Chapter 47 Briar
brIAR
“What happens when I catch you?” Monroe watches me from across a row of camellia hedges, yellow streaks of paint covering her brow, cheek, and the tip of her nose. I pull another tube out from my back pocket, squirting some purple on my hands.
“If you catch me. You can use me as your canvas.” I twitch my nose, and the stalks shoot skyward. She jolts back, eyes trailing up to where they end, giving me another head start. I pass her, leaving a purple print along her side.
“And that benefits me how?” She scowls at me, glancing down at her paint-smeared shirt.
I shrug. “Saves you some time trying to steal something to rage paint.”
“I was just planning to rummage through your cabinets next time I was over,” she says before dropping out of sight.
I take a few steps backward. “No need. I’ll let you take your frustration out directly on the source.”
I lower myself to get a better sense of where she is, but vines wrap around my ankles and wrists, and I’m tugged onto my knees. Mint waves and soft-pink skin marred with yellow comes into view. “Gotcha.”
“Well played, Dr. Tanner.” I chuckle, and the vines release me. Remaining on the ground, I twitch my nose, my shirt and jeans disappearing.
Monroe sucks in a breath and her eyes widen, pupils expanding within the green of her stare. “What are you doing?”
“Giving you ample space to work with. Don’t worry, I’ll leave these on.” I gesture at the fitted black underwear, savoring the way she nibbles her bottom lip. “Wouldn’t want to distract you.”
My smirk earns an eye roll.
“Fine.” Monroe grabs the paint tubes and summons more, along with a paintbrush. “Stay still.”
“I’ll try my best.” She crawls over and takes her time, scanning every inch of exposed skin.
I count backward from three hundred to keep the only covered part of me from reacting.
Failing the moment she steadies herself by holding on to my leg, drawing a long stroke along my stomach where a stem reaches up from my pelvis.
“Fair warning, I may not be able to control every part with the way you’re staring up at me from your knees. ”
“Noted.” Her focus remains on painting along the inked lines of my flourish marks, filling them in like I’m a life-size paint-by-numbers.
After the flowers curving up my abdomen, she works her way up my chest, avoiding the entwined peonies and foxgloves that reach over where my heart once beat. Not that I remember a time when it did.
It doesn’t make a difference, though. It’s just an organ.
Something left behind. The love I feel for this woman goes beyond human frailty.
It doesn’t bend or break or yield. It’s as immortal as I am.
And I’ve never felt more immortal than I do right now with my mate’s hands reverently manipulating my body, her brush becoming an extension of her soul, transitioning from firm strokes pressing into my shoulder to soft sweeps curving like a caress along my neck.
She swipes a fine-tipped brush through a smudge of evergreen, and I clench my jaw, trying not to laugh as it tickles its way up my throat.
When she steps in front of me, I don’t miss the glint of mirth in her eyes.
She’s fucking breathtaking. Tension uncoils, starting in her shoulders and descending her frame as she paints.
Every ounce of calm is a welcome relief.
The sun dips behind the trees, soaking the sky in the velvet purple of twilight.
“Feeling better?” I finally ask once I think the rage part of her rage painting has subsided.
Her eyes flick up through a fan of delicate lashes. “You know I am.”
I swallow thickly, wanting to keep the peace, for those walls to remain down between us. “True. But it means more hearing you say it.”
She scrunches her mouth, concentrating on following the long stem of the foxglove crossing over the left side of my chest. I take a deep inhale and search for the courage to speak. “About what you said earlier, about giving you time to come to your senses…”
Be brave, idiot. This is your chance.
“I’m not biding my time waiting for you.”
“You’re not?” She keeps her attention on her painting, but I don’t miss the firmer press of her brush.
“No. I’ve already waited a lifetime.” Every year that passed, I wondered when the mark would arrive. Then my girls became my world and it seemed even further out of reach. “I’m just grateful to finally know who my mate is and honored it’s you.”
Our eyes meet, and the brush curls over my chest, filling in one of the foxgloves in dusty lavender.
