8. Mia
MIA
"He hasn't eaten today."
Sophia stood at the kitchen counter with her arms crossed. She had a look on her face I'd learned, in two weeks of lunches, to never argue with.
"He won't come out for me." She pushed a mug of black coffee across the counter toward me. Then a plate.
Lamb curry, still steaming, piled beside a torn piece of naan. "Maybe he'll come out for you."
I stared at the plate. Then at Sophia. Then back at the plate.
"I've never met him."
"I know."
"He doesn't know what I look like."
"I know that too."
"Sophia, I can't just walk into his studio and hand him curry like I'm room service."
She picked up the plate and placed it in my hands. The ceramic was hot against my palms. She added the mug beside it, balancing everything with the precision of a woman who'd been managing this household for decades.
"Down the hall. Past Ludo's study. Last door on the left." She turned back to the stove. Conversation over.
I stood there holding lamb curry and black coffee for a man I'd never spoken to. A man who'd been a silhouette in a window. A hand-wave across a courtyard. Nothing more.
Two weeks I'd been coming to this house. One of those weeks, I'd known he was nearby.
A door closing down a corridor. The faint sound of music at odd hours. And now Sophia was handing me curry and directions like this was normal.
You're delivering food. That's it. Walk, hand off the plate, leave.
I started walking.
The corridor stretched ahead of me. My boots were quiet on the hardwood.
Past the office where I spent my days. Past the bathroom at the end of the hall on the right. Past Ludo's study with the reading lamp that was always on.
The air changed. Warmer, thicker. Turpentine and linseed oil and a layer underneath both of those, alive and human.
My pulse picked up. Which was ridiculous. I was bringing a man his lunch. That was all.
What if he's old? What if he's strange? What if he asks why I'm here and I have to explain that his housekeeper sent me because he skipped a meal?
The door was closed. I shifted the mug to the same hand as the plate, freed up a fist, and knocked.
Nothing.
I knocked again. "Mr. Rossi?"
Silence. Just the faint scrape of bristle on a hard surface. A brush on canvas, maybe.
I pushed the door open.
The studio was enormous. Twice the size of my apartment in town. Concrete floor, paint-splattered in layers so thick they'd become part of the surface.
Canvases leaned against every wall. Some finished, some abandoned, some blank. A long workbench ran the length of one side, cluttered with tubes of paint and jars of cloudy liquid and rags stained every color.
And in the center of the room, standing at an easel with his back to me, was a man.
Barefoot on concrete. Jeans low on his hips. No shirt.
Paint on his shoulders, his arms, the back of his neck. Dark curls, wild and thick, falling past his ears.
He was enormous. Not just tall. Built. Broad shoulders that tapered to a narrow waist. Arms that looked like they'd been carved, not built.
He hadn't heard me. Or he was ignoring me. I opened my mouth to speak.
He turned around.
Green.
That was my first thought. My only thought for a span of time that could have been two seconds or two hours.
His eyes were green. Not the kind of green you describe with a comparison. Not forest or emerald or sea glass. Just green. The most green thing I had ever seen in my life.
My second thought was that he was a foot taller than me. At least. I was looking up at him the way you look up at a building you didn't know was there.
My third thought didn't make it into words. It was just heat, spreading from my center outward, filling up every space inside me that had been empty for a year.
Three-day beard. Dark brows drawn together. Paint on his jaw, his collarbone, his fingers. A crease between his eyes that looked permanent.
He stared at me. I stared at him.
The curry was getting cold. I was not.
"I brought you food."
That was what came out. Not "Hello, I'm Mia, your transcriber." Not "Sorry to interrupt."
Not anything a reasonable, professional person would say to her employer the first time they met face-to-face.
I brought you food. Like I was a carrier pigeon with a plate.
I held out the plate.
He didn't move. Those green eyes dropped to the plate, then back up to my face.
He was studying me the way I imagined he studied a canvas. Taking inventory. Cataloging. I could feel him seeing things I wasn't ready to show.
