Sculpting Grace: A Light Romance Novel (Art of Grace Book 2) (42 page)

"No, no, no!" I yelped, as my body screamed out yes at the thought of what he described. "We need to keep this separate! If we're seeing each other, well-" I thought of saying that it wasn't a good idea, but my clitoris somehow reached up through my throat, grabbed my tongue, and warned it not to say another word if I ever wanted to feel another orgasm in my life.

Sanford sighed, however, and nodded. "I do see your point. We need to have some rules, maybe. Keep this controlled."

I wasn't sure about 'controlled', but I nodded. "Before or after work hours, but nothing between nine and five," I suggested. "Business hours are for business only."

"Excepting today, of course."

"Well, yeah," I nodded. "The rule starts tomorrow morning."

"Great." And then, only as I started to see the hole in this plan, Sanford reached greedily out for me. "So I've got the rest of today to get all of this out of my system. Now, come here and let me try something I saw online once..."

I meant to argue, but it turned out that Sanford had seen something very similar to what the Cosmo magazine described, and, well, I owed it to my long-deprived vagina to give it a try while the option was on the table...

Chapter Nineteen

*

I don't know what Heaven is like, but the next few days was about the closest that I've ever experienced.

I spent my days working my way through the cluttered second floor, no longer feeling quite so worried over the sheer number of antiques that needed to be examined, researched, and photographed. There wasn't as much furniture up here, and the items weren't as haphazardly stacked in corners and piled up under sheets, but the overall number was higher, with many little objects that I needed to examine with a high-powered flashlight and a magnifying glass.

Alone in these old rooms, exploring all of these items, most of which were older than I was, I remembered what I enjoyed about my business. I always liked learning about old bits of history, and these rooms were almost perfectly preserved, like stepping through a window to an earlier time period.

But just as much as I enjoyed my days at work, I liked what came next even more.

I'd usually wrap up towards the end of the afternoon, packing up my computer and camera and making a careful note of which items in the current room I'd examined, and what I still needed to check out. I'd stow my computer and camera in my bag, and would then head downstairs, in search of my men.

I usually found them in one of the sitting rooms. Now that we'd pulled most of the furniture out of the roughly stacked piles, Winston had gone to the trouble of cleaning some of the larger pieces, setting them up probably in the same way that the room used to look. I usually found Sanford sitting on one of the couches, his feet propped up without a second thought on top of some fragile end table worth thousands of dollars and with a book or his laptop computer sitting on his lap.

More often than not, as well, I found a large orange lump of fur sitting next to him, curled up and snoozing or loudly purring as Sanford's fingers idly scratched at the spot just behind his ears. Admiral Whiskers, it seemed, had found a new best friend. Maybe he knew about those two tiger tattoos on Sanford's chest.

I pointed this out one time to Sanford, wondering if he'd deny any connection to the fat, lazy cat. He just shrugged, however, as if it wasn't a big deal.

"I get along with most cats," he offered. "He doesn't pester me, and I don't demand much of him. It's a good relationship."

I tried not to read anything into that comment. Fortunately, Sanford immediately put his book aside and tugged me down onto the couch, helping to distract me from thinking about his earlier words.

"Wait, not here!" I protested as he nibbled at my earlobe and his fingers roamed up inside my shirt to undress me. "This couch is more than a hundred years old, and it's really valuable!"

"So? Seems like a great place to have sex," he whispered back, and something about the combination of this argument, plus the feel of his sun-warmed body against mine, made it especially hard to argue back.

I landed on the couch beside him, and Whiskers hopped off at the disturbance. He glared back at us, annoyed that we'd dared to disturb his nap, but eventually settled down in a sunbeam a few feet away when we didn't seem likely to move off the couch so that he could reclaim his old spot.

"Okay, fine," I gave in, as my bra mysteriously popped open and slid down off of my shoulders. "But be careful! If you break this, you'll owe me the commission on it!"

"Maybe I decide not to sell it," Sanford said, his voice husky as he peeled my jeans off of me. "I could keep it, use it as decoration in my sex dungeon."

"You don't have a sex dungeon," I bluffed, watching eagerly as he peeled off his own shirt.

"I'm thinking of getting one. It seems useful."

Well, I couldn't argue with him any longer, not with him shirtless and ripped and glowing in the light streaming in through the mansion's big windows. Damn him and his sexy appearance, always throwing me off by making me want to have sex with him instead of argue and try and win an argument once in awhile.

