Dance Away with Me - Susan Elizabeth Phillips Page 0,101

It’s nontoxic.”

“Why should I be con— Hey!” She gave an involuntary yelp as he touched her nipple, leaving a curl of bright blue behind. “What are you doing?”

“I’m a renegade, remember? Used to working with all kinds of surfaces.” He swirled the color around the tip.

That’s when she understood. When he said he wanted to paint her, he’d meant it literally.

She stood motionlessly and let him turn her breast into an elaborate medallion of blue, crimson, maroon, and gold, with feathery edges drifting over her ribs. The warmth of the paint and the sensuous touch of his fingers grew into an exquisite torture. Her bones began to melt as he cupped the weight of her breast in one hand and used the little finger of the other to swirl the pigment.

He selected a square of thin canvas from the fabric pile on the cart. Gently, meticulously, he molded it to her breast, transferring the image from her skin to the small canvas. Using her body as a pliable stamp.

She stood before him, weak-kneed and ferociously aroused. He set the canvas aside and painted her other breast into an intricate, multicolored pattern of airy lace. Her palms grew damp as he tormented the nipple with ochre, lemon, and maroon. Sweat began to pool at the base of his throat.

Once again, he pressed the canvas to her breast, made his stamp, set it aside, and moved on to her naval. His hair had fallen over his forehead; his brow furrowed with the intensity of his concentration.

Her skin was alive, every inch of it stimulated by his sensuous touch. He surrounded the oval of her naval with a mosaic of rolling waves. Pressed a new canvas to her. Set it aside.

Paint dripped onto her underpants. He shrugged out of his sweat-damp shirt and went to his knees. She fisted her hands to keep them from sinking into his hair. His breath fell hot on her skin. He moved behind her. He pushed the rear waistband of her underpants down and caught the fabric on one side in the crack of her buttocks, exposing a single cheek.

She couldn’t see him, only felt his hands on her skin and imagined what they were creating. The room was too hot, the sensations too intense. He molded the canvas to her bottom, his finger straying.

Now he was in front of her again. Paint smeared his bicep and stippled his hair. Her underpants were in his way. He pulled them off and spread her legs. He worked carefully, painting the tiniest design high on her thigh. The back of his hand brushed her intimately as he worked there until she lost her balance and sank to her knees in front of him.

Their eyes met and held. A spatter of white paint clung to the stubble at his jawline. A dab of green hovered at the corner of his mouth. Keeping her eyes locked with his, she cupped her breasts and rubbed the paint that remained there on her hands.

“Now you,” she whispered.

He groaned as she splayed her palms on his collarbones and dragged them down his chest to his waist.

* * *

When he felt her fingers opening the snap of his jeans, pulling out the condom, he lost the last of the control he’d so rigidly clung to and pulled her to the floor on top of him. He tunneled his paint-streaked hands into her hair and kissed her, inhaled her. They rolled over, mouths together, both of them struggling with the barrier of his jeans, their breathing heavy, their movements clumsy. An elbow here, a knee there, the wayward scrape of a fingernail—no graceful choreography. Bodies slick with paint and sweat.

He turned her. Under him. Over him. The slip-slide of pigment between their bodies. On her knees. Cupping her from behind, smearing what was left of the patterns he’d made.

Turning her again.

The paint pots tipped, and pigment spilled onto the floor. They rolled in it. The two of them, out of control, out of their minds.

And then he was inside her. Part of her. This lush, giving body. This woman with glazed, violet-blue eyes and midnight hair wreathed in a chaotic corona around her head.

The sweat poured from his body as he held himself back. Waited for the arch. The cry. Her arch. Never—never so much restraint.

He drove deeper. Holding her. Riding her through her torrent. Through his own. Into an explosion of the spectrum.

When he came back to himself, he saw they’d turned his careful work