Flirting With Forever (17 page)

He picked up his palette, and she closed her eyes.

The wine had loosened her scruples. She did not feel so frightened. She liked his eyes upon her and had a sudden overwhelming desire to make him ache. She very much liked his eyes upon her, but without the cover of the muslin she could not return to that gentle, inebriating rub against the arm of the chaise.

Her nipples peaked instantly at the memory, and the brushstrokes stopped. She smiled, though the ache she had hoped to cause him had been visited upon her, sharper even than before. She rubbed her legs together, like an evening cricket, but the pain only magnified. It beat hard, like a heart, hotter with each thump. She brought the heel of the folded leg closer … closer.

The throbbing pleasure of contact nearly made her cry out. Now if she could only lift herself against it, against his touch. She arched infinitesimal y, and the charge went up her spine. She couldn’t let him see this. Or could she?

Again she lifted and again. It was a slow undulation of her hips, that’s al . The instinctive movement to some internal music. In her mind, though, her private Peter suckled those nipples, drawing them into an exquisite tightness, while his hand caressed her hip, her thigh and dipped easily into the space between her legs. Slowly, slowly he stroked her, stoking the fire.

Cam slitted her eyes. Peter gazed upon her, his attention undivided. What did he see? The bare-breasted fiancé of an unworthy painter or a woman openly disporting herself before a man she hardly knew. She wil ed him to see what she saw, to feel the primeval pounding of desire.

Her lids fluttered shut, and the Peter of her dream was there waiting. His hands were in her hair, plucking her pins loose and combing out her curls. He spread them over her breasts, rubbing the strands between his palms and the taut flesh. She turned to meet his lips.

“Beautiful,” the painting Peter said, and so did the one lying next to her, just before his tongue met hers. With a shift of her thighs, she let his ful ness come between them, prodding her throbbing bud gently. Ignoring her trembling, he brought his hand to join it, a perfect triumvirate—hand, mouth, cock.

At the easel, the painting Peter made a distracted noise.

He retreated to the shelves, searching for something. When his back turned, she slid a finger under the muslin, hiding the motion behind her knee. Immediately the glow turned hot. And this was Peter’s hand, obliging her, but he was growing rougher—oh, so rough—and his need bigger and bigger.

Her nipples tightened into ridged nubs of iron.

She pressed her legs together as hard as she could, lodging the roving fingers there like a cork. Oh, dare she?

Dare she? Peter turned from the shelves, and she closed her eyes. She could feel the rhythmic shake of her breasts, the growing warmth in her hips and bel y. Without warning, the blinding pleasure roared through her like a freight train.

With prodigious effort, she clung to a semblance of rectitude, holding her legs and arm stil and letting the heat that would have been dispel ed with wild bucking set her body on fire.

Hhhhhhhhhh,
she said in a long, desperate exhale.

With eyes shut tight, she cursed her foolishness. To have al owed him to bear witness to such an act now seemed wanton beyond description. Yet she regretted nothing at al she’d let the dream Peter do. If only she had not confused the dream world with the real.

She waited for the lighthearted aside or the suggestive comment, but none came.

When the rush of her blood quieted, she heard him at last.

He was painting.

* * *

He wondered what it would be like to be the man who engendered such a look of desire. He wondered what it would be like to loosen that hair and let it slip through his fingers. He wondered at the fine fire of a woman that had such intoxicating heedlessness in her. But most of al he wondered why any painter, even the most brick-headed picket-post scrub, had not taken the opportunity to paint his lover, even once. Painting one’s lover was the most exquisite act of lovemaking. Not just in the carnal sense, though it was that and more, but in the giving of love, the elevation of one’s partner above al others.

It had hurt her, he knew, to admit this portrait was her first. He wished he had not made such an assumption, let alone voiced it, but now that he knew, it pleased him deeply that he would be the one to show her this joy.

Peter had painted Ursula many times. His favorite was a painting in which she appears four times, once unclothed and with her back to him as a classical goddess, once in the maternal guise of a Madonna, once as the rich wife of a painter, and final y, with her breasts bared and looking straight at him, as the woman who had turned his bed into an inferno of pleasure and his heart into a wil ing supplicant.

His eyes returned to the chaise and the woman, eyes closed, who lay there.

She wasn’t Ursula. The carmine hair did not make her so, nor did the unfettered tongue, though he would be lying if he did not admit both captured his attention. No, this woman was unto herself. A proud, spirited woman, perhaps from a background like his, who had used her wits to insert herself into his diary, who had not hesitated to save his skin with the king, and who had now al owed him to witness her most private imaginings. It was a most provocative act—

most provocative—and even if he could not be the man fil ing her head, to have witnessed the stripping bare of her desires was an aphrodisiac, in this case a very potent one.

He gazed at the tightly quilted flesh of her nipples, and his brush, once abstracted, stopped entirely. God, he ached with desire, something he had not felt in so long. If he weren’t so pained, he would laugh at the comedy of it.

Lustful at last, but for a woman who could never be his.

He tried to turn his mind to the painting, even going so far as to consciously draw the sable down the canvas, but he could not.

