24. Ivy
IVY
I hardly register it when Cam scoops me up off the canvas and carries me into his bathroom.
Barely understand what’s happening when he holds me up with one arm and cranks on the shower with the other, then presses languid kisses along my collarbone, my neck, my tear-stained cheeks, my lips while holding me steady.
My mind and body both float in that heady post-orgasm space where I can’t care about anything, blissfully allowing Cam to take control just like I did out in the studio.
He tugs me under the spray, and the hot water starts to soak into my skin, washing away the paint that must be covering us by now. Everything in me sags, giving in to the exhaustion, relying on Cam to support me physically and emotionally because I am utterly spent in both respects.
Gentle hands scrub a loofah across my wet skin, and goosebumps erupt over every inch of my body, a little moan slipping through my lips.
Cam chuckles low, burying his face in my neck as he continues to wipe away the evidence of what he just did to me. “Don’t worry, Ivy. I’ll get you to bed.”
My thighs clench at his words, every part of me remembering what we did with a dull ache, and my legs tremble so badly they can hardly hold me up.
Only his strong arm wrapped around my waist keeps me from falling over as he washes my body and hair with such care that more tears slip from my eyes that I pray he can’t see under the spray.
This is the real Cam.
This is the one I saw that he tried so hard to hide.
He switches off the water, wraps me in a fluffy towel, and dries himself off carefully, with one hand on me to ensure I stay upright, then scoops me back into his arms effortlessly.
I don’t have the energy to do anything except snuggle against him, pressing my face to the damp skin at his neck, breathing in the vibrant citrus scent that always clings to him that must be from the soap he uses.
Considering how often he must wash his hands to cleanse away the paint, no wonder he always smells like it…
He pads across the studio and sets me down beside the bed, pulling the towel from around me so he can dry me fully, before he settles me onto the mattress and tugs the sheets up around me.
Instantly, sleep tugs at me. This warm, blissful place my mind is floating in starts to be encroached on by that welcome darkness that has been so hard to find for so long.
The lights in the studio shut off, and a few seconds later, the bed dips behind me.
Cam settles in at my back. His strong arm wraps around my stomach, and he tugs me up against him—all hard, lean muscle and heat as he presses his lips to the nape of my neck.
“Mmm…” I instinctually shift back even more, rubbing against him, my ass nestled to his crotch, needing the contact, wanting it, despite how drained I already feel.
His cock instantly hardens, and he nips at my collarbone, making me twitch. “I’m trying to be good here, Ivy. I’m trying to let you sleep .”
I arch my neck and tilt my head toward him, then reach and run my hands through his damp hair.
My nails score over his scalp, drawing a low groan from him and a shift of his hips that presses his hard cock between my ass cheeks in a way that reawakens the heat I thought had ebbed after what happened on that canvas. “You told me you weren’t good…”
Cam’s own words from earlier seem to hang between us for a moment before he issues a low, muttered curse and tilts my head back enough to kiss me.
His tongue delves into my mouth, warring with mine, my body jolting alive again, and my already wrung-out clit throbbing, wanting more of what he gave me only a short time ago.
Why is it like this between us?
What sort of twisted game has fate been playing to lead me here? Into this man’s arms and bed?
All the questions continue to race through my head as the heat builds with his searing kiss, and he slides his left hand from my stomach down between my legs to cup me gently. His lips flutter across mine. “Are you sure, Ivy?”
The promise is there.
He would stop if I said I didn’t want this.
If I chose to drift off to sleep in his arms with his hard cock straining against me, he would gladly let me and hold me all night.
But that isn’t what I want, despite the exhaustion I felt only moments ago.
Back in his arms like this…I want more.
I nod vehemently, pressing my lips to his hungrily.
He tugs my left hip over his, spreading me wide so he can delve his fingers between my legs, my body starting to slicken there with my renewed arousal.
Heat licks across my skin, every inch of me already aflame.
He skims a finger through my folds, dragging the liquid up across my clit, and I groan, arching back even more.
“Fucking hell…” He mutters the words next to my ear, then reaches between us and adjusts his cock so it rests against me, my wetness coating him as he rubs it back and forth, and his fingers play with my most sensitive spot, drenching him even further.
A desperate little mewl slips from my parted lips.
It feels so fucking good that I don’t want it to end.
But I also need more.
Faster.
He seems to sense my growing frustration and alters the angle of his hips so he can slide the head of his cock inside me. I gasp as he spreads me wide, then shoves up, fully impaling me.
I gasp at the sheer force of his entry, and he rolls, taking me with him onto his back so I’m draped across him. With his arms looped over mine, he pins me in place so he can brace his feet into the mattress and hold me hostage.
Completely at his mercy.
Again.
Only, instead of the almost manic pace of earlier, he thrusts up into me slowly. In long, steady strokes that make me feel every single inch of him in exquisite detail.
So unlike what just happened on the canvas.
That was rough and wild.
Fast and hard.
This is…almost reverent.
Every brush of his lips against my ear. Every breath fluttering across my skin. Every drive of his hips designed to worship me in a way that makes tears burn in my eyes again.
He releases my arms, and I reach back to tangle one hand in his hair as he nuzzles my cheek. My other hand drifts down to the mattress, clutching at the sheets, seeking a way to ground myself when he expertly tries to make me spin out of control with every move he makes.
The roll of his hips. That extra little thrust at the top that catches the head of his cock inside me. The sweep of his tongue and lips and scrape of teeth against my neck and shoulder.
