by Cybill Cain
When I finally felt the welcome warmth of him standing right behind me, I fell back into him, soaking in the feel of his hard warm body. I growled at him, “What the fuck took you so long?” not meaning to sound angry, realizing once I’d spoken how easy it was to confuse need with anger. When he put his arms around me, and held me to his chest, everything in me settled. When he spoke into my ear, it all came loose again, as if his words evaporated the gravity of my mind.
“I was busy falling in love from across the room.” Rising to my toes, I spun in his arms, pressing my body to his. A second later I hesitated, remembering I had paint on my hands, despite my best efforts to keep them clean, anticipating that he would not be able to stay away. He smiled at me, leaning in slowly toward my lips. “Unh-huh, I knew the risks when I approached you.”
“But your clothes.”
“I’ll get more, or not. They’re a bother around you anyway. You keep me hard all the time.” I wanted to rub myself all over him. He kissed me, needy and soft, filling all my senses with only him. Naked, clothed, it only mattered that it was Max. My cloudy brain finally heard him.
“Falling in love?” He growled at me, and pulled me back to kiss me again.
“Yes,” he whispered between kisses. When I finally got my eyes to focus he looked like he’d been pillaged by Sherwin Williams. He had paint in his hair, and along his cheeks where my wandering hands had touched him. There were handprints on his shoulders, and I was pretty sure that when he turned around there were going to be Annie sized prints on his hard round little ass. His gaze followed mine, taking in the brightly colored map of my desire for him.
“I’m going to frame these clothes,” he teased me, as he pulled his t-shirt over his head, and reached for the button on his jeans.
“Turn around, before you do that.” He cocked his head to the side, but did as I asked. When I gasped, he looked down over his shoulder, and shook with laughter.
“Yeah, so gonna frame these.” He slid them off, keeping his back to me, giving me a perfect view of the part of him I’d just squeezed while kissing him. I wanted to mark him again, but not with my hands, not with paint that would come off when he showered.
“Stay there.” He was watching me over his shoulder, with fire in his eyes as I carefully cleaned my hands, before approaching him. I placed one kiss on the middle of his shoulders, before trailing down his skin with my lips. Kiss after kiss I marked him, until I reached the top of his ass. There I kissed the top of each cheek, breathing out slowly to let him feel my breath against the moisture my lips had left on his skin.
His head fell back, and he hissed as I blew out again, puckering my lips to increase the effect while I admired the shape of his long legs with every muscle highlighted from the strain I had him under.
My hands slid up his sides, across his skin, and around to his chest. I ran my hands all over him, memorizing the shape of him with my touch only, relishing the feel of his body. I pressed my cheek to his back, so I could reach around him, holding him, until I felt him start to turn in my arms. I stepped back to let my eyes feast on what my fingers had touched.
“Fuck, the way you look at me,” he ground out, his voice a raspy whisper. I licked my lips and made my eyes meet his.
“How…” I swallowed. “How do I look at you, Max?” His eyes slipped partly shut in pleasure.
“Like I’m the thing you’ve been praying for your whole life.” He took my breath away.
“You are.” He looked uncertain, and I knew it was because he wasn’t sure if I meant the man or the movie boyfriend. I regretted my outburst in the deli, because it had made him think I wasn’t seeing him. I had to put a stop to that right now. “I mean the man, not the image. You asked me earlier how you became my movie boyfriend.”
“Yes.”
“My mom was sick for a very long time before she passed away. There was chemo, and surgery, and then a round the clock nurse. It’s part of why I nearly lost Escape, trying to cover her medical bills. It lasted for years. There were times when I thought I’d lose my mind from all the suffering that went on, both hers and mine. All the goodness was leaking out of my world with her passing, leaving me alone in the dark.
“One day, the nurse tried to take care of me, too. She told me about a movie that was playing, and handed me my purse, banishing me for the rest of the afternoon.
“I couldn’t even remember the last time I’d been out of the house for something other than a run to the drugstore, or a visit to the doctor. I was practically giddy, but also felt guilty because it was slowly dawning on me that my mother would probably never have another afternoon of complete freedom.” I felt a tear slip down my cheek, but I went on, needing him to understand that I knew the difference between dreams and reality, and that I knew it took both to make us whole.
“It turned out to be Heartthrob that was playing, and the nurse was right, it was wonderful. You were wonderful. It was just the thing I needed to remember that there was life yet to be lived. Something about you, Max, reminded me that I still had things to do, because I could see in your face that you were living your dream. As I sat there in the dark I started to wonder just how you’d made that happen.
“My mind started to connect all the strange and wonderful things that had to happen for that single moment of awakening to occur. I could see my side, how I’d wound up there, but your path was the mystery. What had led you to that theatre where you fired yourself into the dark of my world, lighting it up like a flare? What trials had you overcome to shine so brightly on that screen?
“Before long I came to see that it wasn’t just you, it was the writer who told the story, and the musicians who wrote the score that made my heart swell when you took the leading lady in your arms. Dozens, maybe even hundreds of people who had trials and darkness of their own to conquer to be there, and reach out to me with their art when I was lost.
