The Painter's Passion

by Dr. Rebecca Sharp

Just for tonight, she wanted to be the type of woman he wanted – the type of woman that he always got.

  Pierce was frozen – paralyzed watching as she grasped his arousal. This was not a new experience for him, but somehow it was like nothing he’d ever experienced before.

  He knew what her intentions were, which is why when she paused he thought the worst.

  He was large; he’d told her that he didn’t exaggerate about his pleasure. But was that the reason for her hesitation? Or was she second guessing herself?

  She should; she should fucking get up and leave.

  No one deserved to be on their knees for him – least of all, her.

  Then he watched as her perfect golden crown descended over his throbbing length and he braced himself.

  Her lips closed over the tip, her tongue darting out to lick the bead of moisture from the top, and Pierce thought he might have died.

  Searing pleasure ripped through him, burning even hotter than the knife that had almost killed him. Even though she had lingered for that moment, there was no hesitation now. No, his seductive sovereign, his enigma, surprised him again by expertly teasing his body with those perfect lips of hers.

  They slowly descended down his length, her tongue swirling around him as her mouth applied a steady suction to his cock.

  Fuck.

  “Fuck, Ana,” he rasped, his hands digging into the soft strands of her hair.

  And then it became hard for him to see as she began to move up and down his length. She couldn’t take all of him in her mouth, but it didn’t matter; the feel of the tip of him hitting against the back of her throat was exquisite torture. All the while, her tongue teased the aching flesh as the warm, tight heat of her mouth pulled him closer to release.

  “You feel so good, Princess. Fuck, I’m going to come.” He groaned and she began moving even faster. Then her hand reached under to grasp his balls and her tongue did something that he didn’t even know how to explain, rocketing him over the edge.

  He roared her name as his hips jerked up into her, his hands holding her head steady as his erection pumped his release into her mouth. He moaned, grateful that she continued to milk him, allowing him to come down from an incredible orgasm in the warm heaven of her incredible mouth.

  Ever so gently, her lips slid up his hard length, releasing his arousal that still craved more of her. Pierce watched in a daze as she swallowed and then looked up at him.

  Christ. Those golden eyes of hers were shimmering with desire.

  And there was no question that he wanted more.

  He was still hard; he could tie her to the couch for days… weeks… and still never be satisfied.

  And then she licked her lips and the last remnants of his pleasure from them – and he almost came again.

  “Where the fuck did you learn to do that?” he rasped harshly. Too harshly. But there was no putting it gently.

  He expected a smart retort or some sort of scold at his tone. Instead, pink glazed her face and a small smile of pleasure graced those talented lips.

  His little princess was proud of herself.

  “I…” She went to answer and then something stopped her. And whatever it was dampened her mood.

  Her hands rested on his thighs as she pressed herself up to stand in front of him.

  While he lay sprawled and sated with no shirt, his erection still pointing up at what it desired, she stood there wearing too many damn clothes.

  Including a goddamn sweater.

  That was going to be remedied.

  “Pierce, I should go—”

  He pushed himself forward, his hands firmly grasping the sides of her denim-clad hips.

  “Nowhere,” he cut her off firmly. “You are going nowhere, Ana. Not until I’ve touched you.” His hands slid around to her ass, squeezing the firm flesh and tugging her closer to him. “Not until I’ve had a taste of you,” he growled as he planted his open mouth over her core and gently bit down. Even though there were still layers of clothing separating them, he could feel the heat from her sex radiating straight through all of them.

  She gasped and then whispered his name.

  She wasn’t going anywhere, anytime soon. Not if he had anything to say about it.

  Pierce moved his mouth away, his forehead resting on her stomach, making space for his right hand to press expertly against the front of her jeans, cupping her through them.

  “I know where you want to go, Princess,” he rasped. “Let me take you there again.” He laughed harshly. “You want to know why it took me all day to get your information? Because this was all I could think about.” His fingers slid up inside the edge of her pants, heading for the button and zipper.

  And then a bomb exploded. Or the front door opened and shut.

  His gaze darted to hers – the golden globes still hazy with her desire, her need for release. It took her only a moment longer for the sound to register, her eyes widening in shock and fear.

  Morgan and Tash were home. And if Morgan found her here…

  “He’ll kill me,” she whispered.

  And as if the door slamming shut was the final stroke of midnight, his princess pulled out of his grasp and the desirable dance they’d been engaged in and fled his room.

  She was wrong though. Morgan would die for her. It would be his head that Morgan would claim.

  But, oddly enough, the only thought that came to his mind was that he would gladly die for her, too.

  Ana almost tripped running through his room, but she needed to get back down to hers before Morgan made it there.

  In all reality, she probably hadn’t needed to rush like she had.

  She made it through her bedroom door, closing it a little too harshly behind her in her hurry. Leaning back against the wood, she took a deep breath – her heart racing for a variety of reasons.

  Knock, knock.

  She jumped away from the door like she was expecting it to open on her and then froze.

  “Ana?” Her brother’s voice came from the other side.

  Shit. Shit shit shit.

