Artfully Yours

by Isabel North

  “I don’t lure girls into my barn. Just you.” He scanned her thoroughly, lingering in the interesting places. “And you’re a woman.”

  Yep. She was feeling particularly womanly right now. “Mind if I take a closer look at your other stuff?”

  He gave her a look she found hard to read—challenging, and something else beneath that—and nodded, letting her go.

  He could tell that she didn’t get his work. It was cute. Striking? She said his work was striking? All right, he’d give her that, but it was so much more. It was passion and yearning and a pure ego-less coming together of two separate entities into one shattering union. It was a layering of dimensions, with each angle as the captured step of the only dance worth knowing—a dance of giving, taking, demanding, accepting…

  Alex watched Elle as she moved on to another piece. Would she understand that one? He absorbed the way she stood in front of it, awkward and uncertain. She didn’t seem to know what to do with her arms. She crossed them over her chest, she hooked her thumbs in the back pockets of her skinny jeans, she tapped her chin with a thoughtful nod.

  He grinned. She wasn’t going to understand any of it, was she?

  Elle obligingly inspected every single piece. He knew his focus on her as she did so was unsettling, could tell by the wary glances she shot him every now and then and by the set of her shoulders. He couldn’t help it. He didn’t need her to appreciate his work, to understand it, hell, even to like it. He wasn’t interested in like and don’t like. He did need, to the very depths of his being, to see her in this moment as she saw him. For Elle, she was checking out sculpture. For Alex, he was watching the instant when his inspiration came face to face with reality. Saw her own heart parlayed through the blood and sweat of a man in love.

  She finished looking and rejoined him with a smile.

  He stepped into her, crowding her because he couldn’t damn help himself. “Hungry?”

  “Yep. What’s on the menu?” Her cheeks pinkened when he didn’t reply. “Alex. Hey. Alex. What’s for dinner?”

  Right. Food.

  They strolled back to the house, where Elle seemed more thrilled with the setup in his dining room than any of his work. “This is romantic,” she said, taking in the flowers, the candlesticks, the crystal glasses, the classic white tablecloth. All perfectly replicated from date number six in the handbook Gabe had sent to his iPad.

  “Of course.” He seated her and went to the kitchen, came back carrying an exquisitely arranged salad on a white bone china plate he’d just had to pop the plastic cover off, and placed it in front of her.

  She was murmuring something to Gargoyle, who was about as good with personal boundaries when it came to Elle Finley as he was, and she did a double take at the extravagant food. “Wow. You cook, too?”

  Alex pushed Gargoyle’s big head off her lap, ignored the drool patches he’d left, and laid a crisp napkin in place. “No,” he said and glanced down into her startled eyes. “Talking to the dog. Go lie down.”

  Gargoyle grumbled but slithered under the table to sprawl on the floor, nose touching the tip of Elle’s boot.

  Alex sat down himself and continued, “And as for the cooking, also no.”

  She took in the tableware and the food again. Her hand clenched around her fork. “Is this catered?”

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  “Alex. I thought you were cooking! I saw you go into the store!”

  He’d gone into the store. He’d come back out of the store. He’d gotten into his truck, driven home to his laptop and found the nearest starred restaurant he could throw enough money at to get over here and help him make a good impression.

  “You shouldn’t have,” she said.

  “Yes I should. This is a date.”

  “A date! Not a formal catered event. A first date!”

  “Does this feel like a first date? I was thinking it felt more like a sixth date.”

  She waved a hand. “We could have gone out to a restaurant. You didn’t have to bring the restaurant here. This is too much.”

  “It’s not too much. I didn’t want to go to a restaurant. Couple of logistical problems. Eat.” He nodded to her plate.

  “Logistical problems?” She popped in a mouthful, chewed, and sighed. “Fabulous.”

  He shifted on his chair. Shit. She was always making these weird noises. His voice came out rough. “First problem, I didn’t want to do this surrounded by a room full of people and being constantly interrupted by the waiter. I don’t like rooms full of people. I want to be alone with you.”

