Page 46 of Four on the Floor: A Menage Romance

We linger there just a moment longer, my hand still in his.

Then Slate smiles again. He lets me go, and we head to the kitchen to eat Cash’s grandma’s chicken casserole.

Chapter Seventeen

Cash

If I had my way,I don’t think I’d ever leave this hotel.

Sure, it’s a really nice place, even if we’re currently cooking all our own food and doing our own laundry; there’s still a swimming pool and a sauna and we each have our own private jacuzzi, not to mention the world-class hot tubs outside.

But the best part is Larkin.

Larkin reading on the couch in the lobby, wearing nothing but a tank top and a blanket. Larkin making some sort of complicated stew for dinner, standing in the kitchen, waving away steam.

Larkin on the treadmill. Larkin in her bathing suit out in the hot springs, or standing in her studio, hair in a braid over one shoulder, glaring at her latest painting and pouting.

That last is what she’s doing right now, wearing ripped jeans and a slouchy, off-one-shoulder t-shirt, both covered in paint. She’s also got a slash of blue-gray on her right arm, some white on her left elbow, and fingerprints in burgundy on the back of her neck.

I’m watching her through the open door of her studio, but she’s so lost in contemplation that she’s not even looking at me right now. She’s just staring at this canvas, complicatedly covered in small triangles that are all shades of blue, gray, black, and white, and muttering to herself.

Larkin’s been working on this painting for days, and it shows. It’s so intricate, beautiful, and complicated that I’ve got no idea how she’s made it work — hundreds of little triangles that, when you look at the whole thing, somehow come together to form a sunburst behind a mountain range, but the effect is like you’re looking into the sun yourself. It’s just as dazzling and blinding, but it’s somehow an optical illusion that she’s painted.

Basically, my mind is blown.

“Dammit,” she mutters to herself, shifting her weight to her other leg. She’s standing with her arms crossed, a paintbrush in one fist, the bristles wiping a thin stripe of blue paint on the sleeve of her t-shirt. Larkin doesn’t notice.

“It’s beautiful,” I say from the doorway.

Larkin jumps about a foot in the air, then puts one hand over her heart.

“Jesus, Cash,” she laughs. “I didn’t know you were there.”

“I’m sneaky like that,” I say, raising one eyebrow.

Larkin rolls her eyes good-naturedly and turns back to the painting. I step up and put one arm around her, and she leans her head against my shoulder.

My heart skips a beat, just like it does every time we touch.

“I like it,” I say.

“There’s something wrong with it,” she says, sighing.

I look closer. I can’t tell that anything’s wrong with it.

“I’ve been staring at it so long that I can’t even tell what’s wrong with it, but it’s definitely something. Right around here,” she says, waving at the general area of the sun.

I cross behind her, take her shoulders in my hands and start massaging.

“You need a break,” I tell her, feeling her knots release beneath my fingers. Larkin sighs, leans back slightly into me.

My cock jumps. I can’t help but have that response every time we touch. Even if it was only two days ago that she bounced up and down on my cock, moaning while she swallowed Gavin, two days feels like an eternity when it’s Larkin we’re talking about.

“Maybe if I come at this with fresh eyes it’ll help,” she muses.

“It works for us,” I say, still kneading her shoulders. “You try something again later and it magically has worked itself out.”

I move my thumbs lower, work at the knots around her shoulder blades.

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