Gathering her resolve, she stood. He looked back at her, his body stiffening as he watched her trembling hands reach for the belt and loosen the knot. The robe slipped off her shoulders and piled on the floor at her bare feet.
Without a trace of shame, she draped herself across the velvet chaise, one arm tucked beneath her head, the other with her hand resting on her belly and her fingers splayed across her flesh—the same pose in which he’d been painting her. She stared boldly back at him. Completely nude.
Chapter 14
Sweet Lucifer.
Dom stared at her, unable to breathe. Unable to move at all, except for the pounding of his heart and a flexing of his cock.
Good God, she was beautiful. Not just her body, finally laid bare to him, with the fullness of her breasts, the soft curves of her hips as they rounded down into her thighs…the silky waves of her red hair spilling across her shoulders, with one wanton curl daring to tease at a dusky pink nipple.
No. It was her expression that held him prisoner. That same appearance of innocent invitation he’d glimpsed in her the day they met. That look of being secretly stumbled upon, of nervously contemplating what could be allowed to happen if consequences were thrown aside. Only Eve could create such emotion, with her determination to grab onto life by both hands and not let go. Her eyes glowed with it, and her lips parted delicately in anticipation of what could be—
The subject he’d longed to capture. The real woman with the inner light of a goddess.
Her face softened patiently, as if she knew that his artist’s soul was warring with the gentleman inside him. “Finish the painting, Dom.”
“I can’t,” he rasped out, although he desperately wanted to.
“Yes, you can.”
With an awkward laugh of incredulous disbelief, he turned away in an attempt to tamp down his lust. She had no idea how great a temptation she posed to him, both as an artist and a man.
He pointed at the easel. “That painting can never be shown. You’ll be recognized, and your reputation truly will be destroyed.”
“Then paint it for yourself,” she answered, undeterred. “Prove to yourself that you’re the great artist everyone proclaims you to be.” Her bare shoulders melted against the velvet beneath her as she whispered, “Because I already know how brilliant you are.”
His chest swelled with more masculine pride than he had a right to feel.
Uncertainty touched her voice. “You do want to paint me like this, don’t you?”
“Yes.” More than I want to breathe.
“Then paint me.”
He shook his head as he began to pace back and forth across the studio like a restless lion in a cage. Her eyes followed him patiently, a soft pleading in their honey-amber depths.
Grasping at any excuse he could, he halted in mid-stride and jabbed a finger toward the lantern hanging by its peg. “The light is wrong—all wrong. The lamplight will color your skin, the shadows—”
“Am I not pretty enough by lamplight?”
He groaned in frustration. Pretty enough? With the way the light shined golden on her bare skin and lit her hair like flames of burnished gold…Not pretty. Sublime.
“Tonight is all the time we have left,” she quietly stated the obvious, as if explaining that rain fell down and winters were cold. “Do you want to spend it arguing with me or painting me?”
All they had left, a few precious hours…Something inside him broke. Succumbing to her enticement, he strode to the easel and whisked away the cloth. Her image stared back at him from the canvas, still unfinished.
But not for long.
He hurried around the studio to gather all the lamps, lanterns, and candles he possessed, lighting them and placing them around her so that no shadows darkened any inch of her. He adjusted her arm beneath her head, brushed his fingers through her hair to move it just so, lifted her chin ever so slightly, spread her fingers wider across her abdomen…
He tried to forget the allure of her as he worked. Impossible. He was a damned fool to think he could. After all, it was that very allure that he wanted to capture.
But as he picked up his brushes and positioned the palette on his forearm, he lost himself in his work. He went deeper into himself than he’d ever gone before, until he existed as nothing but the stroke of the brush, the trail of color, the emerging beauty…He lost track of the hours, each one slipping away toward dawn, immersing himself in his painting. In her.
The lantern on the post sputtered and died, the oil used up.