  She looked around frantically trying to decide what to do – pretend to be sleeping and not answer? Answer through the door?

  The problem was that if he was there, there was a good chance that he’d heard her door shut which meant any attempt to avoid conversation would be suspect… just like trying to have one through the door would.

  Deep breaths.

  She cracked the door open, using it to half shield her from her brother’s curious stare.

  “Everything ok?” Hazel eyes that sometimes matched her own narrowed on her, quickly assessing her appearance. “I didn’t think you’d be up this late.”

  “Yeah, I… ahh… couldn’t sleep.” Stay calm, Ana.

  “Is everything ok?” His voice was getting a little harder as he processed what she’d said against how she appeared. “You were trying to sleep in your clothes?”

  “Of course not,” she retorted. But what was she trying to do? “I couldn’t sleep so I went downstairs to get some tea and since my robe is in the wash, I just put my clothes back on from earlier. Is that ok, mom?” she teased. “What’s up? How was your movie?”

  He remained silent for a moment. His big brother instincts told him to press further, but, thankfully, he didn’t. “Nothing.” He shrugged. “Movie was awesome. I just heard your door shut so I thought I’d check and make sure you didn’t need anything from me tomorrow.”

  She smiled at him. “No, I think I’m good. Tony and Gino are great to work with.”

  “Yeah, I figured.” He ran his hand through his matching blonde hair. “Sorry that you have to deal with Pierce. If you want I can try to talk—”

  She shook her head. “Don’t worry about it; I can handle him.” In fact, he’d just been putty in her hands… or, well, her mouth.

  “Everything ok, sis?”

  “Yeah, just a lot happening very quickly. I just don’t want anything to go wrong. I think I’m going to try to f
all back asleep.”

  “Alright, well if you need anything, you know I’m always here for you.”

  Her stomach clenched, feeling like she was betraying him by becoming involved with his friend. But she couldn’t help herself and he wouldn’t understand; he would see it as the same reason that she’d stayed with Shane all those years – because she didn’t think she deserved better. “Goodnight, Morgan.”

  “Night.”

  She shut the door behind her, barely making it to her bed before she dropped into the soft sheets.

  Too hot.

  Groaning, she sat up and quickly divested herself of her clothes. After what just happened, there was no way she could sleep with anything on right now; her body felt like it was about to catch fire.

  Deep down, she knew something like this was going to happen if she followed him up to his lair. But, for once, she wanted to do the wrong thing.

  He’d drawn her and his sketches were beautiful – far more than she was. It was all the more reason why she should have left. She’d seen the other drawings and paintings haphazardly cluttered throughout the space – all half-completed women in the nude.

  Beautiful women.

  She wasn’t one of those anymore. She was a lot of things – strong, determined, skilled, successful – but, ‘beautiful’ didn’t made the list any longer.

  She should have left then, but instead, she listened to her body that told her she needed to do this – she needed to do the wrong thing.

  As per usual, she tried to take control by asking to draw him instead. If she had known what would happen…

  All this time… all these weeks… she’d come to believe that no one could get through to Pierce, that maybe this was all there was to him: deviousness and desire. In that moment, she’d glimpsed something more: devastation.

  But it was the second he’d told her that she should leave, that she deserved more than this, than him, that she knew leaving was never an option.

  In that moment, doing the wrong thing – wanting him, wanting to pleasure him, wanting to take away his pain – had never felt so right.

  Wasn’t it ironic? With Shane, she’d stayed with him because she thought it was the right thing to do, because he’d convinced her that she couldn’t do better, and she honestly felt that she didn’t deserve any better.

  Now? She wanted Pierce even though it was the completely wrong thing to do and even though he tried to convince her that she could do better. This time, she knew she deserved better, the problem was that she didn’t want it.

  She wanted her devil and all his desire and demons.

  Chapter 15

  “Is everything ok, Ana?” Tony’s warm, caring voice tiptoed into her brain.

  She’d met with him and Gino earlier that morning and, after working so long together as a team, they’d quickly come up with their plan on how to tackle the space and the tasks which meant that there had been plenty of time afterwards for Tony to insist that he take her to lunch.

  She’d shared the information that she’d gleaned from Pierce the night before about the layout and guest list. It was safe to assume that many of the guests would be of an unsavory nature, in spite of their high class, which meant that it would be wise to use caution.

  The gist of their discussion? Gino would be monitoring the guests. Tony would be monitoring the team. And by team, they all knew that she really meant Pierce. She’d instructed Tony to stay near them, to strike up a conversation with her in order to give Pierce the opportunity to look around the room for their target.

  Even though she felt like she’d made strides with Pierce last night, she still didn’t trust him to not act on his own.

  The image of Pierce anguished and asking her to leave flashed in her mind. It was the first time that she’d glimpsed raw emotion from him and now, everything made just a little more sense. Pierce felt responsible for everything – his past, this painting – and it tortured him to no end to have to drag his friends into his mess.

  Before, she’d thought he was just a stubborn – sexy – asshole. Now, she had a feeling that he wanted the control, he wanted to take the lead, because if anything happened, he knew he should be the one accountable; he would take the fall, the failure, if it meant keeping it off of the rest of them.

