I still hadn’t gotten used to having sex. It might have been my upbringing, but all the women in my world seemed so uptight and reserved. I thought there was something wrong with enjoying what Elis and I did together.

“Dev, stop that,” he said, peeling my hands from my face. “I love you. I love being with you. You are so fuckin’ amazing. I wish you would be freer when your clothing is on.”

He kissed my lips, and I tasted myself on him, something I had experienced many times. It was one of the ways Elis tried to loosen my inhibitions. He liked to spread my arousal on my lips and ask me to lick it off. Usually, when we were in the middle of sex, I loved and relished it, but now I felt like I was doing something wrong.

“Stop it, Devlynn. You’re my girl. You will always be my girl. My girl has to know she is fuckin’ amazing.” He kissed me again, this time a sweet, chaste kiss. “I love you,” he whispered on my lips.

“I love you, too.”

“I’m gonna get going. My mom made dinner tonight—sounded important. I’ll text you later.” He smiled as he grabbed my panties off the floor, bringing them to his nose and winking at me as he put them in his pocket. “I’m gonna need these later when I jerk off.”

***

That was the second to last time I saw him. He broke up with me a week later, leaving me heartbroken and angry.

Chapter 5

Elis

I went back to the wall the next day.

Only, I didn’t get to check on the progress of my artwork, just the takedown, as city workers scrubbed a section of my tag off before a second crew followed up with white paint rollers.

All that fresh paint made my fingertips itch to tag it in something colorful again.

I swallowed, edging to the corner of the brick building across the street, my eyes following a line of penthouse windows at the top of a limestone building. Dozens of black iron balconies in a row, the perfect canvas for my handiwork.

But that wasn't why I was there. The real reason was her. I hardly wanted to admit it to myself. I always checked up on my work after I finished a piece—I liked the temporary nature of what I did—but now, instead of focusing on the graffiti, I was focused on the girl who lived in one of these buildings upstairs, a Park Avenue princess.

I frowned, counting the windows along the top row of apartments obsessively. Twenty-four, all equally spaced. Some with heavy drapes, some wide-open into the lives of their owners. Which one was hers?