Jo didn't stop to let Harry catch up. She had  to relieve Audrey or at least have a conversation with her about whether she could stay the night. If she stopped for Harry, well, if she stopped, they were going to have it out or make love in the parking lot of the university and nobody had time for that.

Harry caught her once she was in her car, and rapped at her window hard. Jo rolled it down for him and winced at the anger on his face.

"What the fuck was that?" he asked and breathed through his nose, a bull in their china closet relationship.

"What? What was 'what' Harry?" Why was he out here yelling at her? She had done nothing wrong. If anything, he should be in there yelling at Colin. Oh, that was it!

"He had his fucking hands all over you and you stood there." He clutched the side of the door, "And I had to stand there to and watch it, all of it." He hung his head.

"Harry, I told him off." She measured her voice, tried to calm him down. "And I didn't let him do anything, I didn't want to make a scene. And you coming over would have been just that. It would give us away. Don't be stupid!" She nearly bit her tongue off then, that was not a way to stop a brewing fight.

"I'm not stupid, I'm fucking pissed off Jo!"

She dared to put her hand over his on the window frame and he flinched a bit before letting her touch him. "You have no reason to be mad! Ok? Nothing happened, and I told him no, not ever. Now, I have to go. I'll try to come over tomorrow—"

"Tonight." Harry shook his head.

"I'm not sure that I can come tonight, lover. Zoe-"

"Ask Audrey to stay." Harry's eyes singed her skin and she knew it was anger, mostly, but he was simmering like a pot on a stove and it caused a companion low boil in her.

"Ok, I'll try. But if not now, I'll come by tomorrow, we need to talk-"

"Yeah, about your twat of an ex! And why he's fucking allowed to touch you in public and I'm not even allowed to look at you too long!"

"Stop yelling!" she seethed. "Yes, about that twat! But also about your mother," she chided.

"My mum! What about her?" He looked genuinely bewildered, but it was much better than the green-eyed devil who was taking him and her senses over a moment ago.

"I think she knows, or at least suspects! You slipped Harry, go, say your goodbyes, don't drink any more and let me try to come over." She really wanted to kiss him, kiss it better, but that was not going to help their snowballing chances of exposure. "I gotta go."

He leaned into her and she clutched his cheek, to keep him away. Harry's eyes squeezed closed and when he opened them they were that emerald they went when he was incensed. " I love you." Jo tried to comfort them.

Harry did that thing he did, that made her livid sometimes, where he nodded, fucking nodded when she told him how she felt. He backed off the car and stood against the one opposite with his arms crossed.

His whole stance was surly and frustrated and she wanted to smack him. The she wanted to kiss him and draw out his loving words. A nod?

Jo spent the entire drive home thinking about when he nodded at her declarations. It had been a good long while since he had pulled that on her. At least since his birthday. Her grand gesture had convinced him better, and her willingness to stay after the uncomfortable weekend with her son. When he saw what she risked. And all it took was a jackass move from her jackass ex to go back to him nodding at her I love you's. What the fuck was that?

Jo looked up with utter surprise when she found that she was in her own driveway. She must have been so in her own head that she's missed all of the landmarks that lined the way home. Too busy thinking about all of the landmarks in her relationship and the fact that they had wound up in some damned roundabout where she felt like they were just past the beginning instead of at the turn of the corner, to notice the actual road she was on.

Jo tried to come in quietly and found her steps surer than the drive would suggest. She was afraid that her blackout on the drive was not just her thoughts, but that she had had more or something stronger than she meant. She was especially glad she had nursed Colin's first Old Fashioned and disregarded the second. She should have thrown it in his face.

Oh fuck, she had nursed Colin a bit too, maybe. Not on purpose, but to keep the peace. It still would not have done to cause a scene and slap him or throw alcohol in his stupid blue eyes, but she had been decent to him all night, and men were stupid and misconstrued niceness with interest. Her ex certainly seemed to have. She just wasn't used to that utter stupidity anymore. Not with Harry. He was careful with her and she was so on green light for him anymore, she was a speedway

Jo had been truly confused about Colin touching her, it had taken her a minute to process. Longer to respond, and maybe Harry wasn't aware of how angry rejected men could be.