“Can I ask you something?” She bites that bottom lip of hers, and I summon the image of moldy cabbage for the innumerable time this paint session.
“Anything.” Moldy cabbage. Moldy cabbage. Moldy cabbage. “I’m basically at your mercy right now.”
She continues to paint, attention flitting between my face and the foxgloves she’s shading. “Did you mean what you said earlier? That you felt something for me before you got the mark?”
“Of course I did.” I catch her chin with the crook of my finger.
“I’ll admit, the bond did help me act on it.
” The mark tingles with each chilling streak of paint she adorns me with, and I’m not sure if it’s her reverent treatment of it as she works, but courage wins out over the fear of scaring her away.
“I was fascinated by you when I was in your care. The more time I spent with you, learned about you… It was the first time I really wanted to know more about someone from the mortal realm.”
I fall into the depths of her stare, drunk on the knowledge she’s trying to piece me together.
“And then you showed up at the Conservatory. When I found out what happened, I knew it didn’t matter you’d been on my mind since my return, you’d never forgive me.
You said as much yourself, so I was prepared to stay out of your way as you’d asked…
Then, of course, the mark arrived and you wanted nothing to do with me.
” I release her and swallow down the jagged pieces of the truth, speaking them despite how raw the pain is.
“At first, I was going to do just that.”
She rocks back on her heels and sets down the paints, not taking her focus off me. “What changed?”
“Once Fate confirmed she couldn’t change things, that you’d be stuck with me despite your anger toward me, I couldn’t stand by and do nothing. Maybe I deserved the pain of a withered bond, but you didn’t.”
“You know I don’t blame you for what happened—not anymore.”
“I know.” Have known that for a while now. “But your forgiveness only lessened the heft of guilt I’d already placed on myself.”
When Monroe sits back up, she doesn’t pick up the paint.
She slides her fingers over her creation, trailing her nails along every stroke and line of art decorating my body.
A mural of duty reinvigorated by her vibrant touch.
I never got to live, not truly, but ever since she took her brush and swathed my world in color, I’ve never felt more alive.
Her hand stills above the mate mark.
She hovers there, and a pinch of fear flares through the bond before it’s tucked away just as quickly.
I can already see her retreating, rebuilding the walls that have started to crumble between us.
Instead, sweetness fills the air. I suck in a breath when she drags her hand along my torso and lands on my waistband.
I release a shaky exhale. “Monroe—”
Slowly, tortuously, she inches down my last stitch of clothing.
“Stay still, Professor,” she says with the hint of a smirk. “Let’s see if you’re as good at taking instruction as you are at giving it.”
My cock springs free.
She watches it bounce against my thigh and then glances back up at my face. “Be a good bunny and don’t interrupt my process.”
Fuck me.
Wrapping her fist around me, she works in elegant, exploratory strokes, noting my every reaction, as if making me come is a chemistry experiment she wants to ace, not the forgone conclusion I know it to be.
Doesn’t she remember the ruined pants fiasco? I’m a goner.
A thick bead of precum buds from my tip. There’s a self-satisfied glint in her eyes, and pride swirls through the bond as desire permeates the misty air. I pinch the bridge of my nose to stop myself from exploding right there on her stunning face.
That wouldn’t do at all.
“Monroe— I— Fuck.” She squeezes the base of my dick, and I groan with the next twist of her fist. I don’t know what turns me on more, the way she’s owning my body like it’s hers to toy with—which it is—or how wickedly pleased she is with being my total undoing.
“Keep stroking yourself.” She lets go of my weeping dick and sits back onto her heels. “But don’t come.”
“Cruel woman,” I say, my fist already matching the rhythmic pace she set.
“You offered to be my canvas,” she teases with a teasing frown. “Can’t have you ruining my masterpiece before it’s ready, can I?”
“I suppose—not.” I pant between quick tugs on my shaft.
She undoes the top button of her blouse and continues working her way down.
