Say it Louder (15 page)

For several quiet minutes, I just hold her, feeling her heartbeat.

I bury my nose in the side of her neck and breathe in the warmth of her skin, the salt from her tears. Her chest hitches with a few more ragged breaths and I wrap my arms around her as tightly as I can.

I don’t believe in much—my world’s been turned upside-down in the past couple weeks—but I believe in her.

My lips slide down her neck, from the hollow behind her ear to her collarbone. Her breasts swell and tighten against my naked chest, her nipples erect beneath her shirt, and my cock hardens against her.

I’m about to pull away, to give her space, but her hips roll into mine, a delicious acknowledgment of what’s happening between us. The air feels heavier with silence and unspoken want. My skin prickles as she slides soft fingers up my ribcage.

When her nails scrape the skin on my back I groan, feeling her want so acutely. I shove away questions of right and wrong, of whether being here with her like this—broken and fragile, open and needful—is the right way to show her I care.

She presses harder into me and I slide my hand from her shoulder to the scant space between us, the rise of her breast, the pebble of her nipple. When my thumb grazes its tip she rolls her head back and gives me a tiny moan of pleasure that can’t be ignored.

She needs this as much as I do.

I drop my hands to the hem of her T-shirt and tug it up. She lifts her arms to reveal a simple, no-nonsense black bra. It’s not the kind of lacy Technicolor wisp of lingerie that Kristina favored, but somehow that makes it more enticing because it’s more
real.

Willa is more real, more present with me here than I can ever remember being with a woman.

I kiss a trail from shoulder to elbow, then across her stomach and up to her sternum as my hands work behind her back. The clasp opens and her bra falls away, my face between her heavy breasts.

I hold her against me, stumbling to my knees, mouth moving between her breasts, teasing and tugging and licking as she moans and makes whisper-soft pleas and promises.

Her breathing quickens as I twist a button and unzip the fly on her jeans. I guide them to the floor, then her panties, and though she squirms and her fingers dig into my shoulders, I make my intent absolutely fucking clear.

I pull her closer and duck my head, my mouth seeking the heat of her center. She rakes her nails across my back and I’m on fire, every nerve tuned to who she is and what she needs.

She whimpers as I nip at the inside of her thighs, teasing her as my mouth gets closer to her pale curls.

Soft. So soft, beneath her tough exterior. I run my nose across her, inhaling her scent, and I find the edge of her pussy with my tongue. I trace her reverently, slicking her lips, and she moans more loudly this time.

I want her to feel something besides the sadness and desperation that left her crying in the corner. I want her to feel hope and joy and … elation.

I stop before I’ve even reached her clit, pushing her back from me slightly, and her face falls.

“What—why …?” She falters, nervous in her nakedness.

I stand and shuck off my jeans, my hard-on thoroughly apparent through boxer briefs. I take her hand. “I’m not stopping. I just want us to try something.”

I lead her toward the painting studio side of her apartment, grab a clean canvas dropcloth and spread it on the floor.

“Hands out.” She quirks a brow in question but obeys. I grab the nearest tube of acrylic and squirt a quarter-sized dollop of blue in her palms. “Rub them together.”

“Are we finger-painting here? I thought were—” Her cheeks color in embarrassment.

“Both,” I promise, a wicked gleam in my eye. “Turn around.” I anoint her skin with a dozen more blobs of paint, deep red and vivid purple, rubbing each into her skin. Her shoulder blades, her ass cheeks, the back of her thighs and calves. “Lie down.”

My art project seems to take shape in her mind and she follows where I point her, wriggling as I add a deep cobalt blue to the soles of her feet.

I kneel between her legs and see pupils dilate, her lips part. My hands are covered with paint and I lean over her, balancing on my arms, to take her lower lip and then each nipple between my teeth, sucking until her back arches.

I shuck off my boxers and scoot down the canvas, licking her center again, long strokes that part the seam of her lips, and mingle her moisture with the saliva on my tongue. I swallow her heady taste, something so primal that it sets off an explosion in my body that throws me into overdrive, no longer teasing but demanding more, more, more.

I plunge my tongue inside her and I hear her voice rising, begging, saying my name like it’s the key to another world. I dance my tongue across her clit and she writhes beneath me, desperate hands gripping the canvas. As my tongue moves deeper, she scratches her nails up my back, leaving my skin raw with desire.

“It’s too much,” she chokes out, and I lash my tongue against her nub as fast as it can move. I feel her tipping point like the instant of silence when my band plays its last note, the breath before the audience erupts. She tips, her whole body compressing around a single, explosive moment.

She’s in freefall, screaming something I don’t even understand, and then she’s clawing and pulling to bring me above her, to settle on top of her. I’m conscious of my weight, especially with her back on the hard floor, but her arms tighten around my chest, and I don’t want to pull away.

I just feel her against me, her breathing coming back from a panting sprint. My cock is rock-hard and throbbing, impossible to ignore on her stomach, but I’m afraid to shift and burst this perfect bubble of pleasure.

I turn to her cheek, paint-streaked and beautiful, and kiss her the way I see her, something precious and original. Like art: priceless, rare. I’ve been here before, this postcoital taking stock, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen a woman as clearly as I see Willa.

It hurts. Hurts to see her in pain, and now it hurts, knowing the pleasure that’s possible when I’m all kinds of fucked up and I can’t give her what she deserves.

I can’t make her pain go away.

Willa stills beneath me and then her hand reaches to the side of the canvas for a tube of paint. I feel the cool squeeze of it on my back, her hands rubbing it in, and then we roll.

She straddles me like a goddess on horseback, light from the windows behind her illuminating her pink hair in a halo. Her cheeks are flushed, eyes bright, and she moves her hips to take my cock in her cleft, slicking me with her moisture.

