When the cab finally pulled up to the Kennedy Center, she thrust the fare at the driver and bolted from the back seat. People of all ages were already streaming into the long white building. American Ballet Theatre was a perennial favorite on the ballet schedule. It was a must-see event for every young would-be ballerina in the area. Marie’s own childhood ballet lessons had been short-lived due to a general lack of flexibility and toes that just wouldn’t point that hard.
She scanned the terrace in front of the building, expecting to see Luc leaning against one of the narrow bronze-colored columns as if he hadn’t a care in the world. But no leaners resembled him. She hurried through the front entrance and into the Hall of States, ignoring the fluttering flags above her. She peered into the gift shop and box office, but no Luc there either. She stopped at the coat check where she pulled from her purse a smaller clutch holding her wallet and keys, then checked the larger bag.
The Grand Foyer was packed with people buying candy and sipping cocktails. She took a deep breath, trying to will calm into her system, as she threaded her way through the crowd. Maybe he hadn’t come. Maybe he forgot, immersed in a painting, or gotten stuck in traffic. Middleburg was a bit of a drive from the city.
Another, even more unwelcome, idea popped into her head. What if she found him and he was talking to someone else? A man like Luc Marchand wouldn’t go long without a woman trying to pick him up. What were her options then? Sidle up to them and hope he’d notice her? March over and stake her claim? Or quietly retreat, enjoying her box seats by herself?
Don’t think about that. Find him first. She took another deep breath.
After searching the entire length of the Grand Foyer, she finally found Luc standing outside on the river terrace. She stopped just outside the door to watch him for a moment. He was wearing grey flannel pants and a pale lavender shirt, cuffs rolled up to reveal the muscles of his forearms. He was watching Georgetown’s crew teams glide by on the Potomac River below. A young woman in a tight red bandage dress and impossibly high heels walked up to him, said something. Marie was too far away to read her lips. Luc shook his head, not even turning to glance at the woman. She teetered away. Marie didn’t blame her for trying.
That said, however, if she didn’t get over there more women would surely try. Better not to push her luck.
When she reached him, she placed a hand lightly on the small of his back. Even through the shirt, his back muscles were tight and hard and Marie was flooded with memories of last weekend. Not that those memories had been far from her mind all week. Quite possibly, they weren’t even lodged in the memory part of her brain yet. After all, her skin still felt just-touched, just-caressed, just-kissed.
“Bonjour,” she said, trying to mimic Luc’s accent. Unfortunately, it sounded decidedly less sexy coming from her mouth.
He turned and looked at her with an expression of such pure pleasure, her heart nearly stopped. His eyes were big and soft, his white teeth bright in the gloaming. She’d never had a man smile at her that way, a smile that glowed from deep within his eyes. All her fears rose up and floated away like smoke from an extinguished candle. This wasn’t superficial, polite pleasure she was seeing on his face. Even she could recognize genuine delight. It crossed her mind to toss the tickets into the river right then and there and simply go home with him.
“Bonjour, Marie.” He leaned in and kissed her gently on the lips. But not too gently—there was a promise of something more in the kiss, something reserved for later. He leaned back and took in her dress, pausing at the exposed skin between her breasts. “You take my breath away.”
“Thank you.” She looked away, embarrassed.
“You’re not used to people paying you compliments, are you?” Luc took her hand in his, threaded his fingers through hers.
“Not from men, I guess.”
“Well, it’s been awhile since I’ve been on a date,” he said, “but from what I recall, I’m supposed to be a gentleman.”
Suddenly it hit her with an intensity she hadn’t allowed herself to feel all day. She was on a date with Luc Marchand. She, Marie Witherspoon, who just thirty seconds ago was still feeling a little like she was playing dress up in someone else’s sexy dress and heels, was on an actual, honest-to-god date with the hottest man on the planet.
