Chelsea Fine - Best Kind of Broken

Which is exactly why this is perfect painting weather.

I haven’t painted with colors since last summer. For no reason other than I just wasn’t feeling… colorful. But these past few days, something has been growing inside me. Coming to life. Waking up with demands. And I couldn’t ignore it any longer.

So I dusted off the many unopened boxes in my room and tore through them until I found my colored paints. Then I threw on some Florence + the Machine at full volume, and now here I am, standing before this blank canvas with no idea what I want to paint.

I look down at the tube again.

Red. It’s such a statement. Passionate. Unavoidable.

I turn the bottle over and squeeze a drop onto my palette. There it is. Red.

Now I just need to dip my brush in it and—oh, what the hell.

I turn my hand over and squirt a handful of paint into my palm and smear it against the canvas. It looks harsh and unwelcome against the smooth white. Like a blemish. The corner of my mouth turns up as I squirt more red into my hands and start to spread the crimson every which direction until the canvas is no longer a blank square, but a collection of red movement.

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.

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…

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.

His hand runs up the inside of my thigh to right where I need him, and my eyes flutter. Guttural sounds fall from my mouth, and he growls—he growls—in appreciative response. God. I want him to growl more.

I run my paint-covered hands all over his body as his mouth travels to my chest. He pulls his head up and stares down at my scar in the stormy moonlight, and my body tenses.

I’m afraid he’s going to change his mind and stop touching me. But instead, he slowly leans back down and presses a soft kiss to the top of the scar.

“I’m so sorry,” he whispers. He places another soft kiss just below the first, his lips featherlight as they brush against the red mark. “I’m so sorry you wear this.”

I skim my hands up his back and into his hair, stroking the strands as gently as he’s kissing my scar and loving that his lips—Levi’s lips—aren’t afraid to touch my brokenness. “I’m not.”

He looks up from under his dark lashes, his mouth still against my damaged skin.

“My scar reminds me of my hero,” I say.

At first, I think he’s going to refute my words. But quick as lightning, his mouth is back on mine, kissing me like he needs me. And I need him right back.

His back is too broad for me to get a good grip on him, but I sink my fingers into his shoulder blades anyway, grasping at his hot, slick skin as he kisses down my jaw and over my chest. He sucks on my nipple, and I’m pretty sure I would scream if I wasn’t so busy trying to catch my breath. He suckles and cups my other breast as I arch in to him and yank him tighter to me before he moves his mouth down to the sensitive skin of my lower stomach and pulls my panties off.

His hands, his mouth, his everything, work against me, finding wetness, finding the only part of my body that can leave me empty of everything but primal need, and then his mouth is between my legs.

Not touching me, just breathing—which is crazy arousing. Hot, deliberate exhales tickle the sensitive flesh spread out for him, and it’s all I can do not to scream and cry and wail in desire. I shove my hands in his hair and grip his head as his tongue slips from his mouth and slowly licks a trail up the crease where my hip meets my thigh and back down to the most southern skin of my belly. And then slowly, so slowly I think I might die, his warm, wet tongue gently strokes the very center of me with three soft caresses.

Holy hell. Sweet Jesus in heaven. Son of a biscuit eater. I’m in heaven.

Figuratively. Literally.

Heaven.

His tongue rolls over me twice more, and I cry out and fall apart and lose my mind under the blinding and brilliant sensation of his mouth. My thighs tremble violently as I arch my back and claw at the sheets. I don’t know where I am or what my name is or how to breathe, but who the hell cares about minor details like breathing?

Levi Andrews just undid my whole world. With his tongue.

“Condom,” he says breathlessly.

I force my eyes open. “What?” Is someone talking to me? Who DARES to interrupt my bliss?

“Condom,” he repeats.

“Oh. Yeah,” I say. “Good idea. Uh…” My brain doesn’t work. My brain doesn’t work. “My purse!” Brain working now. “My purse.” I point to where it sits on the floor.

He shimmies off the bed and starts digging through my bag. “Why do you have so many condoms in here?” He pulls one out and rips it open.

“Because my best friend travels like a porn star,” I say absently, my muscles flexing with needy bliss.

Did I just call Jenna my best friend?

Levi climbs back on the bed. “Remind me to ask you about that later.”

“Absolutely,” I say, my body still quaking. “We’ll have that conversation right after our conversation about knocking on Pixie’s door before entering her bedroom.”

He puts the condom on and smiles. By the time he’s hovering over me again, I’m pulling at his large body, trying to bring him into me like my vagina is starved and dying. On his elbows above me and with his body up against mine, he stops and stares down at me. Terrified. Nervous.