Chapter 9

Matt

"All right, so show me how to make the delicious brownies, and promise me that they're completely calorie free. I'm trying to watch my girlish figure." I shook my head like I had flowing hair and enjoyed the sly smile on her face far more than I should have.

"Let's just go on a run tomorrow morning and we'll be set." She bent over to pull a pan from under the cabinet, giving me a great view of her rear.

"You should go change. Get out of your work clothes and put on something comfortable." I moved up to the counter and took the pan from her. "Tell me what to do and I'll get the dessert going."

"You haven't changed yet." Her eyes moved across me, leaving me to feel more exposed than I thought possible. My need to run was driving through me at breakneck speed, but the promise of having a little bit of fun with someone I'd fantasized as mine wasn't going to let me take one step in the opposite direction. I was stuck. Time to own it.

"I'll change in a minute. Go do what I told you to do." I nodded toward the bedroom and smiled. "Brownies in the bottom or cookies go down first?"

She handed me the log of cookie dough. "This first, then you lay down the Oreos across the cookie dough. Then mix the brownies up in a bowl and pour them over. I'll turn the oven on. Don't get burned."

"Hardy-Har." I watched her go and got busy on making the dessert. It'd been a long time since I'd spent the evening with someone I wanted to bed. Four years to be exact. I was fine with my withdrawal from women up to that point. It suddenly seemed like far too long to go without, or maybe it was just something about Erica.

She returned a few minutes later in a t-shirt that fell off the side of her shapely shoulder and a pair of yoga pants. My body hardened in all the right places as I let myself imagine the idea of running my hands all over her and memorizing every sweet curve.

"My turn?" I walked past her as she bent over and opened the oven.

"Yeah. These look great. I'm surprised. Most men can't follow directions to save their lives."

I glanced back and stifled a groan. The woman was beyond perfect. Why was I worried about giving myself over to her again? Right, she'd quickly own me, and I'd not want to come up for a breath.

"I'm not most men." I turned the corner and walked down the hall. "Mind if I use your bedroom?"

"No problem."

I grabbed my bag and took it down the hall, making sure to stop and check out the pictures on the wall as I did. There were several of her and an older man that I had to assume was her father. The other ones were various paintings. Her signature was scribbled on the bottom right corner of most of them.

"Wow," I mumbled and reached up to run my fingers over a dark red painting. There was no definitive form, but the colors reminded me of violent passion or deep anger. I had to ask her about it after we got drunk on sugar.

I finally made my way back to the bedroom, and stopped just inside the door, letting my eyes acclimate to the darkness. It almost seemed a travesty to turn the light on. A large skylight window sat just above the bed, bathing the white sheets in an ethereal glow. I could imagine her lying naked under the sheets, her arms before her as she rested on her side. The thick swell of her hip and her pretty dark blond hair splayed out over the pillows.

My body throbbed as tendrils of pleasure danced around in my stomach. I hadn't been so turned on in a long ass time. It took me a few minutes to shake the need to turn on my heel and attack her in the kitchen. She wouldn't appreciate it and honestly, even though I knew she was attracted to me, I wasn't sure how she felt about aggressive men. She wouldn't expect me to be one for sure. That was the hardest part. Shocking her with another side of myself that I worked to keep under lock and key.

"Did you get lost back here?" She stopped in the doorway to the bedroom and flipped on the light.

"No." I glanced over my shoulder. "I was just enjoying the serenity of the room. It's chilly in here and this light in the ceiling is beautiful. I love it."

"Oh, thanks. Feel free to use anything you need to this weekend. Mi casa es su casa." She turned and walked out.

I threw my suitcase onto the bed and opened it, pulling out a pair of sleeping pants and trying to decide if a t-shirt would be a good idea. I wasn't exactly in the best shape of my life, but I was still proud of the way I looked. I was still a cocky Bryant at the core.

I walked back through the house, stopping to let my eyes move across the crimson painting that first caught my attention.

"Did you paint this?" I leaned in and smiled. "I like it. A lot."

"Yeah, I did." Her voice told me something hid behind her response.

I glanced down the hall to covet her for a moment. "Tell me about it. I want to know what lies behind it."

She let out a soft sigh and moved toward me, stopping and taking it off the wall.

"I painted it four years ago when I graduated college." She shrugged and started to put it back.

I reached out and gripped her wrist lightly. "You might have painted it four year ago, but you're still holding back the story. I'm an artist myself, remember? I know quite clearly the well from which we draw out our art. This is intense passion or burning anger. Which?"

"Can it be both?" She put the picture back.

I didn't answer, nor did I take my eyes off the picture.

