Chapter Text
It was no surprise at all that the “emergency” that Rafayel had texted you about simply did not exist.
When you arrive, you find the door open- as usual- and enter. “Rafayel?” you call into the overcast, cavernous room, but the only response is the storm of wingbeats as the gulls on the open windowsill take flight at the sudden noise. You can’t help a tiny twinge of guilt at the thought of them flying out into a thunderstorm for fear of you, but you shake it off, closing your umbrella and setting it against the wall by the door.
You venture further in, dropping your bag on a small table strewn with paintbrushes near the back of the room. These brushes seem to have offended their erstwhile master in some way, as the ends appear splintered and the bristles are uncleaned. You snort softly at the image in your mind of Rafayel scolding these brushes and perhaps banishing them to this particular table as punishment for whatever crimes he imagines they have committed.
A crack of thunder covers the few footsteps it takes to cross to and push open the bedroom door.
Rafayel is splayed out on the floor, arm behind his head as he stares at the ceiling.
It isn’t a surprise at all, and perhaps that’s what annoys you most. “Rafayel? I thought you said there was an emergency.”
He doesn’t even deign to look at you. “There is,” he says glumly.
“Oh, really?” You step further into the room, then crouch next to him. “I don’t see any blood.” You take his chin in your hand and turn his face toward you, and he finally meets your eyes with a sullen stare. “You don’t seem injured. I don’t see wanderers or anyone else threatening you.” You let go of his chin with a scoff and stand. “In short, Rafayel, I don’t see an emergency at all.”
You catch the barest glimpse of irritation in his eyes as you turn away. “You wouldn’t,” he huffs. You stop mid-step, looking back over your shoulder at him. He’s half sat up on his elbows now, watching you leave. “It’s not the kind of injury you would notice.”
You turn back. You can’t help yourself. Concern and guilt war within you as you reach out a hand to him. He raises an eyebrow at you, but takes it, and you haul him up just to push him back towards the bed. “Lie down where I can take a look,” you say. He goes along with it, perching on the edge of the bed as you step closer, then lying back when you lightly press his shoulder. “Where are you hurt?” you ask, and he hesitates. He bites his lip- distracting- and glances away.
You glance dubiously down at his thin white linen shirt. He doesn’t look injured. His pants are also white, thin linen, and you can’t help the slight flush that rises to your cheeks at how little they leave to the imagination.
“Rafayel,” you sigh, “tell me where.” He hesitates again, so you roll your eyes and start to turn away.
He sits up, lightning fast— too fast to be truly hurt— and grabs your hand in his. “Wait.” He pulls you back and places your hand over his heart. “Here.” Those fascinating eyes of his are as serious as he ever is. The red and blue of them is shadowed, and he truly does look pained.
“Your heart?” you ask, pressing your hand into his chest to feel. His heartbeat is steady. He brings his other hand up and presses your hand into his chest with both of his.
“Yes. It missed you.”
Despite the manipulative way he got you here, you can’t help the way the confession makes your heart flutter. “Oh, really?”
“Really.” Rafayel flops backward onto the bed and covers his eyes with the back of his hand. “It won’t stop complaining about it. How am I supposed to find any inspiration with such a distraction?”
The corners of your lips quirk up against your will. “Oh, so now you’re using me as an excuse.”
One eye peeks through those elegant fingers. “It isn’t an excuse.”
“Uh huh.” You carefully maneuver your way onto the bed next to him, sitting with your hip near his shoulder, then put one hand on the other side of his head so you can lean over him. Your hair brushes against his shoulder and he pulls his hand away from his face to look at you fully. “Well, I’m here. Are you inspired now?”
There is a glint of mischief in his eyes. “Perhaps,” he says, and reaches up to tuck your hair behind your ear. “A true artist never tells.”
You huff a tiny laugh that stirs the hair on his forehead, and then his hand is caressing your neck.
“I was more inspired by that blush on your cheeks earlier,” he says softly— knowingly— and you can’t help either the way your eyes drift shut or the heat that rises to your face. He pulls you closer so your forehead is touching his. “What could possibly have made you blush about my emergency, hmm?” he whispers close to your ear, and goosebumps rise on your arms at the same time you let out a shuddering breath.
Your elbow that’s come to rest on his chest feels the rumble of his deep chuckle. “Oh, Miss Bodyguard, you are so adorable when you’re flustered.”
