“Wow. Flattering ourselves, much?”
He shoots me a cocky grin. “Just stating facts, babe.”
My tension breaks, giggles raking my body as I try desperately to suppress them.
“If I may interject,” he goes on, “I’d, ah, like to say that I’m in a very similar situation with my feelings. Every girl I meet sorta just … passes through my life. No one stays, not even my exes. It’s become such a way of existence over the years that, like … I don’t even know what it feels like to have someone there at my side. Someone who will be there. Someone who doesn’t leave my bed in the morning. I … I really want someone there to wake up to. I want someone to share my shit with. I want someone to share my spicy egg scramble with every morning, to share my latest set of photos with, to take care of my spontaneous boners throughout the day …”
“And there it is,” I say with a mocking smirk.
He nudges me teasingly. “I want you, Nell. And I want you badly. I want you so much that I feel fucking … empty without you. I know we didn’t quite break up or whatever, but it feels like we did, and … and damn it, I don’t feel like I’m a better artist without you. I’m a crap one. You inspire me, Nell. Don’t I inspire you? Like, even a teensy bit?”
I shrug, considering his question. “Maybe a little.”
“So how can you make art without your muse?”
“Good question. And this is all about you, after all,” I tease.
“It’s about you, too. I’m a mess without my mistress of darkness at my side.”
“Mistress of darkness? Really?”
“It’s a catchy name,” he insists cockily. “You should totally steal it. Run away with it. Or with me.”
“With you,” I echo.
“I’m in the dark without you,” he says, his face suddenly serious, his eyes burning blue. “Be with me. Because the truth is, I’m afraid of the dark. The truth is, I’m still that fuckin’ awkward kid at the party who doesn’t really know what he’s doing and who … desperately wants that perfect girl at the other end of the room. He doesn’t want anyone else. He doesn’t want the easy catch. He doesn’t want to just get off and go. He only wants her. That girl is you. It’s always been you, Nell. I’ve been chasing you my whole life and didn’t know it.”
He shifts his weight to one elbow, then brings a finger to my shoulder, letting it trace down my body. The touch sends a party of goose bumps and delight throughout me. I have to close my eyes now, consumed with the way he’s making me feel.
Then he asks: “Do you want me?”
I shiver pleasurably under his touch.
“Nell?” I hear his voice draw closer to my face, bringing his lips with it. “Do you …” His lips press lightly to my ear, then to my cheek, then to my jaw near my mouth where it’s most sensitive. “… want me?”
I turn toward his lips, catching them, and the kiss that ensues casts an earthquake that rockets down to my core, shaking away all the pain and the doubts that have so plagued me. It leaves but one thing in its wake: a ringing assurance that this is precisely what I need, both as an artist, and as a human being.
“Yes,” I answer. “And now.”
BRANT
That thing I was missing …
That one, elusive thing I was missing that I couldn’t figure out before the showcase …
This is it.
I bring her tightly into my arms as my lips warm against hers. I taste her and feel a flood of comfort and excitement and heat that fills me completely. “I want you,” she whispers between our kisses.
The gravel of a rooftop is not the most comfortable choice to do the sexy-sexy, but neither of us seem to care. I roll onto my back anyway, pulling her over me so as to spare her the discomfort. She straddles my body as we kiss, and I feel the warmth between her legs as she rubs and humps my fast-growing stiffness.
Yeah, this isn’t going to take long.
“HEY!”
Startled, the pair of us crane our necks to peer over the ledge where the voice came from. One of the security officers down below seems to have spotted us.
“Oh, fuck,” Nell blurts.
We’re on our feet. Despite the agonizingly hard situation in my pants, we tumble for the door and race down the stairs. I catch the side of her face, and when our eyes meet, we find ourselves laughing. I take her hand and she grips mine tightly as we push through the door to some random floor of the building. The hallway is dim and no one’s in sight, but still we run, chased by a security guard who might not even be pursuing us.