Seven Nights To Surrender

by Jeanette Grey

  Rylan’s smile was low and wry. “To express the inner workings of your poor, tortured soul?”

  She laughed, a little breathless with it. “Yeah. Basically. That’s what it finally became, when it wasn’t needed anymore just for documentation.” She lifted one shoulder up before setting it back down. “It didn’t make sense to pay a painter to take three months to do what a photographer could do in a day.” She connected her gaze with his again. “And it didn’t make sense to replicate something a lens could do, when as a person you were so much more.”

  There was a warmth to the way he looked at her then, and she squeezed his hand before glancing away. “So people started mixing it up. Making it personal. Impressionism brought in all these crazy colors and left in all the brushstrokes the old masters would have blended in. They let you see the artist in the art.”

  And that had always been the place where she’d struggled so much. She’d never known what to let people see.

  She still had her father’s voice in her ear, telling her there wasn’t anything in her worth seeing.

  Beside her, Rylan nodded. “So it’s more about the interpretation instead of just about what they saw.”

  He’d said something similar before, hadn’t he? That one time she’d showed him her sketchbook?

  “Yeah,” she said.

  They stood there for a minute before he raised their joined hands and gestured at the images surrounding them. “What made you want me to look at these pieces in particular?”

  It was hard to put her finger on. “I don’t know. This is technically Postimpressionism, and it’s just . . . it’s my favorite, I guess. Things started getting all blocky, and he was playing with . . .” She stumbled, looking for the right words to describe what it felt like Cézanne had been trying to do. “With the shapes of things. Deconstructing the forms. But it was all still real, you know? That’s clearly a rooftop”—she pointed at one picture and then another—“and that’s a man.”

  “A funny-looking man.”

  “But a more real man for all that he’s impossible.” The idea suddenly gripped her, fervent in a way she couldn’t quite explain. “You’re seeing what he looked like and getting this idea of who he was, or who the artist thought he was.” The thick strokes of paint split the man’s face into planes, hinting at where Cubism was heading without quite getting there. They broke him up. Disassembled him, and put him back together, more whole than he could have been if he’d been rendered any other way.

  “I don’t know,” Rylan mused. “I see Cézanne’s style more than I see a personality. Am I seeing who the subject was or am I seeing who the man behind the easel wanted him to be?”

  “Hard to tell, isn’t it?”

  He let go of her hand, but it was only to shift to the side, moving to stand behind her and wrap his arms around her waist. With his lips beside her temple, he asked, “What do you want me to see?”

  And she didn’t know if he meant as a tour guide, showing him the works that had moved her in the past. As an artist in her own right, or as a—whatever she was to him, sharing his days and his bed in this finite slice of time they had.

  Something shaky fluttered inside of her, but she pushed it down, folding her hand over his. “I guess I’m still working on that.”

  chapter THIRTEEN

  Rylan set the key to their hotel room on the table beside the door with a heavy hand. The quiet slap of plastic on wood echoed more loudly than it had any right to. Kate had entered ahead of him, and she stood with her back to him, gazing out the window as she lifted her bag over her head, sending the loose tumble of her hair falling across her shoulders. His mouth went dry.

  In the past wasted year, and in all the time before, he’d chosen his conquests for a variety of reasons. Most he’d liked the look of. Drawn to full breasts or sultry lips or legs that went on for miles, he’d introduced himself. Turned on the charm and flashed his credit card around.

  And then there was this woman. She was beautiful enough, but she was smart and funny and she saw the world in a whole different way than he ever had—talking about art like it could save the world. She was trying to do something with her life, and if they’d met on another continent, in another universe, he would have run screaming from the way she made him feel.

  Love was a weapon. People used it against you to get you to do things you didn’t want to do, to steal from you. They took it and they threw it away.

  But this wasn’t love. This was a few days of connection. This was lust, for her mind as well as her body, but lust all the same.

  He wanted her so much it hurt to breathe.

  “Come here.”

  She turned at the sound of his voice, and the low roughness of it took even him aback.

  “Come here,” he repeated.

  She quirked one eyebrow up, but as she twisted her hair between her fingers, she did as he’d asked, advancing on him. She’d taken off her shoes, and God, even her feet were dainty and lovely, and the lines of her legs from under that skirt made him even harder.

  As soon as she was within reach, he struck, reeling her in and pulling her tight against his body. He’d been so patient with her the past two nights, and part of him was aching to take what he really wanted. He could bend her over the mattress the way he had so many girls before, and shove her skirt up and—

  “Rylan?”

  Torn from the fantasy, he looked down at her. She pressed a hand against his chest, not quite pushing him away but not far from it, either, and while there was arousal in her gaze, there was something else, too.

  Fear.

  The same fear he’d cursed other men for daring to put on her face.

  He closed his eyes and filled his lungs, once, twice, then made his mouth and his hands both soft, holding her instead of gripping her. “Sorry. Just—” The emotion he’d felt, standing in the middle of a museum, listening to her as she described why an image of a man reading a book had moved her so deeply swept over him. A helpless smile stole over his lips. “You look so beautiful when you talk about the things you love.”

