PctureThis (4 page)

She groaned, her head thrown back as she catapulted into a long, intense orgasm
. Fuck
. Watching her writhe like that in total abandon, her gorgeous body shuddering with the fierceness of her pleasure was the hottest thing he’d ever seen. He leaned down and licked her nipple, applying the flat of his tongue to her in the same rhythm as his hand. He smiled savagely when she gasped and jerked in response, her body spilling more of her wetness onto his hand and just like that she was on the brink of release.
Again
.

The pleasure.
God, the pleasure.
It had almost been more than she could bear and had bordered on pain, it had been so intense. She’d known, as soon as he’d moved inside her, the relentless entry and retreat of his big body in hers would push her toward an orgasm that was unlike anything she’d ever experienced before. Even now, struggling to draw in enough air, her body still throbbed with the aftermath of it. How long had passed?
Minutes?
Seconds?
It could have been hours for all she knew. She’d been totally lost to everything.

Jillian cleared her throat with effort. “I’m sorry. I…”

“Sorry? No. Jesus, don’t be sorry.” Sam was lying next to her, his big hand still buried between her legs, his fingers rubbing gently over flesh still slick and swollen. “I’m not sure I’ve ever given a woman a multiple orgasm before. Actually, I figured it was pretty much a myth.”

“Yeah, me too,” she managed.

“That’s never happened to you before?”

Jillian could do nothing but shake her head. Was he kidding? She’d overheard her last boyfriend tell his friend that fucking her was like “sticking his dick into a plank of wood”. Yeah, he’d been a gem all right. She’d had no idea her body was even capable of release like that. Even bringing
herself
to pleasure, knowing just how she liked it, being able to control every aspect of her orgasm, felt nothing like it’d just been with Sam. It was as if he had some direct line into her sexual psyche somehow and that was more than a little terrifying.

Just looking at him, knowing they’d had sex, that his body had been over her, in her, had the now familiar frisson of awareness simmering through her again. The strands of his thick hair were damp around his face and the muscles in his arms and shoulders gleamed with sweat. His breathing was still rough, his eyes dark and raw and intimate with the explicit knowledge he now had of her.

He slowly trailed his hand from between her legs. Jillian felt the wetness against the heat of her skin at the top of her thigh and swallowed against the dryness of her throat when he lifted his hand to his face and licked his palm in a long, slow swipe.

“
Your
cum tastes so fucking sweet,” he groaned, sucking two of his fingers into his mouth. “Next time I won’t be so quick off the mark. I want to ride that with you.”

She probably hadn’t been aware of it, but she’d panted his name as she came. Over and over in a chant that was probably forever etched in his brain. How fucking hot was that? Of all the women he’d been with, not a one had used his name like that. Almost like a litany, in total and utter abandon, breathy and raw.

She still had her shoes on. Actually, she was technically still wearing the dress. He’d been in too much of a hurry to even think of getting them off. Her legs were spread, her thighs reddened—probably from his beard stubble. Hell, he should have shaved, but he’d been too on edge to think about much of anything before she’d shown up.
And after?
Well, thinking had been pretty much impossible. He’d need blood flow to his brain for that. He could see the flesh between was flushed pink and swollen, glistening with her cum. Man, he’d done that. She looked liked she’d been well and truly fucked. He frowned. No, that wasn’t exactly right. With her spectacular body totally relaxed, her hair tangled and fanned out across the sheet and her eyes heavy lidded, she looked like she’d been thoroughly…pleasured.
Yeah, pleasured.

Sam had never been much into kissing after sex. It was kind of beside the point, but he suddenly wanted inside of her again, even if it was just his tongue in her mouth. He cupped a smooth cheek, holding her still while he lowered his mouth to hers. He felt the jolt to his gut as he slid his tongue across her lower lip and into her mouth. He groaned when their tongues touched, swallowing her sigh and the moan that sounded like it was torn from her. He threaded his fingers into her hair and angled her head a little more, slanting his mouth more firmly against hers and sank into it, into her, in a kiss that had his dick hard and aching again in an instant. He wanted her under him again. Hell, if the images he had in his brain were any indication, it was going to take most of the night just to try all the positions he was imagining. He’d come and he rarely went for a repeat performance once the initial appeal had been satisfied, so what the hell was going on? What was it about this woman that he couldn’t seem to get enough of her?