"You're not going to relent, are you?" She reached out and brushed her finger across it.

"No. I wish I could." I moved behind her and ran my hands over her shoulders. It was dangerous to even touch her, but I wanted to hear the story, yearned to know that there was something more than she was presenting to everyone else. She was a woman's woman. The kind of girl who decided she was going to rule the world and fucking did it.

"I dated the same guy from sixth grade through my senior year of college. I figured we were going to be together forever. The night he called things off was the most painful and yet freeing night of my life. I'd grown comfortable in my relationship with him. There was no passion there and I was suffocating."

"But to be rejected by him left you angry?" I pressed my chest to her back and pulled her closer as I breathed in softly.

"Yes. I thought my heart was going to bleed out that night. I've never cried so hard in all my life. I haven't cried since." She pressed against me and crossed her arms over her chest. "It was a death of sorts."

"I can understand that." I brushed my lips by the back of her silky hair and released her. "I paint from a well of various emotions too. I love that this has more than one within it. It pulled me in immediately. I had to know what drove you to do it."

"The need for white-hot passion." She turned to face me and glanced up.

"Then why paint it red?"

She smiled and reached out to touch my chest. "Because most people think passion is colored in crimson and pinks. Only a true artist knows that the very absence of color is the deepest desire of the painter."

I reached out and touched the side of her face, wanting to take her down the hall and let her find what she needed in me.

"Because it's the beginning for us? It’s the blank canvas?" I took a step closer as the sugary goodness of the brownies reached my senses.

"That's exactly right. Anything that happens going forward is ours to build upon. To change and make perfect."

"And what if perfection is a myth?" I slid my fingers into her hair as my heart raced to break free from my chest.

"I don't believe that. You don't either." She slid her hands around my waist and pulled me in tightly. Her eyes moved down to my lips and I couldn't hold back another second.

The groan that left her as I pressed my lips to hers drove desire through the center of my stomach and left my skin itching for her nails to race across it.

She slid her hands up my back and opened her mouth, brushing her tongue by mine as I leaned down and pressed her to the wall beside her pretty painting. My free hand slid over her hips and down her outer thigh before moving back up to slide up her side and up to cup her breasts. She was more than a handful, and I wanted so fucking bad to strip her bare and worship each of her tits before pressing my tongue to every crevice of her body. Hunger raged through me in slow methodical waves.

"More," she whispered against my lips and lifted her leg, looping it over my hip and sliding her hands down to cup my ass.

I ground into her and leaned down to consume her again. She smelled like heaven, something clean and minty mixed with arousal.

The buzzer on the stove went off, and I pressed my forehead to hers and panted softly alongside her for a few seconds.

"Brownies," she mumbled and pulled away from me, walking quickly to the kitchen.

I turned and put my back against the wall as I brushed my palm over my erection. I gathered my thoughts and forced the caveman back into the cave before walking into the kitchen.

"Where are your recent pieces?"

"I'm sorry?" She worked on cutting the brownies even though they were hot.

"Your paintings that you've done recently. I want to see them."

"I haven't done anything for a few years." She turned and handed me a plate before getting a fork and extending that to me too. "Try it. I think you'll like it."

"Got any vanilla ice cream?" I gave her a cheeky grin.

She chuckled. "For you? Yeah, I'll share my ice cream."

"I feel special." I sat down at the table and couldn't seem to take my eyes off of her. I had to tread lightly or she would think I was just like my brother. As much as I wished I were, it simply wasn't me to sleep with a woman that I had no intention of creating a long-term relationship with. I wasn't sure that woman was Erica just yet. She drove me mad with lust and left me feeling like a love-sick boy, but in all honesty, I didn't know her at all.

"You should." She sat down and put a scoop of ice cream on my plate. "I love painting and drawing, but I try to use that passion to fuel the work I do for your father now at M&B. It is possible to transfer your passions over to the working world. You just need a supportive boss like I have in Kent."

"I guess, but he's not your father. I think it would be a different answer for me."

"I don't think so, but that's for you to decide for yourself."

"Why do you want me to come work for you?" I took a big bite of the brownie and sat back, groaning loudly. "Holy shit. That has to be the best thing I've ever tasted."

She laughed. "Well, now you know how to make them."

"Answer my question, Erica." I licked my fork, loving how closely she watched me.

"I think we would be a good pair. I'd be lying if I didn't say I was interested in a relationship with you. Even a solid friendship would be great." She shrugged. "I think you could find yourself here."

"You think I'm still looking for myself?"

"Aren't we all?"

I smiled and took another big bite. She had a point.