Chapter 16
Sixteen
Piper
“ I t’s not your birthday is it?”
I smiled into the canvas I’d propped up on the easel I’d erected after pushing aside the dining table so he could paint in the middle of the room.
Knox hadn’t offered to help; he’d just sat on the sofa, chain-smoking and watching me. The windows and doors were open to let in the warm breeze, the only way he’d even entertain smoking inside. I’d urged him to do it, which was against everything I stood for since I’d previously thought it was a bad, deadly habit that shouldn’t be engaged in and certainly shouldn’t be inflicted upon others.
But now the bitter and acrid smell was intoxicating to me. Comforting. The simple act of him sitting on the sofa, watching me, smoking was calming.
He’d put out the cigarette, his hands on my hips, featherlight. He smelled faintly of tobacco.
“No,” I told the blank canvas.
“You manipulated me into getting what you wanted.” His lips brushed my neck.
I shivered as they traveled to the base of my ear before he lightly bit down on my earlobe.
“Yes.”
His hands went under my shirt, feathering up my stomach and then my rib cage.
“I’m proud,” he murmured.
I smiled in surprise. “You’re not mad?”
He continued brushing against the ridges of my collarbones, the base of my breasts, but not moving upward to where my peaked nipples were crying out for attention.
“I’m not mad,” he replied, a rasp in his voice. “Manipulation and cunning are what you need if you’re going to survive me, Petal.”
Though his velvet words were meant to be some kind of ominous threat, I didn’t take them for that. Knox was so sure that my character would have to degrade if I stayed in any kind of life with him, but I knew the opposite was true.
This was not the time for debate, though.
“What do you want to paint?” I asked, staring at the blank canvas, anxious anticipation rising within me.
Knox’s form was tight, coiled. I could feel the discomfort radiating from him. He was in uncharted waters, feeding parts of himself that he’d long starved.
My soul cried for the ways he was damaged. And I vowed that I’d be there to help repair whatever I could and treasure whatever I couldn’t.
He put gentle pressure on my torso so I turned to face him, his hands still grazing my ribs. “The most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.” His eyes ravished me. “You,” he added after a heartbeat.
My breath fled from my lungs. He’d called me beautiful, perfect before. But the power in the words, the reverence in them floored me.
I nodded, trying to play it cool. “Okay.”
“Naked.” He trailed his finger along the hem of my tee, pulling at it to expose my collarbone. My breath hitched at the simple touch.
“Naturally,” I said, breathing heavily. “I’ll … go get ready.” I gestured to the bathroom, unaware as to why I was suddenly acting so chaste when this man had seen all of me.
So I did what any sane—debatable—woman would do. I went to the bathroom to get naked for her captor to paint her.
“Ready?” I asked him, grinning. Once I’d set up the easel, he’d taken over arranging everything else he needed.
I’d watched him with rapt attention, enchanted by him moving in this way. His deft fingers arranging paintbrushes, paints, precisely lining them up beside him. If I got a ruler out, I’d bet they were the exact same distance away from one another, down to the millimeter.
He looked up from his paints.
I saw it. The flicker of uncertainty. Of … fear? Unease? He was out of his comfort zone. And that satisfied me. That he was willing to go there with me.
He nodded once, curtly, instead of speaking. Once again retreating to that cold part of himself. But his mask didn’t hurt me. It didn’t fool me.
I dropped the robe I’d been covering myself with.
Knox let out a sharp hiss although he’d seen me naked many times in the short amount of time we’d been … whatever we were. He’d made it his business to learn every inch of my skin. To own it.
But he still reacted with visceral hunger that I felt in my synapses whenever he looked at me. I wondered how long that would last for. Surely, the shine would come off the diamond, so to speak. Then I thought about my need for him. It surely did not seem to have a bottom. I couldn’t even envision myself not reacting with feral desire for Knox.
“Where do you want me?”
