The Blank Canvas (Apartment #2) (23 page)

“I need you so badly,” she whimpered, unable to pull her eyes away from his arousal. She could swear that she saw it twitch when she spoke.

“Like what you see?” He reached down and grabbed himself, pumping once, twice. She watched as the swollen tip turned a beautiful shade of violet with each movement of his hand.

“God… that’s so damn hot,” she gasped. “Please come here. Please?”

“Scoot back,” he commanded, his voice rough and gravelly.

Lily did as she was told, inching herself farther up the mattress to make room for him. When she lifted her feet to the bed for more leverage, she realized that she still had her high heels on. “Oh, I guess I should take these off, huh?”

“
No
!” he barked sharply. “You’re not removing one fucking thing until I say so, got it?” She only nodded, unable to speak, too turned on to form any words.

Ethan crawled onto the bed, sitting up on his knees between her legs. He grabbed her by the hips again and pulled her towards him, sliding her up over his bent knees until she was resting on his thighs. He looked down and saw that his erection was resting right above her glistening sex.

“I was wrong,” he whispered. “
That
is the sexiest fucking thing I’ve ever seen in my life.” He grabbed his painfully hard shaft and rubbed the tip against her slick flesh, watching as her fluids coated him. He swirled it around her clit a few times, loving the sounds it elicited from her, before lining himself up with her entrance. “Lily?” The tone of his voice made her open her eyes and look up at him.

“Yes?”

“I want you to know that I love you.”

She smiled brightly, reaching up quickly to squeeze his free hand. “I love you, too.”

“But I’m going to fuck you now… and it’s not going to be gentle.”

“Thank God! Don’t worry, we can do gentle another time.”

“My thoughts exactly.” With that, he shifted his hips and pushed inside her, slowly at first, savoring the feel of her tight walls stretching to accommodate him. “Oh… God!” he cried out, clenching his eyes shut and throwing his head back. When he looked back down at her, he had such a pained expression on his face that she worried something was wrong. “I thought I remembered how good you felt… I was so fucking wrong.”

He began thrusting harder then, grabbing onto her hips as he pounded himself inside her. Lily wanted to talk to him, to tell him that it felt better than any of her memories, too, but the angle at which he was grinding into her made words impossible. So she moaned. And she grunted. And it felt so fucking good that she would have sold her soul to Satan himself if he had offered to never let it end.

Ethan was hypnotized, watching their bodies join, watching his now glistening shaft sliding in and out of her as her inner muscles gripped him tightly. He moved one hand over until he was touching where they were connected, circling his thumb over her clit to add to the friction.

“Oh God!” she screamed loudly. That got the response he wanted. He felt her clamp down on him tightly, a warm rush of wetness coating him.

“That’s it,” he snarled through clenched teeth. “Come on me.” He began pounding even harder, thrusting through her moans and cries. “Come all over my cock. It’s been so fucking long since I’ve felt you.”

When her shaking subsided he grabbed her by the arms and pulled her up, dragging her like a limp ragdoll until she was sitting up on his thighs. Once she felt her strength return she wrapped her arms around his shoulders for balance, looking into his glowing eyes. He looked feral, and frantic, and sexy as hell.

Sliding one hand between their bodies, Ethan pulled at her corset until her left breast was exposed, the tight pink nipple inviting him to feast. Growling low in his throat, he bent forward and captured it between his lips, sucking and biting as he continued to thrust so deep inside her that he wondered if he’d ever be free of her body, knowing deep in his soul that he never wanted to be.

After a few more violent thrusts, he knew that he wasn’t going to make it any longer. It was all too much; the way she looked, the way she felt—even the scent of her sweet pussy and the sweat on their bodies was driving him insane.

“Oh God,” he moaned against her skin. “Do you think you can go again? I can’t hold it any longer.”

She nodded quickly, answering him through broken pants and sobs. “I’m so close… you feel so good!”

He shifted his hips, grinding his pelvic bone into her more roughly, hoping it would provide the friction she needed but unable to focus any more than that with his own impending release.