Please don’t be a gentleman ran through her brain. Already he was scrambling her thoughts and words she had no control over were falling from her lips. “It’s okay if you don’t want it to be a date. I mean, I know what happened last weekend ... you’re trying to teach me and I get that. You don’t have to worry, though, that I’m fal—attracted to you. I am but—”
He ran a finger lightly along her shoulder then slipped it briefly beneath the fabric of her dress, right where it began to wind around her neck. Her words evaporated into the dusky air around them.
“Maybe my intentions weren’t clear enough, Marie, but I’m trying to make you fall for me.” He kissed her, and it was no gentle, reserved kiss this time.
All around her was a rush of silk and diamonds, suits and ties, as people sipped their dirty martinis and chardonnay and watched the planes gracefully bank the curves of the river on their final descent to the airport. If someone recognized her, now would be the perfect moment to snap a photo—her in Luc Marchand’s arm, his gaze serious and intense, hers stunned and disbelieving.
“You wouldn’t have to try that hard.”
“On the contrary, it’s proving rather harder than I thought it would be.”
“I just didn’t want to assume.”
“Marie, when a man makes love to you twice in one day there’s not much left to assume. I know I make seeing seem like some mysterious talent. But sometimes it’s just a matter of seeing what’s right in front of you.” He tugged gently at the knot of fabric holding up her dress, then brushed his lips against her ear. “And when I untie this later, what happened last weekend is going to happen this weekend, too.”
* * *
Inside the Opera House, Marie peered down at the orchestra level seating, where resigned men in dark suits followed women in sequins and furs down the aisle. Normally, that’s where she would be seated, too. Richard liked to be seen as a man of the people. No box seats for him. He liked it when random strangers snapped pictures of them with their cellphones. Marie had hated it.
Up here in the box tier, no one would be gauche enough to photograph other patrons—or even make eye contact, really. That was a good thing, too, because she was still stunned from the words he’d spoken out on the terrace. He was trying to make her fall for him. He was planning to make love to her again this weekend.
Had she fallen for him? More like thrown herself out of a cargo plane at thirty thousand feet without a parachute.
She could still feel the path his finger had traced along her skin.
From the corner of her eye, she saw Luc scanning the theater, taking it in as though he were trying to memorize every line and shadow. He did that often, she’d noticed.
He caught her watching him. “This is my first time to the Opera House. I’ve only been to one of the other, smaller theaters here,” he explained. “It’s very red.”
Marie’s laugh was lost in the sound of the orchestra beginning its warmup. “Yes, it is very red,” she agreed. The Opera House had red seating, red walls, red carpeting, red ceiling. It was thoroughly and unrelentingly red.
An awkwardness had settled in around them, now that they were inside. Or maybe it’s just my awkwardness. She was too used to feeling on display in places like the Kennedy Center, like she was an accessory meant to be quiet and merely admired, and she couldn’t shake the feeling now.
She let her eyes be drawn up to the gigantic, sprawling chandelier on the ceiling. Luc followed her gaze, cocking his head thoughtfully for a moment. She wondered how he was going to separate the lines and shadows of that. Best to just take a picture or try for an image more impressionist than real.
“That reminds me of an o
ld Japanese painting, don’t you think?” he asked her. “Like tiny white flowers against a red backdrop.”
Marie had looked up at that chandelier dozens of times in her life but never saw what Luc was seeing. It did look like a Japanese painting, now that he had pointed it out, even if the chandelier had been a gift from Austria.
“I’ll never be able to see things the way you do.”
“Of course you will. It just takes a certain practiced innocence.”
“You don’t seem that innocent to me.”
“I practice innocence, Marie. I try to look at things through my eyes, not my brain.”
The orchestra was settling in now and that delicious air of anticipation was hovering over the audience. Just as the lights dimmed, Luc’s hand cupped her jaw and chin and turned her face toward him. His eyes glittered in the darkness, hot and intense.
“Someone as jaded as you are,” he whispered, “is not that innocent, either.”
