Complementary Colors (23 page)

The sheets on the bed were blue now and the comforter brown. It wasn’t quite big enough to cover the white knit blanket under it.

Roy went to the kitchen. “I don’t think I have any milk. I do—I doubt it’s any good.” He shed his coat and left it on a chair at the breakfast bar. His thick arms flexed under his flannel shirt. The layers of clothes ruined the definition, but the fabric strained as he moved. Half-moon wet spots cupped each ass cheek from where he’d sat in the snow.

I left my coat on the couch along with my scarf and gloves.

Roy got something out of the cabinet. The movement raised the back of his shirt and long johns high enough to flash the cleft of his ass over his belt line. I itched to run my fingers down his crack, fondle his balls, and taste his cum.

My cock hardened.

“Are you hungry?”

“You have no idea.” I unbuttoned my shirt and kicked off my boots.

“I’ve got soup. Do you like grilled cheese?”

“Sure.” My pants and boxers joined my shirt on the floor.

“Is the heat on? It doesn’t feel like it’s on.” He went back over to the wall and tapped the thermostat. There was a soft rumble from the vents, and a breath of warm air washed over me from the ceiling. “There, that’s—” Roy turned around. The rose of winter’s kiss in his cheeks darkened.

“What’s wrong?”

“I’ll get you some sweats.”

I got in between him and the dresser. “What? You don’t like me naked?” I moved closer, and a tick jumped in his jaw. “Look at me, Roy.” Feral heat burned in his eyes. I put my hands under the hem of his shirt and traced the line of hair from his navel to his pecs with my thumbs. I found his nipples and pinched them. His breath quickened. “It’s time to quit playing choir boy.” I pushed his shirt up, and he pulled it back down. “You want me. You want me, and I want you to have me.” He wouldn’t let me take off his shirt so I went for his pants. Roy grabbed my wrists.

“I like that.” I licked a line up his neck and blew across the shell of his ear. “I like it when you hold me down, when you take me, when you fuck me like you own me.”

A small sound ticked from Roy’s throat.

“I’m willing to bet you like it too.”

“Paris, please…”

“Touch me.”

A tremor ran down his arms into me.

“Use me.”

His nostrils flared.

“Fuck me with that beautiful cock of yours.”

The black of his pupils ate up the green.

“And make it nasty.”

Like a freight train, Roy came right at me. I would have fallen if he hadn’t grabbed me, one arm around my ribs and his free hand gripping the back of my head.

He slammed his mouth against mine, forced my lips apart, and invaded me with his tongue. The ache in my cock spread through my body, turning into a raging need.

Roy moved to my throat.

“Oh, God, yes…”

He raked his teeth down my neck.

“Like that, Roy, like that.”

He squeezed one of my ass cheeks, pressing his thick fingers close to my hole. I clawed at his jeans. Roy pushed me backward, and the weight of his body made it impossible for me to resist.

“Want you,” he said.

“Then take me.”

On the way across the room, his shin hit the coffee table and shoved it into the couch. “Want my dick in your ass. Want to feel you come.”

I got his jeans open, and his delicious cock leaped into my hand. Roy rocked into my fist. “That’s it,” I said. “Don’t hold back. Don’t hold anything back.”

My hip hit the wall, and he pinned me against the doorjamb of the bathroom.

“I dream about you, Paris. Oh, God, I dream about fucking you over and over, and you beg for more.”

“Do it.” I attacked his mouth.

A groan rumbled in Roy’s chest. I had him. He would never back off now. I went for Roy’s shirt again, but he spun me around.

The length of his cock left a wet trail along my crack. He parted my ass cheeks and pushed a finger into my hole. “Yesss—”

“Need something slick.” He bit my shoulder. “Need to be inside you.”

“Spit…” I gasped. “Just spit.”

He pulled me into the bathroom. “Don’t want to hurt you.” But I wanted to feel the pain as much as the pleasure.

I wound up straddling the toilet with my hands against the wall. Roy grabbed a bottle of lotion off the counter. A cold glob hit me at the cleft of my ass. Another one landed closer to my hole.

“Now.”

He dropped the bottle.

“Fuck me, now.” I lifted my ass.

Roy slathered lotion over my opening. He pushed in one finger, then two.

