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Chapter Twenty-Three

Calum-past

The salt wind catches Annabel’s dark hair, curling itself around her neck like a noose.

Morning light drips over her skin like warm honey.

Annabel lays across the grass, barely clothed in that sheer featherweight slip, its hem tangled high on her thigh.

She stretches one arm over her head and squints against the sun, her lips parted, indolent and indifferent.

There’s a softness to her—bare legs, bare feet, dark hair spilling like seaweed in every direction.

And then there’s the sharpness beneath it. Like something waiting to cut.

My easel’s angled in front of her. I’ve already blocked in her curves with charcoal, but the oils—those I take my time with. Cobalt blue for the shadows beneath her breasts. A kiss of Naples yellow along her ribs. I chase every hollow and slope with my brush, silently worshipping the shape of her.

“You’re staring again,” she says, eyes still closed.

I dip my brush into the mixture of ochre and cream. “That’s the point.”

“You stare too hard.” Her tone is light, teasing, but I catch the tightness behind it. “Like you’re trying to memorize me before I disappear.”

I glance at her over the edge of the canvas. “Aren’t I?”

She huffs softly, then shifts. The slip pulls across her breasts and the silk clings to her nipples—taut, dark, obvious. She knows it. She does nothing about it.

“I’m bored,” she sings. “How much longer must I lay here like a corpse while you play God with your little brushes?”

I set my palette down. The brush sticks between my fingers.

“You’re not a corpse,” I murmur, stepping around the easel. “You’re a temptation.”

Her lids lift, those ocean-gray eyes glittering as they meet mine. “Then stop painting and do something about it.”

I crouch beside her, brush still in hand. My voice drops low, dark with want. “You always do this. Get restless right when I’ve captured something perfect. You ruin it.”

Her smile is lazy. “Maybe I like the ruining part.”

I slide the strap of her slip off her shoulder and push it down her body, discarding it in the grass at her side.

Her skin is cream, blushed faintly from the sun, and hot under my touch.

She doesn’t stop me. Her breath stutters only slightly when I lower my mouth to her breast and take her nipple between my lips, sucking slowly, tongue circling the stiff peak.

She moans—soft, broken, immediate. Her hips shift against the grass. I bite down, gently, then release her with a wet sound.

“You’re not bored anymore,” I say.

“No.” Her eyes are glassy now. “Not even a little.”

I dip the tip of my brush into sky blue. The color is thick and luminous. She watches, fascinated, as I lower it to her chest and stroke it gently over the nipple I just left wet and aching.

She shivers .

“You’re mad,” she whispers.

“No,” I murmur, painting a soft swirl around the other nipple, watching her chest rise and fall with shallow breaths, the golden locket she never takes off glimmering at her throat. “I’m inspired.”

I paint a line down the center of her sternum. It trembles. Her thighs press together. My brush keeps going—circling her navel, dipping into it like a secret, then down farther still. I pause just above the juncture of her thighs.

She holds her breath.

“I should finish the painting,” I say.

“You won’t,” she whispers.

“No,” I admit. “I won’t.”

I drop the brush to the grass and lower my mouth between her legs, relishing the bare pink softness of her. She gasps when I lick into her, when I suck her into my mouth, when I flick and curl my tongue until she cries out my name, feral and breathless and utterly undone.

She comes fast. Then again. Her fingers knot in my hair, and she arches into me like she’ll die if I stop. The wind tangles around us, lifting her moans to the sea.

When I rise, her body is slack and trembling. Her eyes are wide and wild and reverent.

“Calum—” she breathes.

“Shhh.” I kiss her, tasting her on her lips, and then I slide my pants down my thighs and push inside her in one hard stroke. She gasps. I groan. She’s tight, wet, already ruined and still ready for more.

“Mine,” I hiss against her throat as I thrust, slow at first, then faster, deeper, until our bodies slap together and the garden is nothing but heat and sweat and her whispered pleas.

My lips attach at her neck, sucking hard, hard enough to leave a mark.

I bite and nip, causing her to cry out and beg for more .

“Yes—Calum, yes?—”

I hold her down, her wrists pinned above her head, her legs wrapped around my waist. She’s everything I can’t paint. Everything I can’t control.

And yet she’s always slipping through my fingers.

When I come, I bury my face in her neck, biting down to mark her.

She strokes my hair, chest still heaving.

I lift my head and stare down at her, lips parted, skin streaked with blue. “Promise me,” I whisper. “You’ll always be mine. My muse. My everything.”

She swallows. Her fingers tighten in my hair.

“I promise,” she husks, but somewhere underneath her submission I sense the lie.