“There were so many things, impossible wonderful horrible beautiful things, which had to happen for all of us to meet up that day. Imagining them all made me feel small and large at the same time, because I became a part of that tapestry when I became aware of it.
“Connections like this are all around us, have always been around us, but until that moment I was blind to them. You were the spark that opened my eyes to the world in new ways. I’m not wise enough to see it all, and I have little chance of understanding it, I only know that without you I would have missed so many wonderful things.
“I came home with a fresh perspective on my mother’s illness, and saw her not as a woman dying, but as a woman still alive. I was able to find some joy in the time I had left with her, because I knew that I would never be alone. I was a part of something much larger, and I had to find the courage and strength to do my part, and be a light for someone else when they needed it. I do that with my painting, believing that my art will find its way to someone who needs it as much as I needed yours that day.
“I look at you the way I do, because you inspire love in me, Max. Love, appreciation, and wonder for everything and everyone in the world around me. You’re my muse, Max Alexander.” I would have gone on, but he kissed me quiet, his mouth plundering mine as if he could capture the words I’d said and save them for later. He didn’t need to worry. I’d tell him all of it again, any time he wanted to hear it.
***
Max
People talk all the time. Rarely do they say anything. I made my living knowing how to feel and use the weight of words, to make them sink into a person and linger. What she’d just said to me was powerful in ways I could barely comprehend. She saw me, the real me, and what she had seen had shifted her entire perspective on the world around her.
I knew that she had just marked me, deeply and permanently for the rest of my life. There would never be a time when her words were not at the heart of me, reminding me that my choices and my path had meaning, not only to me, but others as well. I wanted to savor the feeling she’d given me, but I was tired of being apart
from her. It seemed like days since I’d awakened to her needing me. I needed her now.
She had a small stool in her studio, for reaching the top of large canvases, she’d told me during the tour. I brought it over to the easel and grabbed a blank canvas, replacing the painting she had there, placing it carefully to the side so she could finish it later. Her paints were on a rolling table, along with her brushes. I pulled them closer and assisted her onto the stool, careful to keep my hands clean of paint.
The height of the stool placed her perfectly so that I could rest my head on her shoulder, while aligning my body with hers. I put my throbbing cock between her thighs, sliding back and forth in her slickness, making her gasp every time I rubbed her clit. Her head fell back on my shoulder while she trembled against me. I put my arm around her waist to steady her when I felt her knees go slack.
I put my other hand between her thighs from the front, using my fingers to massage her when I pulled my hips back, and setting up a slow hot rhythm that never left her untouched. Her head was rolling from side to side against me, her hips following my every caress as I took her right to the edge and stopped.
“Show me what this feels like,” I breathed hot and heavy in her ear.
“What?” she almost growled, frustrated that I had stopped just short of taking her over the edge.
“On the canvas,” I clarified, giving her another stroke for punctuation. She cried out, the depth of her want cutting through me to the bone. “Paint us, Annie.” I leaned forward with her body, supporting her as she dazedly reached for paint, using her hand to paint a broad stroke of red across the canvas. I slowly started pleasing her again, building her up as she added other colors, shaping them into something that held me captive as I watched it unfold.
Her hands sped up, and mine did, too, giving her new inspiration as her climax loomed. When she exploded against my hand, she grabbed the top of the canvas, holding on as she shook and moaned. I held her through it, loving the visual evidence of what I had done to her body.
I pulled her back against me, kissing her neck, turning her head so I could kiss her lips, swallowing her soft hot pants that went all the way to the heart of me. This was what I had wanted in my soul from the moment I had first seen her here.
I pulled my hips back enough to put the head of my cock at her entrance. She moaned into my mouth, and tried to move back, but I held her still, wanting this to last. I pushed until the thick head of me made it past her tight entrance, and stopped.
“Show me, Annie.” Again, together we leaned first to the paint, and then to the canvas. This time she added black to the red, mixing it in slow sensuous swipes until it became the deep red of hearts blood. I could almost feel the pulse of the canvas before us. It beat in time with the throb of my cock and the quivering of her pussy around me. I gave her more of me.
This time she understood what I wanted, and reached over to add a bright streak of cerulean blue starting above the red before joining it in a tight hard swirl of purple. She used her other hand to feather the pure blue out. I slipped in deeper, almost halfway inside her tight heat, and saw her add white to the edges of the blue, making it look like it was disintegrating.
“Am I making you disintegrate, Annie?” I growled in her ear, going deeper into her with my cock.
“Yes,” she answered, still working the blue on the canvas in perfect time to my body rocking into her. She became an extension of our connection, the canvas was her expression of our passion. I gave her the rest of me, my body screaming its need for release when it felt her wet warmth engulf me completely. My head fell to her shoulder as I worked for control. I understood the blue.
“Blue because it burns hotter, right?” I asked her, still keeping my head down and my eyes closed.