“Your cock. I want your cock.” I rocked back. “Do it.”

He pulled his fingers out.

“You want it. Do it.”

He pushed the head of his cock against my hole.

“That’s it. More.”

It breached my opening.

“Goddamn it. I want all of it.” The burn and stretch made me hiss. The first thrust sent a crackle up my spine and across my skin. The second lit me on fire. “Yes, yes, yesss—” The third, oh God, the third. Then the only thing I could think about was the hard length of flesh in my ass.

He pumped his hips.

“More.”

He thrust harder.

“Give it to me.” And he did. Over and over. From the tip and to the root. Roy shoved his cock so deep the muscles in my lower back tightened, and the impact pushed me up on my toes. “That’s it. That’s it.”

“Paris…”

“Right here. I’m right here.”

“God, Paris…” Lust and desperation echoed off the tile, carried on the sound of Roy’s grunts.

He leaned back. The change in angle sent shockwaves through my body. I barked out a cry, and there was a hitch in Roy’s thrusts.

“Don’t stop.” I clenched my ass cheeks. “Don’t you dare stop.”

He put one hand on my shoulder and the other on my hip. One slow withdrawal was the only warning I had.

I didn’t think Roy could fuck me any harder, but I was wrong.

The slap of our bodies added another layer to the symphony of sex. Yellows, golds, whites bled through my veins. Blues, violets, and scarlet danced behind my eyelids. And every return of his cock created two dull aches above each hip.

Roy pummeled me until my head bounced between my shoulders, sweat dripped from the tip of my nose, and my bangs clung to my cheeks. My senses blended until I didn’t know where I ended and he began. Time was ticked off by my thundering heart. Euphoria crossed the line into pain, making my insides cramp.

But the last thing I wanted was for Roy to stop. I was hungry for this, and I gorged on his offering.

A deep rumble expanded in Roy’s chest until it vibrated through me. The sound transformed into a growl, and the growl into an animalistic roar. He covered me with his body, still fucking me even as his cock pulsed.

It only took a few strokes before I was shooting my load all over the back of the toilet. Each slowing rock from Roy’s body dragged a spark across my prostate. The sensation echoed with the dying waves of my release.

The muffled beat of rap music leaked through the walls, eating up the newfound silence.

“God, that was good,” I said.

Roy stepped back.

“I’m not going to be able to sit straight for a day. Maybe two.” I turned around. Roy stared at the bottle of lotion on the floor. “What’s wrong?”

His expression pinched. “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry?”

“I didn’t mean…I didn’t mean for that to happen.”

“Excuse me?”

“It shouldn’t have.” He shook his head. “Please forgive me.”

“For what? Fucking me?”

He lifted his gaze.

“You’re serious?”

The pity—the regret—in his expression was too much. I tore free of his grip and gathered up my clothes.

“Please don’t go.”

I pulled on my jeans. “Why not? Obviously, my presence disgusts you.”

“You don’t disgust me.”

“Oh, so that ‘taste like shit’ expression you’re wearing is a figment of my imagination.” I didn’t bother to button my shirt.

“It’s not that, I just…please.”

“Fuck off.”

“Paris…”

He reached for me, and I knocked his hand away. The hurt expression on Roy’s face was worse than any punch. I forgot to take out my socks when I crammed my feet into my boots, and they bunched up in the toes.

“Will you let me explain?”

I grabbed my coat and put it on. “You’ve made yourself perfectly clear. Sorry I ever wasted your time.” I went to the door. “I promise you’ll never have to worry about me doing it again.”

He called after me, but I was already down the steps and back into the cold.

I sat on the couch across the room from a clean canvas. After three days of waiting for the colors to bleed through, it remained blank. The more time passed, the less sure I was the colors had ever existed.

The phone rang. I no longer looked at the caller ID. If it wasn’t Roy, it was Julia, and if it wasn’t Julia, it wasn’t anyone else I wanted to talk to.

The phone stopped.

I kept staring at the canvas.

The setting sun broke over the tops of building and left streaks of bronze sunlight across the tile floor. It turned orange, then red, then a pale purple. Night fell, leaving nothing but me and the canvas.

It remained empty.

I remained empty.

The phone rang again.

I picked up my glass from the side table and drank the last bit of orange juice and vodka. There was no sweetness, no bitterness, just nothing.