“Oh God… that’s it!” she screamed, her body clamping down on him tightly. “Oh! Ethan… God I love you!”

And he was gone. His orgasm shot through him like a rocket, sending his body up in flames in its wake.

“I love you!” he cried out, thrusting his hips frantically as he pumped his seed deep inside her. “
Mine
!” he growled possessively, one final thrust before he collapsed on his side, taking her with him.

They lay there together gasping for air, a tangled heap of sweaty limbs.

“That was… God, Ethan, that was so…”

“Perfect.”

“Perfect,” she sighed, kissing him gently on the lips.

Their breathing began to even out as they rested, and right as Ethan was about to drift off to a light sleep, Lily’s hushed voice broke through the silence.

“You know, I
am
yours. And you’re mine. For as long as you’ll have me.”

He reached out for her without opening his eyes, pulling her tighter into his side. When he felt her there he kissed her forehead reassuringly and began to fall back asleep.

“Forever,” he whispered.

When Lily began to stir over an hour later, it was to the faint sound of scratching in the distance. It had a rhythmic quality to it, the repetitive scrape, scrape, shuffle, shuffle almost lulling her back to sleep. Once she finally committed to searching out the source of the noise, she opened her eyes slowly, allowing them to adjust to the bright glow of the still-burning candles.

“Don’t move,” a rough whisper called out. “I’m almost done.”

Slowly turning her eyes toward the sexy voice that had haunted her for months, Lily could just make out the shape of Ethan in her peripheral vision. The scratching noise continued, and she could see his arm moving over something he held in his lap. “What are you doing?”

“I’m sketching you.”

“Oh,” she replied awkwardly, not sure what else to say. “Can I turn my head? I can’t see you.” She didn’t mind that he was sketching her, but she had never posed for anything in her life and she had no idea how still he needed her to be.

“Yes, I’m done with that part. Just don’t move your legs.”

When she turned her head more fully, she found him sitting in a chair to the side of the bed, his boxer briefs back in place and one long leg tucked underneath him. A sketchbook sat in his lap, and he kept looking back and forth between her and the opened page as his hand flew across the surface, applying the charcoal with measured strokes. Upon closer inspection she could see that his fingertips were covered in black powder, and that he must have absently wiped his face a few times because there were random smudges on his cheek and brow. Also, the more he concentrated, the more the tip of his tongue would poke out of the corner of his mouth and flick at his lip.

He was adorable.

As much as Lily would have loved to lay there for hours and watch him work without moving a muscle, she began to feel a familiar pressure building in her bladder. “Um… baby? Are you close to finishing?”

“Yeah, why?” he asked without looking up from the page as he shaded another area.

“I’m sorry, but I really have to pee.” She could feel her face heat with embarrassment, but any longer and she was about to start squirming.

“Oh! Of course, I’m sorry,” he apologized, looking up at her sheepishly. “I wasn’t even thinking. I tend to lose track of things when I’m working. Yes, I have enough of what I need to finish here, go ahead.”

Lily scurried into the large bathroom that was attached to the bedroom. After she had finished and tidied herself up a bit, she returned to find him still hunched over the sketchbook.

“So, is this something I’m going to have to get used to?” she smiled, draping herself across the bed sideways on her stomach so that she could watch him.

“What’s that?” He didn’t look up again, lost in his art.

“You know, waking up to find you sketching or painting at all hours of the night.”

“Sadly, yes. I really do lose track of time when I’m at it, but it’s not so bad when I don’t start this late. I couldn’t resist… you looked so deliciously wild and rumpled. I just had to get it down.”

“Can I see?”

“Actually… yes,” he said with a final flourish of his hand as he signed the sketch. “All done.” He turned the book around and laid it down in front of her on the bed. “What do you think?”

“Oh wow!” she gasped. “Ethan… it’s beautiful! I can’t believe you did all of this just now.”

“Well, I didn’t put a ton of detail in it. I just wanted to capture the moment. I could’ve spent hours on it, making every little thing perfect, but this feels more…”

“Intimate?”

“Exactly,” he smiled. “So you like it?”

