by Wolff, Tracy
She cries out as she falls forward off the curb and I reach out, grab her elbow. Then I yank her back, straight into my side as a truck speeds by on the cross street.
“Jesus, are you okay?” My voice is harsher, more strident, than I mean it to be. But my blood is roaring in my ears as traffic continues to rush by and all I can think about is what would have happened if I hadn’t caught her.
“I’m okay. I’m sorry.” She’s blushing again, but this time it’s from embarrassment and I hate it. Especially since she has nothing to be embarrassed by. “I’m just so clum—”
“Don’t say you’re clumsy. And don’t apologize.” I glare at the backs of the two frat boy dickheads who crashed into her. There’s a part of me that wants to catch up with them and teach them a lesson, but from the way they’re bobbing and weaving all over the place, they’re too drunk to remember what they did—if they even realized it in the first place.
“It’s not your fault,” I say as I swallow down the anger. “I just want to be sure they didn’t hurt you.”
“They didn’t. I’m fine.” She smiles up at me. “Thanks for catching me. It could have been...”
“Yeah.” I blow out a long breath and don’t say what I want to, which is that I’ll be catching her a lot more before our time together is through. But that’s pushing too far too fast, and the last thing I want to do is spook her now, when I’m already making a slow, steady kind of progress.
So I content myself with a murmured, “Of course.” Then I take her hand and lead her across the street.
This time she doesn’t fight me—even after we get to the curb on the other side—and we walk the final four blocks to her apartment, hand in hand. Occasionally she glances up at my face, or down at our clasped hands, but she doesn’t say anything and neither do I.
Instead, we talk about the museum, not my exhibit, but the work of some of the other artists hanging in the personal collection.
“You’ve got an incredible eye,” I comment as we walk what she assures me is the last block before her apartment.
“It’s not just me,” she answers. “Richard has forgotten more about photography than I know and we’ve got an incredible board. It makes it easy to find exciting new artists.”
This time, I don’t comment on the self-deprecation. Instead, I file it away for later and ask, “So, who’s your favorite photographer?”
“You.” She doesn’t even pause to think about it.
I laugh. “You don’t have to say that.”
“I know I don’t have to say it, but it’s true. I’ve been in love with your work since I was sixteen years old. Having this exhibit in my museum, having you here...it’s a dream come true.”
I ignore most of what she said and focus instead on what intrigues me. “Sixteen?” I study her carefully. “Are you a photographer yourself?”
“I’m not, no.”
“Then how did you run across my work that young?” I have more installations around the world now, but I’m guessing she’s about twenty-six and ten or eleven years ago I was still very much making my way up in the art world.
“I grew up in San Diego, and though I’m not an artist myself, I’ve always been fascinated with it. So once I got old enough to drive, I’d take off for a few hours on the weekend and haunt the local galleries just to see what was out there.” She smiles a little dreamily as she remembers. “That morning I had taken the ferry to Coronado and was just wandering between this little row of galleries, waiting for something to strike me.
“And then something did. In one of the little side galleries, there was this photograph of the sky. It wasn’t sunset or sunrise. Wasn’t filled with thunderclouds or lighting. It was just the sky on a mostly sunny day, stretching for what felt like forever. It just grabbed me. At the time, I didn’t know why. I didn’t know about composition or symmetry or depth of field. I just knew that that photograph set my hair on fire. And then I found out it was part of a series—”
“Céu.” I was in Brazil at the time I photographed that series and named it after the Portuguese word for sky.
She lights up. “Yes. I stood in that gallery for hours, just staring at the series. And when I got home, I Googled everything I could find about you and your work. I’ve been hooked ever since.”
Her eyes are dancing, her whole face shining with a joyous intensity that grabs me by the gut. I want to photograph her like this, wide open and sparkling brighter than the stars above our heads. Then again, the longer I spend with her, the more ways I find to photograph her.
I want to shoot her naked in the moonlight, hair tumbling over her shoulders and arms lifted to the sky like some pagan goddess.
I want to shoot her in my bedroom, in my bed, slivers of her pale luscious skin showing through my ropes.
I want to shoot her in the museum, on the ocean, everywhere.
I want to pull every drop of expression she can give me from that incredible face...and then I want to dig even deeper.
“So, what’s your favorite piece of mine?” I ask when I manage to drag my mind back to the present.
“I don’t know,” she responds immediately. “That’s really hard.”
“No, it’s not.” I study her face closely, wondering what it will look like when she finally opens herself to me. When she finally gives herself over to everything I want to show her. “Don’t think, just answer. What’s your favorite?”
“Alone.” This time it comes without hesitation. “Or maybe Muhadad.”
“Muhadad?” I repeat the Arabic, both brows arched as I imagine the sequence of photos I entitled Dark, because that’s how they make me feel. “You surprise me.”
“I surprise a lot of people,” she answers with a grin. Then she’s pulling her hand from mine. “Thanks for walking me—”
“Sit for me.” The words come, unbidden, from deep inside me, where they’ve been waiting for far too long.
“What?” She looks at me like I’m insane.
“Sit for me,” I repeat as I reach for her hand and pull her close.
