by Vremont, Ann
“So now you know my first name. What else is it going to take to get you naked and inside my apartment?”
He threw another bad boy wink at her. She blushed, enjoying the way Walt was playing with her. She looked down to where her bare foot brushed against the linen.
That couldn’t really be the key, could it?
What else could it be?
Bryce gave a weak nod in the direction of the fabric and bracelet. “I guess you could start by getting a bag for those?”
“Is that a ‘yes’?”
His grin was infectious and she forced herself not to return the smile. “It’s a ‘maybe.’”
He was still smiling, seemed incapable of doing anything else. “Better than a ‘no’.”
Holding one hand up, he cautioned her against running away. When she promised she wouldn’t, he dashed back into the apartment. Returning a few seconds later, he scooped the fabric and bracelet into the bag and offered it to her.
“Could you carry it inside?” She felt slightly paranoid, but even the brief contact of the material against her foot had threatened another psychedelic panorama.
Walt bowed and extended his arm toward the apartment’s interior in invitation. She wanted to reach out and put the palm of her hand flat against the tanned muscles of his back, feel them ripple as he straightened. She imagined running her finger down his body, just as he had stroked her. And then she envisioned him naked and flat on his back, her tongue teasing the full circumference of his balls before she licked her way up to the swollen head of his cock.
“Still not sure?” he asked.
His low purr brushed against her visions of him staked out on the patio’s rough concrete. Blushing, she dipped her head and stepped inside the apartment. She was going to embarrass herself—badly—if she didn’t immediately stop fantasizing about him.
Stopping in front of the black leather couch, she turned and frowned at him. With the patio door open the last fifteen or so minutes, the apartment’s interior had lost its air conditioned coolness. She grimaced at the thought of her bare flesh against the leather, of the way it would stick and peel in a drawn out manner when she moved, reminding him of how much flesh she had just hidden inside his kimono. “Where do you want me?”
“In my bed.”
Dizzy, instantly so, she leaned against the couch. “Excuse me?”
Oh…it’s…uhm.” He stopped and a golden peach blushed beneath his tan. He pointed in the direction of a closed door. “It’s the richest looking room in the apartment, which goes with the style I had in mind.”
Brows raised, she scanned the front room and kitchen. The furnishings were far removed from what she would consider inexpensive. The leather couch was part of a three piece set accompanied by a solid mahogany coffee and end tables. A mahogany entertainment center housed a sound system and forty-two inch television.
She hadn’t been in that many of the neighboring apartments, but she was pretty sure their interior furnishings were more like her own—a mismatch of self-assembly pressboard papered with wood grain. Next to the closed bedroom door was another room that seemed to serve as a makeshift studio with a second easel and some blank canvases in view. So, he essentially had two bedrooms, while the cost of just a one-bedroom apartment left Bryce riding city buses.
“I never see you go to anything that looks like a job,” she said, disbelieving he paid for everything just from commissioned portraits. He did go out for extended periods, often returning late at night, but the hours seemed too erratic for work.
“Oh, I paint here or at the client’s place, depends on where and when the muse claims me.” He had moved to the master bedroom’s door, one hand holding the small bag with the sheet and chain, the other resting on the doorknob. “You don’t mean to tell me that you’ve been paying attention?”
Her turn to blush—again. She looked away and hoped he hadn’t caught her body’s involuntary confession of just how much attention she’d been paying to his schedule.
“I’m just naturally observant,” she said when she could tell he wouldn’t move until she answered.
“‘Naturally observant’…really? So all the times I’ve tried to get you to talk to me over the last seven months for more than a minute at a time—you were flat out avoiding me?”
He opened the door and the click of the handle drew her attention back to where he stood. Her gaze landed on the sculpted lines of his bronze-brown shoulder. His body partially blocked her view of the bedroom beyond, but, from what she could see, they went together—Diaz and the room. The four-poster bed and dresser had been shaped from dark mahogany that matched the living room set. The bed coverings were a cascade of burgundies and chocolates in silk and velvet, with a touch of dark purple and gold trim. The room and its owner were both rich in texture and color, their surfaces demanding to be touched and admired.