  “We’re not technically alone. Gargoyle’s here.”

  “He’s not interrupting the conversation, and anyway he won’t stick around too long. He’s scared by loud noises.”

  “What?”

  “We’ll be alone later, when it matters, because he’ll run away. Because of the loud noises.”

  “You’re a screamer, huh?”

  “Can be.”

  She grinned at him, then when he lifted his brows, she swallowed hard. “Second problem?”

  “Second problem is after we’re done eating. The nearest good restaurant is a forty-minute drive. I’m not a patient man. Don’t like waiting.”

  “Oh.”

  He continued to watch her as she pushed the food about on her plate. “Right, then. Ready to move on?” He stood up.

  Elle’s gaze flew to his and she said, breathlessly, “You really don’t have an issue with just coming out and saying it, do you?”

  “No.”

  “How about another glass of wine first? Another two?”

  She seemed out-of-proportion nervous about the impending main course.

  Alex replayed the conversation in his head. “I mean to move on with the meal.”

  Elle sat up primly, straightened the knife and fork on her plate. “I knew that.”

  He couldn’t help it. He tipped her face up, and touched his mouth to hers in a fast, hard kiss. Then another. Then made himself pull away and pick up the plates. “Stay.”

  “You talking to me or Gargoyle?”

  “Both of you. This kind of waiting—” he lifted the plates with practiced ease, “—I can handle. Pour some more wine.”

  “Oh, I will.”

  He whisked the plates away, came back with the main course, and placed it in front of her.

  “You’re very graceful for a guy whose day job involves welding torches and whatever else all those tools were out in the barn.”

  “Trust me, you need grace and dexterity when you’ve got tanks of combustible fuel, fire, and superheated metal a couple of inches from your face. But as it happens, I have some waiting experience. Did it for years in San Francisco when I was getting started and I couldn’t pay anyone to look at my pieces, let alone pay me for them.”

  “Tell me about it. How you got into the whole metal sculpture thing.”

  He pointed at her food. “Eat,” he said, waiting for her to begin before he continued, “Not much to tell.”

  “Are you kidding? There’s a lot to tell. Misfit high school student with controlling wicked grandfather runs away to the big city and morphs into super-buff artist guy with the power to bend metal to his will. It’s like a superhero origin story. I went to the city too, spent eight years up to my eyeballs in ER trauma, and the only power I discovered was the ability to start a relationship with a man and drain him of passion. As in, completely. I can suck it right out of him. Leave nothing but a husk.”

  Alex dropped his fork.

  Elle stared at him. “Holy God,” she said, “not that. I don’t mean it like that. I’m a medical professional! I’m not euphemistic about these things. If I was talking about giving a guy a—” She choked off. Took a slug of wine. Placed the glass down with care and gave him a bright smile. “Well. That took an unexpected turn for the awkward. Let’s get back on track, shall we? I want to hear more about your art.”

  “I want to hear more about the passion sucking.”

  “H
ah. No. Art.”

  “Fine. Eat.”

  They ate in a simmering silence, Alex fascinated by the play of her blush, to be able to visually track the heat moving through her. He felt it in himself always, felt the heat running through his veins like a river of fire, but seeing it in Elle made his attention drift as he started to imagine another piece.

  “Alex?”

  “Hmm?” His vision swung back into focus on her cautious face.

  “You okay?”

  Yes. He took a deep breath and sighed. Oh, yes. “I’m good.”

  “Think you about burned a hole in me with that staring thing you’ve got going on.”

  He noticed with surprise that she’d finished her food. He glanced down. So had he. “Sorry. I was thinking.” Great. Way to impress her, drifting off in the middle of a conversation. He checked Elle’s expression. She didn’t seem annoyed. She seemed…intrigued.

  “What were you thinking about?” she asked.

  “You.”

  “You were thinking about me? Are you sure? Even though I’m right in front of you, you didn’t see me. I had to say your name three times before you heard me.”

