The Finished Masterpiece (Master of Trickery Book 3)

by Pepper Winters

  “Gil...” I moaned as my finger strayed between my legs, touching how hot I was, how drenched. I flinched at the sensitivity, turned on to the point of pain.

  He snapped.

  In one leap, he cleared the step, grabbed me, and swung me off my feet.

  A second later, he sat on the stage, moved me until my thighs were spread over his lap, then fisted a hand in my hair. Yanking my head back, he kissed me before I could speak.

  He kissed me savagely, deeply, forcing my every sense to lock onto him.

  While his lips corrupted me, his other hand dove between us. He thrust two fingers inside me, testing, making sure I was ready.

  I convulsed in his arms.

  With a feral groan, he withdrew, grabbed his cock and angled it at my entrance. He stopped kissing me, sucking in air and pressing his forehead to mine. Our eyes snapped together, wild and wanting.

  Our souls spoke. Our bodies commanded.

  He never looked away as he thrust inside me, plunging deep, taking everything.

  I cried out.

  He snarled, his chest rumbling with vicious greed, spreading me, taking me.

  My mouth opened wide beneath his as he kissed me again and again. My body stretched and yielded to his sudden invasion. I moaned as he thrust upward, pushing my body onto his.

  He gave me nowhere to run, no space to wriggle away from the oversaturation of his possession, no way of easing into his violence.

  His brow came down, casting shadows. His entire body vibrated with everything I wasn’t allowed to know. Terror shone in his gaze, ravenous longing coloured his lips, and a bone-deep depression painted him better than all the other colours I’d marked him with.

  Gil had sad eyes.

  He always had.

  But with him driving into me, my arms slung over his shoulders, and our gazes stitched together, I understood something I hadn’t before.

  Gil had lost his way.

  While life had dragged me along, stealing my dancing dreams and gracing me with scars, he’d endured his own hardship. And it wasn’t physical. It was emotional.

  He couldn’t tattoo over the wounds on his heart. He couldn’t pretty up the defects and craters left by whatever nightmares he’d walked through.

  My pulse pounded as his body ravaged mine and tears prickled for him. I would’ve been there for him if he’d let me. I would’ve held his hand in the dark and raised a sword in his defence if only he’d kept me by his side and not tossed me away.

  I hated him for that.

  Hated him as much as I wanted him, blending two opposite emotions into a treacherous one.

  I was vulnerable in that moment.

  I was angry in that moment.

  Nuzzling his nose with mine, I kissed him.

  Kissed him sweet and soft to combat the harsh, hard way he took me.

  Kissed him gentle and loving to combat the violent unhappiness within his soul.

  He stiffened.

  Our skin slipped together, spreading silver, pink, and black. The yellow crowning him dappled his shoulders, dressing him in a sunshine cape.

  Halcyon.

  The word swept into my mind from an English lesson at school. Gil had sat behind me, whispering the new word as Ms Tallup showed how to spell it on the board.

  Halcyon.

  It meant peaceful, tranquil, harmonious.

  A serene, balmy day that had no worries, stress, or strife.

  That was what Gil needed.

  What a shame the yellow in his unruly hair couldn’t grant such things.

  I kissed him harder, cupping his cheeks as he thrust into me particularly deep, almost in punishment, almost as if he sensed my pity for whatever pain he’d lived through.

  He growled as his pace increased. My breasts bounced, shining in quicksilver.

  His head tilted as his hands swooped up my back and into my hair, kissing me viciously, switching the softness into savagery once again. I gave myself over to it, catching his tongue with mine in a swirly, ancient dance.

  Unsheathing my teeth, I bit his bottom lip.

  And that was the end of whatever gentleness existed between us.

  Our eyes snapped closed as our kiss grew wet and hot and fierce. Our bodies matched the thrusting, hunting tempo of our tongues. Our hips rocked and rolled, never satisfied, even as the sharp sizzle of a release made his fingers bruise my skin and a plea hiss through my teeth.

