Page 122 of Possess Me! (I Want You To)

“I’m not ready to paint on my own,” Luca admitted, voice still painfully gentle. “But with you?” I couldn’t stop staring at his eyes. The genuine fondness within them shattered every bit of my resolve as I nodded. “I want to try.”

Luca’s thighs flexed, the shorts he’d borrowed riding up to reveal swathes of gorgeous tanned skin dotted with wiry blond hair. The cuts on his shins had been painstakingly re-bandaged before we’d entered his bedroom, and the white bandages practically glowed in the bleeding moonlight.

He shifted and the shorts rode up higher. High enough I caught a glimpse of the strip of pale flesh that marked where the hem of his shorts usually fell. Desire, unlike anything I’d ever felt before, made me lightheaded.

In Elmwood, I’d chased sex, searching for humanity in the bodies I discarded. With Luca, I’d never been able to bring myself to do that. To dehumanize him with my cock. To discard him beside all the no-named faces, and blurry bodies in my past.

Part of me—I was finally ready to admit—had been terrified of him. Terrified of what he made me feel. I’d erected walls between us, rules for myself put into place so I could protect the last bits of my unguarded soul I had left.

I couldn’t fuck him without admitting I loved him.

Even though I wasn’t even sure I was capable of love. If it was something someone like me could feel. All the complicated emotions I’d avoided for years—all the experiences I’d endured because of my lack of human understanding, had made me feel like half a person. Half a man.

When I was with Luca I wasn’t whole.

But for the first time in my life—I was enough.

My half was enough.

I stared at the blur of paint on canvas, enthralled as Luca’s gaze traveled a million miles away. The turbulence that swirled in the depths of his eyes burst to the surface, trembling through his body, slashed like killing blows with each stroke of his talented fingers.

It was perfect.

The mix of color, black—blue—pink. Twisting, writhing, curling.

Immaculate.

As one corner dried I slid a finger through it, dragging paint across the canvas, the wet-cold feeling of it clinging to my skin causing me to shudder.

“There you go,” Luca purred, clearly pleased. “C’mon Pru.” His grin was back, though his eyes remained beautifully distant. Like he saw worlds in his head—galaxies—invisible to the rest of us. God, he was glorious, paint spotted across his high cheekbone, his eyes wild.

Breathless.

I was breathless.

He’d never looked more beautiful than he did in that moment. Free. Totally himself. No walls to hide behind anymore.

“What are you so afraid of?” His words shattered me, spoken so gently—sweetly, like it didn’t matter. Like it mattered too much. A contradiction, just like him.

I smeared my entire hand across the canvas, black paint slicking my palm as the angry imperfection made my blood sing.

“Fuck yes,” Luca cheered, squirting more paint on the canvas for me to smudge. Which I did. Enthusiastically. There was something therapeutic about ruining something that was so…perfect. About contributing. Like by adding my poison to paper, I was pulling it out of the parts of my soul where it had festered for far too long.

Luca continued to paint, swirling colors through the black I left behind, his laughter breathless, and maybe a little desperate. He grabbed white, and beneath his paintbrush a face began to form. Haunted, shadowed eyes. Wild black hair. His hand moved to another spot on the canvas and beneath it appeared clenched fists, knuckles covered in tattoos and colorful marker.

He was painting me.

All of me.

I pulled black paint with my fingers through the painted fists, tracing over the letters of my tattoos, twisting the words till they formed the only thing that I could think in that moment.

Luca.

Luca, Luca, Luca.

“Shit.” Luca laughed as I grabbed a bottle of acrylic and a brush for myself—adding black everywhere I touched as I began smudging a messy portrait into an empty corner on the canvas. Freckles. A naughty grin. Chewed up hoodie strings.

With every part of his body I depicted, one of my own appeared on the page.

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