“Shhhh.” With a low growl, Ray runs his hands along my curves, and my breathing hitches.

Damn Luke. Damn that night. I’m going to turn my fear into something beautiful. Gritting my teeth, I lift my brush and the black streak becomes a wheel, two, and then I join them with a band of red.

“Fuck.” Ray pinches my nipples between his thumbs and forefingers, his chest warm, hard against my back, his belt buckle a deliciously pleasant pain on my skin.

“Watching you paint is fucking hot.”

PTSD crisis averted, I manage a smile. “Might be your hands on my breasts is what’s making you hot.”

He grinds his hips into my ass, his erection stiff between us. “Touching you makes me hard. Watching you makes me hot.”

Gray for the chrome, more red for the fairing, abstract strokes but my brain can’t fill in the detail with Ray’s fingers grazing the bare skin of my abdomen.

“I can’t paint anymore.”

“You can.” He cups my sex from behind, spreading his fingers, easing my legs apart. “You will.”

I hiss in a breath when his fingers slide into my panties, grazing over my mound. My arm drops and I rock into his touch, willing his fingers to delve deeper.

“Steady,” he says. “Don’t want to ruin my bike.”

I glance over my shoulder. “How do you know it’s your bike? It’s just a collection of brush strokes on canvas.”

He buries his face in my neck, his five o’clock shadow scraping over my sensitive skin. “It’s my bike.”

And then he rips my panties away.

Shock steals my breath, but before the fear can take hold, Ray is on his knees in front of me, backing me away from the easel and filling the space with the breadth of his body.

“I got you,” he murmurs as he presses my thighs apart.

“Ray?”

He doesn’t answer. Instead he glides his thumbs over my folds, parting them, exposing me to the heat of his breath.

“No.” I gasp and my hands tremble. “You can’t. I won’t be able to stand—much less paint.”

“You stop. I stop.” He presses his thumbs upward, exposing my clit from its pierced hood, and then he gives it a lick.

Warm and wet, his tongue rasps over my throbbing nub. A low, guttural groan rips from my throat. Wetness trickles down my inner thighs, and I steady myself on the table and moan.

Ray pulls away, looks up at me, his eyes hooded. “You got it together?”

Drawing in a deep breath, I nod.

“I’ll ease up on you. Let you paint.”

I shudder and nod. Then I grab another brush and pretend a hot, sexy fighter isn’t kneeling in front of me, licking my pussy.

Red. Orange. Some yellow. My painting fills with heat as Ray slicks his tongue through my wetness, teasing and torturing me with the hint of how it would feel to have him inside me.

“Brace yourself,” he whispers. And then he thrusts two thick fingers deep inside me.

I can’t breathe. Can’t move. I certainly can’t paint. There is something sinfully erotic about standing naked in front of a half-painted canvas. Wanton. But this time my sexual curiosity is bringing me pleasure, not pain. “I can’t…need to sit.”

“Not yet.” He withdraws and thrusts again, curling his fingers against my sensitive tissue as he flicks his tongue over my piercing, sending a wave of pulsing heat to my clit.

“Oh God.” Panting, I paint quickly, fiercely, blending shape and form, drowning the black in a sea of color. So much color. Swirling through the canvas in an effort to be free.

My brush clatters to the floor and Ray eases me back onto the chair behind me, lifting my thigh over his shoulder, opening me for him, while he moves his hand faster, plunging in and out with hard, firm strokes. Braced on the chair, I rock my hips in time to his rhythm, my tension spiraling out of control.

“Don’t stop. Don’t stop.”

He pulses his fingers deep inside me, then leans down and draws my clit into his mouth. One light nip and I fall over the edge.

The orgasm rips through me, shaking my body, tearing me apart with fierce, unyielding pleasure. So good. So deliciously bad. Almost a sacrilege to my art. But I don’t care. The freedom to be so unrestrained is a release in itself.

As I shudder through the last waves of the orgasm, Ray releases me and pulls me into his arms, holding me as I melt, boneless against him.

“Better than lions,” I whisper.

With a chuckle, he crushes my lips in a passionate kiss. An erotic shiver winds up my spine when I taste myself on his tongue. Needing more, I slide my hand down, brushing my fingers over his stomach. Ray groans and curls one hand around my ass, driving my hips against the steel of his erection. His eyes are dark with need, and the air between us thick with arousal.

Throbbing, empty inside, I gasp when he twists his fingers through my hair, tugging my head back, making me arch and offer up my breasts for his sucking pleasure. Teasing and torturing first one breast and then the other, his mouth firm but gentle on the little silver ring in my nipple, he holds me tight as I writhe and wiggle against him, my whimpers drowning out the animal cries coming from the TV.

“Ray…” Despite the earth-shattering orgasm of moments ago, I am almost mindless with need, bold with desperation. I slide my hand between us, stroking the ridge of his erection, and then I cup it and he shudders.

Encouraged, I push his shirt up, sliding my hands over his taut pecs to the tattoo outline still waiting to be filled. Like me. Ray rips the shirt over his head, as I tug at his belt and then undo his fly.