by Andrea Dale
He couldn’t know how excited. How her entire body craved another sample of his touch. How if he touched her between her legs, he’d find her hot and wet and on the edge of explosion.
What turned her on the most was that he obviously wanted her, too. She could see it in the darkness of his eyes, in the way his nostrils flared again when she took a sip of champagne, and in crotch.
She tried very, very hard not to stare at the obvious thickness pressing against his trousers.
She had to clench her hand into a fist just to keep herself from reaching out and touching…
He dipped his head close to hers, and when he spoke, she could feel his breath tickling her ear, an erotic, warm breeze. She stifled a moan.
“So, Sarabeth Delaney the Sculptor,” he murmured, “why don’t you show me the rest of the gallery and tell me what you think of the art?”
To give herself time to get her legs to find the strength to move, she toyed with the choker at her neck. She was gratified to see his eyes drop to her cleavage, and linger there.
He, too, seemed to be struggling for control.
What an aphrodisiac that was.
She’d never been one for one-night stands, for anonymous sex. Despite her long-standing lust for this man whom she’d never met prior to the last ten minutes, she didn’t know anything about him. He could be…dangerous.
Oh, she already knew that he was dangerous. She’d had no idea that she’d react to him so completely, so totally, upon being in his presence.
That she would be willing to throw all caution to the wind just for the chance to be closer to him. To press against him. To feel him.
Rational thought fled. All she knew was that she wanted him, and he wanted her.
She could cope with dangerous, she decided. It would be worth it in the end.
For now, though, it did make sense to get to talk with him more in a public place. Get to know him as a person. See how riled up she could get him, with the flirting and the teasing. How much she could get him to want her. To need her.
But, God, the things she wanted to do to him.
She wondered how long she could hold out. How long before she broke down and excused herself to the ladies room where she could relieve the aching need that threatened to consume her?
“I’d love to,” she said.
*
Michael dragged his gaze from her cleavage and his mind away from the fantasies regarding her cleavage, and struggled to remember what he’d just asked her that she was so willingly agreeing to. Please, let it be something good.
Then she was hooking a hand through his arm and leading him into the next room, out of the rotating gallery collection and into one of the permanent displays. The motion restarted the blood flow to his brain enough so that he recalled they were going to look at more art.
He didn’t want to look at art; he wanted to look at her.
But he was willing, for a while at least, to settle for being with her.
Her light touch on his arm sent his senses tingling. Her fingers rubbed the silk of his shirt against his flesh, a maddening sensation. She was close enough that he could see the light glinting off her blue-black hair. The perfume she wore—something flowery, but not cloying—brought his cock to attention again. How could something so simple affect him so strongly?
All he knew about her was her name, and that she was a sculptor.
He didn’t need another relationship right now.
Or did he? Granted, she hadn’t batted an eyelash at his introduction, so maybe, just maybe, she didn’t recognize him. Maybe he had a chance at developing a rapport with somebody who didn’t want him for anything bigger—
Although his cock was getting bigger by the moment, and that just had to be tamped down before he hurt himself or those around him.
“Now, this piece, I like,” Sarabeth said.
Michael forced himself to concentrate on her words. Not the husky timbre of her voice. Not how that voice would sound when she cried out his name in the heat of passion, as he brought her to—
Damn. Must…pay…attention.
She indicated a metal sculpture, this one in bronze. It was a stylized horse, rearing up, head thrown back in abandon.
“There’s movement, even in something as solid as metal,” she said. “You can feel the wildness, the pass—” she coughed, recovered “—the passion.”
“As if the horse is going to leap off the pedestal,” Michael said.
She turned appreciative eyes on him. “Exactly.”
“This one’s sad, but beautifully done.” Now she stood before a painting.
Michael considered it. It showed an empty, rumpled bed. What he took to be the morning sun shot through a window at the head of the bed, a sunbeam bisecting the bed in a streak of red-gold. To either side of the bed, however, the room got darker as it extended away in either direction. Michael looked at the plaque beside the painting. It read, simply, “Separation”.
“I know the artist on this one,” Sarabeth said. “She did it just after she and her husband split up. The pain’s there, in every stroke.”
Michael looked more closely. On either side of the painting was a doorway, each shrouded in shadow. Faintly, he could see the form of a person in each doorway: on the left a man, on the right, a woman. They each were looking back over their shoulders, but it was obvious that the darkness and the gap were too overwhelming. They were already too far apart to have a hope of reconnecting.
“You’re right, it is sad,” he agreed. He thought, fleetingly, of Jill. He couldn’t drum up a fraction of the emotion that was found in the picture. If he had loved her…well, in his way, he had. But it was gone, and the door had shut.
“I didn’t mean to bring us down,” Sarabeth said softly. “Let’s go look at something else.”
“I think I’m getting a sense of what you like in art,” Michael said. “Emotion.”
“Honest emotion,” she agreed. “A piece of artwork can be technically perfect, but that’s not enough in the end. A vase of flowers is one thing. A vase of flowers that look like they’re about to flutter in a breeze, that a petal is going to drop…that they were given by a lover to apologize for a misunderstanding…”
“It takes a lot of talent to create something like that.”
“It does. Talent, and—”
“Passion?”
He said it to tease her, but the word caught on his lips as it had on hers.
“Oh hell.”
He wasn’t sure which one of them swore.
He was pretty sure they both lunged at each other simultaneously, meeting midway in a searing kiss.
*
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About the Authors
Andrea Dale and Sarah Husch met in junior high. A mutual love of the written word, bad jokes, and the rock group Styx kept their friendship together through international moves, marriages, children, and general life mayhem. It was only a matter of time before they succumbed to writing fiction together.
Called a “legendary erotica heavy-hitter” (by the über-legendary Violet Blue), Andrea Dale writes sizzling erotica with a generous dash of romance. Her work—which has been called “poignantly erotic,” “heartbreaking,” and “exceptional”—has appeared in 20 year’s best volumes as well as about 100 other anthologies from Soul’s Road Press, Harlequin Spice, and Cleis Press. She finds passion in rock music, clever words, piercing blue eyes, the wind in her hair, and the scent of the ocean. Visit AndreaDaleAuthor.com for more information.
Sarah has been a retail manager, a laboratory courier and a custom picture framer. Currently, she works at a needlepoint shop where she does the custom framing, and teaches knitting, needlepoint, and cross-stitch. She is an avid reader and stitcher, enjoys spicy food and spicier romance. She has lived in Europe, and in several places in the US. She now lives in Virginia with her husband, daughter, and four cats.
Also by Andrea
Dale
Novels
In Her Hands
(see the Sneak Preview at the end of this book!)
Short Stories
Braceleted
Guarding Her Body
Raven’s Flight
The Queen of Christmas
Table of Contents
A Little Night Music
In Her Hands Sneak Preview
About the Authors
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