“Well, if you won’t answer, will you at least come and lie down?” He moved to the bed and began to mess it up, pushing one side of the bedspread and top sheet toward the center until he had shaped a den for her to nestle in.
“I won’t answer because you’re fibbing.” Surely all those “hellos” of his when they passed going to or from their apartments had merely been good manners on his part. And she’d mainly given him mumbled replies in return, hoping it would sink in that she didn’t need him to waste his time on her even if his little attentions fueled her hopeful fantasies.
“I’m not.” He was staring at her again, eyes roaming her body. Her face, the bit of exposed cleavage where she held the robe shut, her hips and the bare curving legs. He gave the bag a little shake. “Where do you want the toga and bracelet?”
Shit, he was holding proof that she hadn’t hallucinated Percy’s visit. And if the muse’s accoutrements were the cause of his intense interest, how long would the effect last if she wasn’t wearing them? When would he notice the too small breasts mismatched with wide hips and a stomach that curved out as much as her ass did?
“Earth to Bryce.” He spoke softly, his attention seemingly occupied with absorbing the details of her body.
She stared at him, her mind blank with rising panic. “What?” she managed after a few more seconds of silence.
“The toga, where do you want it?”
“Is that what it’s called?” she asked, stalling while she looked for someplace to put it where she could touch it without him noticing.
Surprising her, he blushed as he answered. “Technically, no. Women…well, most women, didn’t wear togas.”
The way he lowered his gaze disarmed her and she took a wild guess at the cause of his sudden embarrassment. “You mean only disreputable women wore togas?”
Diaz took a deep breath and looked back up. She felt the heat of that slowly raised gaze and the strength of her body’s reaction.
“Or the occasional goddess.” He didn’t give her time to fumble out a response. He blinked, then grinned at her. “So where do you want it?”
“The bag?” she asked. Just to be sure. If he was offering something else…
He nodded, his smile firmly cemented on his face.
“Under the pillows,” she answered, hesitating, knowing it wasn’t too late to leave. If she wanted to. “I think.”
“Sounds like a safe place.” He stuck the bag under one of the pillows and then fluffed the rest of them up before patting the mattress.
Slowly, Bryce crossed the room and sat down on the edge of the bed. It was the closest she’d been to him since leaving the patio and every cell of her body was aware that if she moved another inch to the left, she would be touching him. Reaching out, Diaz caressed her white-knuckled hand. She had a death grip on the robe’s edges and he whisper stroked the back of her fingers.
“The robe has to come off, Bryce. That’s the way it works.”
She studied his face. His gaze had taken on a faraway cast. The mouth was soft, contemplative, and she wondered what it would be like to kiss him or have him take the tip
of her breast into his mouth. With her body still covered in a light sheen of sweat, she could almost imagine the glide of his tongue over her nipple and up the slope of her breast, climbing until he reached the hollow of her throat. She heaved a big sigh at the thought, her hands beginning to shake.
As her grip on the robe’s edges loosened, Diaz slipped two fingers into one of her palms and gently tugged. Slowly she let him guide her hand down to the mattress.
He dropped to his knees and wrapped one hand around the wrist that still clutched the robe closed at her waist while his other hand pushed back the fabric to expose her left breast.
He pulled his bottom lip into his mouth, the way he had on the patio, and Bryce felt fresh cream slickening the inside folds of her labia. He certainly didn’t look painterly right now. Not with the way he stared at her erect nipple, his grip on her wrist tightening while he sucked and chewed at his bottom lip.
“You’re trembling.”
“Just nervous.” And wet and wondering if there are any perks to the job Percy neglected to mention. But, then, Percy had pretty much neglected to mention anything and everything.
He stopped working his bottom lip and the grin returned in a flash. This time, the way he smiled at her was downright wicked. “We could both be naked if it would help?”
