by Shelby Reed
His mouth curled into a humorless smile as he slid his hand from her thigh. “No?”
“No more.” She pressed her forehead to his shoulder. “In another time, another place . . .”
“Except we’re here and now.”
“Colm.”
“Okay then,” he whispered, but she was the first to let go.
He got her portrait from inside the Explorer and tucked her back into her coat, straightened it while she stood paralyzed with unslaked desire. The night was over, the sweetness fading, the cold pervading.
As he backed away, he flashed her a grin. “’Night, Birthday Girl.”
“’Night.” And hugging her portrait to her heart, she stood there and watched him stroll across the lawn to his cabin, the moonlight shining a halo on his head and shoulders.
Chapter Fourteen
It was time to stop the game.
He stood beneath the hot beat of the water and showered off a sleepless night as the realization rolled through him yet again. Time to admit defeat and ride out the remaining week with the single, clinging shred of decency left in him—the one part of him that cared more for Sydney than made sense. What did losing the extra money Max had promised really matter? It hadn’t existed in the beginning. Colm would still be walking away with the payment he’d counted on since the beginning. Win or lose, he had his cut, and it wasn’t exactly modest for two weeks’ work with no real effort involved.
Ah, who was he kidding? It was more effort, more torture, than he’d ever experienced. His heart ached in a way he couldn’t explain. His body ached in a way he could. And the worst of it was that Sydney made him want to start from scratch and remake himself, regain what he used to be. He laughed at the futility of it and cut off the water hard enough to make the pipes knock inside the wall.
When he slipped into the studio an hour later, Sydney wasn’t there yet. He wandered around, examining her supplies, noting for the first time the orderliness amid the paint-splattered cans and containers lined on the table and simple wall shelves. He sat on her barstool, whirled around a few times, looked at the brushes staggered in an old latex paint can, at the blank canvases stacked in a corner, at the half-finished ones leaned in another. He breathed deep and knew he would never again encounter the scent of mineral spirits and oils and acrylics without remembering a somber, leggy blonde with the bluest eyes he’d ever seen.
The studio door opened. He spun on the barstool and found Sydney on the ramp, watching him with an unreadable expression.
“Hi,” he said.
She wandered down to where he sat and stopped a couple of feet away. He thought she would speak, but she just looked at him, her blue eyes wide and uncertain.
His brows drew down. “What’s wrong?”
“Max’s flight arrives this afternoon. He’s coming home early.”
Colm swiveled away, toward the easel, where his portrait sat half covered with a stained cloth. “Does it matter? We still have a few days left.”
At her indrawn breath, he closed his eyes. Here it comes.
“Colm, I’m letting you go.”
Colm, it’s over. Colm, go back to your life and lose me forever.
“Why?” he asked finally, toying with the edge of the cloth covering his portrait. “Why let me go early when you still have several canvases to do before your next show?”
“I can take photos of you today, before Max gets home, and work from those. I think I’ve got you enough in my head to easily summon your image.”
“Yeah?” A rueful grin tugged at the edges of his mouth. “That goes both ways.”
Silence fell between them, and then she said, “It’s nothing personal.”
“Bullshit, Sydney.”
Her face flushed. “I beg your pardon?”
“I said bullshit. This is nothing but personal.” Anger rushed up and squeezed his throat, more emotion than he’d allowed himself to display with her yet. “I think we’ve come to know each other well enough in the last few days to avoid the tiptoe crap. So don’t try to save my feelings, or your own, by selling short what this is really about.”
She pressed a hand to her throat and moved past him to straighten a portrait hanging on the wall. “You’re still getting paid.”
“Don’t.”
“But—”
“Jesus, Sydney, just be quiet.” He pushed a hand through his hair and hopped off the barstool. The whore in him was banished, the man in him fully alive and fighting for the truth. “We know what this is. If we keep on, we’re going to sleep together. You and I both know it.”
“So you have to leave.”
“Sydney.” He grasped her hand and drew her closer. “Listen to me. I know you’re loyal to Max. It’s one of the things that makes me desire you—that you want to stay honest until the bitter end with him. Your honesty puts me to shame. But Jesus . . . don’t cut ties with me, too, before we can figure out what this could be between us.”
What this could be between us? Nothing. A joke. But he couldn’t stop himself from fighting for what he couldn’t have, even as she bit her lip and pulled away.
“You can’t be part of the plan, Colm. It just won’t work.”
He squinted at her. “What plan?”
“The one where I learn to have relationships without a bunch of baggage attached. As much as I want you—and I do, God, you know I do!—I can’t start a new life out from under Max’s shadow by jumping into a relationship with you. You can’t argue with me on this. I won’t listen.”
Colm sighed and hung his head, pinching the bridge of his nose. In that moment, that excruciating, gut-wrenching moment, it didn’t matter that he’d been a whore hired to deceive her. It didn’t matter that she was fighting old ghosts to spread her wings. If he made love with her, that’s what it would be. Love. God help him.
Everything in him reached for her, but he squelched the urge to touch her again and instead wandered over to sit on the edge of the platform, his pulse racing. “You want me gone when Max gets here?”
