Exposed to You (27 page)

Lighter.

Everett lifted his head.

“Here, drink some water,” he said quietly, and she took the glass he offered, swallowing the cool fluid between hiccups.

“Oh my God,” she rasped, spilling water on her chest for the second time. “I just realized I didn’t say—I already got the results. Everett, the biopsy came back negative for cancer,” she said, her words coming with the rapidity of machine gun fire.

She heard him breathing in the silence that followed. “I’m so sorry,” she moaned. “I was so caught up in everything . . . shocked you were here . . . Oh, Jesus . . . I should have said sooner.”

He made a sort of choking sound and suddenly his arms were around her again. Joy held up the water, trying to keep it from spilling on him while he hugged the daylights out of her.

“Dr. Chen says I have a really bad virus, and that’s all. No cancer whatsoever,” she managed to get out through Everett’s tight squeeze.

“I’m so glad,” he muttered.

She laughed. “Everett, I can’t breathe.”

He released her immediately. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” she said, smiling. His hand touched her chin. Her fingers skimmed his lips. He was smiling, but she couldn’t see it. Why hadn’t they turned on the light? Suddenly, she wanted nothing more than to drink in the sight of his face. She leaned over and switched on the bedside lamp. She immediately put both of her hands on his jaw.

For a stretched moment, they just stared at each other, both of them smiling. She had the strangest impression their hearts were joined, both of them pounding and near to bursting, they were so full. She studied every detail of his face. How could she have ever thought it was the property of an adoring public? The face of the man she saw right now with the expression of indescribable desire and love in his eyes—that face was
hers
, and hers alone.

Slowly, realization dawned on her. He must have noticed her incredulous expression.

“Oh, Everett—you
didn’t
,” she cried. She removed his cap; her eyes sprung wide. She touched the smooth skin of his skull, needing another sense to back up her eyes. Every bit of his blond, tousled, movie-star hair—
gone
.

“I shaved at the hotel,” he said matter-of-factly.

“Why?” she gasped.

“As a show of support. In case your cancer had returned,” he said. He touched her short hair. Regret flickered across his handsome face. “I was so clueless. I thought you’d cut it short for a fashion statement.” He lightly caressed the port scar on her chest, the reminder of her chemotherapy. He met her stunned gaze. “Please forgive me for being so clueless.”

“Everett,” she finally managed to say. “I can’t believe you did that.” She would have sworn it was impossible for her eyes to manufacture more tears, but that was before she’d seen Everett’s smooth, bald head.

He flashed his grin at her. “It’s just hair, Joy. It’s not a big deal.”

She shook her head disbelievingly, a bark of laughter erupting from her throat. “No. No, it’s the stupidest . . . sweetest, most incredible thing . . .” she said brokenly.

She halted, once again overwhelmed. This time, it was she who squeezed the daylights out of him. She kissed his neck feverishly, transferred to his jaw and finally settled on his mouth. She parted his lips with her tongue, so desperate, so eager to celebrate his existence. He made a gruff, appreciative sound in his throat and ran his hands along her sides, pausing to cradle the sides of her breasts in his palms. Joy hugged him to her, kissing him like she thought his lungs held the last oxygen on earth. She felt his body respond to their embrace and made a sound of confused protest when he broke their kiss. He looked down at her, his nostrils flaring slightly. She read the question and concern in his blue-green eyes.

“It’s just the flu,” she reminded him hoarsely. “But even if the cancer were back, I’d want you inside of me right now. I want to assure myself that you’re real, because from where I’m sitting, you look like the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen.”

“Remind me never to let you switch positions, then,” he said wryly as he grabbed the bottom of her tank top and peeled it off her.

She loved the small smile that flickered across his lips. She loved the blazing heat in his eyes as he touched her breast. She loved the fact that he’d cut off all his glorious hair to remind her of what she should have known.

Everett was the real deal.

“I love you,” she gasped when he pushed his cock into her a moment later. “I
need
you.”

His face tightened with emotion. He touched his lips to hers and then lifted his head, watching her face as he thrust.

He paused with his cock high inside of her.

“Put your legs together,” he muttered.

“What?” she murmured, her hands moving anxiously over his hips and buttocks.

“I want to feel every nuance of you. I want to feel as close to you as I can.”

She moaned as she tried to do what he’d suggested. The pressure in her sex grew intense.

“Touch your feet together,” he encouraged. She heard the hard edge to his voice and knew he, too, was being affected as she squeezed his cock tighter within her body. “Now cross your ankles,” he demanded.