He wanted to take those wild summer berries in his mouth and hear the noise she’d make, and suckle those glistening fingers to taste the melon there. He wondered if that hair would wrap like silk around his fingers, if he could draw a ringlet across that peaked, pinched flesh.

The last vision flooded his head, and he was overcome.

He couldn’t stop himself. He would command what he saw for his painting even if he could not command it for his bed.

Her eyes flew open as he drew near. Was she fearful?

Modest? He no longer cared. If her fiancé could provoke so much wanton desire in a woman, he would have no objection to enjoying her exactly as Peter wanted to portray her. He pul ed a pin from the mass of curls, and she gasped, which made the ache in his bel y redouble. He caught the tendrils as they dropped and fanned them over her skin, cinnamon on porcelain, and where the ringlet caught her nipple, cinnamon on cinnamon. It was al he could do to keep from taking that silk-wrapped flesh and teasing it until she opened her legs to him.

But he held himself in check. Slowly the burn receded, replaced by a tingling in his fingers. Now that he had her exactly as he’d imagined her, he wanted to paint.

He took a deep breath, stepped to the easel and realized that for the first time in years Ursula was miles from his thoughts.

Cam watched him work. The sun had set, and she knew there was not enough light to work, yet he continued. She could tel by the way his eyes shone when he peered over the top of the canvas that he liked her. He had watched her, and he had remained at his easel. Apparently he was not given to impulse when the impulse was to serve himself. He was the rarest of men: one she could trust.

Which is not to say that if he had taken her in his arms and carried her off to that seducing couch on the other side of the fire she would have protested. No, she would have welcomed it and enjoyed every moment. But the fact that he had not taken advantage of her in her recent improvidence

—when he clearly could have—meant he was wil ing to respect the fact she was involved with someone else, or as she preferred to think, he would court her until he’d driven the thought of her fiancé out of her head. Either way, it suggested he was an honorable man who put their relationship above his desire. It was surprising and attractive.

His brush worked the canvas, stil sending sparks to her fingers and toes. She had to admit she enjoyed posing for him, even now, after the foolish escapade, and as unrealistic as it might be, she found herself imagining an endless series of afternoons, nestled among these pil ows as he painted, tel ing her she was beautiful.

“It’s growing cooler,” he said. “Are you al right?”

“Aye. Thank you. The wine, you know …” She lifted a finger toward the glass.

“Indeed.” He smiled. “At some point it might be easier if you told me your name.”

She stirred, flustered. “Cam.”

“Cam,” he repeated, nodding his approval. “As in the
Aeneid
?”

“The
Aeneid
?”

“Cam, wel , Camil a, fought the Trojans. Though she was a mortal, Virgil described her as having mythical powers.

She was so fast, she could run across the sea without getting her feet wet. It was as if she could be in two places at the same time.”

Cam thought of her office and that Amazon screen. She hoped she could get to that phone soon.

“Does he live in England, your fiancé?”

She did not want to think about her would-be fiancé. It seemed intrusive in this interlude she was sharing with Peter, and she shifted guiltily. “If you don’t mind, I would prefer not to talk of him. It feels strange. Until we’ve finished here, you understand?”

He bowed.

“It’s only that we have not had an easy time of it,” she added.

“Is that so?”

“He has not exactly proven himself to be faithful and true.”

He shook his head. “Men change.”

“Aye. They can. I think it’s better, though—safer—when they are born faithful.”

“Safer?” He scoffed with a smile. “Who wants that?” She watched the way he approached the canvas. It was confident, precise, control ed—very different from the disorganized chaos of Jacket. But it was also guarded.

She wondered if Ursula had departed because Peter withheld a part of himself from her. Had he known the breakup was coming or had he been blindsided, just as Cam had been?

“Did you paint Ursula?”

He stil ed. “Who mentioned Ursula?”

“Nel . She said I resemble her.”

She saw the muscles in his cheek contract. “You do, in truth. The hair and …” He made a vague gesture that seemed to encompass most of the features above her shoulders and cleared his throat.

More footsteps on the stairs and Peter yel ed, “Dammit, Tom, I said—Oh!” He dropped into a formal bow.

Cam covered herself, but it was too late. The king’s eyes, as wel as Stephen’s, had raked her. Stephen’s gaze dropped instantly, ears reddening. The king’s lingered considerably longer. Cam jumped to her feet and grabbed the dressing gown before curtsying.

Peter, who looked horrified at the intrusion, said, “Your Majesty. What a great surprise.”

“Aye. I see that.” Charles nodded at Cam. “Good evening, Countess. ’Tis a pleasure once more. I wanted to thank you for the masquerade earlier. It was most helpful.”

Cam resummoned her inner Penélope Cruz. “’Twas nothing.”

Charles looked around the room. “Peter, is this your private studio? I have never seen it.”

“ ’Tis the quietest.”

“Quiet being an uncommon virtue. I should like to have a word.”

Stephen, who looked pained to have been part of this interruption, said, “His Majesty said it was quite urgent.”

Cam understood her removal was being requested. “I could—”

“No. Stay,” Peter said. “There is a painting I wish to show His Majesty downstairs, in any case. Though it is nearly six, I do believe the light wil stil do for viewing.”

Charles nodded and began down the stairs, fol owed by Stephen.

Peter gave her a deep bow. “Until I return.”