Page 26 of The King's Pawn

I swept the brush across a new painting again now, and narrowed my eyes at the silhouette on a whitewashed background. No. Still not fucking right.

I’d trashed three attempts in three days, while Killian had been busy with the business—hisbusiness. He had balls to try and steal the family legacy, but it was going to take more than bullying my father to rule the Back Bay Mafia as a king. If anyone could do it, Killian could.

I had my ear to the ground, I heard the chatter. Most everyone talked in the clubs, ignoring me. Thinking I didn’t matter. Just the boss’s waste-of-space son. But I heard it all, heard how Killian was making moves, and people were taking notice. Some good, some bad.

I dashed the canvas with a few more brush strokes. No, still not right. Fuck.

It was no use. I needed the man himself in front of me to paint him right. But there was no way the big gorilla would volunteer to model.

Scooping up my new phone with paint-stained fingers, I tapped out a text message.

Need u

What’s wrong?

Noah?

I’m coming over.

Twenty minutes later, his heavy-handed knock sounded at my door. “Open up.”

God, I loved that growl. If I waited, he’d kick the door in. But as I didn’t want the hassle of replacing it, I opened up and found him with one arm braced against the frame, sunglasses shielding his eyes, and that mouth tightly pinched with a frown.

His gaze roamed, checking for whatever that fixer-mind of his looked for. Weapons probably. Then it landed on the paintbrush in my hand. “You didn’t reply.”

I shrugged and sauntered back into my loft apartment, stepping into the sunlight pouring through the tall wall of windows. “Needed to get you here, didn’t I?”

“What’s so urgent?”

“I’m lonely. Bored. My arm hurts. I wanna see you. Pick one.”

He closed the door behind him and crossed the living area. Then he shrugged off his jacket and searched for a spot to toss it that wasn’t covered with half-finished art, pots of old, rigid brushes, or my discarded clothes. “Jesus, you ever clean up?”

“This is clean.” Back behind the easel, I dipped my brush and watched him from the corner of my eye.

He dumped his jacket between two unfinished portraits and flicked off his sunglasses. When his gaze skipped to me, it landed like an electrical spark. I’d always mistaken that heat for hate, but it had been hunger all along. I smiled back, and welcomed his gaze roaming over my chest, under the untucked shirt and down my hips, hidden by low-slung sweatpants.

“What are you working on?” he asked.

“You.”

His right eyebrow arched. He started making his way over. “Can I see?”

Nerves fluttered, making me swallow. As I mostly socialized with assholes and murderers, nobody much cared to see my work. A few one-night stands had gushed over some older paintings, but the praise from meaningless hook-ups had been just as empty.

Killian stopped beside be, folded his arms, and fell quiet. More quiet than his usual stubborn brooding.

I eyed the art and tried to see it as he would. The rough, sweeping brush lines and dramatic strokes had captured his grumpy seriousness but I’d tried and failed to catch his secret softness too. Mostly because it was as elusive as his smile.

“You’re good, you know,” he finally said.

“You mean I have enough shitty father issues and childhood trauma to make a go of being an artist?”

“We’ll work on that,” he said, mouth ticking.

I snorted, then eyed his likeness in the painting. I never much cared for what anyone thought of my art. They’d mostly used the veiled compliments to get in with the King family. Until now. It mattered now; it mattered what Killian thought. It always had. “You really like it? You’re not just saying that?”

“Why the fuck would I stroke your ego, when we both know you do that all by yourself.”