He stepped forward. One step. The floor was cold under his bare feet but he didn't flinch.
He reached for the plate.
His fingers brushed mine.
The plate tipped. I grabbed it. He grabbed it.
Our fingers were stacked on the ceramic, his over mine. The warmth of his skin shot through me with a force that blurred my vision.
Neither of us let go.
I looked up. He looked down. The foot of height between us collapsed into nothing. His eyes were right there, close enough to count the flecks of gold buried in all that green.
His jaw tightened. A muscle in his throat moved.
I should have stepped back. Should have put the food down and walked out of that studio like a professional.
I didn't step back.
The mug hit the concrete first. Coffee splashed across the paint-stained floor in a dark arc that neither of us watched.
Then the plate. The curry. The naan. The sound of ceramic cracking against concrete.
His mouth was on mine.
I don't know who moved first. I don't know if it mattered.
One second I was holding a plate. The next his hands were on my face, both of them, huge and warm and covered in paint. He kissed me like I was the first breath after drowning.
I grabbed his arms because my knees stopped working. Raw sienna was wet under my fingers.
He was shaking. His hands, his huge steady hands, were trembling on my jaw.
He pulled back. Just an inch. His breath came fast and ragged on my mouth.
Those eyes searched my face. And in them I recognized what was holding him back.
Fear.
Not of me. Of this. Of whatever was happening between us in a studio that smelled like turpentine and curry and spilled coffee.
He hesitated. His thumbs traced my cheekbones and he went still, his whole body locked in a war I couldn't see.
An old wound pressed into the moment. A history that had nothing to do with me. Everything to do with the kind of damage that makes a man flinch at his own desire.
I put my hand on his chest. Over his heart. It hammered under my palm.
"Hey," I whispered.
He closed his eyes. Exhaled through his nose.
When he opened them again, the fear was still there, but something else had joined it. Something fierce and desperate and impossible to refuse.
His mouth found mine again. Slower this time. His hands slid into my hair and paint transferred onto my neck, my jaw. I didn't care. I didn't care about anything except the wall of him against me and the sound he made low in his chest when I pulled him closer.
His back hit the easel. The canvas wobbled but neither of us reached for it. I pressed into him, my mouth finding the warm skin of his collarbone. He tasted like salt and turpentine and something that made my head spin.
A rough groan rumbled out of him. His arms tightened around me until I couldn’t tell where I ended and he began. We sank to the cold concrete floor together, his big body covering mine, blocking out everything except heat and paint and the hard press of his cock against my thigh through his jeans.
He laid me back on the paint-splattered surface and hovered over me, one hand braced beside my head. His other hand slid under my shirt, leaving streaks of raw sienna across my stomach. I yanked the fabric over my head because I needed his hands on my skin, not cotton.
His breath caught. Those green eyes darkened as they raked over my breasts. “Fuck,” he growled low, the first sound that wasn’t just a groan. He looked at me like I was something he was dying to ruin and protect at the same time.
Then his mouth followed. Hot, open kisses down my neck, across my shoulder, over the swell of my breast. When his lips closed around my nipple and sucked hard, I cried out, back arching off the floor. His tongue flicked, teeth grazed, and pleasure shot straight between my legs.
I hooked my fingers into his belt loops and dragged his hips down. The thick ridge of his cock ground against my core through our clothes and I moaned at the friction.
“More,” I gasped. “I need you inside me. Please.”
He made a broken sound and shoved my jeans and panties down my legs in one rough motion. I kicked them off. His hand went between my thighs, fingers sliding through my slick folds, circling my clit until my hips bucked against his palm.
“So wet for me already,” he rasped, voice wrecked. Two thick fingers pushed inside me, curling just right. I clenched around them, riding his hand shamelessly while his thumb worked my clit in tight circles.
I reached for his jeans, fumbling with the button. He helped me, shoving them down just enough to free his cock. It was thick and heavy, the head flushed dark and already leaking. I wrapped my hand around him and stroked once, feeling him throb against my palm.
