Chapter 9
CHAPTER NINE
SHILOH
It’s easier to fixate on how atrocious Donovan’s helmet is than the way his eyes widened when I told him I’d come to the game for him.
I’m not sure what world exists where I ever gave him the impression that I was interested in hockey, but hopefully he has that out of his head now. I can’t exactly tell him that I’m interested in how pretty his blood would look on the snow… but…
I can do something about that fucking helmet. It looks like a toddler painted it. There’s no way I’ll be able to kill Donovan while the memory of that ridiculous snake on his face is there behind my eyes.
Maybe if I think about that enough, I won’t get caught up in the way he moves on the ice, or the warm surprise in his eyes when he talks to me, even though he has no business letting me get away with the things I have.
I’m still not sure why he’s allowing it. Or why he told me he was going to be away for the entire day. It’s like he wants me to break into his apartment.
Some part of me wonders if Donovan wants to die.
There’s nothing to kill when I go into his apartment the next day after I watch him leave for his game. I’m quick, rifling through his closet to get the empty shell he talked about for his mask, though I wish I could find the other one and burn it.
I do take a little more time when I snap photos of his posters. It wasn’t hard to pick up on the fact that they’re sentimental to him, even if I don’t understand it.
My mother didn’t leave me posters—she left me the memories of her brain spattered on the wall, the pattern of blood as it slipped down the white paint.
She left me with the artistic monster that lives just beneath my skin and craves the taste of copper.
And…
Maybe that doesn’t mean I can relate to Donovan, but I can at least understand that what a parent leaves behind shapes who we are.
As I’m turning to go, something catches my eye. I frown as I make my way into the kitchen and stop in front of his refrigerator. There, pressed and smoothed flat and hung in a neat little row with magnets…
It’s the sketches I did at the diner.
All the imperfect little angles of Donovan that didn’t quite do him justice.
My first impulse is to tear them down and take them with me… but the longer I stare, the more my fingers seem unwilling to move.
My art is hanging in apartments and expensive houses, in studios in California. A few clients have bought enough that they must have entire rooms of my art on display.
And knowing that doesn’t touch the way it makes me feel to see that Donovan probably spent an hour smoothing out the careless crumples I’d made in these fucking napkins.
“Ridiculous,” I grumble beneath my breath, but I leave them where they are and lock the apartment behind me as I go.
Once I have the shell back in my makeshift studio, it’s almost painfully obvious that it isn’t something that belongs here. I have canvas, I have paint. I have the little projects I’m working on for the class I’m signed up to start helping with for a community credit.
This is different, though; it doesn’t belong in this room.
Still, I can already imagine what it’s going to look like when Donovan slips it on.
When I close my eyes, there’s a momentary flash of red—red on white, blood on walls, a perfect distraction from a dead face beside me—and then I can see it.
Lines of red and black, not an exact replica of the posters on his walls, but something reminiscent.
My eyes flick to my paint, and I bypass the bottles I already have mixed, a few that are running dangerously low at this point. Those remind me of how I haven’t followed through with what I need to do with Donovan.
Instead, I pick up a clean palette.
It’s easy to tell myself that I’m making sure Donovan looks good, because if I want to turn him into art, he has to be the perfect subject.
It’s just odd to realize that I already know I’m lying to myself.
A few hours later and I’m almost finished. Working on the plate soothed the restlessness inside me, just enough to take the edge off. I know it won’t last, but maybe seeing Donovan in something that doesn’t look like it fell into a box of Crayola will help.
I just need to add some finishing touches… and as I stare at the carefully detailed snake—streaks of black, green, and red, with eyes that are still hollow and unpainted—I know what I’m going to do before I do it.
I reach for my knife, and it’s only a small flash of pain to cut my arm. My blood mixes with the darker red of the paint one droplet at a time, and when the mixture shifts colors as I swirl, I let out a small sigh, a strange mixture of feeling content and confused.
I don’t use my own blood to paint. I haven’t since I was young. And yet…
The thought of Donovan on the ice, wearing my work and covered in my blood without realizing it… Fuck. I like it. I really, really like it.
It’s enough to send little zips of arousal snaking along my spine as I get back to work.
All the little places that my blood mixes with the paint are possibility—a moment where Donovan might somehow realize that there’s something different about the little splashes of red on his helmet.
I’m very careful when I mix my paint. I’ve sold dozens of canvasses with my dirty little secret streaked in crimson lines.