“So hot,” she sighed, turning to kiss my temple. She moved for more paint, rubbing me inside her as she turned her body back to the canvas. The sensations she caused tore through me, causing me to push deeply into her, unable to stop myself. The motion made her hands land flat on the canvas. Her fingers scrambled for purchase on its slick surface. I could feel the marks she made there against my own heart, and what little control I had slipped away.
My hands went to her hips, holding her as I plowed into her again and again. Her hands were wild, sliding over the canvas in time with my thrusts, making an image of what we were together in that moment. I could feel her quivering around me, almost there. I let go of her hips, and pressed my body to her back, one hand sliding down to where we were joined. One hard slick swipe against her and she broke, taking me with her, howling in an animal release that took us out of her studio, and into something much larger, where we were one.
I held onto my sanity just long enough to get us to her daybed, collapsing with her on top of me as I tried to catch my breath. This must be what an out of body experience feels like, my sex drugged brain thought, before I turned us over and molded my body to hers. She had a blanket on the bed that I pulled over us, feeling warm and tingly all over. Sometime later, I rolled over on my back, and stretched. Annie was still dozing beside me.
I opened my eyes and looked at what we had made together on her canvas, and smiled. It was beautiful. She was beautiful. I turned back, my eyes looking up at the ceiling, and found me smiling back at me. An autographed me, no less. I closed my eyes and shook my head, not able to stop smiling. That dude in the photo might look like he had the world by the tail, but I had something he would never know. I had Annie.
10. Storm Coming
Annie
“Come with me,” Max said, attacking me with kisses as soon as he saw my eyes open. He was going on a fishing trip today, which he was very excited about, and had been asking me to come with him since he’d made the reservation.
“I don’t like fishing,” I told him between kisses, giggling as he tickled me a little while maneuvering us around on the bed until I was pinned beneath him. His nose was pressed to mine, making my eyes cross as I tried to look at him. He chuckled at me, and the feel of his big warm body rubbing itself all over mine to the laughter right out of me. He could set me off like a firecracker.
Believing he was gaining ground in his quest to take me fishing, he shifted and put his hips between my legs, rocking slowly against me as he stared into my eyes with a shit eating grin on his face. “You know you want to come,” he teased, leaning down to nip my neck, kissing a slow trail over it while he set me on fire.
Since our day in the studio we had been inseparable. I couldn’t recall a time when I had been happier in my life. Two weeks had flown by like an instant. When I was working or painting he was nearby working on his screenplay. That was good, but the inventive fantastic ways we filled the downtime were some of my most precious memories.
One night we’d made a bonfire on the beach, and sat out under the stars until nearly dawn. The memory of the hot fire at my back, his hot body pressed to my chest as I fucked him while the cool night air kissed my skin ran riot over my common sense at least twice a day, making me seek him out to do it all over again.
Max was always more than happy to oblige me, giving himself over to me in those crushing moments of need that swept over me. He understood, and I knew it because he would often seek me out with the same fiery need in his eyes.
Once I’d tried to tease him by playfully running away, squealing like a teen. My reward and my punishment had been for him to take me on the stairs, right where he caught me. I could still feel his mouth on me, his tongue inside me as he held me there, making me come twice before he finally gave me what I needed. It was so intense I wasn’t sure I would ever try to escape him again. On the other hand, it was so intense I wasn’t sure that I wouldn’t try to escape him again, either.
That was some special occasion sex, the kind you thought about when you were eighty and staring at the wall, toothless and drooling. That experience had solved the mystery for me as to the drooling. I would always remember what he’d done, and how it had felt to be taken by him wi
th my hair wrapped in his fist while he fucked me hot and slow like we had forever together.
“I’ll let you hold my worms,” he murmured in my ear, not one to ever give up on what he wanted.
“Chum,” I sighed, wondering if he’d ever been deep sea fishing before.
“Oh, we’re closer than that,” he whispered between kisses along my neck. “We’re pals at least, aren’t we, Annie? I wouldn’t let a chum hold my worms.” I snorted as my hand slipped down between us, taking hold of his erection.
“Like this, you mean?” I asked, trying to sound impish, but barely managing any words at all because of what he was doing to me. He grunted his response, and thrust into my hand a couple of times. The tip of him started leaking. I could feel the moisture on my hand, and it made me fucking crazy. I put him at my entrance, needing him right now. He’d burned all the play out of me.
He groaned as he filled me. I wrapped my legs around him, and he raised his body up on his knees at the same time, like we had planned and choreographed this sensual dance. “I don’t like it when you’re not with me,” he whispered in my ear, just before his hips went off like a jack hammer, and my eyes rolled back in my head.
I’d woken up to some version of this for weeks now. He had conditioned me to it. As soon as I opened my eyes I was wet and aching for him. Some days we never made it out of bed at all. Those were my favorite days, the ones I would remember when he was gone. I tried to make the idea go away, refusing to let the inevitable spoil the precious time I had remaining with him.
Even lost in his driving need he felt the change in me, and slowed down, pulling his head up from my neck to look at my face. “You all right?” I closed my eyes, and bit my lip to hide what I was thinking from him. Partially because I wanted him to keep going, and partially because I wanted to avoid telling him how much I hated the fact that he was leaving soon.