There was an urgency in the way we moved through the crowds at the station and navigated the roads back home. Gabriel didn’t let go of my hand once, and I wasn’t sure whether it was because he liked me as much as I liked him, or because he was afraid someone would try to run us over again.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, it registered that he’d been nervous about the car before it tried to hit us, which is the only reason we weren’t flattened in the alley. Gabriel had been expecting it. Or, at least, he had been paying attention. A lot more attention than I was paying. I’d been too busy trying to plan hundreds of future Chicago exploration trips with him because, for reasons I still couldn’t understand, I wanted to be around Gabriel.

He was quiet and reserved. I had to draw him into a conversation, so when I succeeded, it felt like a reward. His smiles were few and far between, but he’d sent one my way a few times over the course of the night, and they were as good as any foreplay I’d ever experienced. By the time we made it up the stairs and were in the hallway between each of our doors, I had to force myself to unlock my door and lead him inside at a normal human pace rather than kick the door open and wrap myself around him like a deadly snake.

“This is the first time I’ve been in your house,” he said, stepping inside and looking around. His eyes widened at the sheer amount of stuff in my living room, and I saw it all through his eyes. The books stacked haphazardly on the end tables, tubes of paint lying on every conceivable surface including the floor, and the easels and canvases leaning in the corner.

“It’s not quite as tidy as your place,” I said, as he headed towards the canvases. “Those aren’t finished yet. It’s where I keep my works in progress.”

He either didn’t hear me or didn’t care, because he picked up the first painting, which was an abstract landscape of a wildflower meadow, and studied it. I began trying to talk him through what everything was, but he waved me away.

“Isn’t good art supposed to speak for itself?”

“Not when they aren’t finished,” I said, a nervous energy I didn’t recognize zipping through my veins. I’d never been shy about people looking at my paintings before, so I didn’t know why I felt so exposed having Gabriel see them.

“They’re finished enough,” he said. Over the next few minutes, he cycled through the whole stack and gave me an approving head nod. It looked like he was about to say something else when his gaze caught on something over my shoulder. His eyebrows pulled together, and he gently pushed me out of the way and crossed the room.

It wasn’t until I turned around that I realized what he was looking at and where he was headed. In the corner by the kitchen was the painting I’d finished late the night before. The one I’d been working on since the first day I laid eyes on Gabriel’s chiseled jawline and impossibly blue eyes. His portrait.

I stood frozen in place, watching in slow motion as he picked the canvas up off the easel, holding it to the light for a better look. Then, he turned around and looked at me, one eyebrow raised. “Is this me?”

I tried to quickly think of a lie.

No, I painted that years ago. Way before I ever met you.

I’m a psychic. I paint the future, and I painted that the day before you moved in.

But it was pointless. I’d captured his features exactly. The painting couldn’t be of anyone else. I felt embarrassed heat spread through my cheeks and down my neck. When Gabriel didn’t know the painting existed, I’d been proud of it. The color of his eyes was a perfect ice blue, and the earthy green shading along his jawbone blended perfectly into the tan of his cheek. But now that Gabriel was studying it, the whole painting seemed like a flashing sign that he should take out a restraining order.

I let out a nervous laugh. “Yeah, I started it after we met.”

“Why?” he asked, looking down at the painted version of himself.

I shrugged. “I was inspired. Sometimes a painting just pops into my mind fully formed, and this one did. You are kind of beautiful.”

I surprised myself with my honesty, but Gabriel didn’t react right away. He stared at the painting for a few more seconds before carefully returning it to the easel and turning to me. His face was unreadable, lips pulled tight, eyes unusually dark. It was only when he was standing within a few feet of me that I realized his pupils were blown wide, dark with something that looked an awful lot like desire.

“You are beautiful,” he said, saying it like a fact. The sky is blue. The Earth is round.

I couldn’t help but shake my head, mostly with disbelief that Gabriel was saying the words to me.

He reached out and grabbed my chin, holding my face still, his fingers digging into my skin. And then he was tilting my face up and taking a step towards me, so our eyes were inches apart. He leaned close to me, his lips whispering against mine. “I’d paint you if I could.”

Our bodies crashed together. His hands grabbed fistfuls of my hair, tugging my head back as his mouth trailed kisses down my neck. My fingers dipped beneath his shirt and clawed at his back, doing anything to draw him closer to me, to fill the gaps between us.

In one fluid motion, he found the zipper at the back of my dress and pulled it down. I stepped out of the black dress and kicked it to the side. Gabriel pulled away from me, leaving me with a yearning ache, as he ran his eyes down my body. I had on a matching bra and panties, both black lace, and the way Gabriel bit his lip made me think he was enjoying the view. While we weren’t wrapped around one another, I took the opportunity to pull his shirt over his head. And then it was my turn to enjoy the view.

It had been obvious from the first moment I’d seen him that Gabriel was well-built. His shoulders were broad, neck thick, arms toned. But nothing prepared me for the washboard abs before me. I reached out and ran my fingers along the muscles, relishing the peaks and valleys of his human landscape.

Before I was nearly done enjoying myself, Gabriel grabbed my hand and yanked it above my head. He spun me around with one flick of his wrist and pulled me back against him, so my back was against his chest. His other hand brushed against the fabric of my bra and then smoothed a line down my center. His fingers tickled along the skin of my stomach until his palm was pressed against my panties. I could feel his breath hot on my ear, could feel his excitement against my back.