It wasn’t easy. Everett was not small, and nor was the thick, throbbing flesh embedded inside her. But the position definitely had its advantages. She had never felt his cock so clearly while it was harbored in her body—the shape, the heat, the throb of his heartbeat along the shaft.

She gritted her teeth, sweat gathering on her upper lip, and crossed her ankles. They groaned in unison. The pressure bordered on pain.

Everett slid out several inches and sank back into her, and Joy realized it also bordered on pure, intense pleasure. She saw a spark ignite in his eyes. Excitement zipped through her, because she knew what that feral gleam in his eyes signified.

He began to plunge into her again and again, their skin smacking together rhythmically. She could feel the thick rim beneath the head perfectly as he pulled his cock out of her. She’d never felt so inundated by a man, so possessed . . . so cherished.

“When I come, I’m going to leave a part of myself in you,” Everett said solemnly as he fucked her.

“Yes,” she moaned, for what else was he doing right now but pounding himself so entirely into her being that she would never—
could
never—let fear rule her again? That was what he was showing her, that love was the master of fear.

Emotion and sensation blended until the pleasure was too much to bear. She exploded with it. Everett was there with her, though, mixing with her, sharing with her, helping her to endure the sweet, shattering bliss.

Epilogue

FOUR MONTHS LATER

“Joy?” Everett called as he closed the front door.

“I’m here—in the studio,” he heard her call in the distance. He smiled and set the mail, a small box and the overnight bag he’d been carrying on the bench in the foyer so he could take off his jacket. He slipped his hand into his back pocket, his grin widening when he felt what he was searching for.

He was still celebrating his good fortune at finally having Joy in his house. She’d decided late last summer to become partners with Seth at Hightower Special Effects, but had insisted that she had to teach the fall term at the Steadman School. The administration wouldn’t have had the time or opportunity to hire a new art teacher, and she hadn’t wanted to leave her students hanging. As such, Everett and she had endured a long-distance romance for much longer than he preferred. He’d grown so impatient for her to join him in Los Angeles that Rill had hollowly threatened on a few occasions to ban him from the production studio for
Razor Pass
because of his surly mood.

Joy had just moved into his Laurel Canyon home two days ago. Unfortunately, no sooner had Everett helped her settle in than he had to take a prearranged visit to Death Valley with Rill, where they’d be moving production of the film to onsite location next week. Norman Cassavita, the author of the novel
Razor Pass
, was dead. For whatever reason, Rill considered Everett to have a better grip on the setting and nuances of the novel than anyone he knew—probably because Everett had been obsessed with the book since he’d first read it when he was sixteen years old. Everett had agreed to take the scouting trip with him to Death Valley before he knew that Joy would be moving in just days before.

This was his first time returning home to find Joy in the house, and it was a sweet experience indeed.

“Hi,” he greeted her as he walked into the large bedroom they’d converted into studio space for Joy. She stood before a half-finished canvas and was in the process of hastily rinsing off her paintbrushes. She dropped the brushes in a jar when she saw him and turned toward him, her face glowing.

“Welcome home,” she said before she flew into his arms. He lifted her feet off the ground, hugging her tight with his face pressed at the juncture of her neck and shoulder. He inhaled the smell of her floral shampoo, the singular fragrance of her skin and the slight hint of her paints—a scent combination he’d come to treasure as uniquely Joy’s.

“I like the sound of that,” he murmured as he lifted his head. He studied her face for a moment, gratified to see happiness in every nuance of her expression. He kissed her soundly.

“Did Rill finalize the set locations in Death Valley?” she asked when he lifted his head a moment later.

“Yeah. It’s going to be a brutal schedule. Rill wants to finish in ten weeks in order to keep down costs,” Everett murmured, touching her cheek softly. It’d grown pink and warm following their kiss. Her hazel eyes grew smoky at his caress.

“At least we’ll be together,” she murmured, turning her head and kissing his palm. Joy would be at the onsite shoot in her new capacity as partner of Hightower Special Effects. “It’ll be the first time we’ve worked together . . . officially, anyway.”

“What about the
Vanity Fair
cover?” Everett muttered distractedly as she pressed another kiss to his palm, and then tasted his skin with a warm, red tongue. He referred to a magazine cover they’d collaborated on several months ago. Joy had done a nude body painting of Everett that was already becoming a collector’s item. Joy had posed him in front of a background mural depicting a sunlit field of grapes. Everett stood in front of a trellis where ripe fruit hung, his body paint of sun-soaked leaves, vines and the weave of the trellis precisely matching the background so that he blended perfectly into the scene. She’d made him into a fucking God with that painting—a fertile Dionysus coaxed by her paintbrush into springing right out of the canvas.

