these colours, cover the walls, feed them to Matthew, along with jasmine rice and Leonidas chocolate and Kilimanjaro Peaberry coffee…
I was making a mess; there were pastel smudges on my jeans, up my arms, and on the rumpled sheets, but I’d planned on changing the sheets anyway before Matthew came over, and the rest didn’t matter. When the first sheet of paper was covered in colour, I put it aside and looked up at the painting that was hanging in my bedroom.
When I’d come here, it had seemed important to bring the paintings over. There was a lesson learnt in each and every one. I’d painted this one while Kendra and I had been muddling through separating. She’d been composing music, spending endless days scribbling pages and pages of notes, playing fragments of sounds over and over, while Henry and I watched from a shared bemused exclusion.
It had passed, and she’d come back to our domestic world, tired and grouchy. I’d collected her pages and pages of drafts from the recycling bin, when she wasn’t watching, and painted over them.
I wasn’t sure any more why I’d clung to the painting so tightly, why I needed to be reminded that obsessions were bad for relationships. Perhaps it was to remind myself why the marriage had ended.
The new piece, with its riot of colours, made me smile. I took it out into the tiny courtyard, lit by the light streaming through my kitchen window, and sprayed it with fixative, then sat on the damp paving and waited for it to dry, guarding it from the sustained interest of the snails who obviously thought that Northumbrian chalk would taste good, never mind the lacquer.
It wasn’t subtle, not in terms of messages from my subconscious, but I moved the green and yellow painting from my bedroom to the closet in the study and tacked the pastel sketch I’d just done in its place. I was too happy to want to think about Kendra any longer.
The washing machine was chugging away, washing the sheets that Matthew and I had trashed on Sunday night, when Matthew rang.
He was sitting on his front step when I pulled up outside his house, and he tossed his pack, laptop and a shirt on a coat hanger into the back of the car, then clambered into the front.
Neither of us said anything, there really didn’t seem to be a need, then he leaned across the car and kissed me briefly. I touched his face, found his lips for another kiss, then he pulled back.
“Take me to your place, now,” he said, and he did his seat belt up.
In the shower, he turned me around and I spread my hands against the tiles, pressed my face against the hard wet ceramic, my breath coming out as a moan.
Matthew’s hands were on my back; touching, sliding across soapy skin, leaving trails of desire behind them. Then his arms were around my waist and his body was pressed up against mine from behind. I didn’t dare speak, because if I opened my mouth, all that would come out would be pleas for him to fuck me, right there and then.
He was breathing hard, too, and we were suspended in time. I closed my eyes and held myself still. I wasn’t prepared to make that sort of decision for him, or for myself, but I had no hope of making myself stop him if he slid into me.
I could feel the bead clearly as the underside of his cock pressed against the cleft of my ass and he said, “Andrew?” in a strained voice.
“Mm?” I managed to get out through clenched teeth.
“I think we need to go to bed now.” Then he stepped back from me and said, “Make sure you’re clean,” and he was gone.
My knees almost gave way completely, leaving me clutching at the grab rail and hoping like crazy it was actually securely anchored.
Chapter Forty
The bedroom was in darkness when I walked in, towel wrapped around my hips. I skirted the end of the bed, and turned on the bedside light, took lube, gloves, and condoms out of the drawer and dropped them on the bed, then looked up.
The musical note painting was gone, and in its place, Andrew had tacked up an abstract piece, a swirl of purples and blues. Only the painting had escaped from the paper and exploded across the cream paint of the wall, leaving trails of midnight blue up to the cornice, and iris purple tracking down to floor level. There were deep greens in it, too, and splashes of red, colours so intense I could taste them.
It was wild and intoxicating, and I sat on the end of the bed and stared at it. I didn’t need anyone to interpret this one for me; this was the exultation that had been on Andrew’s face that morning when he’d fucked me. This was the most intense visual description of pleasure I’d ever seen, and it left me breathless.
That it was on the wall, not on some giant canvas, amplified the impact. This was not going to be hung in someone’s lounge room or exhibited in a gallery. This was art that belonged to this bedroom, and to whomever Andrew trusted enough to bring in here. It belonged to us.
I was still sitting on the bed, staring at the wall, when Andrew came in, towel around his waist, impressive erection straining at the thick fabric. To his credit, he didn’t ask if I liked the art, just sat beside me and stared at it, too.
“Is it permanent?” I finally asked.
“Kind of,” Andrew said. “I’ve put a coat of sealant over it, but it’s a workable lacquer. I think stable, rather than permanent, is a good description. Why?”
“Because I want to fuck you up against it,” I said. “And if the paint’s wet or whatever, I can’t do that.”
“It’s pastel, not paint,” Andrew said, taking my hand. “And I’d love you to fuck me up against it.”
I lifted his hand to my mouth and kissed his knuckles.
There was pigment ingrained in the creases. Seconds later, we were on the floor, kissing so hard that our teeth clicked, grinding against each other, and rolling over until one of my knees got wedged under the edge of the bed.
Up until we got into the shower, I’d thought I wasn’t particularly horny, after the amazing sex of the past twenty-four hours, but it hadn’t taken much to persuade me otherwise. Now, it felt like I hadn’t come for a fortnight, and that I’d go crazy if I didn’t get some release soon.
There wasn’t any doubt that Andrew felt the same way, not with the way he was writhing around on top of me. I looked hopefully under the side of the bed, just in case lube and gloves had magically appeared amongst the dust sheep, but there wasn’t any, so when Andrew lifted his mouth off mine, breathing hard, I said, “On the bed, facedown on a towel.”
Andrew was so gorgeous like that, on his stomach, his hands kneading at the thick quilt underneath him. His eyes were closed, and there was such a look of peace on his face, where it was turned sideways against the bedding, that I didn’t want to disturb him.
Then my eyes tracked down his back to his arse, so tempting with one leg hitched up on the bed, ready for me, that the feeling passed, and I settled beside him, stroking his back gently.
There was fine hair on his lower back and across his buttocks, and I ran my hand across the skin, smoothing the hair, and relishing the feel of the beads of sweat that sprang up as I touched him. One day, I’d wax him, just for the feel of the skin afterwards.
I was getting used to the way he let go as soon as I touched him, just like he did this time. Tension I hadn’t noticed was there ebbed away, and he let out a long sigh. I kissed his shoulder and caressed his buttock, then knelt up beside him. “Wait for me,” I said.
I’d never rimmed without latex, either a dam or a slit-open condom, before, and I carefully switched off the part of my mind that had done micro. If Andrew could let go of conscious thought that completely, so could I.
He tasted clean, of soap and skin, when I leaned forward and licked my tongue down the crack of his arse. He shivered, I felt it clearly, and said, “Oh, fuck…” as I rimmed my tongue across his skin.
This was different without latex; I could press my tongue in, which made Andrew flail around briefly, and suck effectively, which obviously felt good, too, if the yelling was any indication. There was nothing like an