When his fingers dipped inside of me, I was almost begging for it. I whimpered as he pushed in, grateful for the relief. I wrapped an arm up around his neck and then pressed myself into him, massaging his length through his jeans. He groaned and inserted another finger. I responded by grinding back against him, my hips swiveling. It felt like a battle. Each of us trying to out-perform the other.

The heat between us built until we were little more than a writhing, moaning mess. My head was resting on his shoulder as he pulsed in and out of me, his thumb stretching up to rub circles along me until my knees felt like they would give out, until my vision went black and I saw stars.

“Come.” He whispered the word in my ear, but I barely heard it. I was already unraveling around his hand. My mouth opened in a long moan as every muscle in my body quivered and clenched. Even as I shook apart, Gabriel never relented. His fingers continued making a mess of me, sending shocks and jolts of pleasure up through my body until I thought I’d overdose on the feeling of him.

A primal groan escaped from somewhere deep inside of me, and I sagged backward, my body limp and useless. Gabriel slowly slid his fingers out of me, giving me a pat as if to say good game, and then spun me back around.

My hands landed on his chest and I used the rhythm of his heartbeat to try and steady my own. As soon as I felt like I could stand on my rubber legs without falling over, I slid my hands down his body once again, trying my best not to get distracted on the way to my destination. My fingers slipped beneath the waistband of his pants, unbuttoning them with a sex-fueled dexterity and slid them down.

Gabriel’s thighs were beautiful. They belonged in a sculpture garden, not my living room. I felt the indentation of muscle that ran down the side of his leg, the way it cut across towards his knee, segmenting his leg into well-toned muscle. He was so beautiful that while I was pushing his pants to the floor, I dropped to my knees to admire him. My fingers traced the shadows and slopes of his legs up, up, up until I found the waistband of his black briefs. I pulled them down, careful to stretch the elastic around his hard length.

I gasped when I saw him. His sheer size surprised me, but also the symmetry. The smooth skin and purple veins. I leaned forward, my breath warming his tip, and Gabriel let out an expectant exhale. I looked up at him, seeing his square-jaw from an entirely new angle. His head was tipped back, mouth open, eyes closed. The sight of him so vulnerable spurred me on. I wrapped my hand around his length, surprised by how much of him was still exposed, and took him between my lips.

My tongue swirled around his tip, and Gabriel bucked forward, forcing more of himself into my mouth. I opened wide for him, sucking as I sunk down onto him as far as I could. He pressed against the back of my throat and I groaned, eliciting a twin groan from Gabriel. His hand came to the back of my head, holding me against him. I took shallow breaths through my nose, so I wouldn’t pass out, but it would have been worth it. The sounds coming out of Gabriel as he pulsed into my open mouth were animal and sexy. I wrapped my hands around his thighs but let him take the wheel.

His muscles flexed deliciously beneath my fingers as he pushed against my throat, pulling back for a moment so I could inhale, and then starting over again. His moans of pleasure grew louder each time, and I heard what sounded like my name on his lips. Then, his hands were tangled in my hair and he was pulling me up to him.

His eyes were dark and unfocused, but our bodies knew what to do. As soon as I was standing, I wrapped my legs around his waist at the same time Gabriel pressed my back against the wall. He was already hard and ready at my opening, so it only took a small thrust for him to be inside me. He worked in and out of me, pushing in further every time, and I dug my heels into his lower back, pressing him in deeper.

I had never been with a man as big as Gabriel. A man who made me feel delicate, who could hold me up without his arms shaking and giving out halfway through. I drug my fingernails across his back as he finally slid all the way into me. I had never felt so full, and I tipped forward and bit into his shoulder, trying to stifle the noises pouring out of me. With every thrust, my body banged back against the wall, and part of me wondered what my neighbor could hear, but another part of me couldn’t care less. My body clenched around him, savoring every inch of his length as he slowly pulled out of me and then slammed back in. His hips ground against me, pressing on my most sensitive area with every thrust, slowly driving me crazy. I tightened my legs around his hips until it was a wonder he could move at all. I was like a Venus Flytrap, closing around the one I wanted to devour.

“Harder,” I whispered, lips pressed to Gabriel’s ear.

He stiffened, froze for a moment, and then suddenly, I was on the floor with Gabriel hovering above me. He slid my legs from around his waist until my knees were resting on his shoulders, and then he pushed into me again. It was the deepest connection I’d ever felt, and I wanted to pull him to me, to reach out and run my nails down his sides, but Gabriel had me pinned. My knees were pressed against my chest as he hammered into me, and both of my hands were captured above my head with one of his own. I was helpless against the onslaught, my body aching and wanting and needing as he drilled me into the carpet.

My body responded quickly. The wave rose inside of me, lapping against my insides, and there was no teasing. No uncertainty about whether it would crash over me or not. It was a smooth climax. Up, up, up. And then, down, down, down.

I arched my back as I came a second time, my stomach tensing, legs quivering, hips stretching up from the floor to meet his thrusts halfway. Gabriel began to grunt with every movement, his breath hot on my face, and then he slammed into me and held there. Our bodies fused together in passion. He swam above me, a silhouette against the overhead light in the ceiling, and I could feel him twitching, warmth spreading inside of me.

As the last waves of pleasure tumbled through us both, I slid my legs away from his shoulders and wrapped them around his waist, holding him to me, not ready for the moment to be over. When he finally collapsed against me, his muscled weight pressing me into the floor, I trailed my fingers along his shoulder blades and down the deep ridges along either side of his back, pressing into the dips as though there was paint there, coaxing the imaginary color into the perfect shade of golden brown.