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His mouth is on my throat again—he's leaned over me, his chest pressed flush against my back, his lips dragging up the side of my neck while he moves inside me. I can feel my body coating him with every stroke, wet and hot, the slide of him so slick now that the sound of our bodies connecting fills the room between my moans and his ragged breathing.

This man. Who negotiated a deal to get me a private museum showing. Who took a day off that I doubt he's ever taken to drive me to a small village to find my mother's apartment. Who built an apartment for my father so he'd have a place when he's ready. It's not just the studio. It's that he knows what my father means to me and he wants me to have a place where I fit—with him.

His hand wraps into my hair and pulls gently, arching my back. His mouth is on my shoulder, my neck, the spot behind my ear where he bites down softly and then sucks until I cry out.

"More," I whisper.

He gives it to me.

The pace turns hard enough to steal thought. My thighs press against the edge of the table. I reach back and grip his forearm just to hold onto something because the feeling of him hitting that spot over and over is making my vision blur. My legs are shaking and I can feel my body starting to tighten around him with every thrust. Clenching. Gripping. The muscles deep inside me fluttering around his cock like a warning.

He feels it. I know he does because his hand tightens in my hair and his rhythm stutters for half a second before he picks it back up harder.

"Fuck," he breathes against my neck. "I can feel you about to come."

His hand slides around my hip and between my thighs. Finds me where we're connected. Where I'm stretched around him, swollen and soaked. One firm circle with his thumb over my clit, then another. His cock drives deep at the same time and my whole body locks.

"Come for me," he says against my ear. "Right here. In your studio."

That's all it takes.

I break with a cry that echoes off the new walls. My whole body clenches around him—tight, pulsing, pulling him deeper while I come so hard my legs give out entirely. My hands grip the table edge, my back arches into his chest, and I can feel myself clamping down on him in waves.

He groans loud, broken, nothing controlled about it, and drives into me one last time, burying himself as deep as he can. I feel him come inside me. Hot. Flooding. His cock pulsing against my walls while his cum fills me up and his hand grips my hip hard enough to leave marks and his forehead drops to my shoulder. His whole body shudders against my back.

We stay like that.

Bent over a drafting table. Breathing. His chest rising and falling against my back. Him still inside me, softening slowly, and the warmth of him spilling out of me when he finally shifts. His hand smoothing down my side like he's soothing an animal or himself, I can't tell which.

Eventually he pulls out slowly and turns me around and lifts me back onto the table so I'm sitting. He steps between my legs and brushes the hair from my face and kisses my temple. Nothing like the man who used to grimace at my coffee.

Then he walks over to the small sink and grabs one of the clothes all neatly folded like an interior designer set this room up as a showcase, and wets it in the facet and then heads back for me.

He gently cleans me, and then reaches down for his t-shirt and pulls it back over me.

"So," he says. "Do you like the room?"

I laugh, because of course that's the next thing he asks after what we just did in here.

"I like the room."

His grins, satisfied with his surprise. "Good. I hope it makes you feel more at home here."

He lowers me gently. My legs wobble when my feet hit the floor, and he catches me immediately, hands at my waist, steadying.

I look around the studio again.

The easel in the morning light. The canvases waiting for my touch. The windows that will fill this room with every shade of color that the Pacific Northwest has to offer.

He built me this.

Not because the contract required it. And not because it made business sense.

Because he saw me painting him on a beach and decided I deserved more than stolen hours and a folding easel.

Because that’s how Everett Kauffman relays feelings he can’t say out loud.

"So," I say, "about that shower sex you still owe me."