Then he lifts my leg, dragging it up and back, giving himself a better angle and exposing me more as he thrusts up in that same rhythm I’m convinced is a slow form of torture.
I bite my lip to contain the whimper that tries to slip out, and Cam slides his hand across my stomach to the apex of my thighs.
“Tell me how you want it, Ivy. Like this?” He rolls his finger over my clit, and I jerk, clenching down around him. “Slow and steady?” His grin presses to my neck. “Or do you like it fast and hard, like before?”
The whimper falls out.
God, I like it all.
I want it all.
Tonight is truly the first time that I’ve felt alive. The other night, my world was collapsing around me, and what happened between us was tangled in grief, guilt, frustration, and regret.
But not now.
All of that is gone.
All that exists is the feel of his cock filling me, his calloused hands gliding across my skin, and his hot, frantic mouth all over me.
“Answer me, Ivy.” He keeps pumping in that dangerously languid pace that’s more like torture, thrusting up, languidly dragging his fingers across my clit, not giving me what I desperately need…
But God, it feels so good.
His teeth scrape along the column of my neck, his lips following with so much care that the tears finally slip free.
I can’t breathe, let alone speak, to offer any sort of answer.
And he just keeps going, setting a completely unhurried pace, as if he has nothing else to do, nowhere else to be but right here.
Where I want to be.
I don’t want him to move from this exact spot.
Something about being spread out across him like this, feeling every move of his chest, his tightening and flexing abs, his rolling pelvis, his tense legs braced to give him leverage against my own as he works me up, heightens everything .
My skin feels too hot.
Too tight.
Every brush of his fingers across my clit too intense.
The drag of his cock inside my cunt too damn good.
But it never crests.
A languid build that doesn’t seem to lead anywhere but my extended purgatory.
“Cam, please.” My plea comes out as a whimper, the kind of noise that I never like making, that makes me sound so needy, so desperate.
But I am.
For him.
For more.
He takes mercy on me and plants his feet, driving up into me harder, faster, but still completely in control, an artist with his canvas, every stroke deliberately placed, all the tension and harsh lines of his body coiled beneath and around mine.
And when he finally takes my clit between his fingers and pinches, twisting it, I come on a strangled cry that echoes off the exposed brick and steel beams of the ceiling.
His own gasp joins the sound as my pussy clenches around him and unleashes something he had managed to restrain until this moment.
Cam’s hips piston harder.
His body tenses as he chases his own release with hammering drives up into me until he finally finds it, lips and teeth clamping down into my collarbone as he comes underneath me.
He drags my head to the side until he can get to my mouth, kissing me in the same rhythm with his tongue as he just did with his cock.
Advance and retreat.
Long and slow as we both try to catch our breath and come down from the high we just experienced.
Finally, I sag fully against him, and he rolls me back onto my side, coming with me, his cock still embedded inside of me. His arms tighten, his body twitching as he nuzzles me, gently dragging his fingers down my arm.
Minutes tick by in comfortable silence, only our heavy breathing filling the air until his chest finally stops heaving against my shoulders.
He kisses my cheek and pulls out, slipping away with a groan.
I roll over to watch him as he climbs from the bed, his semi-hard cock glistening with our releases. He stalks across the studio, buck naked, completely, unabashedly nude, tattoos coming alive as he moves. “Cam? What are you doing?”
He grabs a blank canvas and moves toward the paints lined up along the floor near the one we spent the evening on earlier. “I have to paint you.”
“What?” I push up onto my elbow, my head spinning, still foggy from exhaustion and the pleasure still making my body twitch. “Camden, no.”
The look he tosses over his shoulder at me shuts me up immediately.
He wasn’t asking.
His eyes blaze with the same absolute focus I saw when I first arrived and watched him start painting. This is his muse speaking to him, telling him what to create. And apparently, it’s me.
Almost frantically, he gets what he needs on his palette and brings it over toward the bed, along with the blank canvas and several brushes.
He pauses, stares down at me, and under his assessment, I fall back, allowing my head to hit the pillow.
“Just like that. Don’t move.”
With one leg up, my pussy, still dripping with his release, is fully exposed, as is the rest of me.
The corners of his lips curl as he takes me in by the pale moonlight shining in from the row of windows, and he casually moves back a few feet, sets the canvas on the floor, then squats, still fully nude, and starts painting.
Every movement of his hand makes the corded muscles of his forearm and biceps bunch. He uses broad strokes of blacks and whites, then creates three different shades of gray, slicing the bristles across the canvas so fast that I can barely follow it.
His eyes narrow on me. “Don’t move.”
“I’m not.”
The corners of his lips twitch. “You are. You’re trying to peek.”
“Well, it is me…”
He chuckles low, the sound doing something to me that I don’t want to admit as he keeps painting, his gaze flicking between the canvas and me.
Minutes tick by, the time melting away easily, the longer I watch him work.
Because he’s a fucking masterpiece himself.
The way he moves, how easily he creates something so beautiful with seemingly so little effort…
By the time he rests back on his heels and examines the painting, my eyes are drooping, the emotional and physical events of the evening taking their toll.
I don’t even know when he finishes, just that I feel the bed dip and his body align to mine. He drapes his arm across me and tugs me against him, fluttering his lips to my cheek and then my ear.
“Fucking stunning, Ivy. A true masterpiece.”
It’s the last thing I hear before the world starts to darken at the edges, and I finally allow myself to drift off, blissful in the arms of the man whose warning I undoubtedly should have heeded.