Chapter 23 Mira #2
He carried me four steps and pressed my back against the freshly painted wall.
Wet cream smeared across my shoulders, my hair, the back of my neck, and I didn’t care because his mouth was on my throat and his hands were everywhere, pulling at fabric, spreading paint across my skin in streaks that felt more permanent than pigment.
His lips sucked hard at my pulse point, teeth grazing just enough to make me gasp, while his fingers dug into my hips, holding me pinned against the cool, slick surface.
Solomon growled in approval, grabbing my wrists and slamming them above my head against the wall with one strong hand. Paint transferred from his palm to my skin, marking me as his.
“Waited,” he said against my collarbone. The word was barely language. “Too long.”
He ground his hips forward, letting me feel the thick bulge of his cock straining against his pants, pressing right into my core. The friction sent sparks through me, and I arched into him, desperate for more.
Then he moved to lower me to the drop cloth on the floor. My tank top was gone before my back hit the ground, and his mouth traced the paint streaks on my skin, tongue dragging through wet cream.
His mouth crashed back to mine, dominating every inch as he tasted me. I moaned into the kiss, my body trembling under his control. His paint-covered hand cupped one, thumb circling my nipple until it hardened into a tight peak.
Solomon pinched it firmly, drawing a sharp cry from me, then leaned down to suck it into his hot mouth, tongue lashing relentlessly. “Fuck, you’re perfect,” he praised between licks, his voice rough with hunger.
“These tits... so full.”
Hearing dirty words from a man of few words made me feel more heated.
He switched to the other breast, biting down just hard enough to make me buck against him, while his hand slid between my thighs. His fingers found my pussy, slick and aching, and he groaned against my skin.
“Mira, you’re dripping already. Do you love being painted up like this?” He plunged two fingers inside me without warning, curling them to hit that spot that made my knees buckle. “Do you love that you’re marked as mine? Like this?”
I clenched around him, panting, as he pumped them in and out, his thumb grinding against my clit. Paint smeared across my inner thighs from his hand, mixing with my arousal, the sensation filthy and intoxicating.
This is a new side of him. A darker side. The beast without restraint.
“S-solomon,” I whimpered, my hands fisting in his hair, pulling him closer.
He pulled his fingers free, bringing them to my lips. “Taste yourself,” he ordered, pushing them into my mouth.
I sucked eagerly, eyes locked on his silver gaze, now flecked with gold. He watched me with predatory intensity, then withdrew his fingers and dropped to his knees. His paint-slicked hands spread my thighs wide, forcing me open.
His mouth found my center, tongue pressing flat against my clit in a slow, devastating stroke that ripped a cry from my throat.
No buildup or teasing.
He consumed me with intensity, focused and relentless, with cream-colored fingerprints across my inner thighs, gripping me open. His tongue delved into my folds, lapping at my pussy as if he was starving, sucking my clit between his lips and flicking it hard.
I writhed, but he held me firm, one hand on my hip bruising with paint, the other sliding back inside me to fuck me with his fingers while he devoured me.
“Solomon, I need...” My voice broke. My hips bucked against his mouth.
He pulled back just enough to look up at me, silver eyes molten, his lips wet, paint smeared across his jaw. The sight alone nearly sent me over the edge.
“I need you,” he said. His voice was wrecked. “I have needed you for centuries, and I cannot be gentle. Not this time.”
“Then don’t be.”
He surged up, capturing my mouth in a bruising kiss, letting me taste myself on his tongue. His hands made quick work of his pants, shoving them down to free his cock. It sprang out, thick and hard, veins pulsing.
Paint streaked his abdomen, and he gripped himself, stroking once, twice, before pressing the head against my entrance.
“Be a good girl for me, Mira,” he utters, nipping at my earlobe. “I’m going to fuck you until you can’t stand, until this paint is everywhere, inside and out.”
My pussy clenched at his commands.
With one powerful thrust, he buried himself deep inside my pussy, stretching me wide. I screamed his name, nails raking down his back, leaving red trails through the paint.
He didn’t pause, didn’t give me time to adjust. His hips snapped forward, pounding into me with brutal force, each drive slamming me harder. Paint squelched between us, smearing across my belly, my breasts, as our bodies slapped together.
“God, you feel incredible,” Solomon groaned, his hands gripping my ass, wrapping my legs around his waist. “Your pussy’s gripping me so tight.”
I clung to him, lost in the rhythm, the way he filled me completely, hitting deep with every thrust. His mouth found my neck again, sucking marks into my skin, praising me between grunts.
“Look at you, covered in my paint, my cum soon. You’re perfect, Mira. Always has been.”
My walls clenched around him and he groaned, the sound torn from somewhere primal. His paint-streaked gripped my hip, angling me higher, and the shift made me cry out as he sank even deeper.
