Chapter 17 Wet Paint
WET PAINT
MABEL
Repeat after me—painting is not sexy. Painting is not sexy. Painting is not sexy.
And yet here I am, practically melting as I watch Corbin perfect the llama’s eyelashes with the tiniest brush known to mankind.
I ordered this paint-by-numbers mural from Maeve Hartley, an artist whose online store is full of adorable stencil-like animal designs she can customize in days.
When I went to Corbin’s game, I requested a fox and a llama sharing a cupcake under a tree—sweet, innocent, and perfect for a bakery. Then I placed the order.
What I didn’t account for was how Corbin would look painting it.
He’s wearing a worn gray T-shirt that clings to his pecs and jeans that do absolutely sinful things to his hockey ass.
But it’s not just how he looks—it’s how he moves.
The way he concentrates, brow slightly furrowed as he drags that tiny brush with surgical precision.
The careful dip into the paint, the gentle stroke, the way he steps back to assess his work like he’s creating a Georges Seurat instead of decorating a bakery wall.
I was already in trouble when he painted the fox’s tail, making it perfectly fluffy with patient little strokes. But watching him work on these eyelashes? I’m done for.
“What do you think?” He steps back, paintbrush still poised in his strong fingers.
“It looks so wet,” I breathe out before I can stop myself.
His gaze snaps to mine, curious. “It is wet. I just applied it.”
“Oh, it’s very wet,” I say, then immediately want to crawl into a hole.
I flash him my brightest, most innocent smile and focus intently on the llama’s chest. “And so is the teal you did before. I just love this pretty teal paint for the grass, even though grass isn’t this shade.
” I stop my work and meet his green-eyed gaze.
“I read that someone who had red-green color-blindness might see teal as a…flatter shade of blue? Is that what it looks like to you?”
His lips quirk up. “You researched it?”
My chest flutters a little from his response. “I did. It was really helpful. And I wanted to understand more about you.”
He stops painting. “That’s…cool.” He sounds taken aback, in a good way. “And that teal looks sort of like a murky blue to me. What does it look like to you?”
I think about the question, wanting to give it the answer it deserves. “It’s like...” I search for something vivid, something alluring. “The color of a tropical lagoon.”
His smile is soft, genuine. “Hmm. Okay, I can see that better now. Like an island escape. You’re on the beach, relaxing, drinking a pina colada, and the waves are so calm, they barely move.”
“Yes,” I say, laughing.
He points to the shade of red at the top of the pink—what else?—cupcake. “What color is this one?”
“Candy apple for the cherry. It needs one more coat.”
“So I should want to bite it? The cherry?” The question is innocent, but the way his voice drops is not.
Now I’m thinking about him biting things. Specifically, me. “Yes,” I say, then I roll my lips together to seal in the murmur.
“The color works, then,” he says.
I turn away so I don’t, I don’t know, throw myself at him. I have a sky to paint. As I dip my brush in the paint can, a drop of robin’s-egg blue splashes onto the top of my foot.
I bend to grab a rag from the drop cloth and swipe off the color. I’m painting barefoot—it’s just more comfortable this way.
We work alone, with music filling the space between us. A Frank Ocean tune, which isn’t helpful since that man’s voice is sex. But I focus on the bakery instead of just how good Corbin’s being with his hands.
“Tomorrow the garage door gets installed,” I say, sticking to practical details. I’ll oversee that since Corbin has a game. “I know it makes you sad that you won’t be here to discuss ‘manly garage things’ with the contractor.”
“Yes, that’s exactly what I want to do,” Corbin says. Then he stops his strokes of blue, shooting me a curious look. “You’re not wearing one of your pickleball dresses?”
It’s said like a question. I can hear the why not.
I glance down at my painting ensemble. “It’s a skort,” I say, then pluck the ruffly hem of the combo skirt-shorts.
I’ve paired them with a white crop top that’s a few years old, something that won’t bother me if it gets paint on it.
I also chose it since he said he can see white easily.
“This skort is from a few seasons and a few thrift shop trips ago, so I don’t wear it when I play. ”
“They’re not premium clothes?” he asks dryly.
I laugh at his description. This is safer than talking about shades of color. “Exactly. I have my cute little athletic numbers for when I play, and I have the fun pickleball dresses for errands, and I have last year’s skorts and stuff for painting and working.”