The soft noise jolted him from his reverie. His eyes darted up to meet hers, momentarily confused. He’d forgotten that he was the artist, not a man in the painting who had happened along and found her by blissful accident, half-awakened from innocent slumber in her bedroom.
Then she smiled at him and brought him completely back to present. “Is it finished?”
Blinking rapidly, he tore his eyes away from her, to look at the canvas. “There are more layers to add with glazes, a thinning of lines…”
But the figure was finally whole. A masterpiece.
He murmured to himself as his eyes took it all in, “Perfect.”
Eve remained where she lay on the chaise as if, like him, she couldn’t yet bring herself to acknowledge that it was over.
Not bothering to wipe the paint from his hands, he slowly moved around the studio, putting out the lanterns and lamps one by one, until only a single flickering candle remained burning in its wrought iron stand just behind the chaise.
He looked down at her and caught his breath. She’d been beautiful in the lamplight, but in the shadows…a goddess.
His goddess.
He knelt in front of her. Her breath quickened beneath his shameless gaze until it matched his own. So much more than desire—never had he wanted a woman as much as he wanted her. More than a craving to bury himself between her thighs and find pleasure, he wanted to fill himself with her essence and carry her inside him always, to draw on for inspiration.
Like the siren she was, Eve placed her hand against his chest. Her fingers curled into the soft satin of his waistcoat, seeking out the fierce beat of his heart beneath. She slowly slipped the first gold button through its hole, then another, and another…He couldn’t find enough of the gentleman inside him now to make her stop.
When the last button slid free and his waistcoat fell open, she hesitated. The innocent uncertainty he’d captured in the painting returned to her, striking him with so much force that he bit back a low groan of need and reached to touch her.
Her bare flesh trembled as he caressed his hand along her leg, over the curve of her hip to her slender waist. A faint tracing of apricot-colored paint remained in its wake. He smiled. He was painting her a second time with his hands, turning her into a work of art.
She held still as he smeared paint over her lower abdomen with his thumb. Her breath hitched, the tiny muscles contracting at the sensation of the warm caress contrasting with the cold wetness of the paint.
Unable to resist, he circled her left nipple with his forefinger, leaving a trail of paint behind. Then the right one, just as deliberately. The streak of color faded as he drew a line down between her breasts, past her bellybutton to the edge of her curls, like an arrow pointing to the secret heart of her that she’d kept hidden from him for so long. Until tonight.
“Dom,” she whispered.
Emboldened, he ran the flat of his palms over her, smearing paint everywhere he touched. From her slender shoulders down her arms, along the sides of her body and over her ribs—one hand slipped beneath to stroke her smooth buttock and drew a gasping shiver from her.
“You made me promise to kiss you when I finished the painting,” he reminded her. He felt like a man bargaining with the devil. His artist’s soul in exchange for the sweet pleasures to be found in her. “I’m claiming that kiss now.”
Then he took her nipple into his mouth.
“Dom!” Her hands went to his head.
&nbs
p; “A little kiss,” he cajoled as he teasingly flicked the tip of his tongue against her hard nipple, making it draw up impossibly taut between his lips. “That’s all.”
A ragged sigh of permission poured from her, and the hands that had gripped at his head now relaxed, to sift her fingers through his hair. “If—if that’s all…”
He chuckled against her bare flesh. Only a kiss, yet nothing short of ambrosia. The decadent taste of her was sweet on his tongue, and he suckled at her, drawing her nipple deep into his mouth. A moan fell from her lips, and she arched her back to bring him harder against her.
She filled his senses—the sweet taste of her on his tongue, the warm flesh of her bare breasts beneath his kneading hands, the soft whimperings of her own mounting desire. He drank in the feminine sounds as his mouth captured hers for a languid yet passionate kiss that cajoled her to open to him, so he could slip his tongue inside and thoroughly ravish her mouth.