The curtain rose just then, revealing dozens of dancers posed onstage. Marie was breathless, both from the beauty of the dancers and from Luc’s insinuations. She agreed with him. She was jaded. It was hard to grow up in Washington and not be jaded about a lot of things. But was that good or bad in his eyes?
She looked over at him from the corner of her eye, as discreetly as she could. He appeared to be mesmerized by the swirl of music and movement and lights onstage. Did he even like the ballet? He never did say, and she’d forgotten to ask. Without acknowledging her gaze, he reached over and took her hand in his. A soft warmth bloomed in her chest and spread down her back.
Maybe he’s not here for the ballet. He had said as much, hadn’t he? But she didn’t know him that well, and she knew she had to be careful not to let physical intimacy fool her into thinking she did. So he wanted to make her fall for him. But he hadn’t said that he was falling for her. He might be just a player. A French player, but a player all the same.
She tried to push all these questions out of her mind, questions that couldn’t be answered in the Opera House anyway, and tried to focus on the stage. Normally, she loved the ballet and especially ABT, despite her own failed attempts at the art. But the insistent warmth in her chest—that had now spread to other even more sensitive places—and the feel of his hand wrapped around hers were distracting in the extreme.
Her college boyfriends had held her hand, and Richard once in awhile—mostly when he was trying to keep her right next to him. But the feel of Luc holding her hand was ... different. Not merely friendly or possessive, but ... intimate. He wasn’t squeezing her hand, or clutching it. His hand was embracing hers, gently, loosely, as though he was confident she wouldn’t break his clasp. She wasn’t planning to, either. A man like Luc could be confident in that way.
The ballet was into Act II, the lead dancers locked in a wrenching pas de deux, when Luc’s fingers brushed against her lips. He pushed something small into her mouth, which immediately melted into rich, dark chocolate. She swallowed a tortured groan. A moment later, another piece of chocolate was slipped into her mouth ... and then another. He spent the next five minutes feeding her chocolate in the dark while the ballet continued beneath them.
Marie’s taste buds were just becoming numb to the sweetness when a smaller, harder piece of candy crossed her lips. It was faintly sweet at first—more purely sugar than the chocolate—then it dissolved into a spicy fieriness. A red hot. One by one, he slipped the tiny pieces of fire between her lips. By the time the curtain fell at intermission, Marie’s mouth was aflame, her tongue and lips feeling burned and acutely sensitive from the cinnamon.
As applause swelled and filled the opera house, Luc leaned into her and pressed his lips softly to hers. “Don’t look at us with your brain, Marie. Just let yourself see.”
Before she had time to ponder that statement, his tongue slipped into her mouth and curled around hers, caressing, then drawing it toward him. She felt the sting of each gentle stroke blaze down her spine and splay across her lower back and hips like a pair of strong hands. He had primed her mouth for this with the candy. The sweet then sharp tastes had overwhelmed the nerve endings in her lips and mouth. Now his soft velvet tongue was both soothing her mouth and pushing the fire into the rest of her body.
He was no innocent, no matter what he said. Diabolical, perhaps, but not innocent.
Marie gave into his kiss. There was no point in resisting it anyway, even if she wanted to. He was the conductor here, playing her body, plucking notes from it, teasing her with the crescendo she knew lay in wait for her later.
Chapter 14
Marie awakened the next morning to stripes of pale yellow sunlight laddered across her chest, and an empty space in the bed next to her. Quite possibly that had all been merely a dream last night, the ballet, the candy, his tongue doing things it surely hadn’t been designed to do. She began to sit up, only to be stopped by Luc’s insistent voice.
“No no no. Don’t move. Just another minute or two.”
Luc was sitting on the foot of the bed, his drawing pad propped on his bare knee, strategically hiding his groin.
“You were drawing me sleeping?”
“Oui. It’s going to make a gorgeous painting.” He waved his pencil at the window. “The light on your hair, the eiderdown next to your skin ... you should see it.” He smiled.
“So these paintings are going to be for sale? It’s that kind of a show, right?” She tried to picture herself on a gallery wall, her bare shoulders exposed, her hair tangled from sleep.