You feel the soft trace of his lips against your ear. “I think,” he says softly, “Maybe you came here hoping to land in my bed, hmm?”
You scoff and pull away. “You called me.”
He shrugs. “Semantics.”
You look down at him and narrow your eyes. “Maybe you called me here hoping I’d end up in your bed.”
“Guilty.”
It’s the guileless way he admits it that takes the wind out of your sails and stops you from getting up and marching out immediately.
“You could just tell the truth, you know,” you say, flopping down onto the bed next to him.
“If I’d said that, you wouldn’t have come,” he says.
You hum noncommittally, closing your eyes. You might have. You certainly aren’t immune to his charms. He does not need to know that, however.
“Besides,” he says, sitting up. “I didn’t lie. I truly was having a crisis of inspiration.” You feel him lean over on the mattress. Then you feel the swipe of something wet along your cheek.
Your eyes fly open and you raise your hand to see what it is, but Rafayel catches your hand and pins it to the bed. “Oh no you don’t. You aren’t going to ruin my masterpiece before I’ve even begun.”
You see the wet paint on his other hand.
“Rafayel,” you grit out, actually annoyed now.
He makes a disapproving noise. “I simply needed a different canvas, it seems. And here you are.” He fixes you with a stern glare. “Now don’t move.”
You fake a deep breath and let it out. “Rafayel, I am not a canvas.”
“Of course you are,” he says, letting go of you and standing. He strips off his shirt, then grabs a messy palette of paint off his night stand. “Anything is a canvas if you want it to be.”
He sits back on the bed next to you, then swipes his index finger through a medium blue and wipes it down your cheek. You shiver, and the glint of interest in his eyes keeps you watching him as he chooses color after color and decorates the side of your face and neck with painstaking focus.
You watch the play of muscles in his arm and chest as he leans over you with each swipe of paint. You notice the way his eyes catalogue your every reaction. When your breath hitches, his gaze sharpens. After a while, he sits back slightly to inspect his work.
“Hmmm.” He leans forward, his breath mingling with yours. “It’s missing something.”
You raise your eyebrows.
His clean hand comes up to caress the unpainted cheek. He leans forward and ghosts his lips over yours. Your breath catches, and you feel the smile against your lips as he pauses, then deepens the kiss.
He pulls away all too soon.
There’s a smear of blue across the left side of his chin, but he doesn’t seem to care. “Perfect,” he declares. “The canvas merely needed a little color.”
You feel your face flush a little more when you notice the way he’s looking you over intently. He reaches up and unbuttons the top button of your shirt, smearing paint all over the white fabric. “Rafayel!”
“Shhh. I’m not done yet.” He unbuttons the next button. “Be a good canvas and stay still.”
You can’t help the way your breath comes unevenly as he meticulously bares you from the waist up. He leaves the shirt under you, but stands and tilts his head. Then he snaps his fingers. “Oh, yeah.” He turns and fishes around in a flower pot on his dresser and produces several paint brushes. He sets them next to you on the bed, then moves toward your feet. “Shoes, in bed? A bodyguard ought to be more professional.”
You scoff. “If I was more professional, I would not be in your bed at all.”
“Touché,” he says, lifting your foot and beginning to unlace your boot. “Nevertheless, we can’t fix that now, can we?”
You roll your eyes at him.
One boot is removed, then the other, then your socks. Your skirt, he makes quick work of, and before you know it you’re entirely bare.
He sits next to you on the bed, facing you, his hip against your hip. He trails elegant fingertips from your collarbone to your navel, and you shudder slightly. “Is the canvas to your liking?” you manage to ask.
He hums, tilting his head. “I think I can work with it,” he says. Then there’s the feather-like sensation of a brush being dragged along your right side and you moan. “It is quite a noisy canvas, however. Very distracting.”
You choke on a laugh, and then you feel wet paint being smeared under your breast and down. Your eyes fall shut and your back arches. Rafayel uses his clean hand to press down on your stomach. “Didn’t I say to be still?” he asks, amused.
You open your eyes just enough to glare at him. “You try being still…”
He leans forward and kisses you, his forearm pinning your chest down as the thumb with the wet paint brushes across your nipple. You moan helplessly, and he uses the opportunity to slip his tongue into your mouth, giving your tongue the briefest caress before pulling back.