She doesn’t fight me. Instead, she just shakes her head and says, “I don’t understand.”
“Not much to understand, luv. You sit where and how I want you and I take the pictures.”
“You make me sound like a dog.”
“You’re destined to be a lot of things to me, Grace Parker, but a lapdog is definitely not one of them.” I lift her hand to my mouth, press a kiss to the center of her palm.
Her eyes go wide and wild. “I don’t understand what’s happening here.”
I tug her a little closer, then spin her until she fits against me, her back to my front. She’s a tall woman—only a couple inches shorter than my own six feet—and she doesn’t fight me, so it’s easy to wrap my arms around her waist. Easy to bend forward until my lips are a scant inch from her ear.
“I think you do,” I breathe, relishing the way she shivers just a little. When she doesn’t pull away, I press my lips against the nape of her neck.
“Jaxon.” Her voice is even smokier now and it slides into me—slides through me, like the darkness we were just speaking of.
“I like that,” I tell her, sliding my thumb over that luscious lower lip of hers.
“Like what?”
“The way my name sounds on your lips.” I kiss her again, this time on the sensitive spot right behind her ear.
She shudders, and though her back is ramrod straight, I can feel the way she sinks into me. Can relish the way her back rests against my chest. “I don’t think—”
“Don’t think,” I answer, sliding my arm around her waist to hold her even closer. I wait for a moment, to see if Grace objects. When she doesn’t, when she just melts into me even more, I slide my hand inside her suit jacket and up, up, up, until I’m cupping her soft, firm breast in my palm.
&nbs
p; She gasps and I soothe her with several more kisses along the length of her neck. “Okay?” I ask, when she shivers but still doesn’t pull away.
For long seconds she doesn’t respond and I wait, heart pounding, cock throbbing, for her decision. Just when I’m about to pull away—the last thing I want is to do something Grace isn’t into—she nods jerkily. “Yes.” It’s barely a whisper, but it’s enough. At least for now.
I slide my hand a little higher on her breast, stroking my thumb back and forth against her taut nipple as her breath comes in shaky pants.
“I’ve wanted to do this from the moment you walked into that bar tonight,” I whisper in a voice so gravelly I can barely understand myself. “Well, this and so much more.”
“What—” Her voice breaks as I squeeze her nipple between my fingers, her hips jerking so that her lush ass rubs against my dick again and again. I barely bite back a groan as she murmurs, “What else do you want to do?”
“So much,” I answer as I angle us closer to the building. The sidewalk is surprisingly empty for this time of night, but the street is busy and cars are passing at a steady rate. The last thing I want is to embarrass Grace after the trust she’s put in me.
We’re right next to the bushes now, in the shadows cast by her apartment building’s overhang. Grace is facing the bushes, angled away from the door and the street, and with me wrapped around her from behind, all anyone can see is that I’m hugging her.
“I want to do so much to you, Grace,” I tell her as I pinch a little harder, relishing the way her whole body just melts into mine. Then I slide my free hand over her stomach and inside the waistband of her pants.
She jerks against me. “Jaxon!”
I squeeze her nipple just a shade tighter as I find her clit with my thumb and start to circle it fast and hard.
“Jaxon, I don’t—” Her breath catches in her throat and I freeze instantly.
“Do you not want this, Grace?” My whole body tenses up as I wait for her answer, the need to make her come—to see her come—a wild animal within me.
She arches against me, pushes her hips into my hand. “People—”
I relax, start stroking her clit again even as I slip two fingers along her slit. “No one can see you, luv. I’ve got you.”
It must be the reassurance she’s waiting for because seconds later the back of her head is resting on my chest and her hands are clutching at my thighs as I whisper in her ear.
“What I want is very simple, Grace. I want to fuck you.” I slide my fingers inside of her, loving the sound she makes deep in her throat. Loving even more the way she clenches around me.
“I’m going to fuck you. I’m going to tie you up. I’m going to turn you inside out. And then I’m going to immortalize you.”
She cries out then, one sharp, high gasp that has every nerve in my body going into red alert. Seconds later she slams over the edge, her body clutching rhythmically at my fingers as she comes and comes and comes.
I take instant advantage, leaning forward and nipping at her ear as I use my hands to draw out the pleasure, to make it sharper and keener. “I’m going to do all that and more to you, my strong, sexy Grace. And you...you are going to let me.”
And just like that she falls over the edge again.
Friday: Grace
I can’t believe this is happening. Hell, I don’t even know what’s happening, if I’m being honest. I met Jaxon Silva in a bar last night and this morning it feels like my whole world has been turned upside down. Especially if I let myself think about last night and how it felt to have his breath hot against my ear as he made me come. Or how my entire body went haywire when he said he wanted me to sit for him.
That he wanted to photograph me.
I’ve spent half my life surrounded by art, surrounded by subjects who have been “immortalized” by artists. I’ve looked at so many portraits—photograph and canvas—and have wondered about those subjects. Have wondered who they were, what they dreamed about, what they felt and thought about as they sat for the artist. Throughout the years, there have been thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of people whose lives I’ve wondered about as I stared up at them from a museum or gallery floor. I’ve never wanted to be one of them. Have never even thought of being one of them...before now.
