Page 119 of Lock Up the Darkness

It was just a matter of time. Not even a lot of time.

But even that was pushing me, inciting frustration and just compounding everything else.

I shoved my hand through my hair and stepped back from my canvas.

It definitely reflected the inner turmoil pulsing through me.

Layered, thick crimson strokes stretching across the canvas, interspersed with sharp and jagged thinner black lines. And at the center, a blurred void of thick swirling black and white that had been growing and growing the more I’d painted.

It was one of my most chaotic pieces.

I stepped back and snatched up a couple of wipes from the container off to the side of my easel. Then I turned and opened the doors to the balcony. One step outside and I snatched my pack of smokes off the little glass table I’d placed them on earlier. I fired one up, then stared at the painting as I took a soothing drag, blowing the smoke out over the balcony, high into the air.

My phone buzzed with a text notification and I pulled it from the back pocket of my pants to take it in.

Aurora: Need to see you.

I choked a little on my next drag. Fuck.

I locked myself down and responded with my usual air of indifference and just a dash of insolence and challenge thrown in for good measure.

Asher: Don’t be shy.

Aurora: I meant, are you decent?

Asher: Decent? Far from it, sweetheart.

Aurora: You’ve been holed up in your room for the last two days, who knows what depravities you’ve been engaging in.

Asher: You’re hoping for another up close encounter with my cock?

Aurora: In your wildest dreams.

Asher: Indisputable, little beast.

Aurora: Just unlock the door, or I’ll force my way in.

Asher: I’m tempted to tell you to have at it, but that lock is expensive and time-consuming to repair.

I scrolled on my phone and sent the command to unlock my bedroom door.

Asher: Done. Enter my domain.

Aurora: *Middle finger emoji*

I chuckled.

Not two minutes later, I heard her booted heels through the art studio and over in my adjoining bedroom. I stayed where I was, leaning against the balcony wall as she searched me out and passed through the archway doors off my bedroom and into the modest studio.

“Wow,” I heard her exclaim.

Her stunned reaction as she took in my work fell to the wayside as I took her in.

That light blonde hair, what I liked to think of as ice-white in my head, was styled in loose curls today, bouncing with her every slight movement.

She had on a pair of black jeans that rested low on her hips, a silver tie belt slinking through the loops. A strappy tank peeked through beneath a charcoal-gray t-shirt, one that I’d bought her for her workouts. She’d cut out the neck so it hung off one shoulder. Little minx. She hadn’t been wearing it for her trips to the mansion gym either, still going in her sports bra and tiny shorts, or those cock-teasing yoga pants.

And because of what she’d become to me, I’d fucking well let it go, allowing her to just be.

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