Once the red is emptied, I grab a blue bottle and fill my hands with the color of peace and calm, wiping it alongside the red.
Then green. Life. Beginning. Healing.
Then yellow. Happiness.
Purple. Hope.
Colors fill my eyes until I can’t imagine anything without them. My heart is on fire, like it’s been frozen for so long and has just now started melting into this blaze of… God, life.
I pull colors through my hands as lightning flashes and thunder booms. It’s madness outside, madness inside. And it’s beautiful.
And then I hear Levi’s TV turn on.
54 Levi
I watch TV and try not to think about what the girl next door is wearing as she paints away—which I know she’s doing because Florence + the Machine is blasting through the wall, and that is most definitely her painting music.
Three pounds sound on my wall.
“Turn it down!” she yells.
I turn the volume up two notches.
More pounding. “Turn it down!”
“Shh! I can’t hear my show over all your pounding!” I shout.
“Aaaagh!”
Victory is mine.
As I go back to my show, the wind howls outside and I frown at my window. I just know my day is going to be full of yard cleanup tomorrow.
The power suddenly goes out and I clench my jaw.
Pixie.
In a storm? Really?
Stomping out of my room, I go down the hall and throw open her door, more amused than angry, but still.
Two things surprise me.
One—the innocent look on Pixie’s face in the gray light from the mostly hidden moon outside.
Two—she’s wearing nothing.
Well, not nothing exactly. She has on a see-through tank top and a pair of panties that leave little to the imagination. But she may as well be wearing nothing because all I see standing before me is a naked Pixie, covered in paint.
“What the HELL are you doing?” She’s pissed, and manages to look a little embarrassed by her outfit, which confuses me. “What makes you think you can just keep barging in here?”
I scoff. “Maybe the same thing that makes you think you can just blow the fuse whenever the hell you please.”
“I didn’t blow the fuse!”
“Next time, just threaten the fuse thing and I’ll turn the goddamn TV down to save myself a trip outside.”
She takes a step forward so now she’s standing right in front of me. “I didn’t. Blow. The fuse.”
Lightning flashes into the room, and a loud clap of thunder shakes the window. That’s when I realize the storm knocked out the power. Not Pixie.
Well, shit. Now I feel like an idiot.
She stares at me in the foggy light, and her expression slips into one of… well, want.
I should leave. Right now. I really should.
But Pixie’s eyes are on mine, and she’s so damn close to my body that I can’t seem to do anything other than stare at her with want and need and desire and every other hell-born pleasure known to man.
But I’m not going to kiss her.
I’m not.
If I kiss her, there’s no going back. If I kiss her, I’ll touch her. And if I touch her, then I’ll forever kill any other guy who tries to touch her and then I’ll be royally screwed.
But my head and my heart and my body all want the same thing—and when the hell has that ever happened before?
This is Pixie.
I shouldn’t want her. I don’t deserve her. I shouldn’t… I don’t…
55 Pixie
Levi is looking at me with nothing but hunger, and I’ve never wanted to feed anything so desperately.
My chest is in front of his, breathing. Inhale. Exhale. Life in. Life out.
My hands run with all the colors of the rainbow, dripping onto the floorboards and my bare feet and legs as I stand before him.
Lightning strikes, brightening the room for an instant, flashing against our faces with urgency. I see the hesitation in his eyes, the fight between need and guilt, the fight both he and I have been losing for a year.
I hesitantly move closer.
Closer.
Then I give in to the untamed thing inside my soul and kiss him.
I’m against him with my body, pressed to his mouth with my lips and molded to his skin with my hands. I want him. No, I need him, and he needs me. Not just in desire, but in life and healing. And here we are, under the sound of rain against the window, the fields. Alive.
He kisses me back, and there’s nothing between us anymore. Sadness and pain and loss and regret still exist, but they swim around us, unable to break through the wall we built decades ago. With friendship. With love.
His mouth moves against mine as he wraps his hands around my body, holding me steady, setting me free. My lips part and his tongue sweeps inside, pulling hot breaths from my chest as our tongues meet and mend.
I grip his shoulders, trying to climb up his body so I can sink into him. His hands lock on to my waist and his fingers slip under the raised hem of my shirt, pressing into my back. I can feel each pad of his fingers, like small flames branding fingerprints into my hips, my spine, my bare skin.
I lift up on my tiptoes as our kissing becomes desperate and breathy, shoving my hands into his hair and feeling it run through my fingers for the first time. It’s intimate, the feel of his hair gliding between my fingers.
His hands run under my shirt and around the sensitive skin of my belly. I whimper into his mouth as every muscle in my body is clenching beneath his touch. I want to arch my back. I want to climb inside him.
His mouth moves to my throat, where he barely sets his lips against my windpipe. Not kissing. Not licking. Just breathing. And God, I’m melting.
My body is wet and wanting, and I want to cry almost as much as I want to howl. I tip my head back and gasp as his tongue slowly burns against the vulnerable skin there.
I cup his face and pull his mouth back to mine so I can kiss and grab and hold every piece of him. His scruffy jaw sits in my palms as I devour him, and I love the sensation of his rough stubble against my soft skin. Burning me. Marking me.
He picks me up and moves us to the bed, where I’m soon on my back and rolling my hips up to meet him. We pull at each other’s clothes and skin and hair until he’s only in his jeans and I’m only in my panties. I’m out of breath and wild inside. I feel like an animal and a goddess at the same time, tearing into him with my tongue and my nails and not getting enough. Not nearly enough.