She shook her head “no”, vigorously. Her pussy already contracted wildly this close to him, if she saw him naked and erect, she would either come or faint on the spot. Her free hand moved to cover her exposed breast and Diaz stepped back, hands raised in surrender. He walked to the dresser, took a bronzed silk shawl folded over the edge of the mirror and brought it back to the bed. He draped the shawl across her lap and then turned his back to her.
“We’ll go in steps then,” he suggested. “Why don’t you take the robe off, lie down and cover what you want with the silk?”
Holding the shawl against her torso, she loosely folded the robe up and put it at the end of the bed. She caught his gaze in the mirror, dark and smoky as he cheated and watched her.
“Close your eyes,” she said and waited until he complied before stretching out in the nest of blankets and drawing the shawl across her mound and breasts. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be so difficult.”
“It’s okay. I knew you’d be a challenge.”
“I see.” She tried to squash a lifetime of self-deprecation, but painfully comic thoughts chattered inside her head.
So, Sir Diaz, why did you climb Mount Bryce?
Because she was big and she was there!
Diaz turned and looked at her, his sensuous mouth turned down at the corners. “What do you mean, ‘I see’?”
Bryce shrugged, careful not to unsettle the slip of silk protecting her from another round of complete exposure. The bed was long and wide and her backside curved against the small wall of bedcovers. That left a gap at the edge of the bed and Diaz sat down, slowly reaching for one corner of the shawl.
“You said I could cover what I want.”
His frown righted itself, his olive green gaze sparkling with quiet intent. “Yes-s-s-s,” he said, and grinned wider with each second he elongated the word. “That was step one. Step two, I get to uncover some of what I want.”
Diaz moved slowly, giving Bryce time to object or accustom herself to the increased nudity. His eyes followed his hand, first his fingertips grazing her breast and nipple, then his gaze stopping to stroke the surface of her bared skin.
“Your coloring is lovely, Bryce.” He reached up to curve a lock of her hair along the side of her cheek. “All honeyed-blonde up top.” He trailed his fingertip down the sensitive skin of her throat, back to the tip of her peaked nipple. She gasped but he didn’t pull away. “And cream and cherries everywhere else.”
If he only knew how cherry, she thought, straining against the impulse to arch her back and press her breast against his open palm. Her body was warm and melting despite the coolness of the apartment now that the air conditioner had kicked back on.
Could he smell how wet she was?
He drew the shawl down over the swell of her stomach. Bryce tensed. Afraid that whatever illusion gripped him would shatter on so close an inspection, her hand crept under the pillow to find the toga and bracelet.
“Yes, I like that.” He caught her hand. “But above the pillow and a little over your head.”
Leaning forward, he steadied himself with one hand against her hip. His fingers lightly pressed into her skin in a possessive curl while he positioned her arm to curve around her face until he had her hand tangled in the soft waves of her hair. The movement brought his chest into contact with hers and she closed her eyes.
His hand on her hip, his arm enclosing hers, body to body, it felt like a lovers’ embrace. She breathed in the scent of him, becoming increasingly detached from everything else in the room. In the air surrounding him, she could smell a trace of the paints he worked with on the patio. But closer to his skin, she detected the warm perfume of toasted almonds, and his hair held the rose-watermelon smell of guava.
Taking her other arm, he positioned it along the curve of her waist and hip, her hand resting over the warm section of flesh he had just held. She pressed the loose smile forming at the corners of her mouth into an ambivalent line before he could see the effect he had on her.
She noticed the stiff way he rose from the mattress and walked to the corner chair and believed for the moment that his wasn’t the only magic being worked in the room. Gripping the chair, he started dragging it closer to the bed. The muscles of his back bulged, narrowing his waist until her gaze was forced down to where the cotton shorts clung to his butt and upper thighs.