His eyes flared with lust as he fingered a brush.
My core hummed, and my nerves tingled with salacity.
His very gaze told me where he wanted me. Riding his cock. Which was very much where I wanted to be too. I’d never felt more complete than when Knox was inside of me. Never felt more healed. And I was never sated either. Despite the amount of times we’d had sex, my insides aching from exertion.
I denied the hungry goddess inside of me, urging for more of him.
Again, Knox didn’t speak, he merely canted his head toward the bed, still rumpled and unmade from us. The scent of our coupling still lingered in the air.
I breathed it in as I sat on the bed.
“How should I sit?” I asked, unashamed of my nakedness. I’d always been confident, but the way in which Knox had shown reverence for every inch of my skin made it impossible to feel shy about any of it.
“Show her to me,” he commanded, voice as rough as a handful of rocks, grazing my bare skin in the most delightful way.
I knew what he was talking about. It was impossible not to. His possessive gaze was zeroed in on the space between my legs. The core that throbbed for him.
“Make yourself comfortable too,” he added. “Read.”
I smiled against the command that I might’ve bristled at a week ago. A lifetime ago. Now his commands made me feel warm, secure. Safe.
I reached over to where I’d placed the book on the wooden nightstand, never able to get more than a few paragraphs in.
“You think I’m going to be able to concentrate on this?” I waved the paperback at him as I settled, arranging the pillows behind me to sit against the headboard, exposing my naked core to him.
“If I’m going to concentrate on this,” he nodded to the easel, “I’m going to need to have you not look at me like you’re going to impale yourself on my cock.”
His voice was significantly less restrained than it had been moments ago.
My body quivered at his words as I struggled to hold my need back. I opened the book with shaking hands, smiling at him above the pages.
“I can’t make any promises,” I said seductively. “But I’ll try my best.”
Veins in his neck protruded as he held my gaze, not returning my smile. I’d never seen him smile, not once, just small twitches to his mouth.
It didn’t bother me, him not returning my smile. I didn’t need such benign things from Knox. I just needed … him.
A lifetime simmered in the moment we stared at each other before he broke the gaze and dipped his brush into the paint.
“Don’t expect a masterpiece,” he grunted as I tried to focus on the words in front of me. This wasn’t a killer. A monster. Just a self-conscious man.
I glanced up at him, smiling. “I’ve already got one.” Corny, but I wasn’t lying.
He didn’t respond.
He just started painting.
He painted for hours.
No breaks.
Not that that surprised me. Knox was not a man to do anything by halves. My limbs had started to cramp from sitting in the same position, but I didn’t dare complain. I would take a little pain to watch Knox like this. Forever. I’d let my bones calcify, my body waste to ruin if that’s what he needed. And I knew that he’d never let me wither. That even in his trance, he’d be aware of my needs. He’d asked me intermittently if I needed water, food, bathroom breaks. The smallest shake of my head was all I’d given him, unwilling to puncture his groove.
His brows were pinched in concentration, his hands moving in sure, careful strokes.
I’d never seen his face move that way. Be so expressive. Maybe when he was inside me, but that was it. I watched at first, him being tense, like an animal out of their habitat, unsure of the air, the environment, the threats.
But then I saw it, the muse, the art… whatever it was took over him, and he changed. He was still Knox, but he seemed … lighter somehow. And heavier too. All at the same time, embodying all facets of himself in a single moment.
Over the hours, I read the same page over and over again. Most of the time, I just watched him.
Until he stopped painting to stare at me.
“You keep looking at me like that, Petal, there will be no more painting, and you’ll be on your back, screaming my name, milking my cock.”
My body jolted at the words, puncturing the silence I hadn’t realized had been so heavy. Need flooded my sore limbs, and I fought not to react. Although I really wanted him to do those things, I wanted him to paint more.
I painstakingly ripped my eyes off the masterpiece that was the killer painting me and stared at the words on a page until he was done.