The painting had been a private affair between Everett and Joy. The result had been stunning, Joy having caught his rising desire for her as she tortured him with her tickling paintbrush just as she had done that first day in the studio. His tense, rigid muscles, the flame of arousal in his eyes as he stared at her, a painful erection that didn’t entirely dissipate for three solid hours while she worked—all of it had been captured in the painting. When they’d finally made love afterward, it’d been like an inferno tearing through a fireworks storehouse.

All of it had ended up in the final photograph except his actual cock. For the cover photo, Joy had inserted a lush, large, juicy-looking bunch of grapes between his thighs in place of his raging erection.

“The
Vanity Fair
cover was hardly work,” Joy said before she slipped one of his fingers between her lips.

“You know, I never really got you back for that,” Everett mused as he watched her suck on his finger. His cock twitched when she began to slide it in and out of her warm mouth. He threaded the fingers of his other hand through her soft hair. It’d grown a few inches in the past few months. She wore it in a short bob that emphasized her cheekbones and large eyes. He’d been relieved and beyond grateful that Joy had been pronounced perfectly healthy at her last checkup. In the future, she’d only have to return every six months.

“You’ve gotten me back plenty of times,” she murmured around his finger, giving him a bewitching smile before she bit the tip of his finger gently and released him.

“Not in the exact same way.”

“Do you want to paint me?” she asked, amused.

“Yes.”

She blinked.

“Of course I won’t be able to do it with a thousandth of your skill, but my body paint will have its advantages.”

She arched her eyebrows, looking bemused but interested. He grinned and walked out of the room, only to return a few minutes later with the box that had been delivered with the mail.

“I ordered this for you,” he said, ripping open the box. “Well, for me, too.”

Joy read the label on the package.

“‘Erotic edible body paints—chocolate, strawberry, blueberry, peach and sweet cream.’”

Everett pumped his eyebrows. “Do you have any unused brushes?”

She laughed. “Yes.” She walked over to a large bureau and opened a drawer. “Here,” she said, handing him several brushes.

“Take off your clothes, little girl.”

She gave him a droll glance, but began to unbutton her cotton blouse.

He watched her fixedly while he tore off several sheets of the white paper Joy used to protect the carpeting while she painted, the result being that he didn’t make the paper long enough and had to start all over. When he’d laid several layers of the paper on the floor, he said, “Be right back.” He hastened to Joy’s and his bedroom and retrieved their favorite pair of padded leather cuffs from the bedside table. He grabbed a pillow from the hall closet.

“I didn’t handcuff you for the Dionysus painting,” she chastised amusedly when he reentered the room.

“Yeah, but I almost always cuff you. No reason to alter the tradition just because of a paint job,” he murmured silkily, approaching her. She looked extremely beautiful standing there wearing nothing but a tiny pair of pale pink panties. Her breasts looked firm, full and tender, contrasting markedly with her delicate, narrow rib cage. He caressed one of the soft globes, molding her to his palm. Her nipple stiffened so quickly, he leaned down and pressed his lips to it, so grateful for her responsiveness . . . her sweetness.

“Lie down on your back on the paper,” he said. He whipped his shirt off as she followed his instructions, and then removed his shoes and socks. A moment later, he came down on his hands and knees over her, the paints, brushes and cuffs in hand. He dragged the pillow beneath her head. “Stretch your arms over your head. Straighten them as best you can,” he murmured.

He cuffed her wrists together, and then pocketed the key in his jeans with a satisfied smile. As always, the sight of the black leather cuffs next to her smooth skin, the knowledge that she would be helpless in the face of desire, sent a jolt of excitement through him.

“You’re a sick, sick man, Everett Hughes,” Joy said with wry amusement.

“And you love me for it.”

“True,” she conceded.

He grinned and opened the package of blue paint. He dipped the paintbrush into the thick liquid, stirring it, before he withdrew it and set the container next to Joy’s hip.

“Let’s see. Where to begin,” he mused, studying his breathtaking human canvas. “Spread your legs so I can make an informed decision.”

She did so slowly. She had trimmed her pubic hair very short. His pulse quickened at the sight of her pink, feminine folds. Unable to resist the lure, he lowered his head between her thighs and inhaled her subtle, sweet perfume. His cock responded to the smell of her sex instantly, swelling and lurching against the fabric of his jeans.

“So lovely,” he murmured, kissing her once on her labia and evoking a small whimper from her throat before he crawled higher over her. “I may not have artistic talent,” he said, “but I have the instinct of a lover. And it’s telling me to start on Joy’s sensitive ribs.”