He tore his mouth away from hers, leaving her trembling and gasping for breath as he lowered his head and nuzzled his face in the soft curls between her legs. He breathed in the musky scent of her that tempted him to his core. He could never enjoy her fully, never bury himself inside her warmth, yet he couldn’t resist taking as much of her as possible.
If tonight was all they had left, then he wanted to imprint on his mind and senses everything about her, right down to that small beauty mark just to the lower left of her bellybutton, which he kissed reverently.
She stiffened, her fingers stilling in his hair.
He tilted back his head to gaze up the length of her body and met her eyes in the shadows of the flickering candlelight. “Only a kiss,” he reminded her.
Then he gently parted her legs, and his mouth slipped down between them.
She gasped with surprise at the contact, all of her tensing. For a single heartbeat he feared she might change her mind, push him away, and deny him this forbidden taste of her.
But his brave little adventuress dared to let him stay right there between her thighs. She didn’t yet relax beneath him, but her gasp faded into a ragged sigh of soft permission to continue.
As he placed gentle kisses to the most intimate part of her, the tension eased from her, and she repeated in a breathless whisper, “Only…a little kiss.”
But the kiss he took now wasn’t at all little. What he did was simply plunder.
His hands on her inner thighs held her legs open wide as he kissed and licked and nibbled, relishing the way her bare bottom squirmed against the velvet cushion as if the pleasure were too much to bear, yet she slipped her hand behind his head to hold his mouth pinned to her. He thrilled in the wanton innocence of her.
“This is…more than…a kiss,” she panted out.
“No, mia bella,” he murmured against her. “This is the best kind of kiss.”
She shuddered as he slipped his tongue beneath the guarding hood of her femininity and found the delicate little nub beneath. He teased at it until she spasmed with pleasure.
A cry rose from her lips, only to grow into a wild moan as his tongue plunged deep to give her all the pleasure his mouth could grant. Her hands fisted in his hair as she arched into him to meet each thrust of his tongue, her body curling around his head in her attempt to take him even deeper, to drive toward the release she’d not yet known in her life.
She broke, coming against his mouth with a shudder that swept into him like a lightning strike. Her hips bucked with her release, and the sound of pleasure on her lips faded into a low, guttural moan of primal satisfaction.
He kept his mouth against her, kissing her reverently as he claimed the decadent dew glistening on her sex and prolonging the bliss that passed over her in waves. He was the first man to give her this joy. To know that the blissful expression on her face belonged to him and him alone…divine.
He rested his cheek against her soft belly and closed his eyes, to let the wonder of her fill him up.
After a long moment, when she’d regained her breath and her trembling subsided, she whispered, “Dom?”
“Hmm?”
“That’s…not all, is it?”
The hesitancy in her voice surprised him. Turning his head, he gazed up at her over her flushed body. He carefully kept his face inscrutable. “You didn’t find that pleasing?”
“I didn’t mean that! I meant—” She looked away, and he smiled that she’d suddenly grown shy given what she’d just allowed him to do. “Of course, I did.” Her whisper was as soft as the candlelight flickering across her bare flesh. “It was heaven.”
Hiding his own pleasure at that, he placed a kiss to her belly. When she trembled with fresh desire, he bit back a groan. She already had him hard as stone, with no way to find release tonight except by his own hand. If she kept this up, he’d be dead of frustration by dawn.
“Then what’s wrong?” he asked.
She idly ran her fingers through the hair at his temple, having no idea what even that little touch did to him. Or how much he wanted her hands on him everywhere.
She watched her fingers, not daring to make eye contact. “I know what happens between men and women, how they join bodies and…” She swallowed nervously. “I’ve heard it’s wonderful.”
“It is.” He fought back a grin. Of course her sister had told her about sex. The woman was married to a Carlisle, after all, and was most certainly happy in her marriage.
“I want to do that with you.”
He froze. All of him except his cock, which jumped eagerly at the invitation.
She continued softly, “I want it to be you, the man who…You make me feel special and beautiful.”