In this case Harry seemed to have misconstrued her politeness with interest too. Did he think she wanted to be around Colin, welcomed his advances?

Did Harry feel rejected? Or powerless? Or? What?

She still felt like he was overreacting, but was sure she needed to see him. She was concerned about his mother and caught up watching him shine, Colin had just been the gnat at her ear, but he seemed a bigger fly in Harry's ointment.

Jo walked into the house full of thoughts and found her babysitter passed out and a quiet room flashing with the odd light from the muted television casting blue hues onto the walls before pitching back to black.

Audrey was curled up on the couch, her hand over her face and a book open nearby. She was the sweetest girl.

Jo found herself smoothing Audrey's light brown hair behind her ear, is this what her Zoe would be like at 20? She hoped so.

"You're home? What time's it?" Audrey stretched and moved to sit up.

"It's 1 AM, love. I was wondering, can you stay? My boyfriend would really like me to come over. He was at the event and well..." She bit her lip and was feeling guilty in a few ways and feeling pissy about it because that was ridiculous, she had done nothing wrong at all. "You're welcome to the guest room, and I can fetch you a night shirt and toothbrush. I'll pay you extra for these hours."

"Course I'll stay Miss Jo, but I have work in the morning at nine. So I'll need some time." Audrey was sitting up and closing her book and making moves to the guest bedroom.

"That's fine! I'm going to try to beat Zoe waking up. Thank you so much love, let me get you some things."

Jo was feeling guilty for leaving Zoe overnight, and guilty for Harry over Colin and pissed she felt either. Mostly pissed right now, she couldn't find a damn toothbrush. She knew she had one from the dentist. Ahhh, there. She grabbed a long white t-shirt, making sure it wasn't Harry's. That would not be ok. Just the thought made her jealous.

She didn't like that thought at all. Audrey, or any other woman, in Harry's clothes. His bed, his studio, her mind whispered and she felt her eyes go extra green from their muddy-colored hazel.

After setting Audrey up, that was what Jo focused on on the way to Harry's. Jo turned it over and over again, how it had felt to imagine Audrey in Harry's shirt, for just a moment. How terribly it made her feel and how she had to stop it, mentally push Audrey out of it, away from any mark of ownership from Harry.

By the time she got to his door, she knew they still needed to talk, but she was feeling less angry and more sympathetic. Audrey had zero claim on Harry and Jo was jealous over a t shirt. But Colin shared a child with her. And she'd married him. Jo didn't know any of Harry's previous partners and she never felt like she needed to. Right now, she was sure she didn't want to. He belonged to her.

But she belonged to him, just as much. So she hadn't even thought about Colin or awkwardness or jealousy. Harry being jealous of Colin did not compute in her head, because Harry owned her body and soul, without the piece of paper.

But Colin had marks of ownership Harry wasn't allowed.

Her knock was hesitant and Harry answered the door with just joggers on. He had taken off his monkey suit and she was sorry she didn't get to undo the little flower tie he had been wearing. She realized he had red on one hand and that he must have spent the hour and a half it took her to get here painting.

He didn't kiss her hello, didn't even say it, just turned in that frenzied way he did sometimes, though this felt like the nod that had incensed her before. It was a purposeful, petulant move, a sleight.

Jo followed him into the studio and found him conjuring a rocky coast, his woman made of stone, far off, and facing away. His perspective lesson had done him well.

Harry already was painting again, and he had turned the music up too, loud. What was she doing here if they were not going to talk?

Jo let it go on for a few minutes, maybe he wanted to finish a part of his piece. He stared at and put paint on his canvas and ignored her presence for long minutes. After 8 minutes of silence that was thick as fog, she decided direct communication was needed.

The ridges on the dial of the old boom box, were emphasized and it only took a couple clicks to make it quiet in there.