* * * * *

Jillian’s first thought was that it really was huge. She’d known it was
large,
of course she did, but didn’t remember it being
this
big. But then she’d never actually seen it finished, and it had been a long time ago. Once she’d completed the sittings and gotten her money, she’d been so out of there. Her second thought was that
it really was her,
in all her naked glory. She sat amid rumpled white sheets, her arms wrapped loosely around her drawn-up knees. The pose would have been almost coy if not for the fact her legs were angled slightly to the side and the observer had a clear and very explicit view of the folds between her legs and one softly rounded, pink-tipped breast. The room in the painting was shadowed, but there was enough light to see every detail between her legs. Her head was bent, her hair tousled and trailing down the curve of her back and over one arm. Her face… God, her face was turned slightly away, but her eyes stared straight out of the painting as if they were inviting the viewer to join her. She was pretty sure she’d never looked like that before in her life.

“The resemblance is amazing.”

Jillian jumped as Sam sauntered slowly into the room, a room she assumed was his bedroom. She’d woken alone in the room where they’d fallen asleep together a few hours ago and had gone looking for him, following the sound of the shower. She’d been going to join him. Instead, she’d found
this
. In the dim light, she’d almost missed it.

She pulled the edges of his shirt more closely around her. She’d grabbed it from the floor and hadn’t bothered to button it. The soft, wrinkled cotton still held traces of his scent. She could have used the confidence that came with knowing she looked good, but her hair was probably a bird’s nest, her makeup long gone and she still felt wet, sticky and achy between her legs.

Sam’s hair was damp and ruffled where he’d probably made a token effort to dry it and the odd droplet of water clung to the smooth skin of his shoulders. A snowy white towel was wrapped around his waist and he smelled of some tangy, citrusy soap. It was clean and very, very male. She knew she must look like crap. Who gave
him
the right to look so goddamn gorgeous?

He was watching her warily. And so he should.

“You,” she breathed. “You’re the one who bought it.”

“Jesus, so it
is
you.”

Jillian swallowed the lump in her throat and looked back to the painting.
“Yeah.”

“You know it’s named for you?”

“Yes.”
Jillian
.
She hadn’t given much thought at the time to what the finished piece would be called. When she’d found out it had just made the risk of discovery one day that much more real.

“When I noticed you yesterday in the lobby it shocked the hell out of me. You want to tell me why a corporate financial whiz, a bright career in front of her, poses nude for a well-known artist? I mean, I assume you posed, unless you knew the guy.”

“He wasn’t so well-known at the time.” Her voice was flat.

“Jillian,” he said softly.

“I—I needed money when I was in college. I didn’t have a cushy scholarship or a trust fund. I was studying for final exams. I was almost done, but I was about to be evicted from my apartment.” Jillian wrapped her arms firmly around herself and took a deep breath. “I couldn’t ask my parents for more money, my dad was already working two jobs. I had my student loans. And then I met this guy, a painter. He offered me what I thought was a fortune to sit for him. It was stupid I know, and it could have turned out badly, but…I posed for him. It seemed a fair exchange at the time.” Jillian walked closer on shaky legs until she stood right in front of it. “I didn’t know anything about art, but even I could see how good he was. It was probably only a total of ten hours or so. I never saw the painting actually finished.
Until now.”

“It’s magnificent.”

She caught the awe in his tone, but he wasn’t looking at the painting. His gaze was centered on her. “It’s an embarrassment,” she fired back.
“A big, fat regret.
Something I always knew would come back to bite me on the ass someday.”

She pushed the tangled hair back from her face and suddenly felt weepy, her throat tight and aching. “No wonder you didn’t bring me in here.”