I could feel every inch of him, every ridge, every pulse of heat as he drove into me with a ferocity that left no room for thought.
Solomon’s free hand found my jaw, tilting my face to his. Silver eyes, gold bleeding through at the edges.
“Look at me.” His hips never stopped, pace brutal, relentless. “I want to see you when it happens.”
I held his gaze.
My hand came up to trace the scar lining his temple to his jaw, leaving a trail of cream paint along the raised skin, and he turned into the touch, pressing his mouth against my palm.
His rhythm stuttered for a single beat, emotion cracking behind those silver eyes, and then he drove into me harder, deeper, each stroke claiming me from the inside out.
“Now,” I gasped. “Please.”
Solomon’s canines pierced the mark on my throat. The pain was a flash, replaced by a flood of sensation so intense I couldn’t separate the bite from the pleasure from his cock buried inside me.
My orgasm crashed through without warning, walls clenching around him as I cried out against his shoulder, and he fucked me through it, his thrusts growing erratic, chasing his own release.
Then the knot swelled.
I knew what it was this time. Knowing didn’t make the stretch any less overwhelming. My breath punched out in a gasp and my hands flew to Solomon’s shoulders, gripping hard.
“Breathe.” One word. Rough but steady against my ear. His hand cradled the back of my skull, holding me against him.
“Easy for you to say.” My teeth clenched as the pressure built, my body resisting the expansion on instinct. “You’re not the one being... oh God.”
“I’ve got you.” His mouth pressed against my temple.
Paint-streaked fingers brushed the hair from my face, and his thumb traced my cheekbone while he waited, letting my body catch up.
The burn crested and tipped into fullness, my muscles unclenching, the ache transforming into a pressure that bordered on pleasure.
“Good,” he said against my skin.
His body locked against mine, the pressure building, stretching me to my limit, sealing us together. He ground into me in shallow, desperate thrusts, his cock throbbing as he spilled inside me, and each pulse sent aftershocks rippling through my core until I was trembling beneath him.
Solomon’s face hovered inches from mine, silver eyes burning, my blood on his lips, paint in his hair and streaked across the scar I’d traced so many times.
“I can feel you now,” I whispered. “Right here.”
His thumb brushed a tear from my cheek, smearing a faint line of cream paint along my skin. The gesture was so tender compared to the claiming that had preceded it.
“Worth waiting for,” he said.
I laughed. A wet, breathless sound that echoed through the empty bookshop. His mouth found mine again, gentler now, the desperation settled into certainty.
We lay tangled on the drop cloth, paint drying on our skin, the afternoon light shifting through the new windows and painting everything gold.
I pressed my cheek against his chest and listened to his heartbeat from the outside while feeling it echo from within.
Two simultaneous rhythms, one through my ear and one through the bond. Solomon’s hand moved through my hair, pulling paint-stiffened strands away from my face, and the silence between us was the kind only he could create. Full, warm, needing no words.
“We ruined the wall,” I murmured.
“I’ll repaint it.”
“There’s a butt print in the cream coat.”
“I’ll fix it.”
“My butt print. In the fresh paint. On the wall of my future bookshop.”
A rumble moved through his chest. “It adds character.”
I traced a line through the paint drying on his ribs, drawing a lopsided heart without thinking about it. His hand caught mine and pressed it flat against his skin, holding it there.
The wail of a siren split the quiet.
Getting closer, then pulling up outside the bookshop.
A truck door slammed.
“Mira! Solomon!” Percy’s voice carried through the new windows with the subtlety of a bullhorn. “Time to go home! Lucian says dinner’s at seven and he’s making that thing with the potatoes, and I swear if I have to eat another of his super healthy dishes I will defect to a rival kingdom!”
Solomon groaned. His head dropped back against the drop cloth and his eyes closed.
“He’s so annoying,” he muttered.
I dissolved. Full-body, rib-aching, tear-inducing laughter that shook me against his chest while Solomon lay there, freshly claimed, knotted, covered in paint, and thoroughly inconvenienced by the world’s most enthusiastic interruption.
“We should probably get dressed,” I managed between gasps.
“Probably.”
“We also need to be more productive tomorrow. We got... sidetracked.”
Solomon’s eyes opened. The look he gave me was amusement, a fraction of softness that transformed his whole face.
“Again. Worth it,” he said.
Percy honked the truck horn twice.
“COMING!”
I shouted at the window, which sent me into another fit because the word landed differently in the context of what we’d just done, and Solomon covered his face with his paint-streaked hand while his shoulders shook once.
This man. Quiet, deadly, painted head to toe in cream, lying on a drop cloth in my half-finished bookshop with his heartbeat living in my chest.
My life was a romance novel. And not one of the light and fluffy ones.
Definitely from the bottom shelf.