Ruth’s POV
Sleep never came, not even after the weight of Emmett’s body beside mine, not after his release pulsed deep inside me. The silence that followed wasn’t peace, it was rupture.
I lay there with my eyes wide open, skin still marked, muscles still trembling, but my mind refused to still. It raced through the violence we’d created together, the guilt that shouldn’t have turned me on, and the way his voice had sounded when he said I was his.
I didn’t wash him off, I didn’t even take off my clothes. I walked through the front door like something possessed, kicked off my shoes without breaking stride, and headed straight to the studio. The sky outside was still dark, bleeding into that gray hour before dawn. I flipped on the light, pulled the largest canvas I owned from the corner, and set it up. I didn’t sketch, plan, or think. I picked up the brush, dipped it in deep gray, and started to drag lines across the surface.
My hand moved before I understood what I was creating. I painted the curve of his hands, veins and knuckles taut, fingers spread wide, gripping my wrists. I painted the way his mouth had hovered over my skin, the raw tension in his body as he pinned me down on the cold table in the basement. I painted the way my legs had wrapped around his hips, the bruise-darkened place where his mouth had sucked too hard on my breast. I painted the sharp arch of my back, the tangle of limbs, and my own face, not imagined, but remembered. Lips parted. Eyes half-lidded, expression caught between need and shame.
I hated it. Hated how right it felt to watch it come to life. But I didn’t stop, I moved to red next, deep, bruised crimson, and dragged it across the image like a wound. The strokes grew heavier, messier, turning the painting from memory into something darker. The distinction between what had happened and what I now craved started to blur. My thighs clenched involuntarily, heat spreading low in my stomach, but I didn’t stop, I couldn’t.
The sun was up by the time I sensed the change in the room, not from sound but from pressure. It was the feeling of being watched, not in fear, but in a way that made the back of my neck tingle and my breath catch. I didn’t have to turn to know. He was there, behind me. Quiet and close, watching not just me, but what I’d done.
“You painted me,” he said, his voice low, almost reverent.
I didn’t respond. My hand still clutched the brush like a weapon or a confession, but I didn’t lower it. I stood there, letting him look, letting the moment stretch long enough to hurt. He stepped closer. I felt him at my back before I heard him breathe. The heat of his body rolled against me like a tide, and then his hand, warm and deliberate, settled between my shoulder blades. My body stiffened, but not from fear. It was anticipation, familiar and sickeningly welcome. He didn’t speak again. His fingers moved beneath the fabric of my shirt, dragging up the hem, exposing skin one inch at a time until my breath hitched.
I kept my eyes on the painting, even as his palm slid flat against my spine, pressing me gently forward until my hips met the edge of the table. My breath shook with each second. The brush trembled in my grip before finally falling, smearing across the wet canvas as it hit. I didn’t bend to pick it up. His hand wrapped around my waist and pulled my body flush against his. I felt him, hard, ready, and dangerous. My pulse stuttered as his mouth found the curve of my neck, breath hot and teeth scraping just enough to make me arch back into him. My legs moved of their own accord, parting, inviting, remembering.
He pushed my shirt up farther, exposing my breasts, cupping one with a roughness that made me gasp. His thumb circled my nipple, slow and firm, until it peaked under his touch. His other hand slid down the front of my leggings and into the wet heat between my thighs. I wasn’t just ready, I was soaked, throbbing, desperate in a way I hadn’t admitted even to myself. He didn’t need to say a word, he knew. His fingers worked me open, rubbing slow circles around my clit before plunging two fingers inside me. I bit down on a moan, but it escaped anyway.
My hands braced against the table, my body rocked in time with his touch. I felt the shame and heat build until it blurred into one unbearable ache.
I couldn’t stop my hips from grinding against his hand. When he pulled back and yanked down my pants, I whimpered at the loss before I even realized I had.