“A very distracting canvas,” he declares, sitting back on his heels. He picks up a paint brush and dips it into a color on the palette.
“Now hold still.”
The soft strokes of the brush and the wet slide of the paint have you gasping and moaning in no time, but you do your best to be still. Every now and then, Rafayel dips a finger into the paint on your body and swirls it around, blending colors. You tremble each time he grazes your nipples, and you feel yourself getting wetter and wetter as the minutes drag on under his intense focus.
There’s something deliriously wonderful about being the object of such intensity.
He’s so beautiful like this. The dreamy look in his eyes and the soft fall of his hair are so lovely. No painting he could create would ever be as beautiful as he himself is.
She wonders if he knows that.
“Hmm,” he says, tapping his brush against his cheek. A smudge of greenish paint is left on his cheek. He’s left one side of your stomach as bare as he left the same side of your face. He trails a clean finger firmly down your clean side. You shudder lightly. “It’s missing a color,” he muses. The finger trails lower. Your breath catches when it grazes just above…
“Rafayel,” you choke out. The intensity in his eyes when they meet yours tells you he knows exactly what he’s doing.
His finger dips lower, swirling through your wetness.
“Very unprofessional,” he observes.
Your back arches as he increases the pressure right where you need it.
“I suppose an artist must work with what they’re given,” he says, then scoots down the bed so he can bend down. His finger is replaced with his face and he sighs contentedly against your thigh before licking up into you, and you moan helplessly. Your hand curls into his hair as he moves his arms under your legs, pulling you closer and forcing your knees up over his shoulders. Your heels press into his back when you arch hard against his mouth. He laughs, a deeply satisfied masculine sound that sends a thrill through you. He manages to get his fingers in you, curling them and stroking in a rhythm with his tongue. You gasp and shudder, utterly helpless under his assault.
“Rafayel!” you moan, and he pauses for a moment.
“Shhhhh.” He nuzzles your thigh before turning back and rubbing his nose against your clit, hard.
You cry out, arching hard against him, and when he presses a sucking kiss to that same spot and swirls his fingers inside you, you come hard against his face.
The shuddering waves of your pleasure distract you from what he’s doing, but you know he’s shed the rest of his clothing when he presses you into the mattress with his whole body and kisses you soundly.
“That blush looks so lovely with your paint,” he says softly. You can feel his hard length against you. Then another kiss— slow, sweet, and tender. “Do you want me?”
“Yes.”
That seems to be all he needs to hear.
He tangles the fingers of one hand with yours, and uses the other one to line himself up with you. The glide of his cock into you is sublime. He braces his hand next to your head and pushes up just enough to watch himself sink into you.
It’s his turn to shudder and gasp. “Fuck,” he says, inelegantly, and his forehead falls against yours. He takes up a torturously slow rhythm, seeming to savor every second of every stroke.
You stretch up enough to lightly bite the shell of his ear. He falters, moaning, the hand tangled with yours tightening almost painfully. “Fuck.” His eyes open and seem to glow blue with the intensity of his gaze. “You’re so perfect,” he says, and you clench around him at the raw emotion in his voice.
He picks up the pace, pushing up onto his forearms, and you plant your feet on the mattress to arch against him, the friction driving your pleasure higher and higher with each thrust. He groans and rises up onto his knees, pulling out and stroking his length.
You would be disappointed at the sudden loss if it weren’t one of the most erotic things you’ve ever seen. He’s smeared with blue and green and white paint down one side of his body, and it’s glorious because it’s your paint and your wetness glistening on his chin and cock.
His wrist moves faster, the head of his cock appearing and disappearing in his grip and the fingers of his free hand clutching the outside of your thigh. He finishes with a gasp and a shudder, a stream of cum mingling in the paint on your stomach. The second spurt is definitely aimed, and lands at the edge of the body paint.
You’ve become his canvas, indeed.
Rafayel looks both breathless and smug. He trails his fingers through the mess he’s left on you. “Beautiful,” he declares.
He trails his fingers through his cum and down, down, down, and you gasp as he pushes them into you, swirling his fingers very deliberately and causing you to moan at the intense pleasure that courses through you.
“Well, that is certainly one way to paint a picture,” a familiar voice drawls.
Every muscle in your body freezes and your gaze flies to the open doorway, and to the man leaning nonchalantly against the doorframe.