Chapter Twelve #3
The left corner of his mouth crept slowly upward, his lips spreading wide to allow one single dimple out to play. “I’m making you something, you know. That’s what that photo was: it was for you.”
His fingers beneath her skirt found the skin of her torso, and she shuddered and gasped at the fire of them. When she opened her mouth, he lunged forward and took her lips in his, more forward, more forceful, more heated than he’d ever been before.
It left her breathless.
“Do you know why I work in neon?” he whispered, pulling away from her slightly so he could look her in the eyes again.
Cool air rushed across her neck when he removed his palm, but his left thumb began to make languid circles just above the waistband of her tights, and Audrey shifted and rubbed her legs together, unable to sit still.
The sudden urge to move was incessant, unyielding.
Theo had never looked at her quite the way he did now, and it made her feel odd.
She was hot, burning as if she had a fever, and it was getting hard to breathe, like something heavy had been laid over her chest.
But she still managed to shake her head.
Theo didn’t blink. He didn’t break eye contact. But his fingers twitched again, and he slid both hands beneath the waistband of her tights. He began to slowly tug them down the length of her legs, carefully alternating sides so they wouldn’t tear.
“When I was in high school, I worked in my dad’s auto shop on weekends. I didn’t have quite the same passion for cars that he did, but there were two things I really loved: welding and wiring.”
He yanked the tights free of her feet and tossed them casually onto the surface of the worktable.
Audrey barely had time to register the change in temperature below her waist before his hands slid up her legs again, smoothing across her skin and right back up to her hips before coming down, rubbing over and over, cyclical and hypnotic.
His eyes were molten, and his skin scorched across hers.
Heat built up in her core.
She shifted again.
“He did regular mechanic work too, but he mostly specialized in restoring vintage hot rods. I’m not going to lie: it was pretty cool to be a teenager and work on classic muscle cars with him, especially when he let me drive his on occasion.
He taught me everything he knew, and that’s actually how I got the scars on my hands: spark welding burns.
You really should wear gloves when you’re handling massively dangerous currents of electricity and heat. Don’t be dumb like teenage me.”
“I-I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Good.”
Theo’s fingers had wandered upward again, and when they hooked next beneath the elastic of her underwear, Audrey’s heart nearly beat straight out of her chest.
Her breath hitched.
Time seemed to stop.
Theo paused and waited, watching her closely, a question written across his face.
He quirked one curious eyebrow at her, and it was all she needed to understand what he was asking.
But she couldn’t muster up the air for words, so she gave him a tiny, nervous nod instead.
No one had ever asked her for this before.
But now she needed to know. She needed to know what he might do, and what it might feel like.
His lips cracked into a wicked grin.
The fabric started to slip slowly over her hips, peeling gently down her legs.
Theo took his time.
It was agonizing.
“I didn’t really know what I was going to do in college.
My mom wanted me to be a lawyer, like her and my uncle and my grandfather, but I have no interest in that bullshit.
Never have. I’m too much like my dad. I loved art too much, loved working with my hands too much.
I tried law for a year after undergrad, but it wasn’t for me.
I was miserable, so I left and went for my MFA instead.
” He flashed her another roguish grin, the twin of the one his father wore in the photo upstairs, though this time, it was paired with a bitter huff.
“Turns out I’m the black sheep of the family—I think my dad was the only one who ever understood me.
I don’t know why I’m still surprised by that. ”
Her panties snagged briefly on her ankle before Theo tugged them free, and Audrey’s cheeks heated when she caught a glimpse of them glistening in the bright blue light of the nearest sculpture.
They were soaked through. Theo’s pupils dilated further at the sight and his breathing quickened, but he tucked her panties reverently into his pocket before turning his attention back to her.
“Even though I was on an athletic scholarship when I first went to college, my mom still threatened to withhold some finances from me if I didn’t do what she asked.
So as a compromise for declaring a visual arts major, I promised her I’d do something more ‘pragmatic.’ Her words, not mine.