"Harry?" She called and he kept ignoring.

"Harry?" Nothing.

So she walked up and took the brush, the fan she had given him for his birthday, out of his hand.

"What the fuck, Jo!" He swore at her, he didn't curse at her out of bed. "I'm clearly busy."

"Then why the fuck am I here, while my kid is in her room 30 minutes away and Audrey is on my couch?"

"If you don't want to be here, then go home, Jo! Or go to Colin's, for fuck's sake!" He turned to her and his face was red and his eyes were electric.

"What the fuck are you on about? Why would I ever go to Colin's?" She cast her hands out to the walls around her.

"Oh, I dunno? Maybe because you looked mighty comfortable with his bloody hands all over you in front of the whole of the university staff!" he shot back.

"Harry, you're being ridiculous, I'm supposed to what? Smack him across the face, at his place of work? The father for my child?" He was being so immature about this.

"That's how you think of him?"

"What?" She didn't follow him around that bend.

"That's how you think of him? Like, in your head, as the father of your child?" Now he looked hurt and Jo was grasping at the straws she was poking him with in her hands.

"Harry? What is wrong lover? I told him off and I'm her—"

"Yeah, here, hiding out with me, but never where anybody else can see, and lord knows I'll never get a title like his." He sighed and hung his head and she could tell he was still incensed, his shoulders still shrugged up high, but he seemed sad, frustrated too.

"Harry, what title?" She was a bit lost, and then she thought about the shirt. How a simple t-shirt had made her dig deeper in her drawers, because she didn't want Harry on Audrey in any way. How much more claim did Zoe give Colin?

"Father of your child, ex husband? Husband, you even said to my mum." He sighed.

Had she said it like that? Jo thought she might have.

"I just want to be something to you, like he was." He looked back at the painting, taking his red eyes away from her. They were quiet for a minute while Jo thought about it. Maybe she was ashamed to have another failed relationship, so she had called Colin her husband to his mother, and the father of her child to him. Those were true statements, but only in name, in her heart, well, the only name there was Harry's.

"Harry? Baby," he looked up at that, and she saw a crack in his anger. "You're everything to me! I'm
Not sure how you don't know that." She swore it, but it caused another head shake from him.

"You don't fucking get it, he got you, you wore his ring." He stood up the and his stool hit the ground like a bolt of lightening.

Jo startled, but kept talking. "He didn't get me Harry. Not at all like you. Certainly didn't know me. He was what all I'm supposed to want, need. And was none of what I crave. And now, I'm standing in your studio, lover."

"What good does that do me?" he interrupted. "I can't have you, not really! Only get to borrow you!"

"You have me in a way bloody nobody has ever, apart from my kids. I'm basically on my knees crawling to you, Harry. Over the shattered glass of my life, I'm over her splitting my knuckles begging you to have me, to take me. I thought I had proved it to yo--"

"But I can't claim you!" He yelled. "I want you to be mine."

"So, claim me love, I'm yours, whether I'm brave enough to ink it on my skin or not." She looked at his frustrated face. "What do you need Harry, to make you feel like you own me? Cause you do. That Colin could transform himself into who I thought he was and I'd still look at him like gum on my shoe. Because he's not you."

"I dunno," He wring his hands and looked at her helpless. "Proof, fuck , I dunno, I know you wouldn't wear my ring."

"I would, my love, one day, but I can't yet. And it's rushing Harry, love. But I wear you, all day every day, just beneath my skin." It was too soon to tie a knot between them, at least literally, but she could feel all the binds between them all the time.

He hung his head and looked around his studio, clearly at a loss for what would feel like proof to him, his eyes stopping on the camera, then scanning back to her. His eyebrows flashed. "Documentation," he said, a little shy at first.

She saw the idea spread across his face like jelly on a piece of toast, "Something I'd always have." He looked back at the camera, he must have been working on her pussy, the painted one, because he had mastered the actual one. It was out and he wanted pictures, or she wasn't exactly sure, but willing.