  “You should never have found me,” he grunted, driving upward.

  My body rejected his length, squeezing tight around him.

  “What the fuck am I supposed to do now, huh?” he groaned with another consuming thrust. “How am I supposed to survive this?”

  I had no answers, so I gave him none. I just let him take what he needed.

  Falling backward, he pulled me with him.

  We tumbled to the stage where he’d stood and painted a hundred different women. Paint bottles rolled around us as Gil twisted and placed me on my back.

  We lay on his place of employment, naked and vibrant, and connected in the basest of ways.

  He reared up on his hands, his hips pistoning into mine as the paint on our skin smeared the floor where other droplets had dried. Where other art had been created and destroyed. Where he’d painted me the first time and almost ruined me.

  His hand slicked down my body, pressing between my legs while he drove deep. His fingers found my clit, swirling in time to the rhythm he set. Consuming, possessing, heart-stealing.

  My back bowed as he conjured every heated, hungry nerve ending to focus on his touch. The way his cock spread me wide. The way his fingers soared me high. It stole every ability to think and I belonged entirely to him.

  My pussy clenched around him, demanding the release he teased me with.

  His lips slammed on mine again, pinning my head to the stage. His tongue speared into my mouth, tasting me, making me drunk on the fiery desire he poured down my throat.

  My back slid against the smooth podium as we fought against each other. With each thrust, I grew heavier, hotter, drowning in the delicious thrill of a steadily building orgasm.

  “Gil—” I clawed at his lower back, pulling him deeper into me. “Now, please...I want—”

  “Not yet.” His fingers ripped from my body, reaching for a bottle tangled in my hair. My orgasm faltered. My lips pressed together with impatience.

  Ripping the cap open with his teeth, he smiled grimly as he upended the brightest, deadliest red into the hollow of my throat.

  I flinched as the cool fingers of liquid puddled over and cascaded on either side of my neck, feeling as if he’d slit me from ear to ear.

  Instead of attacking me with more feral urgency, Gil froze.

  His cock pulsed inside me. Horror filled his eyes.

  I didn’t know how the paint looked blending with silver, pink, and blue but the whiteness beneath the black on his cheeks spoke of death and decay.

  My death.

  “Fuck.” A tormented groan fell from his lips as he swiped away the pool of crimson. Again and again, he smeared my skin, turning my individual colours into a muddy, metallic gleam.

  His hand dove into my hair, painting the strands while his forehead crashed on mine.

  The weight of his body increased, the rattle of his breathing quickened, and I stroked his back with shaking fingers. “It’s okay—”

  “It’s not fucking okay,” he snarled, rearing up onto his elbows and thrusting into me so viciously, I scooted away from him.

  But he followed; his knees locked between my legs, driving his cock into me with single-minded determination—a rutting, debasing need to finish, because whatever lived between us had shown far too many flaws to be allowed.

  “Jesus Christ,” he groaned, buckling over me as his anger added a new element to the lust between us. His cock throbbed and thickened inside me, dragging my unrequited orgasm from the depths of my belly and into my pussy.

  My body rippled, milking his length, t
esting permission to explode.

  His eyes narrowed to wicked weapons as he dropped his head and kissed me.

  The moment his tongue entered my mouth, I couldn’t stop it.

  My release wrapped tight spindles around my spine and legs, crippling me with intensity as it ricocheted outward.

  Gil grabbed my breast mid-pulse, making me groan and shudder. His fingers pinched my nipple as his teeth bit my lip, and my mouth went slack beneath his, totally obsessed with the quaking, toe-curling pleasure he smothered me with.

  He kissed me deeper, trying to crawl inside me. I opened wider, submitting to his crude commands.

  His hips never stopped pumping, pounding into me as he wrung every ripple of release from my blood. Only once I was floppy and swimming in ecstasy did his body stiffen and his cock pulse inside me.

  Hot jets of his pleasure filled me as his head crashed to my shoulder, mixing his yellow and black with my red and silver. He jolted in my arms, again and again as he fed me every drop.