“I think that would be best.”
“We still have a few hours.”
She glanced at the clock on the wall. “His flight gets in at four. He’ll be home by six.”
“Then will you do something for me?”
Sydney licked her lips and nodded.
“Will you finish the portrait of me on your easel?”
A reluctant smile formed on her lips. “Okay. Why?”
He shrugged and dug a faint smile of his own from the black pit of his heart. “Just so I feel like you finished something based on a live model. Remember, Syd, your work comes alive . . .”
“When I have a live model.” She released a breath and her shoulders relaxed a little. “Take off your shirt.”
She had no idea the storm roiling within him as he stood, tugged the hem of his shirt from his jeans, and drew it up and over his head. When he tossed the garment aside, she was watching him, not with an artist’s eye, but a woman’s.
She was his just that easily, and he couldn’t stop the seduction, not when he himself was so utterly seduced. Choosing his words carefully, he said, “How do you want me?”
“Sitting on the edge of the stage . . . lean back on your elbows.” She paused. “And unbutton your jeans.”
His gaze never left her face as he propped himself on one elbow and flicked his fingers down his fly.
“No commando this time, I see,” she said.
“I can take off my underwear if you want it like last time.”
To his surprise, she nodded. “You can use the dressing room.”
She had to know him better than that. Standing before her unabashed, he shucked off his jeans, stepped out of them, then slid his fingers inside the waistband of his gray boxer-briefs and pushed those down, too. He had stood before a thousand women with an erection, but this time seemed different. His arousal went so deep it ached in his marrow, as though he could take her a million times and it would never be enough.
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Sydney seated herself on her barstool as he pulled his jeans back on without buttoning them, tucked himself in carefully, and positioned himself as requested on the platform. They worked in silence for a long time, their eyes meeting across the few feet between them every time she looked at him to check the details. The sexual tension built in him, layer upon layer until he broke a sweat and wanted to explode.
At last she laid aside her brush and palette, and adjusted the work lamp so that the light shone differently on the right side of his face. His pulse quickened when she approached him and without explaining herself as usual, gently took his chin in hand and tilted his head a little more to the left.
Then her hand skipped featherlike down his chest, his abdomen, to his fly, and she spread the sides wider so that his cock threatened to burst through the opening.
“Like this.” Her voice emerged husky.
He wondered if she was as wet as he was hard.
Before she could walk away, he grasped her hand and drew it to his lower abdomen, where the muscles jumped beneath the heat of her palm. “A few hours, Sydney. It’s all we have left. Touch me.”
The indecision on her face killed him. He was her demon, her temptation, threatening to ruin her integrity at last, and she was wavering. Colm gritted his teeth, torn between remorse and the steely sense of what he craved.
When he released her hand, it stayed where he’d placed it. Her fingertips moved, glided over his stomach, a light tickle that brought a groan to his throat, one he suppressed. She was like a skittish doe, waiting for sustenance from an outstretched hand. A single sound would have her bounding away, although the silence seemed louder, limning the incredible tension that stretched razor-tight between them.
Her fingers swept his chest, traced his pecs, his nipples, his sternum and throat. He swallowed beneath her touch, and nearly jumped when she touched his bottom lip with a single fingertip. He wanted to lunge up and grab her, pull her down, and strip the paint-splattered yoga pants right off her long legs, but he forced himself to lie still, to subject himself to her slow, light exploration.
“You’re incredible.” She straightened and spoke at last, her voice low. He hadn’t heard it like that before—a little desperate, hoarse with passion. “Don’t do this to me.”
“Then will you do it to me?” He caught her hand and returned it to his abdomen, and within his jeans grew painfully harder. Maybe she would pull away, but all he knew was how much he craved the feel of her fingers on his flesh.
Sydney’s tawny brows drew down as she studied the sight of her own hand on his skin. And then she moved. Her fingers glided into the opening of his fly, slid through the dark hair there, and lightly touched him.
Colm shuddered. Reaching down, he shoved his jeans to his hips, freeing himself so that he rose hard and hot, demanding more.
“Oh,” she whispered.
Who knew what that meant? Shock? Approval? He shifted, resisting the urge to beg, and drew her hand back to his erection. For a long time—forever—her hand didn’t move, just rested lightly on his throbbing flesh. Then with an indrawn breath, she enclosed him in her slightly rough, paint-stained fingers, and pleasure rocketed through him. He pushed into her grip, once, twice, until she picked up the rhythm and stroked him, base to tip, her thumb finding the sensitive underside of his erection.
Colm’s hand closed over hers. Watching her through his lashes, he guided her touch up and down, his breath coming hard and fast.
He knew only too well how to time his own orgasms, but this was Sydney.
Sydney.
Just that fast, after a mere week of wanting her so badly, the climax built low in his belly, tightened his muscles, rushing, rushing—
And like an untried teenager, he arched against the platform, pushed into her hand one last time and shuddered to climax.
* * *
Sydney didn’t want it to end, but Colm finally shivered, halting her fingers on his flesh. His chest rose and fell like a bellows, but she was panting just as hard. She throbbed everywhere as much as if she had been the one to come. His pleasure was more spellbinding than any artwork she’d ever seen, and she wanted to revel in it, to spend hours in bed with him, to learn his body by touch and taste and mold every inch of him with her hands.