“Yes. That’s the general idea.” He continued drawing.
She was quiet, imagining last weekend’s drawing hanging on a wall, too. Luc had spent all week painting from it and had been eager to show it to her last night, even though it was late by the time they got back from the ballet.
A large canvas was quite different from a drawing the size of a sketchpad. Her breasts were larger, for one thing, and somehow more bare. Paint was more lifelike than charcoal. Her face looked lonelier and sadder in color, too. Yeah, she got the whole Edward Hopper thing but still ... it wasn’t as flattering as she had hoped a portrait by Luc would be.
At the sight of her chewing her lip, he stopped drawing. “Are you worried about people you know seeing them?”
She shrugged, a look of uncertainty on her face.
“I wouldn’t worry about it, Marie. Washington’s not an art town. Sam says most of her buyers at the Dupont Circle location will be tourists from overseas.”
“I guess it seemed more abstract to me until I saw the ones you have finished.”
Luc set down his sketchbook and crawled over the bed to reach her. He straddled her body over the covers, stroking her cheeks with his hands. “Marie, love, the paintings will be beautiful. I promise you that. You saw them last night. I don’t paint like—” he wracked his brain for the names he was thinking of—”Eric Fischl. Or Phillip Pearlstein. Sour light and rolls of flesh. I am not like that. I am more ...”
He rubbed his noise against hers, a simple gesture that Marie felt far beyond her nose.
“Romantic?” she whispered hopefully, finishing his sentence for him.
“Oui. Anyone who sees my paintings will think your husband was out of his mind to let you go. And they won’t all be nudes.”
“But nudes probably sell better,” she pointed out.
“Marie, that’s not for you to worry about.”
“I don’t want to make your show unsuccessful.”
“When paintings don’t sell, it’s generally not the model’s fault.” He tweaked her shoulder. “Come. Take a shower with me.”
Luc’s house was centuries old but some previous owner had remodeled the bath enough to squeeze in a narrow, grey-tiled shower next to the clawfoot tub. Marie stepped beneath the hot water, closed her eyes and groaned. The heat felt good seeping into her muscles. She was getting rather more exercise than she was accustomed to since meeting Luc. Who would have guessed that learning to draw would burn so many
calories? It was better than a gym membership.
When she opened her eyes, Luc was still standing outside the shower, just staring at her. Uh oh. She knew where this was going. Instead of joining her, he returned to the bedroom to retrieve his sketchbook and pencil.
“Wash yourself,” he said.
She lathered her hands with the bar of soap and ran them over her arms and neck while Luc’s hand flew over the paper. They won’t all be nudes. But some of them will. She worried that thought in her mind for a few minutes. Did she even want Nishi to see the paintings? Actually, it was the idea of people she knew looking at them that bothered her more than complete strangers. Her classmates might see them, or her professors. Her mother’s donors or people Marie had grown up with. Old neighbors.
Oh screw it, she thought, as she added more lather to her hands. If people don’t like the paintings, so what? It’s not like she was stepping out on her husband. Divorce proceedings were already well underway. That was common knowledge, thanks to the Washington Post and Maya.
“Stop. Hold that position.”
Luc’s command jolted her out of her thoughts and she looked down at her soapy hands. They were resting on her breasts. She hadn’t been paying much attention to what she was doing with the soap.
“Don’t look up. Hold it just like that.” His hand flew furiously over the page.
She stared at the water running into the drain until he set aside the sketchbook at last and joined her in the shower. He lathered up his hands and proceeded to wash her shoulders, then her breasts, patiently working his way down over her abdomen and onto her hips. They were going to have sex in the shower. That was going to be another first for her, like the oral sex had been last weekend.
Luc poured shampoo onto her head and massaged it in, working the bubbles through her hair with his fingers. It felt so amazing, her toes curled against the tile floor. Just like they had when his mouth was on her, between her legs ... the things he could do with his tongue.
Drawing Lessons Page 13