  He reached out across the table and took her hand in his. She started with surprise, then quickly turned her hand in his grasp so they were palm to palm. “I always see you. I was seeing you, just a different form of you.”

  “A sculpture?”

  “Yes.” He moved his thumb over the back of her hand.

  “Is that how the muse thing works?”

  “Sometimes. All I know is, I think of you and I feel. I see you, and I burn.”

  She opened her mouth to reply, but nothing came out.

  He smiled. “That first time I kissed you? I went home and I drew for about six hours straight.”

  “You draw as well as sculpt?”

  “Yes. Gave myself cramp in my hand that night.”

  “From drawing?”

  “Yes. That, too.”

  “Do you still have those pictures? Can I see them?”

  Alex was damn near impossible to embarrass, but the thought of Elle seeing his adolescent fantasies about her as he came down off the high of actually holding her in his arms, those fantasies laid out in uncompromising, stark black ink and white paper, made something deep inside clench. Not the good kind of clenching. All right, some of it was good. But still. No. “I burned them.”

  “Shame.”

  “And when I did, when I watched them break apart into fire and smoke, I knew what I wanted to do. I’d always tinkered with metal work and I was fascinated with the transformative nature of fire, the vector of it, you know, as a conduit and force of change. And after that kiss?” He felt himself shudder, and didn’t care that she saw it. “Everything came together, and I shifted over to concentrate on sculpture.” Her lips were parted. “’Course, I was terrible at it for years. Years. But I learned how to get it to shape what I wanted.”

  “All because of that one kiss?”

  “Yes. The pieces in the barn, though? My new stuff? That is a whole new direction for me, and it’s like I’ve been reborn. Like I didn’t even know I was down to cold ash and now, it’s all I can do to keep up.”

  “Wow,” she said.

  “Yeah. Now it’s my turn. Tell me about the passion sucking.”

  Her dreamy look fell away, and she gave a nervous laugh. “I was joking.”

  “Shouldn’t joke with a man about that, Elle.”

  She rolled her eyes. “It was my ex-boyfriend, all right? Ugh. Fine, the last couple of exes. But mostly the last, Chris. I fell in love with one guy, and three years later, woke up with someone else.”

  “And that’s your fault how?”

  She ran her fingers idly up and down the stem of her wineglass until she noticed he was watching, then snatched her hand away. “I’m a nurse. I’m about as ordinary and sensible as you can get. I’m not like you. I’m grounded in the world around me, in the physical and the tangible. I look at a piece of metal, and I see a piece of metal. Depending on the state of it, I see possible lacerations, an impaling, a tetanus shot. I’m not imaginative or creative or, well, passionate. So it kind of fascinates me and, I don’t know why, but I’ve always been drawn to these over-the-top guys.”

  Alex gave her a smug smile. He knew why. She’d missed him as much as he’d missed her.

  “Thing is, it always starts off great but then it fades. And the fading hurts, Alex. I know the crazy can’t-keep-your-hands-off-each-other part of falling in love is supposed to mature, and that’s fine. Everything changes. Everything should change, because the definition of not changing is standing still, and that’s another way of saying stagnation. But I can’t ever seem to get to the part where it matures and develops into something new. It doesn’t develop. It dies. Goes cold. The passion burns out, and I’m left with nothing.” She swirled the wine in her glass, glaring at it. “You know the scariest part of the nothing? It’s nice. Nice is terrifying. Because I could settle for it, nice. I don’t want nice. And nice is all I seem to get, so I’m starting to think it’s me. I find a passionate guy, use him up, he’s happy with it, I’m not. So we break up. And I get to stand there and watch this once-a-force-of-nature guy walk away. Wearing a cardigan.”

  “You got something against cardigans?”

  “Some guys can rock a cardigan. Sometimes, the cardigan is a sign of the end. When you move in with someone and he’s a powerhouse of passion and then three years later you realize you haven’t had sex in six months because he’s too tired and you’re too tired, and all you do in bed is cuddle, and he wears cardigans and bought you slippers for your birthday…it’s like the world turned black and white. And I wanted to see all the colors.”

