When I'm With You: The Complete Novel (43 page)

She lifted the brush to his skin and began to paint. It was a little like working while a ravenous lion raced toward you in the periphery of your vision. She was acutely aware of the power in him, the incipient energy, like a giant spring that was being held down tight with effort. She worked steadily for the next half hour or so in the area of his lower abdomen, creating the impossible—a flare of fire in water.

The realization hit her as she moved to the lower left quadrant of her design that she should have told him he could release the garment until she began to work in that area again. He’d kept his hands on the sides of the brief the whole time, however, exposing that strip of sensitive skin. Something about his pose excited her for some reason. It was as if he were frozen in the moment of offering himself to her . . .

Giving her a taste.

Her cheeks burned at the uncontrollable thought. She leaned away from him, feeling the loss of his subtle, radiant body heat on her cheeks and lips. She exchanged her paints and went back to work.

What was wrong with her? She’d never had this reaction before while she’d been working. Her skin felt flushed and prickly with awareness. There seemed to be some strange, inexplicable connection between where her paintbrush stroked his taut skin and her clit.

Why did she want to hold on to that brilliant flare of lust that the stranger’s fierce eyes and hard cock promised?
Maybe because you were told today that life and a future aren’t a certainty, that both of those things were as ephemeral, as difficult to hold on to as an unexpected lightning strike of desire?

Joy didn’t want to let go. She wanted . . . no, she
needed
to hang on.

The air around them seemed to have taken on a weight. She forced her lungs to move as she exchanged brushes and reached for a paint she’d deposited at the far end of the table. When she touched him with the wet tip just below his hip bone, his taut abdomen muscle twitched. She glanced up and saw a small smile on his mouth.

“It’s colder than the other ones,” he said.

“I’m sorry. The paint was sitting right in front of the air conditioner.”

“It’s okay.”

His mouth moved again, but no sound came from his throat. Some instinct inside her told her this man didn’t typically become speechless.

She felt a surge of liquid heat at her sex.

She swallowed with difficulty and resumed painting, the feeling of moving in a dream only amplifying. How long would this surreal sensation last? When would the reality of her diagnosis of cancer really set in? Her grim future seemed impossible to grasp as she sat there, flushed with arousal, painting a brilliant tattoo on a beautiful, virile male she’d never seen before that moment, and would probably never see again.

“It’s finished,” she murmured minutes later as she placed the solvent that set the paint on the table. From the corner of her vision, she saw that he didn’t move his hands, keeping his briefs lowered. The fullness behind the seaweed design hadn’t dissipated during the past forty-five minutes.

“Joy.”

She glanced up slowly, both hesitant and anticipatory at once at the sound of his hoarse voice.

“I hope you don’t think I’m a complete jackass for saying this, but that had to be the most erotic thing I’ve experienced since Peggy Barton let me touch her breasts when I was fourteen years old.”

She just stared at him in amazement for a second before she laughed. The strangling sexual tension fractured slightly, letting her breathe. He smiled, full-out and brilliant.

Her laughter ceased.

Oh my God,
she thought, stunned. Her sunburst tattoo would be considered dim next to that smile.

Suddenly, unaccountably, fear broke over her. She stared at the very image of vibrant life. What would it
be
like to be snuffed out of existence, no longer able to see, to hear . . . to feel?

Her gaze sunk over him. She absorbed his image hungrily, drinking it like an elixir that vanquished terror. His cock jerked in the briefs when her glance landed on it.

The realization struck her that if she wanted to touch him, if she wanted to stretch this strange, powerful moment, she was going to have to make the move. Who knew? Maybe she wouldn’t even be here this time next year.

It felt nowhere near as anxiety-provoking as she would have thought it would to touch him. In fact, it seemed like the most natural thing in the world to do.

She thrilled to the heaviness of his cock beneath the cloth. Arousal spiked through her, and those life-altering words—
primary mediastinal B-cell lymphoma
—scattered to the periphery of her consciousness like frightened moths.

“Do you mind?” she asked, looking up at him, her voice vibrating with barely restrained emotion.