Jo looked at the Nikon with him and went liquid. If he needed it. And she wanted it. "Yes," was all she managed.

He looked at her then and raised a brow, it was a tinge cruel and she remembered that boy who had flirted with her, seen her lusting for him and pushed his advantage, she missed him. Wouldn't trade her golden boy for him, but he was the first taste.

She bit her lip and her head dropped demurely as she looked at him through her lashes. If he needed to own her, Jo'd give him the night of it. And the idea of photographing it, filming it?

It was stupid and reckless and put them in danger.

And was the hottest thing she'd ever contemplated. It even set her body aflame more than the memory of him in the green shirt, or the green of his eyes when she caught him wanking, or gold paint on her body. Jo felt her warmth rush to her center at performing for him, letting him be her director, or her co-star. Rewatching it together, later, over and over. Jo'd bet they were beautiful together. That they were creation together. "What do you want me to do?" She flashed him her wrists.

"Strip, Jo, now. Then stand in the frame, grab the corners, legs spread."

Jo found her hands at her zipper immediately, she could use his help, she hadn't changed like he had, was still wearing the blue dress she had worn earlier. It would be easier if he unzipped her, but she needed to bare herself to him. It had to be for him and he wanted her to do it. He had the camera up and pointed already.

"Picture or?" She asked, her voice a creaky door.

"Video" his was a slam.

Jo nodded, "Are you ready?"she was breathless.

He didn't speak, but smirked.

So she wiggled the zipper into her fingers and brought it down to the base of her spine and let it fall to the substantial curve of her ass and hips then turned and writhed and pushed it down and off. She hadn't worn undergarments. They showed through, it wasn't her habit, and she hoped that if Harry's hand happened to surreptitiously coast over her ass, he'd know and give her a trademarked grin to wet her non-existent panties.

She stopped then, naked, and looked at her heels and at Harry, then her shoes again.

"On," he ordered.

So she walked away from the camera with her heels still on. They were a blue suede and were just uncomfortable enough to emphasize the swell of her ass and flex of her thigh and emphasize the sway of her hips on the way to the heavy gilt frame leaned against the wall.

It was perfect, she fit under it well, and the support of the wall and it's weight allowed Jo to arrange herself as she interpreted his order.

"Like this, Har-Harry?" She cast her eyes at him, hoping to pull back a full net, replete with his praise and desire and hope of relief.

"Ummmhmmm, just like that Jo." He adjusted the camera and sat it on a high stool and took his eyes off of the image of her through the viewfinder and looked at her in living color, and he kept talking. "I've never seen breasts like yours, they're fucking... god I love your tits Jo, paint them in my sleep."

He adjusted himself where she could see him swelling in his sweats. "I think about your shoulders, and it's weird, but they're some boundary. Like,  your fucking eyes are heaven. Jo, I see eternity there, in your eyes, but your body is ....." He put a hand down his pants and she saw him stroke over himself and squeeze hard. "Earth, and I get both. Do I get both Jo?" She watched him stroke more, her eyes glued to his hidden movement.

She was sure she made a sound at that. He smirked and kept talking. Goosebumps spread over her body and her already hard nipples were apt to cut glass. "Your nipples are like cherries. You have to bite them to get to the center of you. I know it gets you in the pit of your stomach. I watch it clench while I do it. And know you're getting wet."

He picked up the camera then, pointed it at her crotch and zoomed in. She was hot a bit before she got there, from his jealous reaction, which she thought she should be ashamed of, but after their fight, and his idea, directions, narration, her thighs were wet and she knew she was the deep pink he told her about, leaking and juicy near the center.

Deep sweet fruit.

"You're wet. I haven't even touched you. Why?"

"Har-Harry, your, your voice." God she couldn't even talk properly, let alone think, "And you have, you have touched me."

"I have, baby, I have," he said. "Are you sodden just on the memory?"

"Yes!" She let go of the frame and started to reach down, her needy pussy empty and even her fingers would do.

"No. Don't touch." He brought the camera up to catch her face while he asked the next question.