  And I was allowed to stroke him.

  Allowed to show tenderness after such a fiendish display.

  Slowly, his head rose, his face a wash of colour but his eyes dull and exhausted as if he’d given me his last remaining heartbeats.

  We stared at each, trying to see each other’s secrets but only finding roadblocks and confusion.

  Gil gave me a bitter smile, looking like some god born to a demon.

  Two personalities.

  Two tragedies.

  Two men.

  And I didn’t know either of them.

  He withdrew and stood, towering over me, painted and sated but still totally tormented.

  With a gruff whisper, he bent over and offered me his hand. “Come on.”

  Placing my fingers in his, I marvelled at the swirls and shades of our multihued skin. “Where are we going?”

  He hauled me to my feet, granting balance as I stepped from the stage. “To wash.”

  I padded naked and barefoot beside him as we left his studio and entered his apartment.

  To wash away our lovemaking.

  To wash away our art.

  To wash away...us.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  ______________________________

  Olin

  -The Present-

  STEPPING INTO GIL’S personal bathroom for the second time was no stranger than the first.

  Then I’d been searching for painkillers for his unretaliated punch-up. Now, I stood awkward and naked as Gil turned on the shower and waited until steam curled behind the grey and white shower curtain.

  His back held streaks of paint, his ass toned and muscular with my handprint on his left cheek. His cock still hung hard and heavy as if his orgasm hadn’t given him the same level of release mine had.

  Hugging my colourful breasts, I backed up as he stepped into the shower and held his head under the stream. The thick yellow in his hair instantly diluted to water colours, flooding his chest and face in liquid lemon.

  Rubbing his eyes clear of the sluice, he looked past the steam to where I stood by the vanity. I waited my turn, very aware of my nudity and the remnants of sex between my legs.

  I wanted to be by myself. To piece myself back together and harden my heart after being shattered all over again.

  I need to be alone.

  A by-product of being lonely for so many years.

  But he held out his dripping hand, his skin slick and delicious. “Get in.”

  I shook my head. “I’ll wait.”

  Not wasting words, he climbed from the shower and marched toward me. His footprints left colour-swirls dancing on droplets as he grabbed my wrist and pulled me into the warm embrace of the spray.

  The moment the water hit my face, I sighed, rubbing at the stickiness of pigment, running hands down my body to remove any trace.

  Gil stood behind me, his looming presence growing ever more intense the longer I stayed under the heat.

  I jerked as his heavy hands landed on my shoulders, kneading me, slowly cascading down my spine. His fingers traced the lines and shadows of my tattoo, following the bumps of scar tissue and valleys of torn muscles.

  My body locked in place as he took his time, touching and learning.

  I wished I could see his face. I wanted to spin in his embrace and study whatever emotion he felt.

  But I didn’t.

  I stayed bound beneath the comforting water, goosebumps contradicting the heat as he continued to inspect the most personal part of me. The part that was almost a shrine to our childhood.

  He cleared his throat as if heavy painful things lodged there, making it impossible to swallow. “There’s even an ocelot in here.” His finger worshipped me as he followed an owl’s feather and found the tiny wild cat.

  I squeezed my eyes against the memory, slipping back into the past.

  He’d slowly started running out of things to call me starting with O. One day, in the library during lunch, while we hid from other students, he’d claimed a dictionary and sat beside me while I’d nibbled my ham and mustard sandwiches. He hadn’t taken a sandwich, saying I fed him too much already.

  As I swallowed a mouthful, he’d smirked and stabbed the pages with a finger. “Ocelot. You’re an ocelot.”

  “I’m a what now?”

  “A feral spotted cat.”

  I took another bite. “I suppose that’s better than a fruit or a monkey.”

  He leaned closer, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear. “Does this mean you have claws, my fuzzy little ocelot?”

  I grinned, pretending to swipe at him like a cat. “The sharpest.”

