. His hands were magic.
She couldn’t sort it out.
They didn’t understand each other. They had just been shouting at each other about how little they were understood.
But he knew her body, and her body gloried in a touch from his.
And it was so bright and bold.
Last night, there had been no paint, but everywhere his hands had been left behind a trail of fire. She’d been sure that anyone who looked at her would be able to see the imprint of where his hands had been. And now it was true.
Desire right now was so much stronger than anything else.
He moved to red next, passionate strokes down her stomach, her back, her nipples. And then he took her skirt off, her panties, leaving her bare and sitting on the counter.
He forced her legs open, painted streaks of gold down her thighs, leaving handprints on her hips. And he hadn’t even kissed her yet.
She was trembling, desire and fear fighting for equal place inside her.
And then finally—finally—he kissed her.
It was slow, and it was tender, and in strange opposition to everything else that had happened before, which had been all about passion, anger and other hard-edged things. His lips were gentle, his tongue exploring her mouth slowly, achingly. Paint-covered hands gripped her face, and she knew there was no way either of them could walk away from this encounter without being marked by it.
And she told herself she just meant the paint.
Because the paint was a much easier thing to handle than anything else.
She shifted slightly, and he knelt down in front of her. He consumed her. Stroked her slowly, the sounds he made so rough and perfect.
He was tasting her. Pleasuring her.
It hit her right then, the intimacy of sex. The way they were sharing the air, the way his body felt.
That his mouth was pressed against her.
The way she could hear his breathing. Match it in time with the pitch of his chest and connect it to the way his tongue played havoc between her legs. The way she could see, hear and feel how she affected him.
She looked down, right as he looked up, as he shifted. And in that moment she could see that hard, telltale ridge pushing against the front of his jeans.
He wanted her. And she could see it, up close and intimate, in the way his pupils dilated, the way his jaw tensed.
And he was a living canvas in front of her, all streaked in paint and need, the colors haphazard and bright over his tanned skin and corded muscles.
There was a bit of orange in his chest hair, and she wondered if it would be difficult for him to scrub it out later.
And then she thought about helping him do it.
She licked her lips, thinking about how it would be to see him like that, water rolling over his body.
And then she realized the vague ridiculousness of having a sexual fantasy about a man while she was in the middle of having sex with him.
She didn’t need to fantasize. Because he was right there.
Hot and hard and real.
She never even had a fantasy quite this good.
And the only real, clear memory she had of sex was with him.
This wasn’t mottled or fuzzy. It wasn’t vague.
And tomorrow morning she wouldn’t wake up with a bad taste in her mouth and her head pounding and great blank gaps of wondering what had happened the night before. Sleeping next to a stranger, who was even more of a stranger than he might’ve been because she couldn’t even remember the ways they’d gotten to know each other hours earlier.
This was like an entirely different thing. A different act.
She was doing it for different reasons.
She wanted him.
She wanted sexual satisfaction with him.
She didn’t just want to be close to someone. She didn’t just want a human comforter to keep the horrible, cold loneliness away.
She didn’t just need a bed to stay in.
Thinking about that, about her past, made her chest get cold and frozen, and she didn’t want that. Not now. Not while she was with him.
No, while she was with him, she wanted to be present.
In the moment.
She reached down, put her fingertips on his throat, right where his pulse was pounding hard, revealing his desire for her.
Then he lowered his head again and her fingers drifted up to his hair. And she watched her hands rest there, as he continued to tease her, pleasure her.
He nuzzled her inner thigh before beginning to consume her again, as he looked right at her while he continued to lap at her. She could feel him staring at her. Could feel the heat from those blue eyes right on her.
She couldn’t look.
So she just looked at where her hands rested on him.
Because that was real. And it made her feel grounded.
Made it feel like she could breathe.
Forced her to quit living in the past and worrying about the future, and just feel the present moment.
Him.
Like an anchor in a whole uncertain ocean.
This moment was real.
And she wasn’t nothing. She wasn’t empty. She was filled.
With her need for him, with her desire for more.
They weren’t gray. They were bright and brilliant, all their feelings painted across their skin, anger, stripped away and becoming need beneath that.
He rose to his feet then, and reached into his back pocket, took out his wallet and set it on the counter next to her. And then he undid his belt, the button on his jeans, his zipper, and toed off his shoes as he pushed all the fabric away, leaving him naked in front of her.
He was beautiful. She moved her hand, pulling it back, allowing herself to look at his entire body. His broad shoulders and chest, tapering down to a narrow waist, abs that were streaked with paint, and then to his lean hips and muscular thighs, the part of his body that had no paint at all because it had been clothed during their war.
The evidence of his desire for her there was like magic.
This man, who wasn’t a hero, wanted her, a woman who certainly wasn’t one either.
But he wanted her.
He saw her.
He looked at her and didn’t seem to wish that he could look away.
She didn’t want to look away from him. Even though staring at him was a little bit like staring at the sun.
He made her burn. He made her ache.
He was such a beautiful man, with all of his scars. Oh, not on that perfect body of his, but they were in his soul. Something about those scars made her own light up bright and white-hot inside her. She recognized them.
She recognized him.
And he was right, she didn’t know everyone’s secrets. But she didn’t have to know them to know that he had them.
“I hope the pain
t is nontoxic,” he said, leaning down and capturing one nipple between his lips, sucking.
Pleasure pierced her like an arrow, and she arched forward. He stepped between her thighs, the hard ridge of his erection hot and tempting right there between her legs where she needed him most. He rocked his hips forward, curving his arm around her waist and pressing her tightly against him, riding her gently as he continued to suck her nipple.
She held on to his shoulders, pleasure building at the center of her legs and deeper.
Then he rolled his pelvis forward, the insistent pressure sending her over the edge.
Pleasure coursed through her, and she clung to him, shaking.
When he lifted his head, he was smiling.
“I know it was your orgasm and not mine,” he said, his voice gruff. “But I’m pretty sure I felt that.”
Heat washed over her, but she didn’t have time to let it turn into embarrassment. He grabbed hold of his wallet, opened it and took out a condom.
He made quick work of it, tearing the plastic packet and discarding it, rolling the latex over the head of his arousal as he nudged at her slick entrance.
“Hold on a second.” He wrapped his arm more tightly around her waist, lifting her up and back, laying her down on the counter and following her onto the marble surface.
He hovered over her, his gorgeous face less than an inch from hers, his broad chest brushing against her breasts. He kissed her then, every inch of his naked body pressing against hers, pressing her into the cold countertop, but she didn’t mind.
She lifted her hips up, and he met her, sliding into her in one easy stroke, making her gasp as he stretched her.
He was so thick, so gloriously hard, she had a feeling he wasn’t the sort of man she could get used to accommodating quickly.
And she didn’t mind that either. She raked her fingernails down his back, down to his ass, holding on to him tightly as he thrust into her.
The way the counter braced her allowed her to feel the impact of each stroke, each brilliant burst of pleasure as he made contact with her most sensitive place.
She felt another release building inside her, even though it should be too soon. Even though it was absolutely too early.
But with him, it wasn’t. Somehow.
He was magic for her body in ways that she couldn’t explain.