Chapter Twelve #4
He’d increased the speed of his strokes inside her as he talked, pumping his fingers in and out, curling and uncurling, stretching and widening and filling her full, so full, and Audrey couldn’t stop herself.
She clung to him while she rode his hand, suffering, shaking, agonizing through the buildup of an intense wave of pleasure on the verge of cresting.
She couldn’t speak, she could hardly breathe, she could only bury her face in Theo’s shoulder while she moaned, while she burned, while she let herself be consumed by the fire he generated both inside and out.
“Look at me, Audrey.”
She’d never heard him be so commanding, so sharp, but it was more than that: there was an urgency in his deep voice she couldn’t ignore. It took everything she had to pull away from his neck and face him, panting and hot and so achingly close to breaking.
“I work with neon because it’s the material that drives the stars, that fuels the cosmos, that lights up the universe with galaxies.
Whenever I ignite a piece for the first time, it’s like a new sun bursts into being.
There is no greater creative feeling than that,” he gasped.
What heat she could discern in his face through the shifting, colored lights seemed just as scorching as her own.
“It’s like I become God.” Theo rocked back and forth with her in time with her hips, dipping down to press his forehead to hers and his lips to her own.
His right hand slid up and gripped the back of her neck, shaking but strong while his fingers tangled in the sweat-soaked hair at the nape.
“Audrey, I need you to look at me. I need to see it—I need to see when I light you up for the first time, brighter and more beautiful than any star. More gorgeous and glorious than any piece of art I myself can ever hope to create.”
It was the intensity in his eyes when he said it that sent her over the edge.
It shattered her completely.
Audrey seized and cried out as the wave crested and pleasure crashed through her body, wiping out any sense of self she might have tried to cling to.
Instead, the only thing she could grasp on to was Theo, and she dove into him while stars exploded behind her eyes, while heat pulsed across her skin, while her body melted into the fire he somehow always seemed to create, before disappearing into the ether.
She went blind, sightless, weightless, soundless and voiceless, save for the ragged screams of pleasure echoing somewhere in the distance beyond the black, beyond the veil.
At some point, she found herself back in her body, the weight of the world back on her chest. Or it would have been—if Theo hadn’t been holding her so closely.
He was clutching her to him, his hands making soothing circles on her back and stroking her hair, his lips alternating between murmuring gentle praise and peppering tiny, delicate kisses along the underside of her jaw while she gasped for breath and tried to remember how lungs were supposed to work.
“Oh my god,” she finally managed.
“Thank you, sweetheart,” Theo breathed against her neck. “That was incredible. You’re perfect.”
“Are you joking?” Audrey was mystified. She’d never come so hard in her life, not even on the rare occasions she had the time and space to touch herself while Violet was out of the apartment, and Theo had done all the work.
She could feel how hard he was. His length was pressing against her through his gym shorts, and if it felt like anything he’d just done to her, she knew it had to be agonizing.
And besides: she wanted to touch him.
“Theo,” she said, stretching out a hand. “Can I—”
“No.” He shook his head sharply and pulled away just enough to brush her hair out of her face. “No. Don’t touch me.”
“Why not?” She frowned at him. “I want to.”
Theo sighed and rubbed his eyes. “Two reasons: first of all, if you touch me now, I’m going to come so fast, I’ll embarrass myself.
I’d rather not.” He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye.
“And two, I want to wait. I need to wait. Because…” He drew in a deep breath.
“Because above all else, I am a horrible, greedy, selfish man. And once I start, I won’t just want a taste: I’ll want all of you. A full banquet of your body.”
“What was this, then?”
“A preview. Just the scent of a meal to tide me over.” He smirked at her, the lights of his artwork glittering in his eyes.
“And the only thing it did was make me hungrier. But you have midterms this week, work in the morning, and I can’t keep you all to myself right now.
So I won’t push it any further. Not today.
But I needed this all the same, and…I wanted to watch it happen here. So thank you.”
“Uh…” Audrey blinked, dumbfounded. She was the only one who’d gotten the orgasm, but he seemed perfectly pleased by it. “You’re welcome?”
He snorted in amusement and flung her tights over his shoulder, stooping again to gather her up in his arms before shutting off his creations and mounting the stairs.
The constant, low-grade buzz of the neon lights cut out sharply when Theo’s studio was plunged back into darkness, the light of his stars suddenly extinguished.
“Hey, Theo?” she asked as he carried her back up into the soft glow of the lamps on the first floor.
“Yeah?”
“Can I have my panties back?”
He hummed pensively, tilting his head from side to side in deep consideration. “Mmm…no. No, I don’t think so.”
“Oh, come on!” Audrey tried to lunge toward his pocket to grab them, but Theo was too strong. He hoisted her out of reach and threw her back over his shoulder like he’d done earlier, and she had to resort to twisting and pouting at him. “I still have to get home! That walk’s going to feel brisk.”
“You’re not going anywhere yet. Didn’t you hear me?” She yelped when he slapped her ass playfully. “I’m starving. We’re ordering Chinese.”