The cushioned chair’s width was somewhere in between a regular chair and a loveseat, and he used his whole body to move it. Dressed, she would have offered to help him. Naked on his bed and with his back turned to her, she relished every flex and muscle bulge the effort produced.
When the chair was angled about a foot from the bed’s end, he went back to the corner and retrieved a standing lamp. Repositioning the light closer to Bryce, he tilted the shade until her body was lit in a soft glow. She expected him, at this point, to leave the room for supplies, but he reached under the bed and pulled out a sketch pad and box of charcoals, instead.
“Don’t you need your easel?” she asked. “And paints?”
Diaz sank into the plush padding of the chair. He pushed a chin-length lock of hair, black as a raven’s wing, behind his ear and rested one foot against the bed’s bottom frame.
Radiating a proprietary ease over the entire room, he flipped open the sketch book and thumbed past already filled pages. “Some preliminary drawings,” he answered, finding a clean sheet. “Easier to undo my mistakes when they’re in charcoal and not oil.”
Concerned that she’d started a process that would last beyond the weekend, Bryce started to turn onto her side, but his upward glance froze her in place. “Well, how long does all this take?” she asked as she settled back into the pose.
She couldn’t describe the expression Diaz wore while she waited for him to answer. He looked like he was holding a fresh chilled strawberry in his mouth, the juices spreading across his tongue while the pressure of his sensuously curving smile slowly crushed the fruit between tongue and upper palate.
Sated, happy and more than just a little horny—that’s how he looked.
“Oh, a finished painting takes months,” he answered at last.
Months! She certainly didn’t have that long. Percy’s impromptu vacation didn’t give her more than a few days. “I’m not sure I have more than the weekend.”
“If the weekend is all you’re willing to allow me, I’ll take it.” He dropped his gaze to the sketch pad and began making the first strokes. “For now.”
Chapter Three
Trying to sketch and hide his growing erection with the art pad at the same time, Walt shifted in his seat. Every stroke of the charcoal across the page equaled pressure instantly transferred to
the bottom edge of the pad where it rubbed against his cock. He’d painted plenty of nudes, even women he had been intimate with. He had always been able to view them with a sense of artistic abstraction during the sessions. But he had never painted a woman he had been lusting after for months.
To go from a complete standstill to this…
And Bryce wasn’t making it any easier on him. She was thinking things, he could tell. The color on her breasts and face would rise from its usual warm cream to a rosy pink. Naughty things? Shy things? That he didn’t know, but his cock grew incrementally harder with each blush. Lines blurred on the page and a slight tremor ran through his hand. He wasn’t sure whether he could actually sketch her when she was within touching distance.
Maybe if he hadn’t already touched her, he could have remained detached. But it was too late for “maybes”, and he would be lying to himself if he didn’t admit to wanting her first as a lover. He could still smell the gentle fragrances of her body from when he had briefly pressed against her. Far from the juicy cherry coloring of her lips and nipples, she carried the scent of wild jasmine resting on top of cut green apples. The difference created a startling impression of innocence that was completely at odds with the suggestively lush flesh and the things he imagined doing with her.
Looking at her on the bed, he saw that she was lost in thought again and he waited for her to come out of it, waited to catch the slow spread of color against the creamy skin and see the barely perceptible swell of the breasts that bordered on petite in their asymmetry to the rest of her body. He groaned in anticipation, the sound seeming to jerk her back to reality. There. The flush. His cock twitched and he groaned again before dragging his attention back down to the sketch pad.
“Is something wrong?”
Concern darkened her hazel irises and he gave his head a slow shake to let her know everything was okay. It was damn near perfect.
“You’re sure?”
Well, he wanted her to lose the damn shawl. But then he might come completely undone—scaring her and embarrassing himself in the process. And she would bolt if he came on too strong. He didn’t doubt that for a second. She would be up and out, and he’d be right back at square one, facing untold months of offering to drive her someplace or help her carry something in or out of her apartment. The guarded smiles she had always returned would change, too, growing more distant or, perhaps, downright hostile.