  Her cheeks bloomed, and she glanced away, but he wasn’t having any of that.

  Taking hold of her chin, he tilted her head up, all gentleness in his motions. He darted his gaze between her eyes. “You are,” he insisted. “The whole time you were talking, I wanted to . . .”

  He’d wanted to stay there, listening to her forever. She was the exact opposite of him, full where he was hollow, caring so deeply while every choice he’d had stripped from him had fed a growing, gnawing apathy. Her vibrancy was shaking his soul to life.

  But he couldn’t say that. Without the words to describe how she was confusing everything, he showed her the best he could, dipping down to capture her mouth. He’d wanted to do that, too, in the museum. Wanted to kiss Monet and Degas and Picasso from her lips, until they were nothing but brushstrokes and canvas and air.

  Deconstructed, precisely the way she’d said. And reassembled by an artist’s knowing hands.

  Feeling like he was the one being taken apart, he gripped her more tightly, with none of the possession of a few moments before but with an intensity that he couldn’t quite explain. She held him right back, though, curling her hand around his nape and threading her fingers through his hair. He took control of the kiss, trying to push all these thoughts she’d been awakening inside of him into the possession of his mouth.

  She made him feel things, dammit, in places that had been so cold and empty for so long. Made him want to be better.

  He swallowed down the lonely throb that thought evoked in him—the undeniable knowledge of all the ways he was lacking, especially now.

  He’d left all of his responsibilities behind, had discarded the life he’d been forced into after his father’s bullshit had been exposed. He’d been directionless ever since. But here, with her, he had a purpose. Clutching at her hips, he crushed her closer to his chest, bending his will to the warm pleasure of contact. The needy thread of
desire pulsing just beneath his skin.

  She moaned and opened wide to him, letting him lick into her mouth. The scratch of nails against his scalp set the low burning inside of him thrumming hotter, and everything came into a sharp kind of focus. He wanted inside—wanted to fuck and touch, and be touched, but more than that he wanted to give her something.

  With his heart hammering and his own need a dull, dense ache, he walked her backward toward the bed. He pressed on her shoulder until she sat, and then he dropped to his knees. Her legs fell apart with the barest of prompting. Dragging both palms up the curves of her calves, he licked his lips. Looked up at her for permission as he skimmed his hands up her thighs, rucking her skirt up higher. When he slipped his fingertip along the elastic of her underwear, her breath stuttered in her chest. The fabric was damp and hot, the perfume of her cunt a soft presence in the air, one that made him even harder.

  He slid his thumb along the center panel of her panties as he stared into her eyes. “This. The whole time you were talking about art. I wanted to do this.”

  “What?” She’d dug one hand into the hem of her skirt, clenching it in a fist so tight her knuckles paled. “Get between my legs?”

  But it had been more than that. He shook his head and leaned down, kissed one knee. Then higher, on the inside of her thigh. With his lips still pressed to her flesh, he curled his fingers into the waistband of her underwear. Cast his gaze up the length of her body. “To thank you.” For so many things he wasn’t ready to say aloud. So instead he lifted his chin and smirked. “For teaching me about art.”

  “Oh, really?” Her words and tone were all skepticism, but she lifted up when he prompted, letting him tug her panties down. He eased them over her feet and spread her legs again, holding them wide with his hands on her thighs.

  “Really.”

  He’d wanted to thank her for letting him see what she was seeing when she looked at ancient paintings, for helping him understand what she was trying to do in her own battered sketchbook.

  For giving him this week and all of its diversions, and making him talk about himself, if only a little.

  “Well.” It came out like a sigh. She was uncomfortable. Twitchy and nervous, and her thighs kept pressing against his hands as if she were trying subtly to close them. None of it was as bad as that first night, but he still wanted to shake her—to remind her that only good things were going to happen here. Her throat bobbed. “You’re welcome?”

  “You can’t say ‘you’re welcome’ until I’ve finished with my thank you.”

  “You weren’t done?”

  He raised his brows. “Believe me. You’ll know it when I’m finished with you.”

  He hadn’t even started yet.

  With that promise in the air—with the scent of her driving him mad and with his ribs ready to burst, he slipped his fingers along the soft, pink folds of her. He held them open and ducked his head, transcribing his actions, looking up into her eyes before taking a first gentle lick.

  Just like the first time, she was all sweetness and musk and the salt-sweat taste of sex against his tongue. She wasn’t as desperate—he hadn’t worked her up as hard, but he was cresting on his own desire, and he dug in, unreserved and unabashed. He worked teasing circles over her clit and then dipped down to lick inside. Her fingers wound themselves into his hair, finally letting go of the hem of her skirt, and he shifted the fabric higher. There was still something so illicit to it, though, even if he’d lost all sense of shame so many years ago. He knelt there, completely dressed, with his head up a girl’s skirt, eating her out on the edge of a bed. It was juvenile, and it was beneath him. And it was fantastic.