He groaned and pulled his fingers out of me. In one smooth motion he hooked my leg over his hip and pushed inside.
The stretch burned in the best way. He was so big, so thick, filling me completely. I gasped at the fullness, nails digging into his shoulders as he sank deeper until his hips met mine.
“Fuck, you feel perfect,” he growled against my ear, staying still for a heartbeat, letting me adjust. Then he started to move.
Deep, hard thrusts that slammed me against the concrete. Each stroke dragged over that sensitive spot inside me and sent sparks through my whole body. Paint smeared between us—raw sienna on my breasts, on his chest, on my thighs where his hands gripped me.
I met every thrust, legs locked around his waist, moaning his name like a plea. “Harder—yes, just like that—fuck me harder.”
He gave it to me. His hips snapped faster, cock driving into me over and over. One hand slid between us, thumb finding my swollen clit again, rubbing in firm circles while he fucked me deep.
Pleasure coiled tight and fast. My thighs started shaking. “I’m close—don’t stop?—”
“Come on my cock,” he growled, voice rough and desperate. “Let me feel you.”
I shattered. My orgasm crashed through me, pussy clenching hard around his thick length as waves of pleasure rolled over me. I cried out, back bowing off the floor, nails raking down his back.
He thrust through it, chasing his own release. His rhythm broke, hips stuttering. With a deep, guttural groan he buried himself to the hilt and came, pulsing hot inside me as he filled me with his cum.
We stayed locked together, panting, bodies slick with paint and sweat. His arms trembled as he held me close, forehead pressed to mine.
I was crying before I understood why.
Not sobbing. Not the messy, gasping kind. Just tears, sliding down my face in steady streams, landing on his bare chest where my head was resting.
He didn't ask. He didn't say "What's wrong?" or "Are you okay?"
None of the things a normal person says when the woman they just slept with starts leaking tears onto their skin.
He pressed his mouth to my temple. Then my cheekbone. Then the wet trail down my jaw.
Kissing the tears away one at a time with the kind of patience that wrecked me more than anything that had come before.
His hands were still shaking. I could feel the tremor where his palm rested on my hip.
A year. It had been a year since anyone had touched me. A year since Cory. A year of cold apartments and borrowed names and sleeping alone in beds that didn't belong to me.
All of that pressure. All of that isolation. All of that grief I'd been carrying in my spine and my bones for twelve months.
It came out of me in those silent tears. Not sadness. Release.
I pressed my face into his neck. He smelled like linseed oil and clean sweat and a scent underneath I'd never be able to name. I'd spend my life trying to find it again.
His arm tightened around me. He pulled me closer.
We didn't speak. The studio was quiet. Late afternoon light came through the windows and turned the floor to gold.
A drop cloth hung over a large canvas near the far wall. I noticed it for the first time. The shape underneath suggested a figure, tall and still.
I didn't ask about it. I didn't ask about anything.
I lay there with my head on him. Paint on my skin. His heartbeat under my ear. Trying to remember how to breathe in a world that had just changed shape.
He hadn't said my name. I hadn't said his. We'd gone from strangers to this in the space of an afternoon and neither of us had spoken more than three words.
But his palms were gentle on my back. His mouth was soft against my hair.
When I stopped crying, he tilted my chin up with one paint-stained finger. Looked at me with those green eyes. Said nothing.
His thumb brushed across my lower lip. A question without words.
I kissed the pad of his thumb. An answer without words.
He exhaled. Long, slow, shuddering.
Then he pulled me against him and buried his face in my hair and held on like he was afraid I'd disappear.
I was his employee. I was in witness protection.
My name was borrowed. My past was a lie. The last man I'd loved had died because someone wanted me enough to kill for it.
I had crossed every line I'd sworn I wouldn't cross.
The worst part was that I would cross them all again. Every line. Every boundary. Without hesitation.
Every single one.
For the man shaking in my arms who kissed my tears without asking why.