“Jillian, I—”

“I knew you were a player, Sam. I got it loud and clear it was a one-night thing, but
this?
You have the gall to bring me here and fu-fuck me, knowing you have
this
here?”

“Jillian—”

“So, you saw me yesterday, put two and two together and decided you couldn’t pass up an opportunity to ‘do’ the real thing? Is that what it was?” She waved her hand back toward the guest room.

“
That
was the fuck of the century.” He ran both hands through the damp strands of his dark hair. “Okay, I admit I’ve been obsessed with it since the first time I saw it and it’s interfering with my sex life. I took one look at you and I had to have you. I’d already fucked you in my head, over and over, in every way you can imagine. You know how many times I’ve lain here jerking off to it, even after I’ve fucked some chick’s brains out?”

Yeah, brilliant move, Steele. Tell her outright you’re some kind of pervert along with being an unfeeling pig.

“So what was earlier?
An exorcism?”

Sam winced at the look of hurt on her beautiful features and the sound of her voice. He got the disgust and the anger and accepted them, yet it was the hurt and the sound of unshed tears in her words that tore through him.

“Look, Jillian, I’m captivated by you. Yeah, captivated, and if you knew me better you’d know that’s not a word normally found in my vocabulary.”

“The painting—”

“It’s not that. It’s you. I think that’s maybe why I was drawn to it,
because
it was you.”

“Yeah?
Except you didn’t know me then.”

How did he explain it when he couldn’t, not even to himself?

“Sell it to me.”

He frowned. “What? Do you have any idea how much I paid for it?”

“I know to the dollar.”

“Then you know you can’t afford it. Besides, it’s not for sale.
Ever
.”

“Why?”

“Because…”

It’s mine and I need it.

He’d bought the house because of the view of the ocean from this room. He wasn’t about to admit he’d rearranged all of his furniture in here so that he could look at the painting of her while he was lying in bed, and to hell with the incredible view. That should have given him some clue.

“So, you were just working some fixation you’ve developed out of your system?”

For weeks Sam hadn’t been able to get off without picturing the painting, fantasizing about sinking into the woman who seemed to taunt him from its depths, visualizing
himself
fucking her wildly out of control. Now that he had for real? It hadn’t done a thing to lessen the lust, the need that ate at him. He just wanted her all the more.
Her
.
Not the painting. It didn’t have a thing to do with the fucking painting. He hadn’t thought about the damn thing like that
once
since he’d seen Jillian yesterday. So, where did that leave him and what the hell did he do now?

She turned away from him. It gave him some respite from seeing the pain in her eyes, but he hated that she was already distancing herself from him.

The sex had been out of this world, just like he’d known it would be, even for someone of his experience.

So, how the fuck had it all gone to hell so fast?
And how did he fix it?

Sam’s silence was more telling than anything else. Jillian felt the pressure in her chest and the stinging sensation in the back of her throat that she absolutely refused to give into. She wouldn’t give the bastard the satisfaction.

Even now her body felt the echo of what it’d felt like to have him inside her, holding her, kissing her. It’d been incredible, she’d really felt a connection with him.
And him?
It had been what?
A chance for him to fuck his fantasy in the flesh?
An added bonus for the fortune he’d shelled out for it?
A chance to see if she delivered
on the promise explicit in her gaze in the painting?

“Outstanding,” she drawled, knowing she sounded bitter, but what the hell? “I hope I lived up to your expectations.”

She needed to get away from him. She had such lousy taste in men. She went for the hot guys and they always turned out to be selfish assholes. Why couldn’t she fall for a boring guy who’d treat her like a queen? Jeez, she’d settle for one not stomping on her heart as he screwed her over. It’d make a nice change.

It was why she hadn’t allowed herself to go this far with a guy in almost two years. But she’d thought what? That he’d felt the same tug she had, the same magnetic pull that had her acting totally out of character and agreeing to a one-night stand, just to be with him? That Mr. Playboy Extraordinaire would suddenly change his ways and fall madly for her?
Shit
. She knew better than to tell herself that drivel. It just didn’t happen and she’d do well to remember it.