He didn’t tell me he was done; he just stepped away from the canvas, rubbing his jaw and staring at his work with a critical eye.
After waiting to make sure he wasn’t just taking a break, I stretched, my aching muscles thankful for the movement.
Knox’s eyes snapped up to where I moved, running along the bare skin. His gaze was no longer critical. It was hungry.
“Uh-uh,” I waggled my finger at him, snatching my robe and ignoring the groan of my hips as I jumped quickly off the bed before Knox could prowl toward me and make me incapable of coherent thought.
I tied the robe quickly and walked to the canvas, tentatively, as if I were walking toward a bomb.
“Am I allowed to…?” I motioned to the painting.
Knox’s posture was ramrod straight. He barely moved his head in a nod that I took as permission.
Gingerly, I stepped around the easel so I could look, suddenly scared that he painted like shit and I’d have to pretend it was good. And I wasn’t good at pretending. Knox would see through me in a minute and feign not being wounded. But he would have to be since I’d coaxed him to do something creative and good, and if he got a bad reaction to it, he’d slither back into his dark shell, never to come back out.
I hadn’t really put much thought into the carnage I’d wreak if my little plan backfired. Not smart of me, considering what was at stake.
But I needn’t have worried.
I blinked when I stared at the canvas, my jaw slackening. I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t.
The painting was unlike anything I’d ever seen before. I didn’t know why I was expecting a simple portrait. Knox was anything but simple.
It was me. Naked and reading on the bed. Painted in exquisite and painstaking detail. I could feel the reverence, the worship he had for my body in it. There was a radiance to me that I couldn’t describe, soft pinks and whites merging together to elevate my form. I was perched on a bed, but the walls of the cabin weren’t behind me.
It was The Devil card from my Tarot deck, towering behind me, painted in harsh strokes of black and red, contrasting the gentle pastels he’d painted me in. Hovering above me. Casting me in shadow. Swallowing me whole. The Devil was also painted in exquisite detail, almost exactly like the card in my little bag of mementos. How he’d painted it from memory was beyond. It was unbelievable.
I looked from Knox to the painting, tears crowding my eyes. It was that mind-bendingly perfect. That visceral.
“You were born to do this,” I whispered, once again captivated by the painting. I was unable to look away from it for too long. It encased beauty and darkness and the harshness of life in a way that I couldn’t quite pinpoint.
I knew what the not-so-subtle symbolism was saying. That he was The Devil. The dark cloud casting a shadow over my life and spirit. It saddened me greatly that he saw himself like that, but I understood it. He was saying it in every way he could, screaming it at me through this exquisite piece of art.
What he didn’t understand was that the coolness of his shadow was more comforting and warmer than the brightness of any sunshine in a world without him.
“No,” he said harshly, yanking at the tie of my robe so it opened. “I was born to do this .”
He lifted me onto the table that had been cluttered with paints and paintbrushes, both the former and the latter tumbling to the floor as Knox placed me there. He immediately propped my legs up, spreading them and barely giving me a moment to prepare before he dove in. His mouth landed in the perfect spot, and I arched my back, pleasure shooting to my very fingertips. Knox was a wild animal, devouring me without restraint, without respite.
My orgasm washed over me in a wave of pleasure that shrouded me, taking me out of the room for a moment. And a moment was all he needed to remove his mouth, take his cock out of his pants and thrust into me with the same ferocity he’d eaten me with.
My toes curled at the pleasure of his glorious assault. He grasped my hips, towering over me like The Devil in his painting. His fingers were flecked with black and red, staining my bruised hips with paint. I wished the paint would sear into my skin forever.
“I was born to do this, Piper,” he grunted, not halting his rhythm even for a moment. “For you.” He slammed his hips harder to punctuate the point, sending me exploding around him all over again.
The entire time, I stared at the painting, transfixed by it.
I couldn’t help but believe I was born for this too. Born for him.