  The noise she made when he pressed his fingers inside had his hand digging into the tender flesh of her thigh, his eyes closing as he sucked her clit between his lips. She’d shown him how and where to touch the night before, had taken the buzzing end of that vibrator and pressed it just—

  Her knee jerked up, a sharp shock of impact against his shoulder, and her moan was the most uninhibited he’d heard. He caught her leg before she could do more damage, throwing it over his shoulder and swiping harder with his tongue, curling his fingers, trying to match the way she’d angled the glass as she’d thrust it home.

  She jerked hard at his hair, and fuck, it hurt, but in the best way. She tried to let go, starting to stutter out some kind of apology, but he grabbed her hand and put it exactly where it had been.

  He parted from her flesh just long enough to glare up at her. “Don’t you dare hold back.”

  Not after all the progress they’d made, not when she was finally starting to give him exactly what he’d wanted.

  Even if it wasn’t anything like what he thought he’d been looking for when they’d first begun.

  It didn’t take long after that. As if a spell of her own inhibitions and all that ingrained doubt had suddenly melted away, she gave in to it, pressing her hips forward. He gave her another finger beside the first two, filling her up the way that someday—God, he hoped, someday—he was going to do for real. Kissed her clit wet and sloppy, lapping up the slick taste of her, and when she finally tensed, he locked in. Didn’t change a thing, kept pressing and pressing, circling right where—

  “Fuck!”

  Her walls clamped down around his fingers, thick waves of pulses squeezing him tight as she arched backward, the hand in his hair yanking hard, sending a shock of pain and need straight down to the roots.

  And he was dying for it. Was desperate to rise up over her and get himself right up in all that slick, shove himself home and take what he wanted.

  Except before he could even ask—before she could give him that look again, the one that turned all thoughts of his own pleasure to ash and dust, she was urging him upward.

  He parted from her sex, tugging his fingers free, and then she was kissing the wetness from his lips.

  “You’re welcome,” she said. It was breathless and harsh, needy in a way he’d yet to hear from her.

  And practically before the syllables were out, she was shoving him over. Getting him onto his back on the bed, and straddling his hips, and he was so ready he could scarcely think to slow things down.

  But he didn’t have to.

  Before doubt could creep in, she put his hand where he was aching for her and cupped him oh so perfectly through his jeans. Her face was flushed and mottled, her hair a mess, and she was beautiful.

  She rose up over him and said, “Now it’s my turn to thank you.”

  Kate’s body was still pulsing with aftershocks and she was kneeling there, bare beneath her skirt with her hand on a man’s cock. He’d made her come, and it had been so easy. In these few short days he’d stripped her of her inhibitions, and without them, she’d had nothing left to do but spread her legs and hold on to his hair and let him.

  And she was so grateful it hurt.

  She didn’t have any condoms—she hadn’t come to Paris planning for any of this—but she bet he did. Ignoring the taste that lingered there, she kissed his mouth and closed her eyes. She planted one hand beside his head while with the other she worked at his fly. These past few times, she’d scarcely touched him, and he’d seemed fine with that, but it was time.

  Fear closed the back of her throat, but she pushed it down.

  Goddammit all.

  She was sick and tired of her own hang-ups, of letting the past taint the present the way she always did, in her life and in this bed. This time, sex would work. It had to work.

  A little of the fog of orgasm cleared as she got her hand into his boxers, curling it around hard flesh. He was big, but she was as ready as she’d ever be. It probably wouldn’t hurt. And she’d be glad she had, later. When she was back in New York alone, remembering the only man who’d ever made her feel like this, and he was here, doing whatever he’d done before he’d decided to do it with her.

  A noise of distress fought its way past her throat.

  “Hey. Hey.”

 
A warm hand cupped her jaw, edging her away. She sat back, and he grasped her wrist, stilling it against his flesh. His eyes were dark with need, and he was hard in her grasp. She gazed down at him, confused. “What?”

  He shook his head. “You seemed a little . . .” He trailed off, but she could hear the words, and her skin felt hot. Frigid, scared, stiff. He stroked his thumb against her cheek, and his voice went softer. “I want you. So much. But we only do what you want to do, and if you’re not ready . . .” He shrugged, but he let go of her wrist, sliding his hand up her arm to her shoulder.

  God, this was so frustrating. She wanted to be ready. He’d made her feel so good, and if she was ever going to love sex, it would be with him.

  Except, in the end, a voice in the back of her mind whispered no.

  Forget the fear of physical pain.

  Her heart clenched just looking at him. The sharp corners of the jaw that had drawn her in in the first place, and then the things she’d come to love about him since then. The wavy, dark strands of his hair and how they stood up on end once she’d had her hands in them. The subtle cleft of his chin.

  The depths behind the piercing blue of his eyes.

  He was beautiful and wounded, kind and gentle and so guarded that when he let her see even a fraction of himself, it took her breath away. Already, she felt too much. If she let him inside of her, if he made it as good as he had promised to . . .

  Her ribs squeezed so tightly it ached.

  If she let this happen between them, how would she ever stop herself from loving him?

  The answer pulsed its way through her chest: She couldn’t.