His nostrils flared slightly. “Are you kidding?” He sounded downright incredulous at her question. Their gazes held as she felt his heartbeat thrum against her palm. He reached up and ever so gently, careful of his paint-covered skin, touched her jaw. A strange, strangled sound escaped her throat at his caress.

She carefully, deliberately reached inside the pocket of the costume boxer-brief, intent on not ruining the makeup application on his thighs. She bit her lower lip when her hand closed around the circumference of his cock. She drew out his length.

For a moment, she just stared.

It was like holding life in her hand.

His naked penis stood in stark contrast to the elaborate makeup applied to his body. The long, straight length of it running from root to fleshy cap struck her as sublime. She held him up before her face, the tip slanting toward the ceiling. She ran the tip of her tongue from the ridge beneath the head all the way to the base, flicking a firm testicle experimentally.

He made a muffled gasping noise like his lungs had deflated in an instant. His male scent filled her nose. She twitched her fingers on the shaft, relishing his sheer virility, his weight and firmness.

Yes.
This is what she needed.

She tightened her grip, closed her eyes and arrowed his cock between her lips. She abandoned herself to the voluptuous, eternal moment, escaping into it like a fugitive from a harsh, meaningless world.

* * *

Everett Hughes became distantly aware that his muscles were so tense, they felt like they’d break given one more ounce of pressure. He ached.

Everywhere.

He studied the crown of her head like he thought his stare could bore down into her brain and read her thoughts. It would probably do him good to read her mind, he thought with grim amusement. Her thoughts were undoubtedly mundane and matter-of-fact. Nowhere near as X-rated as his had become ever since he’d walked into the room and seen Seth Hightower’s niece standing there, looking like a fresh wild flower amidst a field of artificial and hothouse blooms.

She’d been about as aware of him as she was the paint on the wall as she prepared to work. It was an unusual feeling for Everett, to be overlooked. He relished the opportunity to study her openly.

If he’d gone by her face alone, he might have guessed her age in her midtwenties. Only her swift, sure movements as she prepared her paints and the feminine curves accenting a slender, toned body hinted to him that she was likely nearer to thirty than twenty. He knew that Seth was part Pueblo Indian. He saw some evidence of Native American heritage in Joy, but to a lesser extent than in her uncle. Mostly her still, calm expression and smooth, apricot and copper-hued skin called that strain of her heritage to mind.

Everett had become disenchanted with the term
beautiful
long ago, feeling the hollowness of the term as it was applied to every second woman he met. But this woman—Seth Hightower’s niece—she didn’t just deserve the descriptor. She epitomized it without trying.

He found himself staring at the top of her long mane of chestnut brown hair as he endured the erotic sensation of her felt-tip marker sliding across his skin. His cock was thickening. He couldn’t seem to help it. He closed his eyes and breathed through his nose, trying to envision the mechanics of a particularly challenging scene with Ellie Granolith, the leading lady in
Maritime
. Every scene with Ellie was a trial to get through, but this one was particularly difficult.

His half-assed attempts to distract himself fractured when Joy’s marker stimulated a patch of sensitive skin just below his hip bone.

He looked down into a pair of large hazel eyes.

You’ll have to lower your briefs enough for me to make the transition look natural.

His heart had lurched next to his breastbone when she’d said that. Everett was not unfamiliar with recognizing a spark of desire in a woman’s eyes. If he was seeing it in Joy Hightower’s solemn gaze, it
had
to be the result of wishful thinking, though.

His throat felt tight when he swallowed. He reached for the side of his briefs and lowered them. It felt very vulnerable for him, to expose himself in this way. He typically preferred being the dominant during sex, and something about this situation seemed to speak of the opposite of control. First off, this wasn’t a sexual situation. It was inappropriate for him to be aroused. He couldn’t control his sexual response, however, and that made him both uncomfortable and, paradoxically, more aroused. When she paused for a moment, staring at him while she clutched her marker, he felt sweat bead on his upper lip.

Seth was going to slug him if he ruined his makeup. The makeup department head was formidable, not the sort of man Everett would choose to piss off.