“I love it! It’s very sensual,” she blushed, looking at the sketch of a disheveled woman who had clearly just been ravished beyond comprehension. Her stockings were twisted and her corset was askew, leaving one perky breast exposed to the world. Her legs were bent so that nothing truly indecent was showing, and the messy pile of sheets around her helped to hide everything else. Because it had been drawn from the side and she had been turned away, her face wasn’t totally visible, but Lily could make out just enough of her profile to know it was her. “I can’t believe that’s me. I don’t think I’ve ever looked so sexy.”

Ethan grabbed the sketchbook and placed it on the table behind him before kneeling down in front of her to look her in the eye. “Believe me, this pales in comparison to the real thing.”

“So, is this the artist’s equivalent of taking dirty pictures of his girlfriend?” Lily teased.

Now it was his turn to blush. “Kind of,” he replied with a low chuckle. “I try to capture the beauty in anything I see… but with you, the beautiful and the erotic go hand in hand. Don’t worry; this one is going in my private collection.”

“You have a private collection?”

“Of course. I have a number of pieces I’ve done through the years that I just couldn’t bear to part with. They are all in storage right now, waiting for the day I finally settle down in one place and can put them up in my studio or something.”

“Are there any of me in there?”

Ethan’s blush deepened. “There are two.”

“Really?” she smiled. “So what made those two different from the walls of paintings you showed me tonight? Those all seemed fairly personal to me.”

“Every painting is personal to an artist; each one is like a child you have nurtured and watched grow before your eyes. But if you want to actually make any money doing what you love, you have to learn to detach yourself as soon as possible so you can sell them. I have everything photographed and cataloged so that I can look at them whenever I want, but every once in a while one of them is just too hard to let go—or it was never intended for anyone else’s eyes but mine.”

Lily nodded with understanding. “And the two of me fall into the latter category.”

“Yes. When I did all of those paintings, it was like I couldn’t stop until every memory I had of you was documented in some way. And as many of the paintings in the gallery showed you, a lot of my memories were sexual. I tried to keep them tasteful, but there were two of them that I couldn’t handle showing anyone… and I didn’t think you would be comfortable having anyone else see them, either.”

“I appreciate that,” she sighed in relief. “What were they of?”

“They involved a bit more nudity. Nothing shocking for the art world of course, but more than I thought was appropriate without your permission. I tried to record the perfection of your breasts in one of them, but I can see now that I didn’t do them justice.” He leered at her cleavage, reaching out a long, slender finger to trace the edge of one brownish-pink areola that had begun to sneak out above the top of her corset.

“And the other one?”

“Hm?” He looked up at her as if breaking out of a trance. “The other one? Ah yes… well, let’s just say that the other involved… lube.”

“No! Please tell me you didn’t show that!”

“No, Lily, nothing so graphic. But the symbolism was there, and I knew what it meant. I couldn’t stand for someone else to buy that memory… and I wasn’t about to explain anything about it to people viewing it.”

“Thank goodness for that!” she laughed. “So… will I ever get to see these paintings?”

“Perhaps… one day,” he said absently, already lost in the valley between her breasts again. He continued stroking lazy patterns across her skin with his finger, watching as her flesh dipped and changed color under the pressure. When he finally dragged his gaze up to meet hers it was with great difficulty, and his eyes were dilated with lust. “It all depends.”

It was hard to concentrate on everything he was saying between the touch of his fingers and the heat in his eyes, but she could tell from his tone that he was being playful. “On what?” she smirked.

He did nothing but look at her for a moment, allowing the tension to build between them. When he finally spoke again it was with a gruff voice. “On how fast you can get up on all fours and show me that delectable ass.”

Without another word, Lily scrambled to her knees. Turning around abruptly and bending over to brace herself with her palms, she arched her back dramatically and flipped her hair back to look at him over her shoulder. “Fast enough for you?”

“Fuck,” he growled, standing up quickly behind her. “Spread your knees,” he commanded. Looking down at the sinful display in front of him, he had to swallow down the saliva that flooded his mouth. “I swear to Christ, Lily… I know I keep saying it, but you are the sexiest thing I’ve ever fucking seen.”