The vague scent of his release rose to her senses and woke her from her trance. “Let me get you a towel.”
He didn’t say anything, just raised himself on his elbows and watched her, his expression dark as she backed away.
The silence between them filled her with uncertainty . . . and then came the remorse. She would have touched Colm, would have taken him in her hand, even if she hadn’t planned to break it off with Max. She couldn’t help herself. This entire last week had been a slow descent into infidelity and the ever-cursed poor decisions for which she hated herself.
My mother was right. She was bound to repeat her mistakes over and over.
As she drew a towel from a shelf near her easel and brought it to Colm, the implications of what they’d just done left her doubting her ability to speak.
He did it for her. He wiped his stomach and chest, tucked himself into his jeans, and sat up to look at her. “Hey. Come here.”
When she stepped closer, he caught her fingers. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” she said. “You?”
“I’m okay.” He hesitated, his thumb whisking over the back of her hand. “What are you thinking?”
“Nothing,” she said. “I’m just confused.”
“Well, I’m not. I want inside you, Sydney. Right here on the platform. I want to come inside you, not in your hand.”
She shook her head and stepped away from him, unsure of where to flee. He was deadly. The memory of his groan at the height of pleasure played through her mind, and fire blazed inside her everywhere, from the aching place between her legs to her throat, her cheeks. “I’ve done a lot of bad things in my life. And now I’ve done it again.”
“Don’t say that. What you did has been building between us for days, and I wanted it even more than you.” He rose to his feet, adjusted himself in his jeans, and reached for his shirt. “I can’t leave without asking you again. Let me make love with you. We both need it. We have the time.”
She resisted the urge to glance at the clock, her heart pounding. “I can’t. I’m sorry.”
“Because of Max.”
She looked away.
“Watch out for him, Syd,” he said quietly. “He’ll fight for you, and it’ll be through manipulation.”
“I’ll ignore it. None of it matters now except taking care of myself.”
“And you think I would keep you from doing that.”
She rubbed her hands over her face. Her cheeks were so hot. She was hot all over. “Our timing was bad. I never expected you.”
“I never expected you, either.” He started for the door, struggling into his shirt as he went.
Her dream was leaving the room. But God, it had been sweet. “Colm.”
Colm turned to look at her.
When she reached him, she slid a hand into the thick, short hair at his nape and drew his mouth down to hers. For a long time they kissed, lips softly caressing, their breathing stalled and hearts thrumming.
Her words were choked when she finally broke away. “Pack your things and leave right away, before . . . before I . . .”
“Before you what?”
“Before I follow my usual path and fall. It can’t happen, Colm.”
While she stood there, watching in desperation, he pulled the door open and took a final glance at her over his shoulder. The sad smile he wore tugged at some place deep inside her, where bad things happened to people who didn’t deserve them, and the world tilted in favor of unfairness and confusion.
“Jesus, Syd,” he said softly, resting his cheek against the edge of the door. “I didn’t think it would be this hard to say good-bye.”
She couldn’t speak without crying, so she didn’t s
peak at all.
And then he was gone.
Chapter Fifteen
Sitting in motionless bumper-to-bumper traffic an hour later, Colm rubbed his bottom lip and stared at the minivan in front of him. A sticker of five cartoon stick figures in descending size graced the corner of the rear window: mother, father, two boys, and a girl. Lower down, a bumper sticker proclaimed, My child is an honor student at St. Bernadette Academy.
He felt like he’d just swept in on a UFO.
An hour ago, Sydney’s hands had been on him. Not too soft, but not abrading. Firm grasp and easy slide. He replayed it over and over, his entire body throbbing again as though he’d never known release at her hands. He wanted her.
He missed her.
Coldplay sang from the radio about trying to fix someone. It reminded him of Sydney. He snapped it off and sighed, watching the minivan with the stick-figure family change lanes and inch out of sight. As usual, he was in the slow lane. Damned Washington traffic.
At home, he found Amelia in the living room, watching talk shows.
“Hi!” Her big green eyes studied him as he set down his overnight bag and her smile faded. “What’s wrong?”
He sat on the closest chair, the weight of his mistakes curving his shoulders. “I lost the job a few days early.”
“Oh, Colm.”
“I still got paid, but it feels all wrong.”
“Hold my hand.” When he grasped her fingers, she said, “I’m so sorry. I know how much you love your work.”
He wanted to laugh; he wanted to cry even more. He couldn’t stand the lies any longer. He couldn’t think about what the truth would do to his sister, either. Out of his power, it clawed its way up his chest to his throat. “Amie. There’s something I need to tell you.”
Those long lashes blinked. “What is it?” His hesitation stretched on until she added, “Hello?”
He wobbled on the edge of destruction . . . so close . . . and then, miraculously, swallowed the truth. It curdled his stomach, but the sense of relief was greater than the pain. What good was confessing now? Hurting her now? Ah, God, why the hell had he agreed to swallow Max’s bait in the first place?