She was all that, and so much more. Which was why he could never do as she asked.
“I trust you.”
Those three words were a knife-plunge into his heart.
Good God, how could she make him so happy and so miserable at the same time? Yet there she was, the most delectable temptation he’d ever been offered. His for the taking.
And all it would cost was his artist’s soul.
“Oh, Eve.” He shifted a safe distance away, but even then he couldn’t resist reaching to run his hand through her hair one more time, those red tresses that seemed to change with the weather, that now looked golden brown in the candlelight. Unable to bear looking into her eyes, he could force out nothing more than a raspy, “No.”
Her breath hitched. “You don’t…want that?”
“I want that so much more than you realize.” He dropped his hand away from her, then stood and turned away before she saw for herself exactly how much. She’d aroused him before with her kisses, but nothing like this. He was harder than a steel rod, painfully so.
When his gaze landed on the canvas, the sight was better than a jump in a cold river for tamping down his desire. Because if he gave in and made love to her, tonight would destroy everything he’d worked his entire adult life to achieve.
She would steal away his passion, all of it, in a way no other woman had ever done. Not even Elena. And then what would he have left for his art?
Behind him, fabric rustled softly as she moved off the chaise and slipped on her robe. Thank God. He was a gentleman—barely. But even he had his limits. If she kept offering herself, he might grow too weak to keep refusing.
He ran a shaking hand through his hair. “But we cannot do what you’re asking—I cannot.”
“You’re Vincenzo. I’m pretty sure you can.” A forced teasing colored her voice, which grew closer until she was standing right behind him. “And quite expertly, too.”
He bit back a curse. Was she daring him now? His fault, really. She’d worn him down with her arguments when he’d refused to paint her and again when he’d refused to kiss her, and she’d gotten what she’d wanted both times. Now, like a demanding muse, she was certain she could wrest from him anything she desired.
But he could never give her that.
He strode away, to put the distance of the studio between them, a
nd pretended to busy himself with the paints and brushes he’d used at the canvas. Had to keep his hands busy, or he’d reach for her again. And if he reached for her again—
“No.” He dropped the brushes into a jar of turpentine. “There are lines we cannot cross.”
“That you won’t cross, you mean.”
“Same thing.” The weight of her stare on him followed his every move as he put away his supplies. “You’re a shipping heiress who—”
“I’m not an heiress.”
“—who is yet an innocent—’
“That doesn’t signify.”
He finished pointedly, “—who is related to the Carlisles. Men the size of mountains who would pulp me into oblivion if they ever found out.”
“Then don’t let them find out.”
He shot her an irritated glare over his shoulder, but she only gazed back unrepentantly, her hands folded demurely in front of her. Somehow, in that satin robe with her hair lying in mussed waves down her back and satisfaction still flushing her cheeks, she was even more appealing than when she’d been lying naked across the velvet cushions.
In frustration, he threw an unused vanishing brush onto the worktable, where it landed with a loud thump. “You’ll be ruined.”
“After Burton’s poetry reading, I’m already ruined.”
“Not like that.” He threw a second brush, letting it smack hard into the wall and fall to the floor. “I am the Marquess of Ellsworth. If I claim a young lady’s innocence, I’m expected to marry her.”
“I don’t expect that. No one else would either.”
“Your future husband will.” He certainly would.
“I’m the daughter of a shipping merchant who grew up around sailors and dockworkers.” Her voice emerged as a soft challenge. “Do you really think the man who marries me will expect me to be innocent?”
She was right, damn it. And whoever that man was, Dom hated the bastard already.
“What do you want from me, Eve?” he half snarled. All this talk of sex and innocence had his blood boiling.
“You.”
Desire flamed through him so fiercely that it was all he could do to remain where he was, to not have her on her back right there on the chaise. And for more than just physical release. Unlike every other woman he’d ever met, she inspired him, challenged him, impassioned him to his core—
What A Lord Wants Page 15