” He rolled his eyes, but it was just a flash.
He didn’t seem to want to take them away from her for long.
He placed his hands on her hips and pulled her to the edge of the table, nestling himself more firmly between her thighs.
His left hand wandered up her skirt and between her legs again while his right slid up her back, bracing her as solidly as he could for what she assumed he was about to do.
Audrey’s heart thrummed in her ears, mixing with the buzzing of the neon lights surrounding them.
“I wasn’t sure what that more ‘pragmatic’ major would be until I decided to take chemistry for my science credit. And we learned about the noble gases.”
Theo’s calloused fingertips trailed along the soft skin of her inner thighs.
They paused, and his eyes searched her face for one more moment before he slid his fingers up further—and along her slit.
She was slick already, unbearably wet, and he closed his eyes and breathed out slowly, gathering himself while he began to stroke her gently.
“I’d already worked with some of them in my dad’s shop, actually.
” His voice was ragged, but he continued anyway, his fingers gentle and slow and soft, circling and caressing and soothing, as if she were the most delicate thing he’d ever handled—as if he were terrified of breaking her.
“Hold on to me, sweetheart,” he whispered as an aside, bending forward slightly so Audrey could wrap her arms around his neck.
She obeyed, twining them around his head and burying her fingers in his hair.
He grunted and surged forward when she accidentally tugged a bit too hard on his roots with a trembling hand, but he pressed a quick kiss to the side of her neck before speaking again, his hand gradually increasing in speed.
Audrey gave in with a groan.
She couldn’t help it.
Her hips rocked against his palm of their own accord.
“Argon is a shielding gas in welding, so I knew some of their properties. When the gases are inert, you can’t perceive them.
They’re colorless, odorless, tasteless, formless, transient, and, frankly, extremely rare.
They’re completely invisible to the naked eye, their true natures kept hidden from both science and man for centuries, and they have to be manufactured or created in labs for us to use.
” He paused, and Audrey wanted to die when he did.
The lack of friction was unbearable now.
“Do you know where we find these gases out in nature?”
She shook her head.
“We find them in the stars.”
Theo slipped one finger inside her, and Audrey arched into him with a gasp at the sensation of it.
His hands were so big, so wide, his fingers so thick and strong that only one of them was nearly enough to fill her entirely.
When he curled it, beckoning, she curled over his shoulder, hardly able to breathe at the rising heat and pressure threatening to overwhelm her at every one of his strong, slow strokes.
“If you take those gases and apply a little energy, a little friction, a little…stimulation in the form of electricity—” Theo pulled his finger out only to replace it with two, sliding them both in slowly, so slowly, and stretching her carefully, gloriously as he pressed them deeper and deeper inside of her.
God, she’d never felt so full before.
His thumb continued his earlier work, circling gently across her clit while he stroked his fingers along that elusive ridge inside.
“If you provide that, they burst into light, explode into color, swirl and form into stars. It’s chemistry, yes, but it’s also physics, it’s metaphysics, it’s philosophy.
It’s everything that drives us and drives the cosmos, the basis of life and light and everything we build upon it.
“When I realized that, I knew what I wanted to do. I saw it then, sitting in that chemistry lab, images of exploding light and sculpture in my mind, electricity buzzing into life, the fabric of the universe stitched in beautiful, vibrant colors. I already sketched incessantly, I already painted, worked with clay, was taking life drawing classes with live models, but everything paled in comparison to the idea I had of this medium.”
His brows knit together, but not because he seemed unhappy—he seemed to be seeing something else, something that wasn’t quite there in front of him.
“Neon is both new and not new, a distinctive piece of America’s iconic, early twentieth-century past, over a hundred years old now—but at the same time, the gases you use in it weren’t discovered until recently, not compared to other forms of art, other media, other tools and structures and components.
It’s both traditional and futuristic, classic and avant-garde, of the now and not.
But it’s grown stale over the years, and it needed its boundaries pushed. I decided to be the one to push them.”
“Th-Theo. Theo, I’m—”