  “I’ll remember that.” He captured my hand, kissed my knuckles, and continued reading the dictionary as if nothing had happened. All the while, my heart soared, fluttered, and plummeted deeper into love.

  Gil’s touch dragged me back, making me shiver.

  He stole the air right out of my lungs, and I couldn’t do this anymore.

  “Stop.” Twisting in his hold, I faced him with water plastering my hair to my shoulders and paint still staining us. I said what he’d said to me, begging him for space. “Please, don’t.”

  Our eyes caught.

  I sucked in a breath.

  How could I admit that he was the soul-mate who got away?

  I can’t.

  Pure and simple.

  The boy I was in love with wasn’t the same as the man, and my heart sank. It sank to the shower floor and slithered down the drain because I didn’t have the courage to tell him to either commit to us or leave me alone.

  He didn’t utter a sound.

  Utmost silence apart from the hissing shower as his hands cupped my hipbones, his fingers bruising me.

  He stopped breathing as heat and history flared between us. So many things lurked beneath the surface. So many things trapped us from truth and stopped us from being honest, and it hurt.

  It hurt way, way too much.

  It hurt him too.

  Pain glimmered in his eyes the longer he stared.

  Standing in the cramped shower with the faint hint of strawberry on the steam, we washed in vulnerability and fragility. Two very breakable things because we were two very breakable people.

  We did our best to seem unconquerable and brave, but in that moment, that heart-stopping, life-ceasing moment, we were the same.

  Doomed.

  His features shadowed with confliction and a heavy dose of self-loathing. With aching tenderness, he slipped his touch up my waist, caressed the sides of my breasts, and cupped my throat. His thumbs stroked me with irreparable reverence.

  I didn’t want to.

  I fought against the pull.

  But I tripped a little.

  I fell into him.

  Literally and figuratively.

  My body into his body; my heart into his heart.

  I fell out of sanity and into lunacy because I had no right to feel this way. He had no right to make me feel this way.

&
nbsp; His lips captured mine in the sweetest, softest kiss. His fingers braided through my hair, cupping the back of my neck. With our mouths touching, he paused as if giving me the chance to pull away.

  I tried to.

  I tried to stop loving him.

  But my lips parted and the tip of my tongue requested more. A butterfly-inducing more.

  His fingers tightened, holding me firm. He deepened the kiss, touching his tongue to mine, tasting me, dancing with me, slowly, gently, lovingly.

  The shower disappeared.

  The past and present blended, and I kissed him back.

  I kissed him like he kissed me...with devotion, idolization, and a cold gust of fear.

  This was truth.

  This was authentic and legitimately real.

  We kissed forever.

  Our heads choreographed in their seduction, our mouths a perfect fit, our tongues meant for each other.

  My hands swooped up his naked chest.

  He flinched and kissed me harder as my palms felt his thundering heartbeat beneath the mixture of paint and flesh.

  We couldn’t stop.

  We couldn’t end whatever spell cast around us, dragging us deeper, confusing us, ruining us. I’d slept with Gil twice. I’d loved him for years. Yet there was something singular about this kiss.

  Something unique and special and absolutely terrifying.

  This wasn’t about sex.

  It wasn’t about power or passion.

  This was deeper and darker and dangerously raw.

  His soft groan made my heart bloom like a rose, its petals straining for whatever sustenance he could offer. All while the tangle of thorns in my stomach warned me not to fall. Not to put myself through the pain of Gilbert Clark again.

  His body tensed as he tried to pull away. His tongue retreated and his lips thinned, and I prepared to withdraw from the most spectacular kiss of my life.

  Only...as space encroached on our togetherness, he pulled me back. He jerked me into his arms as if he couldn’t bear to let me go, and I moaned in agony.

  Couldn’t he see neither of us were equipped for whatever fallout would follow?

  Locking our lips together, he kissed me with a desperation that burned. Our sex had been explosive and almost angry. Both times. But this...this was totally different. It wasn’t playing games with our lust but with our hearts.