She jumped slightly when he touched the wet brush between two ribs and painted a stripe as far around her as he could go. He used the blue paint for the skin between her ribs and the peach-colored paint for the bones themselves. By the time he’d finished covering her ribs, he noticed that goose bumps had risen on her skin and that her nipples looked like hard, red berries.

“Cold?” he asked, gazing at his work appreciatively.

“No,” she said in a strained voice. His gaze leapt to her face. Her cheeks were flushed, and her eyes had taken on the glassy sheen of arousal he so prized. He held her stare as he leaned down and tongued off a blue stripe slowly.

“Hmmm. Not bad. Blueberry.” And then, a moment later, “Peaches and blueberries taste awesome together.” He felt her shiver beneath his tongue as he licked along her tender sides. It never ceased to amaze—and arouse—him how sensitive she was there.

“I’m so glad you’re enjoying it,” she said breathlessly. She moaned and wiggled when his tongue dragged just below the lower curve of her left breast.

“You’d like it, I think. Want a taste?” he asked, lifting his head minutes later.

The sight of her lips parting made a stab of arousal go through him.

“Okay,” she said, seeming a little dazed.

He grabbed the dark pink paint along with a fresh brush. He straddled her, his knees at either side of her chest, and dipped the brush into the liquid.

“Keep your lips parted. Just like that,” he said as he began to trace her lips with the pink paint. The color looked vivid and a bit lewd on Joy’s sweet, lush mouth. It excited him. His cock grew so stiff that his jeans were increasingly becoming too confining. He set aside the paint and brush and hastily unbuttoned his fly. He reached down his pant leg, grimacing as he drew his erection over the waistband. The fabric of his boxer-briefs and jeans bunched around his balls. His cock fell heavily, but his clothing propped it up so that it stuck out of his fly at a downward angle.

He glanced up when Joy moaned. She was staring at his penis avidly, the tip of her tongue slicking along her graphically pink lower lip.

“Uh-uh,” he chastised lightly. “No dessert before supper.”

He gently lifted her head and used the tip of his penis to trace her smile. His cockhead now thoroughly covered with the pink paint, he thrust it between her lips into the warm, wet cavern of her mouth. A shudder of pleasure went through him as she eagerly sucked away the paint.

“Ah, that’s good,” he muttered tensely, thrusting into her mouth several times. He felt a tingle deep within his balls. “A little too good, in fact,” he muttered regretfully, pulling his cock out of her mouth and setting her head back on the floor. She looked up at him, her eyes glazed with desire, and licked off the remaining sugar from her lips. His cock bobbed in the air.

“I might have to spank you for that later,” he told her.

She grinned like the Cheshire cat.

He chuckled and scooted backward.

“Hmmm, let’s see. What flavors for the prettiest breasts in existence? Peaches and cream, I think.”

He went to work, using the largest brush available to him to coat the curves of her breasts in the peach paint, carefully painting around the crests, leaving the nipples naked. He paused after he’d picked up a smaller brush and the white paint. “It seems a shame to cover your nipples,” he said. “They’re a work of art all on their own. Guess I’ll just have to lick it off immediately,” he said with a decisive shrug.

He dipped the brush into the creamy liquid. He painted one nipple, and then the other, and then set aside the paint and brush. Joy’s breathing was becoming heavy. He came down over her on his hands and knees, elbows bent, and inserted just the tip of her breast between his lips. He listened to her moan softly as he first licked the sweet, cream-flavored, pebbled flesh and then sucked it greedily. She called his name sharply when he took a gentle bite of the sensitive flesh.

By the time he’d finished with both her breasts, her chest heaved as she panted. The firm globes of flesh were clean, damp and gleaming from his tongue. He was becoming unbearably aroused. There was something important he had to do before he lost his head in the heat of lust.

“Lower your hands to your belly,” he said. “I’m going to paint your fingers.”

She did so. He spent the next several minutes painting her fingers and one by one, laving off the paint with his searching tongue. A shudder went through her when he dragged his front teeth along the length of her last paint-covered digit—her ring finger.

“There’s something missing here,” he said gruffly, sucking the digit back into his mouth.

“The paint? It’s running down your throat,” she teased, watching him warmly.

“No, not the paint. This,” he said, reaching into the back pocket of his jeans.

He slipped the ring onto her finger.

“Maybe it’s not fair asking you while I have you at my mercy, but the truth is, I’ll take whatever advantage I can get.” He kissed her knuckles. “Will you marry me, Joy?”