Like the canvas.

Like me.

I rubbed my face, pushed back my bangs, and found myself tugging at the hairs on the back of my head. They were almost long enough to pull, but not quite.

“I’m sorry…”

“Yeah, you should be.” I stood. “You should be, Roy. You should be so fucking sorry.” My voice bounced off the walls of the empty studio.

“I shouldn’t have…”

“Shouldn’t have what? Given me the best fuck of my life? Or maybe it was everything else. Dinner, the wine, your goddamned cardboard sled.” I wiped out a tray of brushes sitting on one of the worktables. “Or maybe it was…”

“One kiss…”

I touched my lips.

Brushing my teeth, showering, doing it all over again could only erase Roy from my skin but never my mind. He was gouged so deep that thoughts of him scarred my bones.

I leaned against the workbench. The spiraling helplessness inside me promised dark and terrible places I’d sworn I’d never go.

“I don’t care.”

My breath rattled.

“I don’t care if you don’t want me.”

My heart ached.

“I don’t care if I disgust you.”

My voice cracked, and my words shattered. I clutched my chest, trying to crush the pain.

“Fuck you.” Closing my eyes forced me to relive the sadness in Roy’s gaze. “Fuck you.”

I didn’t need him. I didn’t want him.

And I’d prove it.

I grabbed my coat and left the apartment.

Melted snow made streams in the gutters and left gaps on the sidewalk. The city had revived thanks to layers of salt and sand on the streets. I could have taken a cab, but my legs refused to quit moving.

I passed through a crowd lingering at the front of a shop, went around two teens on bikes, and stopped at the corner. Car horns blared as I crossed on the red light.

Three blocks down, I took a left and headed toward a cluster of pimped out cars carrying violent melodies. Fishnet and stiletto heels clashed with faux fur coats and leather jackets outside the entrance of the Diablo. A man with a Mohawk whistled at me as I walked by. I could have picked him, but he wasn’t dangerous enough.

The floor wasn’t as packed as I remembered, but the young faces and groping hands were all the same. Neon lights edged the twist and turns of the bar. Bodies crowded the space, becoming people under the dance of colored lights.

I waved at the bartender. “Flat-liner.” He nodded.

The man I was looking for stood a few yards down, leaning back on his elbows against the bar. Blond hair, nice jacket, he could have been the average joe. I almost dismissed him until he caught my gaze. Eyes like that had tracked me through my home when I was younger. Eyes like that had pooled with sinful thoughts. Eyes like that had not only seen those horrors, they’d led the way.

The bartender brought me my drink. I tossed it back before he could leave. My throat closed, and my sinuses flooded. “Another.” I wasn’t sure if he heard me so I knocked the bottom of the shot glass against the bar.

“Sure thing.”

A chill prickled the back of my neck. The two women beside me moved, and a breath of stout cologne replaced the flowered scent of perfume.

The bartender brought me another drink.

“It’s on me.” The man squeezed into the space and put a twenty-dollar bill down on the counter.

“I can buy my own.”

Those hard eyes of his glittered. Were they blue, gray, or hazel? The strobes bleached out the color, and they alternated between a deathly white and pitch black.

“Not tonight,” he said.

The bartender raised an eyebrow at me. I nodded. He disappeared with the twenty.

“What’s your name?” The man moved closer.

“I’m not interested in exchanging names.”

He grinned, flashing a chipped front tooth. “What are you interested in?”

“…you deserve more…”

I tossed back the second drink. It didn’t go down any easier than the first.

“Well?” He was tall enough to put his lips close to my ear. “What are you into?”

The Flat-Liners turned the lull of a day’s worth of vodka into a humming static. “Anything that will hurt.”

He caressed my cheek with the back of his finger. “I have a hard time believing someone as pretty as you could even comprehend the meaning of that word.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Then perhaps you should teach me.”

The hardness in his eyes turned murderous. “Be careful what you wish for.”

I put us chest to chest. “My last teacher wasn’t strict enough.” I pulled down my scarf flashing the bruises on my throat and tipped my head to the side so my bangs would slide off my bruised cheek. His cock hardened against my thigh.

“My car is out back,” he said.

I grazed his jaw with my teeth. “The alley is closer.”