Page 51 of The Painter and His Poet

“It’s my money, I can do what the fuck I want with it. Besides, why am I the one suddenly getting grilled, Sterling here fucked his step-sister,” Ben replies.

“If you weren’t about to die of alcohol poisoning, I’d fucking kill you myself,” I snap, punching him none too lightly on his arm.

“Ow, fuck! I didn’t mean it like that,” he whines, turning puce as he gags.

“Like I already told you all, she wasn’t my step-sister when we met. We were strangers.”

“What’s the big deal, it’s not as if your blood related?” Dalton points out.

“Because, dicksplash, some people have integrity, unlike you,” Drix grinds out.

“Tell that to Sterling who was getting all up and personal with Harlow in my office right after the wedding ceremony,” Dalton replies, flicking Drix a glare of his own.

“That’s what you were doing?” Drix asks, cutting me a look. “You’re playing with fire, you know that right?”

“Give me a break, okay? It was the first time I saw her since we slept together. I couldn’t–”

“Keep it in your pants?” Ben says, his joke falling flat as I glare at him. “Sorry, you know humour is my way of dealing with shit. I don’t mean anything by it.”

“There’s nothing about my predicament with Harlow that I find amusing,” I reply, pinching the bridge of my nose, the headache that’s been threatening to develop into a full-blown migraine all damn night causing nausea to rise up my throat.

“Seriously though, Sterling, what the hell are you going to do?” Ben asks.

“Right now? I have no fucking clue,” I reply.

With my paintbrush gripped tightly in my hand, I look at the huge six foot by six foot canvas before me, studying it through narrowed eyes. I ache all over, and for the last few hours every muscle in my body has screamed at me to stop, to rest. But Ican’trest. I won’t rest until the piece is done.

As soon as I got home this morning I headed straight to my studio on the edge of my father’s property, knowing that I couldn’t ignore my synesthesia a second longer. Trouble is, even after almost ten hours of painting nothing feels better.Nothing.

“Fuck, something’s missing,” I muse, scraping a hand through my tousled hair and ignoring my growling stomach asI take a few steps back, my bare feet stepping into flecks of wet paint that cover the floor.

I haven’t eaten anything since last night at the wedding, despite it now being late afternoon the following day. The sandwich a member of staff brought to me a couple of hours ago is still sitting on the table where I left it, and the second lot of headache pills I took at midday are beginning to wear off. Yet despite the exhausted state my body is in, my cock hasn’t got the damn memo and isstillrock fucking hard.

The truth is, I’ve been perpetually turned on ever since that hot as fuck moment I shared with Harlow in Dalton’s office last night. Fuck, the way she’d fallen into me, the way she’d tasted on my tongue, and her moans of pleasure have played over and over in my mind, keeping me hard for hours.

She’s mine. She’s mine. She’s mine.

Those two words have been circling in my brain over and over, and over again. I feel this intense kind of ownership and possessiveness towards her. It’s like nothing I’ve felt before. On top of all of that, I’m agitated as fuck.

This painting before me is a reflection of all the uncertainty that I’m feeling right now, though it’s not aboutmyfeelings towards Harlow, or the fact that I want her. I truly couldn’t give a flying fuck if my dad and Melody found out that we’ve been intimate, that we’re attracted to one another. What I am uncertain about is Harlow’swillingness to explore this connection between us now that we have parents in common. I don’t know whether Harlow will ever be able to get over her belief that being together now is wrong, despite how right it felt to hold her in my arms.

All that uncertainty has bled out onto the canvas in a display of frustrated and passionate brushstrokes that whip across the canvas in a violent storm of striking scarlet, bright crimson, and deep blood red. They depict every tumultuous thought I’ve hadsince I’ve laid eyes on her again, and right at the heart of the painting is Harlow. Her face is in profile, her expression one of orgasmic bliss. But around her, all that red? It may as well be the raw bloody mess of my heart, every stroke and every drop of paint baring my emotions for all to see.

Yet, it’s stillnotfinished.

“Goddamn it!” I mutter, pulling up a chair, my tired body crumpling into the seat as my legs give way beneath me.

In sheer frustration I throw my paintbrush across my studio, causing more paint to scatter across the floor as it finds its resting place beneath a bench pushed up against the wall on the other side of the room. I’d hoped that painting would give me some relief.

It hasn’t.

I’m still wound up, coiled like a fucking spring. My muscles ache, my eyes sting, my brain is wired from almost twenty-four hours of heightened emotions and overstimulation. I know that I should eat, that I should try to sleep, but I can’t do either of those things until I’ve finished this damn painting.

My eyes trace over the paint strokes before me, lingering on Harlow’s lips that are parted in pleasure, then move across her jaw and the slope of her neck as she tips her head back in ecstasy. Her eyes are pressed shut on a moan, and her face is surrounded by a mist of red. This painting is profoundly sexual and deeply personal, but despite my efforts, I’m still not satisfied.

Maybethat’sthe problem.

Harlow came on my tongue, but I’ve had no such relief.

---