Fucking hell, this friend-zone thing sucked. For the first time I admitted to myself that maybe it wasn’t going to work out.

Gee, what gave it away, asshole—the shirt coming off or you unhooking her bra?

I dipped the brush back in the paint, noting that I’d have to get up early and go buy more tomorrow morning. I’d run most of the way through the green and the red already, and had made good headway with the yellow and purple, too. I was painting flowers. Lots and lots of flowers, a tangled mass of them like something you’d see in the rainforest. Lush and sweet and ripe and deadly, just like Melanie. Vines to tie me up and hold me prisoner until I didn’t even care anymore . . .

She lifted an arm, pulling her hair out of the way as I started up the back of her neck.

“Do you have one of those little thingies?” I asked.

“Thingies?”

“Thingies for your hair. I can put it up for you.”

“Oh yeah. There should be one on the coffee table.”

“Be right back.”

I walked into the living room and found a purple elastic sitting right next to her phone, which had just lit up with a text.

I swear I didn’t read it on purpose.

JESS: I just heard painters back in town and that he went over to our place looking for you. Don’t let him in or I’ll kill you dead with my bare hands. Xx

Frowning, I turned the phone off, then tossed it onto the couch. It might’ve fallen behind the cushions—hard to tell.

Mel could read the message later.

Yeah.

No need to worry her about something that probably wouldn’t even be an issue.

MELANIE

This was stupid.

Really, really stupid.

I sat in the center of the dining room, dreading every stroke of the brush, because sooner or later I was going to snap and things wouldn’t end well . . . But it felt so good, and it wasn’t like we were doing anything bad. Just painting. And his work was truly beautiful—I’d snuck a peek while he was grabbing my hair elastic, stunned by the riotous explosion of vines and flowers he’d painted using my skin as a canvas.

It was amazing. Almost unreal. How something like this could be created by the same brushes responsible for the Ladybugs of Death and Dismemberment was almost impossible to comprehend. Raw talent, I guess.

That and technique.

I wondered if he had any idea how good he really was. Hell, whatever he was doing for the club, if he just sold those paintings of his to the right people he’d be able to make them more money that way. Except it probably wasn’t about money. What did they have him doing, and how likely was it that he’d get himself thrown back in prison?

“Let me get your hair,” he said, his soft voice sending shivers all through my body. I still held the cups of my bra against my chest, like somehow it held the power to protect me.

Assuming I wanted to be protected.

“Thanks,” I whispered as his fingers started combing through the tangled mass. It took longer than it should have. I’d like to think he was as mesmerized as I was, because for all his insistence that we could only be friends, even I was smart enough to know that guys don’t sit around on Friday nights painting flowers on their half-naked, platonic friends. His head lowered next to mine—was he smelling my hair?

“Almost finished,” he whispered, warm air touching my ear.

Then my hair was up in a messy ponytail-slash-bun thing and he was lifting the brush, ready to start torturing me again.

PAINTER

I finished way too fast.

The original colors had run out, forcing me to mix my own. I think that made it better—toward the end, the greens were darker, projecting something shadowy and almost angry.

Frustration.

Fair enough, because that was exactly how I was feeling. I’d spent more than two hours painting Melanie’s perfect body. Now my cock was like a fucking diamond, so hard it could cut glass. I want to push her down across the table and pound her until the paint smeared with our sweat . . .

Christ. My dick was going to explode.

“You can go look now,” I said, standing up. She rose from her chair awkwardly, still holding the black silk in front of her tits, which made no fucking sense.

“There’s a mirror up in Jessica’s room,” she said. She brushed past me, and I shuddered as her arm touched mine. I tended to get very focused while working, but just being near her was a class A mind fuck. She started up the stairs, then turned back to look at me, a puzzled frown on her face.

“Aren’t you coming?”

Coming? No, not yet. Not until you wrap those lips around me.

“Um, sure,” I managed to say. “Didn’t realize you wanted me.”

She stared at me, her expression so intense that I swear the air between us sizzled. Okay, it didn’t sizzle at all, because that’s fucking lame, but it did something. Felt like there was a tight string—no, a piano wire—stretching between us, quivering and pulsing with every beat of my heart.

Mel started up the stairs and I followed her, eyes glued to the gentle, feminine sway of her ass. Those legs weren’t half bad either, and seeing my work all over her body made me feel something strange . . . I had no idea how to describe it, but I liked it. I liked it a lot. Felt like I owned her. Now if I could just tattoo my marks all over her permanently.

No, probably not a good idea to cover her face, even I had to admit that. But the thought of my work across her back, so I could look down on it while I wrapped my hands around her waist and fucked her ass?