“Got it,” he says, grabbing a fresh brush and dipping it into the red again, probably for the second coat on the cherry. “You have the first line and the second and the third.”
“That’s one way to put it,” I say.
“Will you wear pickleball dresses when you’re working at the bakery?”
I toss him a playful look, unable to resist saying, “I don’t know. Do you want me to?”
He steals another glance at me. “They’re cute, I guess. Even though skort is a weird word.”
“But they don’t look weird?”
A smirk comes my way this time. “Not in the motherfucking least, Mabel.”
I hide a smile. I should stop flirting with him. I really should. “And yes, I’ll sometimes wear them when I work here.”
He paints some more, scrunching his brow like he’s noodling on something. “But I’m still not sure I believe you actually play pickleball, Mabel.”
I spin around, lifting my paintbrush like it’s a weapon. “I told you I do.”
“Really though?”
“Of course I do. I play with my friends,” I say. “Remy and Skylar and Trevyn. We all play in the city.”
“And by play, do you mean put on your cute clothes and catch up on each other’s lives at the court?”
I step closer, lock eyes with him, and drag the paintbrush down his shirt, leaving behind a stripe of robin’s-egg blue.
His green eyes pop. “You just painted my shirt.”
I slow-clap. “You’re right.”
He shakes his head, sighs heavily. “Good thing you’re wearing the third line.”
In a flash, he dips his brush into the red paint, then darts out a strong arm, wraps it around my waist, and grips me in place. He lifts the brush and brandishes it.
Inches from my face.
My breath catches.
Everything goes silent between us. The Frank Ocean tune finishes. The air crackles. He’s holding me and staring at me, all while threatening me with red paint in a way I want to be threatened, judging from the heat climbing up my legs.
“I have no choice,” he murmurs at last, then he drags the brush along the hollow of my throat.
It’s cool and soft, the paintbrush slick and surprisingly sensuous as he runs it slowly down to my chest, bristles turning a swath of my pale skin red. He stops at the neckline of my shirt.
All thought flees my head. I’m nothing but atoms and vibrating molecules. I can’t even speak. I’m just breathing—and breathing him in.
The scent of paint, delightfully non-toxic, mixes with his aftershave.
Or maybe it’s bodywash. I don’t know, but that campfire-by-the-lake scent is not only going to my head, it’s going to my thighs.
I squeeze them together, lick my lips, and try to find a word, a phrase—something to tease him with.
But when his brow furrows again, like he’s at war with himself, I stay quiet. His silent debate stretches a few seconds, then he gives in with a raspy, “You have red paint on your chest.”
“Like a candy apple,” I say.
His gaze strays to the canvas of me, his eyes turning darker, glimmering like emeralds.
When he raises his face, he drops the brush to the floor.
It clatters against the drop cloth, a spray of red splattering on the ground.
But I don’t care where, since the sound of the brush falling feels like a before and after.
Mine falls from my hand and splatters too.
Slowly, teasingly, Corbin runs his calloused finger across the paint on my body. I pant ludicrously loud. It feels too good.
“Good enough to bite,” he muses as he traces a circle near my breastbone.
“I don’t think the paint would taste good,” I say.
“Probably not, but this would.”
His lips come crashing down on mine, and I grab him, my fingers roping through his messy hair, tugging him close. He kisses me hard, a little ruthlessly, all teeth and heat and need.
My brain is buzzing, my body humming, but somewhere in the back of my mind, I’m keenly aware there’s a pretty mural inches from us, and I just don’t want to mess it up.
“The mural,” I whisper with concern.
He backs up, away from our work, scanning it to make sure we didn’t smear it. It’s safe. He spins me around and pushes me against the brass pole.
Is that a sign? “Do you want me to strip?” I ask in between hot, wet, deep kisses.
“Don’t tempt me,” he mutters, then returns to my mouth like a sniper.
He kisses ferociously, like he wants to consume me. And I think I want to be consumed. There’s been something restrained in the Corbin I’ve come to know in the last few weeks. He’s confident and cocky, sarcastic and witty, but he’s also controlled and precise.
This is another side to him.
Wild.
Untamed.
Ravenous.
He grabs my waist and moves me around the space, pushing me up against a wall—the one where the tearaway pants once hung. There’s no risk to the llama and the fox here.
