33. Dante
I grinas I watch Riley start to paint, not one bit surprised she grabbed the red. It’s bold. Violent. Bright. Three of my favorite things.
The color is her, and she didn’t dab it or make some dainty little line on the canvas. She fucking owned it.
Riley glances back at me, and my cock twitches. Damn, she’s sexy. Even here, where the whole fucking room always smells of my art, the scent of her lingers on my skin and reminds me how perfect she felt around my cock.
“More,” I tell her, nodding back at the canvas and wishing like hell I could have fucked her bare, with nothing at all between us.
She laughs as she turns back to face the canvas, and the sound does something to me that has me seriously tempted to throw her down right here and claim her on the floor of my studio. I’d love to fuck the stress I saw in her eyes downstairs right out of her system… and get what I need at the same time.
I grin. Another win-win.
And yeah, Madd and Logan would hear her scream for me, but part of me likes that idea a hell of a lot.
Riley has the brush hovering over a twining swirl of blue and purple, and I scrub a hand over my face, getting a fucking grip. Now is not the time to push shit with that rule of Madd’s, and I know it. Not sure I agree, but I do know it.
“Keep going,” I tell her, jerking my chin at the canvas as I move in a little closer.
“I really don’t have any idea what I’m doing,” she says with another laugh that curls around me just like that gorgeous fucking hair of hers did when she was straddling me on the couch.
“Who ever does?” I say with a grin, nudging her shoulder with my hip. “Go on now.”
“You really want me to do this?”
Not sure why, but yeah. I really fucking do.
I tunnel my hand through her hair and wrap my fingers around the back of her neck, enjoying the way her body responds to my touch.
“Maybe this is the blood of the West Point fuckers who took your sister,” I say, indicating the red she used.
Riley stiffens as if her body has just become electrified, her eyes glued to the mark she made. Then she nods.
“Keep painting,” I whisper, heat sliding down my spine as I tighten my grip on the back of her neck. Her breath quickens. “Show me more. Give them what they deserve.”
She grunts like I’ve just punched my cock into her, then brutally slashes the brush across the canvas again. And then again.
“You’re gonna bring them all down,” I murmur, seeing it all unfold as she makes the canvas bleed. “Gonna make those fucking weasels pay for what they took. Avenge the hurt they caused.”
She makes several more vibrant, harsh marks, and I urge her on with my words, completely fucking entranced as I watch her work.
I doubt she’s ever painted before in her life, but I’m not one of those snobby fucking artists who believes someone has to have the right degree or credentials for their self-expression to mean something. What she’s creating is beautiful, because it’s all her.
Unrestrained. Passionate. Fierce.
“Fuck,” she whispers as she sets the brush down, breathing almost as hard as she did after she came on my cock.
She sounds almost awed, and I can see why.
It looks like she clawed the shit out of the painting, but I can still see what’s underneath. I’m not sure if I knew I was thinking of her when I started this one, but it’s clear as fucking day now that we’re staring at it together. The waves of her hair. The chaos of her fighting spirit. That vibrant color she spreads in the world, everywhere she goes.
I put all of that on the canvas as a starting place, and now she’s made it her own.
But she’s more than just blood and vengeance.
I slide the brush out of her hand, pressing against her from behind as I bring her fingers down to the palette. I dip them in the blue that reminds me of her hair and press her thumb into the purple. Then I drag her hand back up to the canvas and swirl it through the wet paint, moving it the way I remember her body moving when she danced around that pole at the strip club.
“You did this,” I tell her. “It’s yours. Look at that, princess. Fucking beautiful.”
She laughs, a breathy sound that’s finally free of the wound-too-tight sound it had when we came up here. I like how she’s letting me add to what she made. Showing her that there are no rules.
I guide her fingers back onto the palette, and she takes control, passing by the red I was going back to and instead choosing… summer. She scoops up a yellow so bright that that’s the only word for it, hesitating for a split second before smearing it through the rest, my hand still twined with hers.
“It feels strange,” she says, her movements becoming bolder. Her breath coming a little faster as my cock hardens against her back.
I don’t know if she means the feel of the thick paints she’s sliding her fingers through, making art this way, or something else entirely. Hell, maybe she doesn’t know either.
“Show me,” I urge her, untangling our hands and smoothing my palm over a burst of color, blurring a long swath of it and then turning that into a cape for the line drawing I quickly sketch through the thick paint with the tip of my finger.
“Oh shit,” she says with a laugh. “Is that me?”
I grin. Her sister’s superhero.
Riley leans back again, then scrapes her nails over the cape and drags the color through the blood of her enemies like jagged claw marks.
“What else?” I ask, sliding my hands over hers again, then wrapping them around the wrists. Not trying to control her, just along for the ride.
She hesitates for a second, then adds an orange the color of the sunrise and a teal that reminds me of the sea, our bodies moving in sync.
It’s chaos. Beautiful fucking chaos.
It’s like fucking and foreplay and therapy, all at the same time. The canvas comes to life, as wild as she is, and I lose track of time as we cover every inch of white together. I’m not actually thinking about sex, even though my cock is hard and I can tell she’s turned on too.
After a while, she turns to me, leaning back and tipping her head up.
“Thank you,” she says, a smear of purple near that sexy-as-fuck nose ring of hers and a pale hint of pink on her cheeks. “This helped.”
I know it did.
I meant it to.
But I didn’t expect to feel this… I don’t even know what. Connection? Bond? Definitely some shit deeper than I’m ready for when she looks up at me like that, eyes all soft and that beautiful face of hers vulnerable and wide open, like she’s forgotten the first rule of survival that I know damn well she knows.
Always protect yourself.
I lean down before I can process whatever the fuck it is I’m feeling, just wanting to get closer. But I come to my senses before I claim her mouth like I want to, planting a kiss on her neck instead.
“Dante,” she breathes out, eyes drifting closed as she tilts her head to the side to give me better access.
My cock throbs. I drag my nose along her throat, hands on her shoulders to hold her in place. She smells like paint and a touch of lilac, and I want to be inside her again. Fuck. I need it.
Her nipples are twin peaks trying to punch out of her thin shirt, and she moves restlessly on the stool, a rolling rhythm that tells me her clit’s probably throbbing for some attention. Her pussy wet and ready for me.
“Fuck, princess,” I groan, biting down on her silky soft skin and getting a hot little moan that almost breaks my resolve.
It would be a mistake to give in, though. She’s affecting more than just my cock right now, and all that beautiful chaos of hers feels like it might just wreck me from the inside out if I don’t get a handle on it before I fuck her again.
Because I will. That’s a given.
But not here. Not now. Not until I can figure out why the hell she gets so far under my skin.
I grab her hands when she twists to reach for me, pulling them back to the canvas. “Come on now, this isn’t finished.”
“The painting?” she asks as I tangle our fingers together and start shaping all that chaos into something new with her.
“Sure, princess.”
It’s true. This kind of painting, this kind of chaos, is never finished.
But maybe a part of me meant that we aren’t finished yet either.
I’m not ready to let her go.