"When do you think of? Which fuck I've given you?" Harry had moods in the bedroom and he was occasionally raw, but always reverent. The dominance he was showing was new, and Jo was left gasping over her reaction to it.

"When you painted me!" She gasped out.

"Gold or red?"

"G-gold," she arched her back and she saw the camera drop to take in the new shapes her body made.

"Why that time?" He smirked, he knew that was a transcendent experience, they had talked about it.

"I felt like I was expensive, worthy and precious. It makes me feel like a I have a fever, like I give you fever. Like I'm molten. Golden. I'd never come like that, or lost time like that. The sun rose in me before it did outside. Please, Har-Harry."

"Fuck!" He set the camera on the tripod he pulled out to not have to crane his neck when he was painting, and trained it on her body, adjusted to height and settings, then stood up and made sure she watched while he stripped off the sweats.

They fell to his ankles and he double fisted another squeeze to his red-tipped dick. Harry had an impressive pride, but tonight it was outdoing itself, thick and full, so hard and his heartbeat pulsed at the top. Jo could see it.

He made eye contact with her while he spit over his palm and spread it over his dick as he came behind her and held the frame tight to the wall. He pressed the whole of his body to hers, and slipped his dick into the hole between her legs, that negative space between empty and full. He rubbed over and back three times, Jo canting her hips up and whining to try to find the correct angle. Harry gripped one shoulder and the opposite hip and began arranging her favorably. It took little force to push into her.

Her neck went soft immediately, heavy on her neck. "No, show the camera, show off what I do to you."

"Fuck, Harry!" She strained while he pulled out to the sensitive circle of cells at her gate. He let the ridge of his dick slide in and out, a tiny movement the camera may not have even caught but that left her with little to do but pant. She couldn't writhe, she would lose her grip on the frame. all she could do to release her joy was voice it. She grunted and keened, whispered and laughed. Some of it his name.

"God, Harry!"

"How do I feel?"

"Like," she moaned over a deep thrust. "Like Heaven." His hand crept from her outer hip, on her angled bone, to her soft ripe flesh. He ran two fingers over where they interlocked and split them to frame his cock. He pressed the juncture against her clit and she coughed out an "OH!"

He seemed to enjoy the addition of his hand for a few minutes as well. Slowly, with busy fingers, and measured haste he brought his fragrant hand up her body.

"What color does it taste like Jo?" He stuck his fingers in her mouth. She suckled them and thought of the colors that made up morning, like she always had.

When he pulled them out she nipped at his fingertips to keep them, to watch the sun break, "Like, yellow, like a new day."

"Who makes the sun rise?"

"You do, Harry!"

"Anybody else." His power was waning, she was wringing him from the inside out and her knuckles were white on the frame from doing it. Her calves ached, but she knew she needed to keep the posture he wanted.

"Nobody, never. Only—" She lost her words along with her sense. "Just you." She found.

"Just me." He pulled her neck up to stare at the camera. "And just you. Us, Jo? Us?"

"Us!" She gasped as her breath gushed out and her essence flowed and he had to grip her waist to stop her falling.

He pulled out while she clung on and fell to his knees. They made a deep jolt and she wanted to ask if he was ok, but she wasn't. Her body was shaking from strain and euphoria and when he sat behind her she was thankful his shoulder held her up beneath her ass cheeks until he ran his tongue from the top of her joined pussy lips to her puckered tail she cried "Har-Harry! I can't!"

He slapped her ass and kept going and she bit her lip and shook. Didn't matter if she wasn't sure she could keep the posture while he ate her pink, he wanted her to, so she would. It's what tonight was about. So she clung onto the frame and whined his name. His tongue coming up her cleft repeatedly, the flat of it broad enough to catch all of her swollen flesh. Her body was twitching, but one of her calves was starting to cramp and she moaned "ow!" and rolled her ankle.

Out of pity, he took her feet off the frame one and a time and removed her heels, rubbed her aching calves, smoothed her thighs on the way to splitting her cheeks and going in deeper with his tongue.