My eyes roll as the sensation of her sends my nerves into overdrive, as if there’s no skin, only sparks between us. She bends to my mouth for a kiss and then executes a perfect push-up—more evidence of her badass strength—and flees to her bathroom with two words: “Don’t move.”

She’s back in seconds, and I hear the rip of a wrapper before I open my eyes. She rolls the condom over me, thick and pulsing with want, then straddles me again, hips angling to find the tip of my cock.

I reach for her face, cradling it in my hands with soft reverence, even while the rest of my body begs me to thrust inside her. “Willa,” I say, and it’s enough. She understands.

She presses back, taking me inside her in this ancient, sacred union that feels unending in its delicious slowness. Her heat, her wetness, her muscles inside gripping me—it slices away my self-doubt and self-pity until all I see is her.

And us. Perfect. Together.

Willa straightens, leaning back to sitting, my cock buried deep as I feel her pulse around me. I reach for her breasts, thumbs caressing the sides of them, palms testing their weight, until I have to pull her back toward me to taste their tips.

My teeth come out, insatiable, nipping and biting harder than before. It sends her hips bucking on me and I buck back harder against her, letting her ride but setting the pace, pushing our rhythm faster.

I feel my senses slipping away—sight, and I am blind to the room. Sound, and I can’t hear anything but the blood rushing in my ears. The taste and smell of her sinking deep into my sense memory.

Then there is only touch. This wild and intense connection where my body shifts from being mine, to being an animal all its own. It races to a place where nothing matters but release.

Nothing but the climax. I buck and plunge and Willa screams her release, collapsing on me and sinking her teeth into the muscle strung from shoulder to neck. And that painful twinge amplifies everything, setting off a roaring torrent that rushes through me.

I am filled and emptied and filled again. I’m taken apart and put back together. I am hers.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

I pull my head up, balancing myself on shaky arms and look at Dave.

He’s blissed out, like he’s not sure what hit him. Paint streaks his face, his forehead, and who knows where else, and I can’t help it.

I laugh. A chuckle that rolls into a full belly laugh and I’m straddling him, with his dick softening inside me, the laugh pushing him out as surely as it lifts the funk of sadness in this room.

He grabs the condom and ducks into the bathroom to take care of it. I stand as he comes back and wraps his arms around my waist from behind.

We shake with giggles as we stare at a canvas where there is
absolutely no question
what just transpired. The prints are smudged with passion. The outline of my ass is an inverted heart, the prints of his knees between my outstretched legs leaving little to the imagination.

“I think it’ll match some rich collector’s couch,” Dave says, nuzzling my ear. “Definitely a conversation piece.”

I turn in his arms. “If I look as crazy with paint as you do right now, this is going to be a bitch to get off.”

“But worth it.”

I lead Dave toward the shower, giving the canvas one more glance. “Definitely worth it.”

***

“So that’s one down. How many to go?” Dave works on my back beneath the trickle of the shower, scrubbing at the paint.

“Oh, I could never sell that.”

“Why not? It would definitely cause a stir.”

I turn and take the sponge to his back. Aquamarine paint-stained soap suds slide toward my rust-speckled drain.

“For one thing, even if I did want to sell it, I’d have to get it stretched and mounted. That’s money I don’t have right now. And I’m out of time—I can’t do twenty canvases in a week. It’s impossible.”

I bite my lip to control the quiver in my voice. The truth of my loss is still so raw that it’s hard to avoid dissolving in another round of tears.

Dave keeps scrubbing me, quiet for a moment. “What would it take? To finish them all?”

“Weeks at least. A couple of months would be better.”

“Could you get Thomas to give you time off?”

I mentally review my upcoming appointments. Not a ton, but I’d take the hit on commission if I rescheduled them all. “I can’t afford it. I can’t even afford to buy new supplies.”

Dave turns me around, dabbing at paint on my chin tenderly before he pulls me against his chest and the warm water washes over us. “Would you let me help?”

I try to pull away. “You can’t.”

“I’m serious. I know you don’t want me to ‘wave a magic credit-card wand,’ but if there’s one thing I can give you, it’s some more resources to finish the job.”

I keep shaking my head no, but an idea strikes me, something the bleak emptiness of my apartment stole away when I was crushed in despair.

I yank open the shower curtain and run over to my paint area, still dripping wet. High on top of an industrial metal shelf where I keep most of my paint is a bunch of rolled-up stiff plastic.

It looks like junk.

But it might be my salvation.

I pull down a couple of rolls and remove the rubber bands. The paint-stained clear plastic mostly comes from dumpster-diving, sheets that used to cover binders or protect products.

Each one of these sheets was painstakingly cut with my box-cutting knife over cardboard, creating the stencil I use for graffiti art and for my canvases. The plastic is curling and unwieldy.

“I never planned to use these again, but I couldn’t bring myself to throw them away,” I explain. “Most of the effort is right here. In the stencil.”

Dave wraps a towel around my dripping shoulders and tucks a towel around his waist, then crouches to look closer. “Wow. These are really intricate.”

“Sometimes I use a handful of stencils for one painting. And they’re all jumbled here, but if I can separate them and flatten them…” I keep pulling at the sheets that stick together with remnants of paint.

“You can do this, Willa,” Dave whispers. “They can steal your canvases, but they’re not going to steal your chance at this show.”

I barely know where to start on this mess of plastic, but I do know where I need to start with Dave. I banish the alarm bells in my head that demand I’ll never accept another handout.

I want to believe his offer comes from a better place, that Dave’s not dangling a promise in exchange for a favor owed.

I swallow my pride and say the words I swore I’d never utter again. “I need your help.”

***