is a logistical nightmare already without adding in guerilla artistry to the mix.”
“Fair,” he says. “So what do you have in mind?”
“I want to paint something new for them. Something… real.”
“Like while they watch? Performance art?”
The idea dawns on me with a lurch and roll, the way the yacht moved beneath me. And then I’m falling with nothing to catch me. Only someone’s here to follow me down. “What if we went to the studio right now?”
He looks exactly the right amount of scandalized. And being the pragmatist, he glances at his watch. “It’s midnight. How long do we have before they open?”
“Long enough.”
For a moment he studies me, and I think he’s wondering whether he’s going to go along with this crazy plan. Wondering more than me, anyway. If there’s one thing this man understands, it’s raw determination. He’ll be in it with me.
A brief nod. “Breaking and entering it is.”
That’s how we end up spending all night in a fancy SoHo art studio, its walls bare and white and waiting for the paintings that are stacked in my penthouse suite. That’s how I end up painting a Medusa in swirls of purple and teal and pink using a wooden folding chair as my step stool.
I don’t know where they planned to put the centerpiece of the show. Probably somewhere front and center, where everyone would see it first. This one’s in the back of the studio. You have to look at every other painting first and turn the corner. And then she blazes at you in all her snake-fueled glory. She turns the viewer to stone, if Christopher’s look of awe is any indication.
He turns to me, and I’m in awe of this, of him, of his bleary eyes and the smudges of paint from helping me. Of the expression of pride on his handsome face. How did we get here?
“I don’t want to go,” I tell him.
“We’ll be back in a few hours. But I’m pretty sure I should shower before then.” He touches his thumb to my cheek, and it comes away teal. “Probably you too.”
“Should we leave them a note or something?”
He hands me one of the paintbrushes, this one tinged with dark purple at the tip. “Sign it. That’s enough of a note.”
I didn’t sign the one I painted in the gym, but I take the paintbrush and swirl my name into the bottom right of the painting, where one of the fierce snakes writhes. “How’s that?”
“Perfect,” he says, his gaze locked on mine.
My breath catches. “Thank you for helping me.”
“No, thank you for letting me be part of this. I went to college with legends in the business world, and I’ve still never seen anything close to this.”
“Careful, or I’ll start to think you’re complaining about capitalism.”
He gives me the slow smile. “Never.”
It’s devastating, that smile and that ambition. Devastating the way I can’t seem to look away from him, not even when he touches my cheek again. This time he isn’t wiping away paint. He cups my face and holds me still. His head lowers in slow degrees, giving me time to stop him.
My body is incapable of moving right now. Even my lungs are frozen, my throat locked tight. Only my heart beats hard enough to hear. It pulses in my lips, waiting, waiting for him.
I spent a good part of the past four hours painting lips that are the focal point of this piece—lips that are full of feminine beauty and eternal regret, of desire and revenge. I’ve worked through the meaning of every rise, every indent, translated the shadows, but now that I look at Christopher’s lips, with their masculine utility, I don’t know what any of it means. There’s a secret code written all over his skin, the message plain if only I could read it.
His mouth meets mine, and for a moment the warmth stuns me. I can only stand there under the gentle press of him, feeling the heat spread through my face and down my neck. Down my stomach and into my legs.
He touches his tongue against the seam of my lips—a question. And I open my mouth in answer, letting him sweep inside with sleep-drunk desire. We shouldn’t be doing this. There are so many reasons why this is wrong, but his hands on my waist feel impossibly right.
A sound comes from me, a moan that would embarrass me if I were thinking. I’m only feeling. Only falling and letting him catch me, as