  “Okay,” Alex said, getting to his feet. He stood beside her chair.

  She let out a squeak when he slipped his hands under her arms, lifted her straight up, and twisted to sit her on the edge of the table. “What are you doing?”

  He bunched his fists either side of her hips, boxing her in. “You ready for dessert?”

  Elle’s gaze dropped to his mouth, then up to his eyes. “Yes. Wait. I’m not sure. Are you…is this a line? Or are you offering cake?”

  “There is cake. You want cake?”

  “I do like cake.”

  “Hmm.”

  “Is there anything else on the menu?”

  “Not food.”

  She hesitated.

  “Too slow,” he said. “Kitchen’s closed. No cake for you.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Alex placed his hands on the inner curves of her knees and held her gaze as he slowly eased her legs apart and stepped between. Trying to get a little space, Elle leaned her upper body back. Didn’t work. He followed her down until she was propped on her elbows, staring up into his face. She raised an arm, not sure as she did it whether it was to haul him down or hold him back, and managed to knock over her wineglass instead. “Shoot.” The wine rushed out over the tablecloth and dripped onto the floor. She tried to right the glass and ended up with her elbow in the plate of food instead.

  Alex gripped her upper arms and drew her up. He held her pinned with a forearm diagonally across her back and up into her hair as he used the other to sweep the table clear.

  Holy crap. He just did that. The plates, cutlery, glasses, condiments set, and flowers all hit the floor. “The deposit!”

  “Really don’t care about the deposit.”

  He kissed her, hungry mouth opening over hers as he bent her backward with deliberation and forced her flat to the table. His hands went back to her knees, this time to wrap around and tug her toward him until they were perfectly aligned. Couldn’t possibly get closer.

  “Better,” he muttered, and then he kissed her again.

  Damn right this was better. Almost perfect. Almost. Nearly there. Just from being kissed and from the way he moved against her as he did it, somehow managing to get the right stroke over and over and over and—

  He
stopped.

  “No!” Elle said. “Why?”

  Between ragged breaths, Alex managed to get out, “Table’s too hard.”

  She bit his lip.

  He moaned, caught her mouth with his again. He kissed her restlessly, relentlessly. He changed the angle from an aggressive, deep penetration to a light teasing flick of withdrawal before sliding back in so damn gently that her arms spasmed around him. And she might have whimpered. It was like he was running through every possible way of kissing her to find the best fit. Every way was the best fit. Except the last one, when he let go to brace his hands either side of her head.

  “I don’t want to hurt you,” he said. “The first three times? They’re going to be fast and hard. Need a bed for that.”

  “I’m really enjoying the table.”

  “Me, too.” He flexed into her slowly, then to her disappointment, stopped and scooped her up instead. “But I’m going to lose control in a moment. Bed.”

  Elle wrapped her legs around his waist as he strode away from the table, and she glanced back at the chaos left behind. The chaos left when he was in control. He turned them into a narrow passageway and booted open the bedroom door. Then his words sank in.

  “First three times are going to be fast and hard?” she asked, voice high.

  “Yeah.”

  Fast and hard sounded great, but, “First three?”

  “Three was an exaggeration.” He paused in the doorway. “After two, I can probably slow it down and be gentle.” He tangled his fingers in her hair, guided her mouth down to his and whispered over her lips, “Probably.”

  Alex strode straight through the bedroom and into the adjoining bathroom, flipping on the light.

  Elle winced. That was bright. “No shower sex. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen people come into the ER after bad shower sex. Dislocated shoulders. Black eyes. Concussions. Broken pelvises. It hardly seems worth the orgasm.”

  Alex eyed the shower. “Depends on the orgasm.”

  Elle stiffened. “No shower sex. It’s a traction issue.” It’s a no way am I getting naked in this lighting issue.

  “Hmm.” Alex propped her on the vanity, reached past to snag a familiar box of condoms. He ripped it open with brutal efficiency, grabbed a fistful, dropped them into Elle’s hands, then lifted her back up.