Chapter 13. Ophelia #2
My breath is caught in my throat, any clever comments I had planned long forgotten as he walks me from easel to easel.
I’m floating on my back in water, hair spread around me like swirling flames.
I’m sitting on a bed, facing away from him.
I’m biting the end of a pen, frowning down at a crossword.
I’m showering, head tipped back against the spray.
He’s left in the soft swell of my lower stomach, the pale stretch marks on my hip.
And then I’m blurred through my own tears, a soft hand cupping the back of my neck as I stare at the artworks in front of us.
“I know you’re worried I’ll panic and leave you again when things get hard. I haven’t exactly proved otherwise,” he says, thumb tracing a line between my shoulder blades. “I know you’re worried about long distance, that it’ll stretch our strings too far. I’m so sorry I let you believe that.”
I drop my head, but a gentle finger tilts my chin up and to the left so I’m looking at him when I speak. “I just don’t want this not to be enough. I don’t want you to forget me.”
“I don’t need you in front of me, Ophelia.
I don’t need you as a model. I know the curves of your waist better than the hallways of my own home.
I could draw you in any lifetime, together or apart.
I haven’t produced a drawing since January that isn’t you in some way or another.
If we have to be long distance, I know I could do it, because you’re never further from me than my pencil. ”
I bury my head in his chest and let an unapologetic sob hiccup its way out of my throat. I’ve never needed to thicken my skin around him.
To be loved by Alex Corbeau-Green is unlike anything I’ve ever known.
He steers us to the final easel, lowering onto the stool. He pulls away, those tortured eyes regarding me through messy hair in need of a trim.
His eyes drop down to my lips, his tongue running a slow line behind his teeth. We haven’t kissed yet, but he’s hard beneath his dark jeans, practically vibrating with want.
It’s too much, too hot, too tempting. I’ve lost control of my pulse, my self-control is abandoned at the bottom of the Thames. I thread my fingers through his hair and straddle him where he sits. His groan is animalistic. “I think Tangerine is standing outside.”
“Clementine?”
“Satsuma?”
I wriggle my hips against his, impatient. “Are you gonna keep naming soft fruits all evening?”
I can’t remember the last time he smiled like this. Like the weights that burden his shoulders all day have been temporarily set down. “I wouldn’t go raisin your blood pressure like that.”
“Alex!”
His laugh echoes around the hall, a little blush forming on his cheeks.
I fall in love all over again, ridiculing the girl inside me who thought no strings would last. He sighs, expression sobering as he regards me like I put the moon in the sky and arranged the stars around it, just for him.
“I’m pretty sure she’s listening outside. ”
I run my fingers over his chest, worried he’s not real. Maybe Clementine murdered me with her giant kombucha bottle, and this is the afterlife. Maybe Eike is a dangerous driver. “I don’t care.”
His hands on me are shameless and clumsy, flying from my waist to my hips to my breasts to my thighs like he can’t quite believe I’m here, either. His thumb traces over my lips, pupils so dilated that his eyes are an inky abyss. “Can you be quiet, Ophelia?”
“Can you?”
A breathless laugh tickles my throat. His hands move dangerously close to the top of my thighs, scorching a path across the freckled skin. “I wouldn’t have thought so, no.”
His fingers dip between my legs, spare hand steadying my waist. My head tilts back, his name a desperate gasp between my lips. He guides my legs farther apart, skillful fingers sinking into me to ease an ache that has plagued my nights for so long.
It’s different now; there are no secrets weighing down the back of my mind; we’re not trying to cram too-big feelings into a friendship-sized box. My heart is in his hands, and his in mine.
His fingers brush my clit, lips tracing my collarbone, and while his actions may feel sinful, his words feel anything but. His words are worship.
“I can’t live without you, Ophelia,” he breathes, against my pale skin. “Not in this lifetime, not in the next.”
“You’ve gone all philosophical on me.”
His tongue grazes my nipple, and there’s no way Clementine doesn’t hear the soft moan that echoes around the empty hall. “Well, you’ve given me hope for the future.”
My fingers fumble with his top few buttons until more of his skin is exposed to me. I breathe in his scent, letting him fill every inch of my lungs. The rush of euphoria that follows is dizzying. “And you’ve made me stronger than my past.”
My fingers flex over the zipper of his dark jeans. His breath catches in his throat, giving way to a quiet whimper. It’s my undoing. “And you’re going to make me a one-minute man.”
I laugh, slightly grateful for the turn to less emotional conversation. The last thing I need is to start crying during hot makeup sex. There has to be at least one event in my year that I don’t cry through.
His fingers move faster inside me, thumb circling my clit. A long thread of warmth unravels in my abdomen, forehead dropping to his shoulder. His spare hand splays over my stomach, both of us covered in differently colored streaks of chalky pastel.
“This is how my dreams go,” he whispers. “Every night, this is how they go.”
We’re an artwork of his creation, messy lines that form something wonderful in all the chaos.
“Fuck, fuck, I’m gonna—”
He stops abruptly, pushing me off the stool, and I think maybe he’s as close as I am, just from a few touches. “Jesus Christ, Ophelia. Turn around.”
I do as he says, turning to face the blank canvas.
His breaths are heaving when he reaches around me and grabs two of the pastels.
The fabric of his jeans is rough against the sensitive skin at the back of my thighs, every graze of his shirt against my arms sending a jolt of electricity down my spine.
He swipes the colored pastels over my hands in long, languid strokes, unhurried even as the evidence of his desire presses into my lower back. A shudder racks my body, the sheer weight of the anticipation between us almost too much to bear.
A soft kiss lands on my neck; a strangled curse floats over my shoulder. Two large hands drag my hips back just enough that I have to splay my hands over the blank paper to steady myself. Brown and orange handprints mar the pristine white page.
Alex’s voice is husky in my ear, breath thawing the cold shell I’ve spent so many years building around my skin. “Paint me a picture while I fuck you, Ophelia.”
The noise that escapes me is embarrassing: a moan and a garbled version of his name trying to escape at once. Orange claw marks rake over the paper as I fight to keep my balance. Alex traces his thumb down the dip of my spine, murmuring a string of muttered French.
He seems keen to take his time, to drink in every detail of this moment, hands kneading the skin of my back like he’s a sculptor and I’m the prize in his collection.
But I’m more of a fuck now, examine each other’s vertebrae later sort of girl.
“What’s the hold up?” I demand, voice edged with desperation. He’s dragging this out just to watch me squirm. “Stuck in traffic, or something?”
He laughs in disbelief, wrapping a handful of my hair around his fist, forcing me to look up at the mess I’ve already made of the paper.
Tears prick my eyes, every sense on high alert.
His hands on my waist are red hot, branding his fingerprints into my skin, and suddenly I’m delirious with need, a frantic longing to be his again.
The word please slips through my lips like a chant.
“Ophelia, baby. You’ve got yourself all worked up.”
One more please slips past my lips, and then he slams his hips forward, one hand on my waist, one on my shoulder to stop me flying into the easel in front of us.
He’s everything, everywhere. The eye of the storm, the calm in the chaos. The pleasure in a lifetime of pain. Neither of us is quiet. I cry out his name, he whispers a broken thank you, like he’s been drowning for weeks, and he’s just been given a lifeline.
And for the first time since the beginning of the year, I can see land after so long at sea.