This is the first time I’ve ever made my own blood part of the equation.
I finish and step back, eying the shell. It’s all vivid color, artistic swoops and heavy black lines. It’s some of my best work, if I’m being honest…
And that itch in my palms still hasn’t gone away. I thought I’d feel satisfied when I finished, but my fingers are already reaching for a pen. I turn from the helmet to the sketchpad on my desk and flip to a clean page so I can try to work out the need that’s burning through me.
It’s broad strokes, rough lines. It’s an angled jawline and deep, quiet eyes that are full of warmth. It’s a spatter of freckles that I shouldn’t have memorized, but I somehow know where to place.
Full lips, the slightest little crease at the corner of his eyes where he smiles too often.
And…
I frown, dropping the pen as a sluice of warmth slides from the place I’d cut myself and into my palm.
Red.
I let the trail of blood drip along my wrist, slide down to my fingers… and then I leave a slash of crimson over black ink.
Red in the lines of his hair.
Red against the blush staining his cheeks.
Red lips.
Red… red, red. I just want to paint Donovan red.
The burning that snaked its way along my spine isn’t dying down. Every drop of blood, every line of my sketch, is only making it worse.
I want…
I want to kill him, right? I slap my bloody palm down so my fingers stretch the length of the lines that I sketched for his throat, but even the little splash of crimson that spatters droplets across his jawline doesn’t make that ache go away.
I don’t think when I shove my loose pants and briefs down my hips, and I don’t hesitate when I spit in my palm and drop my hand between my legs.
I don’t do anything but stare at my fucking sketch of Donovan, caught up in the slash of my blood across the line of his brow and how good he looks as I start to stroke my already half-hard cock to life.
This isn’t normal—I don’t want like this. I’m content with my art, with violence and death… with the way creating a piece and selling it to someone who has no idea what’s really in the paint makes me feel.
I don’t ache—I don’t burn. I don’t need, but I don’t know what else to call the feeling ripping through me as pleasure twists along my nerve endings and my fingers slightly crumple the paper where Donovan is looking up at me.
God, his hands were so warm when he touched me in the car.
The thought makes my lashes flutter, my head drop so my entire world is encased in a sea of green and black curls…
but I can’t close my eyes. I can’t look away from the image of Donovan’s face staring up at me from the paper as I stroke my cock in slow, sure movements that zip pleasure along my nerves with every drag of my palm.
Not because I’m touching myself—not because the heat of my hand feels good wrapped around my aching flesh… but because when my fingers squeeze, and I let out a groan, I’m imagining that it’s Donovan’s hands on me. Donovan below me, looking up at me with wide, startled eyes.
Donovan with blood on his skin and those big, warm hands scrambling at my body to find purchase, or mercy, or to draw me closer.
I’m not sure what I want anymore.
Blood-streaked fingertips trace across his throat, leaving a line of crimson smeared along the lines of his lips.
“Fuck,” I groan, my hand moving faster as I look at the smeared ink mixed with crimson. My breath comes faster, almost too much pressure in my chest to contain, too much pleasure for me to understand.
I want him. I want this. I want the ink on the paper to be real, the warmth that I remember from the car to be something I can touch, that I can taste.
And I want the blood streaking across his lips to be his—I want Donovan in all the ways that might ruin us both, and as my hand works my cock and I feel my orgasm start to build in a tight clench, I realize I’m willing to risk myself for it.
In this moment, with the thought of how good it would be to have my hands on him and his heat sinking into the chill at the center of me…
It would be worth it.
“God.” I slap my hand against the page as my body tenses and I give myself over to orgasm. It’s messy, quick. The sudden burst of pleasure leaves me dizzy, and I bow over my desk, not realizing what’s happening until I open my eyes and see the mess that I’ve made beneath me.
I’m usually so careful with my art. So precise and meticulous in making sure that it’s taken care of…
But that cautious nature seems to disappear when Donovan is involved.
I stare at the sketch—his gorgeous face… covered in blood and streaked with cum.
It’s filthy. A mess that proves I’m not as untouchable as I thought. Proof of a weakness I’ve never felt before.
No matter how much I want to, no matter how much I tell myself I should… I can’t tear the sheet of paper from the sketchbook to get rid of the evidence that some part of me already knows.
I want to make Donovan Myers mine. Living, breathing art, covered in blood and streaked with cum. I want the reality that the ruined portrait staring up at me dares me to take—a promise made in blood, pleasure, and ink.