Seth would likely skip punching and go straight to killing him if he knew what Everett was thinking about doing with his gorgeous, wholesome niece at that moment.

Seeing her lovely face so close to the midportion of his body, studying the outlines of her full, thrusting breasts from above, feeling the whisper of her breath on his skin while the tattoo pen rolled over supersensitive nerves; all of it had been titillating. But when Joy transferred to using her paints, Everett entered the realms of torture. His cock swelled so large, he didn’t think there was room in his skin anymore. His jaw hurt from clamping it shut. He was going to explode, and all he could do was tell himself to stand still. It was like telling a lit fuse to be calm.

He couldn’t hide his arousal. How could he? Regret sliced through him when she glanced up, and he saw the anxiety in her eyes. His baser nature had prevailed, however. He’d told her he could handle his discomfort. How could he possibly move away from the temptation of Joy and her slippery, cool brush sliding just inches away from his straining, hurting cock?

Why was he having the most debauched fantasies about taking advantage of her, of wrecking her smooth, calm exterior . . . of making Snow White so hot, she begged for it?

He suppressed a laugh at his idiocy. He really was losing it.

He wasn’t young anymore. A man in his position in Hollywood learned quickly enough that casual sex often didn’t end up being as casual or as sexy as a novice might expect. He’d become extremely particular about whom he associated with in the past several years. So particular, in fact, that his sister, Katie, had taken to calling him jaded. Maybe Katie was right, because in the past few months, he’d been choosy to the point of abstinence.

Maybe that was what made this unexpected experience feel so sharp, so imperative.

Seth could come in at any moment. Dozens of people moved and talked and shouted just feet away from the still room where he stood and Joy sat, etching her magic on his flesh. More importantly, Everett didn’t pull stupid, crazy stunts. Not anymore, he didn’t.

But a moment later, when her laughter had morphed into that still, sublime expression, he would have dared much, much worse than to explore the promise of her inner fires.

Then she’d spoken . . . and he’d almost had a heart attack at age thirty-six.

“Do you mind?” she’d asked.

He minded, all right. If he didn’t get the opportunity to feel her touch where it counted, he was going to boil and cook in his own sweat.

It’d felt like he was balancing on a narrow, straining wire the entire time Joy had sat before him and caressed him with her marker and tickled him deliciously with her paintbrush. When she so carefully reached into the briefs and extricated his cock, he fell right off that thin line of enforced rationality straight into a vat of need.

His cock felt like it was steaming when she wrapped her cool fingers around it. The image of her removing his length from the stupid seaweed pants was so exciting, he nearly came then and there. Her tongue was surprisingly red when she delicately licked him. Energy arced between them at the direct contact, their naked flesh becoming a conduit. She dragged the tip of it from head to pulsing root. Ripples of pleasure shot up his spine.

He bit his tongue hard enough to make him wince in pain. He’d be damned if he was going to ruin the richest erotic experience he’d had in . . . he couldn’t remember how long by exploding before he truly got to enjoy it.

The metallic flavor of blood spread in his mouth before he allowed himself to pry open his eyes. He groaned upon seeing her spreading her lips wide and angling his cock into her warm, wet mouth.

Christ
, his cock was iron hard, so how was it that he felt like he was melting on her tongue?

She may look fresh as a wild rose, but she knew how to suck. She pulled at him. He winced in pleasure as he slid across her tongue, going deeper into the humid, hot glory of her. How could he have thought she was so contained, so cool?

She was a raging fever on the inside.

His hand moved, seemingly of its own accord. He cradled the side of her head. He withdrew and flexed forward again, suppressing a groan.

“God, that’s good,” he mumbled.

She ducked her head, sucking and sliding his cock between tightly pursed lips, taking him on a thrill ride of a lifetime. With every pass, she took him deeper. Her hunger was a palpable thing, the strength of it shocking him, a force that drove her farther and farther down onto the shaft of his cock. He watched her with a tight, feral stare, taking in every nuance of her—the way his erection strained her lips wide and stained them a dark, vivid pink as she pumped at his cock with a furious focus.