He stares hotly at me, his chest rising and falling. “I told myself not to do this. Not to give in. I made myself a promise.”
I blink. I wasn’t expecting that. “You did?”
He nods, rough and jagged. “Last week. After the game.”
This confession makes my stomach swoop. “Why?”
He breathes out hard, then drops his face to the side of my neck, dusting open-mouthed caresses there—the slow, lingering kind he left all over me in the trailer. They make me dizzy once again. I feel like I’m swimming in desire. I’m hot and achy, and it’s all too much.
“Because I can’t stop thinking about the way you taste. I can’t stop wanting you, and it’s messing with my head. With my focus. With everything,” he says, pulling back, looking at me with confessions written in his eyes.
No one has ever talked to me like this.
No one has ever said anything that’s made me feel like I’m something forbidden. Something dangerous.
Something irresistible.
It’s heady.
I slide a hand up his body, traveling across his firm abs and strong pecs so I can grip the neck of his shirt. “What else?”
His eyes are hazy. It takes him a beat. “What do you mean?”
“What else do you tell yourself?”
He breathes out hard and rough. “Mabel,” he warns. But he started this conversation, and I want to finish it. I inch closer, so I’m rubbing myself against his firm, muscular thigh.
The moment it hits him is delicious. The realization of what I’m doing flashes in his eyes as I press myself to him.
“I tell myself to resist you,” he admits.
“I should resist you too,” I say.
Corbin’s my business partner, and I made a promise to myself to keep my focus on our business. No romance till I get my act together. But still, I ache for him.
The ache is winning.
Maybe for both of us, since he pushes me back against the wall and slides his thigh between mine, spreading them apart. He stares down at me, shaking his head. “You’re trouble,” he says as he cups my cheeks, holding my face hard.
“How much trouble?” I ask, grinding down on his thigh.
His jaw tightens. He blows out a breath, then adjusts his stance so he’s rubbing his thigh against my hot, wet center, riling me up.
“So much that I think about the trailer,” he bites out.
“I think about the things I want to do to you. I think about you all the time. The way you smell and taste and look…and fuck.”
He sounds angry with himself.
“There’s too much at stake,” he adds, but he’s kissing my cheek, offering me his thigh, letting me use him.
And I’m using the fuck out of him. I’m grinding and rubbing, and I’m fucking his leg in our unfinished bakery.
“I thought about you when I was gone too,” he mutters.
“On your road trip?”
“Yes. Tried not to. Fucking thought about you anyway.”
His confessions kick me to another level. Pleasure pools low in my belly, tight and sharp. My body is a coil. “I’m close,” I whisper.
His eyes squeeze shut for a second. For a fight. For the last ounce of resistance he’s letting slip away. He opens them. “Do it. Want to watch you come undone.”
My lips part as I fuck his thigh until I’m gasping, then crying out, an orgasm seizing me, bright and sharp.
And over far too soon.
But he never takes his eyes off me. Not till I relax against the wall while the pleasure floats away.
Then he looks down. “Oh fuck.”
I follow his gaze to the trail of candy apple red footprints all across the drop cloth and the concrete floor. I guess I stepped in paint.
What a mess I’ve made. I tense, flashing back to the bakery crawl with his daughter, when she teased him about how much he hates messes. Will this piss him off?
No, that’s the wrong word. Corbin doesn’t get mad. He’s not an angry man. But he’s an observant one, an organized one, a man who likes things the way he likes things. And I thrive in chaos. “I’d better go find a rag to clean that up,” I say, mobilizing quickly for his sake.
He shoves a hand through his hair, holding the other up as a stop sign. “I will. You’ll leave more footprints.”
“Right, of course,” I say, feeling a little foolish for not realizing that.
He walks off in a cloud of determination, his footsteps echoing till he reaches the kitchen. The sound of running water filters through the space. I picture him washing his hands before he grabs the rags. So very Corbin. He’s neat and orderly. I should be the same.
I force myself to focus on cataloguing the work we need to do to finish the mural, clean up the paint, and put everything away when I register the sound of the cupboards opening, then something scraping against a shelf.
Corbin’s voice comes from the back of the station, loud and clear. “Mabel, did you know there’s a cookie jar in here?”