When his right fingers thrummed her clit and his other thumb plunged her opening and he tongued her asshole she clenched from pinky toe to eyelid.

Jo came back to herself while Harry climbed her back, licking and kissing her shoulder blades, "Shhhhh, shhhhh," she didn't realize she was sobbing a little. "Just kiss me!" She lay out her tongue and took his in. It was a filthy kiss and she swore another wave crashed upon her from the hold he had on her chin, huge hand splayed around her neck and the tongue fucking.

"You ok?" He asked.

She nodded. She was wrung out and once again astounded with herself. Jo looked at the camera and wondered what it saw. What they would see when they watched it.

If it was evidence enough to convince Harry she belonged to him. If he would still need the ring or ink.

"Baby? I'm still hard, leaking. You hungry?" His voice was low and rich, it spread over her nerves like lip balm on cracked lips.

"Ummhmm." She didn't have the wherewithal to respond with more.

"What was that?" Harry directed her face to the camera.

"Yes, I'm hungry." She agreed, sucked the fingers her put in her mouth and let herself be guided down to her knees.

He tasted early and bright, lemony where she coated him and when he gathered her hair to the side of her head away from the camera she wanted to perform for him. Jo let her head follow the rhythm he was calling for like her makeshift ponytail was a handle and relished the depth of her tonsils breached.

Jo cried out in surprised pleasure when he struck her cheek with his overwhelming dick when he pulled it from her mouth and she nodded when he babbled about her loving holding him in her mouth, loved taking him down her throat. When the pace picked up and his litany became, "Jo, Jo, fuck, Jo!" She hollowed her cheeks and prepared for launch.

She was bereft when he pulled out, but then watched in wonder while he cast his leavings over her breasts and collarbones, a little on her chin.

And she followed directions again when he turned her to the camera and trailed her fingers through his markings and placed it on her clit. "Come again, baby." He brushed her hair and helped her to her feet and held her elbows from behind while she took herself apart. He held her for long moments then, repeating thank you and loving words and praise.He held her up until her leg muscles firmed up enough to walk.

In the shower that he led her to after turning off the camera he watched her eyes intently. The blatant, "Was that okay?" Led her to maintain his eye contact, adore him with her eyes. it was more than ok. She hoped it was enough. She knew it wasn't for him. He wanted more.

They spoke little, and stared at each other, Harry only distracting himself a little while he soaped her clean.

He was slow and thorough and handled her naughty bits with the same reverence as her eyelids. He placed little kisses on her brows, nose, nipples, bellybutton, the arches of her sore feet.

Jo folded herself into his body when he was done and placed her face into his neck. "I'm yours." She murmured and hoped he knew.

"And I'm yours." He said on a shaky exhale. Seemed she wasn't the only one astonished by the things that happened, the places they went, when they were together.

After she had soaped him clean from the crack of his sweet behind to his scalp, they kissed until the water went cold.

Jo had just started to shiver when she asked the question that had just come to dominate her mind. "What do we do with it?" Her voice shook a little.

"We watch it, obviously." He sounded surer, amused.

"Once? Or?" He wanted this, documentation, and she had given it to him, but it was yet another bomb they may have to bury.

"I mean, I'd like to watch it on repeat, but...." he sighed. "Let's watch it, next time, and then I'll get rid of the sim card and delete the file. Ok baby?"

Jo nodded, let him dry her off. She wanted to crawl into bed with him, but though she had tasted sunrise several times in the waning hours of night, an actual morning had broke.

"I have to go." She whispered to him and he followed her to the studio where she had to put on last night's dress.

"Do you want some clothes?" He asked, and Jo said no, because more evidence, even some Audrey wouldn't recognize, made her feel more exposed, like she was walking out naked.

And she hadn't questioned it when she did it, but on the drive home she worried about, felt guilty over, the ring she had taken off her hand, the infinity ring Ethan bought her when he left for school, and slipped it onto Harry's pinky.

Her love was infinite, but she wasn't sure about their pressed upon luck.