  His self-sacrifice masqueraded as stubbornness and rude rebellion.

  “Ana?” Tony’s concern broke through her continued barrage of thoughts.

  “Sorry. I’m fine,” she replied weakly. “Just everything with the operation running through my mind, you know?”

  Partially the truth.

  “It’ll be fine.” Tony was always the reassuring one and Gino was her voice of reason. Tony always whole-heartedly encouraged her ideas for an op – even if there were better ones – while Gino generally interjected with better variations. Most of the time, her ideas and direction were on point – the other times, it was Tony’s attraction to her that kept him enthusiastically on her side. “I mean, we’ve been in shady situations before – remember last year in Paris?”

  They’d been investigating a theft at the Louvre. One of the security guards was linked to a group of art thieves that called themselves the V; the ‘V’ stood for Vertueux Voleurs – the ‘Virtuous Thieves’ – and after a year of studying their thefts, she believed the ‘V’ also stood for ‘five’ because there were five of them. Her team had been jointly tasked in tracking them down – the reason Tony and Gino had been in Spain – but with no success. They were good – no alarms, no mess, no casualties, no weapons, and no trace. Why virtuous? They claimed to only steal paintings that they felt or were informed that rightly belonged to someone else – in their opinion.

  She wasn’t sure what that thief had in connection to the V, but they’d been tipped off that the heist was going to happen very soon and the only way that they were going to be able to stop it was to get a man on the inside. And the simple fact was that men have an easier time letting a woman in rather than a man. So, with hardly any information to go on, Ana had gone in undercover as a new security member and convinced the man that she wanted to steal another painting. After a little shy flirting, he’d let her in on his plan and invited her to be a part of it.

  They’d caught him, but he hadn’t been working for the Voleurs. He’d had weapons on him and if there was one ‘virtuous’ thing that she did admire about the thieves, it was their abhorrence for violence. Needless to say, working solo with a man who was ready to resort to violence if necessary had been pretty stressful. When he’d realized that someone was on to him, he was about to start destroying the artworks in storage as a distraction to allow him to get away. The only way Ana would have been able to stop him was by force – and so she did. It was completely reckless and she hadn’t come away unscathed, but her body was used to scars by now.

  “Good point,” she admitted. “I guess I just feel like there are so many more people involved – people who don’t listen to me.”

  And she wasn’t even just talking about Pierce.

  Morgan, and even to some extent Tash, had their own ideas and motivations for doing this: Morgan to protect her and Tash to make up for everything that they’d done to help her. It wasn’t that they were bad reasons, but they were emotional ones and when emotion gets involved in an operation, it can go very bad, very quickly.

  “Are you sure it’s a good idea for you to go with Pierce?” he asked. It may have been the first time ever that he had questioned her and she had a feeling that it was only the seed of jealousy that spurred him to do it. “I mean, you could put him with Gino. Gino can handle him.”

  Ana smiled ruefully. “I’m sure that he could, but I need Gino to focus on the guests and our safety. I can’t have him spend the whole night just keeping an eye on Pierce.” She reached across the table and grabbed his hand as a sign of reassurance, realizing too late that he probably read it as more than that. “As much as it pains me, Pierce is intertwined in all of this.” And all of her. “And whatever he
sees or knows, I need to know. Which means that I think our current plan is the best that we’ve got.”

  Tony nodded, his eyes flickering back to where their hands were clasped. Biting her lip, she pulled her hand back, reaching for her glass of water as some sort of excuse for letting go.

  “Well, if you need me to do anything… or keep him in line… just let me know.”

  “Thanks, but I think you’ll have to fight Morgan for that opportunity.” She chuckled.

  “Do you think you’ll stay here after this case is done?” he asked.

  Ana paused at his question. She really hadn’t thought much about the future. She’d been… distracting… herself from life for a long time – throwing herself into her job, but she had to admit, being in New York with her brother had felt good; it had made her want to go home. She could probably transfer there, but she knew that Tony and Gino wouldn’t. They were from here; they had a semblance of a life here.

  “Honestly? I don’t know.” She sighed. “I miss my family. I’ve… stayed away from them for too long; I think it would be nice to go home.”

  His lips thinned in displeasure, but also with understanding. “Family is important,” he agreed. “Not just the one you have, but the one that you could have.” His eyes met hers, conveying the weighty implication of his words. “I have to tell you that I would really like it if you stayed…” His last sentence was very soft.

  Tony wanted a relationship… a future with her. And she wished that she wanted one with him – it would be so much easier.

  The waiter came at that moment and Ana swallowed a sigh of relief that she was spared from replying to his sweet statement. Instead, the waiter had brought the check and Tony was distracted with paying. She should have interrupted to try to cover her portion of the bill, but she couldn’t bring herself to do that to him right now.

  Guilt gnawed at her, sitting there with a handsome gentleman, when all she could think about was getting back home to the dangerous devil that resided within.

  As soon as the waiter left, she stood.