Which is why I have spent the morning very studiously not thinking about Jaxon and his talented, talented fingers in any context except that of his exhibit—at least until now, when I no longer have a choice.
“What exactly am I supposed to do with those?” I ask the hapless delivery man standing in the narrow doorway of my office.
He looks from me to the giant—and I do mean giant—bouquet of roses in his arms. “Umm, sign for them?”
I don’t want to sign for them. I don’t want to even look at them. Not because I don’t like roses or because I’m offended, but because they confuse me. A lot.
To be fair, I’ve been confused since last night, when Jaxon got me off and then disappeared after promising he was going to make me immortal. But this? I stare helplessly at what has to be at least five dozen roses. This isn’t just confusing. It’s categorically insane.
Things like this don’t happen to women like me. And they certainly don’t happen when the guy in question is Jaxon freaking Silva. Talk about a man who fits the old adage about Byron—mad, bad and dangerous to know. With his piercing brown eyes, fallen angel face and too-long dark hair, it’s like the words could have been written about him.
I mean, sure, there’s always the chance those flowers are from somebody else. But let’s be real. Who else would be sending me this many flowers? Hell, who else would be sending me flowers at all? The only guy I’ve dated this year was so cheap he hadn’t wanted to buy me a birthday card—Do you know how much those stupid pieces of paper cost, Grace?—so I’m pretty sure he hasn’t suddenly sprung for two hundred and fifty dollars’ worth of roses out of nowhere.
“Excuse me, ma’am?” The delivery guy is getting impatient. “Where should I put these?”
“I have no idea.” I glance around my tiny, crowded space and finally settle on the top of a shoulder-high bookcase, largely because it’s the only surface in the office not currently covered in open books, folders and random other stuff. “Over there, I guess. Thank you.”
I rush to move the small pile of art books that permanently live in that space, then watch in a mesmerized kind of bewilderment as he puts the vase right in the middle of the bookshelf. Looking at it from this angle, I realize I made a mistake earlier. There are more than sixty roses in that vase. Significantly more.
There’s a part of me that wants to squeal and count every single one of them because Flowers! From a super hot, super talented guy who gave me an incredible orgasm last night! And another part that is freaking the hell out because Flowers! From a super hot, super talented guy who gave me an orgasm last night and who also happens to be a photographer with an exhibit I am in charge of and this is totally unprofessional.
Good thing I don’t have time to do either right now, especially since the delivery guy is sticking his tablet in my face and demanding a signature in the same voice people use to talk to testy middle schoolers—a cross between impatient and please God, don’t snap and destroy us all.
After I sign, I hand him back the tablet with what I hope is a normal, not crazy at all, smile. “Give me a second to get my purse for the tip.”
“No worries. The tip’s already been taken care of.” He gives me a little wave and then half walks, half flees from the room.
Getting flowers obviously doesn’t bring out my best side. Which is fine, honestly, because what. The. Fuck?
For long seconds, I just stand in the middle of my office and stare at the bouquet. Then, after casting a cautious glance toward my door—just to make sure no one is coming—I walk over to the bookcase the flowers are resting
on to get a closer look.
I’ve never been a rose person, but these are gorgeous—tightly furled and so red they’re nearly black. And they smell amazing. It’s only been a couple of minutes and already my entire office smells like an English garden.
After another glance over my shoulder to ensure I’m still alone, I lean forward and brush my face against the flowers. They’re cool and soft, silky even, and they smell even better when my nose is pressed up against them.
Because I’m curious, I do a quick count in my head and come up with ninety-six roses. Ninety-six. Eight dozen roses. Talk about feast or famine. I’ve never been sent roses in my life and the first time I get them, it’s enough for eight women? I don’t know what to think about that, any more than I know what to think about the man who sent them.
The talented, brilliant, beautiful man who sent them.
Just thinking about Jaxon sends a shiver down my spine—even before I reach for the card buried amidst the roses. When I turned around in that bar last night and saw him standing there with a crooked smile and an arched brow, I nearly died.
I wasn’t lying when I told him that he was my favorite photographer—my favorite artist. From that moment when I first saw one of his pieces hanging in a local gallery, I’ve been transfixed by the utter simplicity—and absolute complexity—of his work. I was sixteen then and now, ten years later, I’ve seen almost everything he’s ever made public and my opinion hasn’t changed at all. In fact, now that I’ve studied art I’m even more in awe of the way Jaxon always, always reveals the heart and soul of whatever subject he focuses on.
It’s that brutal yet compassionate honesty that has secured him a place at the forefront of the art world. And it is that honesty that has my heart pounding and my hands shaking as I finally open the card he wrote for me.
There’s no name inside, just the last two lines from a Pablo Neruda poem. The fact that Jaxon—and there is no longer any doubt these flowers are from Jaxon as I can feel him in every blossom and every aching syllable—guessed my favorite poet doesn’t surprise me. And after what happened last night, neither does the reference to the moon on my skin or the fire inside me. But the title of the poem—“Ode to a Beautiful Nude”—has my hands trembling and my stomach clenching as his words from last night come back to me.