My eyes are glued to the curve of her breasts, my peony wrapped over one, peeking out more and more with each undone button.
Pleasure zooms along my spine at the sight. “Shit. I’m gonna—”
“Not yet you’re not.” Her voice is a command halting my hand.
“I don’t think I can stop myself.” I steady my breaths, and when the stars clear from my vision, she shakes her head at me.
“Are you going to beg, Professor?” she tsks, twitching her nose so her shirt and skirt disappear.
My desire for her is eclipsed by pride.
“I’ll do whatever you want.” If my mate wants to put me in my place for all eternity, I’ll fucking let her. “Please.”
I’ve never been this hard or desperate to come, but I stroke my cock like the good pupil I promised her I’d be.
Monroe wrangles her hair into a wavy ponytail and smirks up at me, her expression feral and full of mischief.
“Time to make your masterpiece.” With a twist of her fingers between her breasts, she unclasps her bra and lets the straps fall down her arms. She lifts her chin, her nipples pebbling under the mist. Her body is a work of art worth worshiping. “Come for me, Briar.”
I memorize every dip and curve of her body, each stunning stroke of our bond inked into her pink flesh. Round and full and fucking magnificent. For the first time she’s not hiding from me. She wants me to mark her.
My mate.
“Fuck. I—”
My balls tighten and that streak of pleasure zips down my spine once again, only this time, I don’t hold back.
I unleash, painting those lush swells and the inked blossoms above them, streak after streak, until they’re coated and glistening.
I slow my strokes, mesmerized. Cum shimmers on the tips of her nipples.
My cock twitches, becoming hard. Just as a droplet is about to slip onto the greenhouse floor, she swipes her finger through it, sucking it between her lips.
I groan.
I don’t think I’ve seen anything sexier. That is, until she hums and circles her nipple with that very same finger before popping it back in her mouth. “You taste so good.”
From the amount coating her, you’d think I’d be spent, but no—my dick is perked up, ready to hop right to it again. That’s the thing about mates, it’s never enough. We’re built to crave each other for eternity.
“I’m glad you think so because it’s all yours.”
Her attention flicks to the thick drop seeping down my tip, then back up to me.
“It’s…sweet?” Her brows crease a little in confusion.
“Is that not usual?”
“No.” She shakes her head, her eyes darting back and forth a moment. “It tastes like something, but I can’t quite put my finger on it…”
Her attention homes on the precum dripping eagerly from my slit.
If I wasn’t already dead, that first long lick of her tongue up my shaft would be the thing to do me in.
She traces every line of ink along my veins.
Thick lashes fan over her cheeks as she hollows them, taking me into her mouth.
With each drag up and down my cock, her breasts sway, still coated in my cum.
My legs buckle, rooting me to the spot.
She’s covered in me, my scent, and the primal part of me that’s all feral need and instinct is aching to do it again. Anywhere she’ll let me. Then flip her onto her stomach and come inside her until her lock draws out every ounce of my release, filling my mate. Pleasing her.
I can’t even imagine surviving hours being locked inside her. A minute of Monroe’s mouth is ruinous. And from the glint in her stare, she knows it. Her pride shimmers through the bond while she watches me bow and break, thrusting between her lips like I’m begging to come for her.
Because I am.
A circle of her tongue and she takes me deep, swallowing around my tip. That mint-green gaze captures my every shudder. She swallows again, and I come with a force I didn’t think possible. My cock spurts, and her throat massages my dick like a fucking dream until my eyes flutter and roll skyward.
“I figured it out.” She thumbs some cum off her chin and licks her lips.
I tilt my head down at her, chest heaving. “Figured out what?”
She moves to stand, and I help her up the rest of the way, supporting under her elbows.
Just when I think she couldn’t get any sexier, I spot the dirt caked on her knees. She brushes some of it off and glances at where another translucent drop slips from my tip. “What you taste like.”
“What’s the verdict?”
She swipes the shimmering bead and pops it between her lips, a grin spreading across her face. “Marshmallow creme.”