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“I didn’t design it for you. It was something I’ve been working on lately.” He picked up his book and flicked the pages for her. “I was drawing her well and truly before you walked in the door and I used the design because she seemed to fit your brief.”
Her brow creased, then smoothed. She forced herself up straighter and then smiled. “I’m sorry, I thought...” She laughed. “I don’t know what I thought.” He just nodded and turned back to his painting.
“Hey.” I glanced up to see Sable had come to sit by me. “I’m Sable. Are you like the shop girl or something?”
“Oh no,” I said, shaking my head.
“Girlfriend?” she looked quizzical with her eyebrow cocked.
“No, I’m his… landlord, I guess.”
“Oh.” she moved so she could watch Flea paint. “Do you do that a lot, hang out with your tenants?”
“My sister and I, we only have the one, well, two if you count Gabe, but he’s her boyfriend.”
Her eyes went wide. “You’re Ash’s sister?” I nodded. She seemed to look me over more closely now. “Yeah, I guess I see the resemblance. How do you deal with the temptation?” she said, jerking her head in Flea’s direction. “I think I’d be next door ‘talking business’ every damn day.”
I stared at Flea as he worked. His movements were precise and economical, he made none that weren’t needed and the paint mimicked this. He is the brush, I realised. Rather than gesturing with his hand or brush like a traditional painter would, he needed to move his whole body to create the shapes and lines of his piece. His singlet slipped off his shoulder, revealing lean muscles that worked hard to make his vision a reality. I knew what he looked like under those temptingly threadbare clothes. Like any women watching him walk past would see the muscles along his ribcage, his chest, as he moved
. His clothes were so oversized they provided tantalising glimpses, but I’d smoothed that garment up and over his head, felt that firm body against mine, felt his rigid length grinding into my core, watched his thick cock bob free when I tore off his pants.
While we are in Damorica, we also need to work on shielding, Miazydar said, shifting restively on the ground.
I know.
You desire the one you work with and he desires you. It’s only a matter—
I’ve got it, dragon, really I do. You don’t want to be linked to my mind when I get to the happy place and I don’t want that either. We’ll work on it tomorrow, I promise.
“So do you?” Sable asked, dark eyes boring into mine. “Go next door every day?”
No, because if I did, it would be like last time, except this time I wouldn’t need to be so drunk. My mouth would be on his and I’d be tasting that curious mixture of cigarettes, minty chewing gum and him. His lips would drag against mine as if we were somehow stuck together, unable to pull away for any length of time, doomed to lose ourselves in a cavalcade of kisses. Because if I did, I would be fully conscious when I pulled his clothes off and mine and I would have more than brief, startling, technicolour flashbacks of how his body looked and felt under my fingertips. I would slow the moment when he pushed his cock into me down to a glacial pace so I could memorise every damned moment. So that when we drew apart and went our separate ways as we are destined to do, I would have something to hold on tight to in my empty bed.
“Not unless my sister forces me,” I said with a shrug. Her eyes scour my face for signs, of what I’m not sure. That I’m lying? That I’ll get territorial if she makes a move? She glances back as he begins to sketch in the girl, the dragon rider from Sable’s tattoo.
“She kinda looks like you,” she says, the muscle in her jaw flexing. She doesn’t wait for me to reply, instead, she gets to her feet and takes her place next to him. I look at them, two long, lean, beautiful forms, standing like they belong together and I got up. He hasn’t done a bad job of recording how it was that day at the Prince of Damorica’s manor, before it all burned to the ground.
I nod and then walked away, through the door, back into the shed, dodging noisy revellers and clots of people chatting, past dancing girls and long-haired boys, bikes, cars, machinery, until finally, I’m out in the open. I gasped in the cool, clear night air; just enjoying the emptiness for a moment. Miazydar looked at me, his eyes reading my body language. He’s right, our world is too full of everything.
I pulled out my phone to ring a cab, scrolling until I find a company I haven’t used before. “Tess!” I hear my name, but I focus on the task. I have to get out of here, I don’t want to be ensnared by any more social obligations. “Tess?” Flea ran up, putting his hand on my shoulder and turning me around when I didn’t respond. “Hey, you OK?”
“I…” I can’t put it into words, this need. It hurts people to hear I can’t always be around them, that sometimes I have to be alone. And if it doesn’t hurt them, it certainly pisses them off. Their eyes go flat and empty, backing away before I can even explain why.
“You want to go? Let’s go.” He took my phone and shoved it in my pocket, me jumping at that small intimacy. “The dog hates cars right? We’ll take it slow, we can stop if he needs to be sick as many times as you like.”
I looked at him, wondering what the hell was going on underneath that inscrutable face. I looked over his shoulder where people were having a great time, a silhouette that looked like Sable’s appearing in the doorway, pausing to search the carpark. “Don’t you have to paint? What about your friends?”
He smiled at this, his teeth bright against his olive skin and then that arm went around my shoulders again, tucking me into the side of his body. “It’s no big deal, I’m not great at collabs. I tend to take over. Meeks and Scott will do the filling in. They’re bloody good and it’ll get them in with the graffiti groupies. Well, where do you want to go?”
If he’d asked me five minutes beforehand, it would have been home, definitely. Instead, my eyes went to where my body met his. “Take me to the shop,” I said. “I think I want to get a tattoo.”
6
Miazydar sat on my lap as we went, his head out the window the whole time. We only had to stop a couple of times. Flea didn’t say anything until we got there, stopping by the front door. “You sure about this?”
“Yeah, I mean, I’ve thought about it before, but I never really found a design I liked. It’ll need to be somewhere discreet, otherwise my mum will lose her shit.” His eyes instantly dropped to my body as he considered this.
“Yeah, that should be doable. You could do something on your back, or on your hip, even your stomach or chest. Do you wear bikinis much?”