Still, even though I was happier in the next few days than I'd been in a long time, Sanford did impose one rule on me that rankled at me.

"No one finds out about this," he insisted. "We can have as much sex as we want, but you can't tell anyone else - at the wine bar or anywhere else, none of your friends. This is a secret, stays just between the two of us. And Whiskers, I suppose."

I didn't laugh at this attempt at a joke. "What about that whole deal at the wine bar, pretending that we were together?"

He frowned at me. "We were just being friendly, not dating."

I rolled my eyes, but decided not to try and explain exactly what the other women had thought of us together. "Why?" I asked him instead, not confident in receiving a real answer.

I didn't get one. "My business is my own," he just answered. "And while I really like this-" his hand traced over one of my nipples, making it very clear what 'this' was, "-I don't want this getting out of hand. It's just a fling, nothing more."

I suppose that I should have been okay with that. After all, a fling was a lot more than I'd had in a long time, especially with anyone as mind-blowing as Sanford. I clamped down on my thoughts, telling myself to enjoy the moment, and that worked, at least for a while.

But I found myself dodging my normal after-work trips over to Vini, afraid that I'd end up giving away the secret of what was happening between Sanford and me. Della had the almost unnatural ability to ferret out any secrets that someone was keeping from her, and I knew that she'd be able to read me like an open book.

Della sent me several text messages, asking me why I wasn't coming by any more. I managed to convince her that I was swamped with all the extra work from the Winterhearst mansion, and that I just wanted to get through everything so that I'd earn my paycheck. She didn't challenge me, and I hoped that she bought it, but I felt awful for lying to my best friend about my other, more illicit activities.

"Maybe we could go out," I finally suggested to Sanford, as we lay together in yet another of the bedrooms and struggled to catch our breath.

"That was an interesting one," he said, not addressing my suggestion. "I really liked when I reached up and slid my hands around your shoulders, pulling you down so that you took me from-"

"Just to the wine bar, maybe," I cut in hastily, although I was too late to avoid the blush that crept up my neck and suffused my cheeks. "It doesn't have to be really romantic, but we could go interact with other people. Do something other than just work and have sex together."

"Are you not enjoying the sex?" Sanford asked, in what was probably the dumbest question of all time. He ran one finger lightly down my back, and I shivered at his touch, little goosebumps breaking out across my skin.

"No, that's not it," I said hastily, before he decided to do even more to arouse me and prove that yes, I enjoyed the sex very, very much. "But don't you want to do more? Don't you want to get out of this house, have experiences with the rest of the world?"

Sanford just shrugged, clearly not sold, but I decided that I'd work on whittling him down. I couldn't withhold sex from him, not since I practically came every time he turned his smoldering gaze on me, but I could torture him in many other ways, dragging out his orgasm until he went mindless and would agree to almost anything. I probably could have gotten him to sign over his fortune to me, if I really wanted it!

"Okay, fine!" he burst out two days later, gritting his teeth and glaring down at me. "We can go out, just stop it!"

I couldn't respond at that moment, as my mouth was full. "Yes? To Vini?" I asked, once I'd slid up along him, loving the feeling of my breasts dragging over his textured abs.

He grunted, his muscles still flexed. "You're the devil, you know that?" he asked me, even as he flipped over on top of me to pin me down.

"Don't be melodramatic," I told him, grinning like a Cheshire cat up at him. "How does tomorrow sound?"

He shook his head. "Tonight, just to get you off my back. But not Vini. I can't stand another night of all those women looking at me like a prize bull that they're about to buy in an auction."

Tonight? God, I'd need to go home, shower, get ready. After we finished, I knew that I'd look an absolute mess, my hair wild and my makeup nonexistent. "Where, then?"

He paused for a moment to consider. I reached up and tweaked one of his nipples to tease him, but he didn't let my touch distract him from his thoughts. "There's a new Italian place, up off of Fourth Street. How do you feel about Italian food?"

Pasta, sauce, rich and meaty, hearty and delicious. My mouth was already watering. "I suppose that I can work with Italian," I demurred. "But I'm going to have to go home and clean up before we go out."

Sanford grinned down at me as his hips began moving. "So you're telling me to hurry up here?"

I groaned. "No, no, take your time," I replied, my voice breathless. "There, right there. Just take your time and keep on doing that, oh yes, just like that..."

I really wanted to slap the man for smiling so indulgently down at me, like he owned and controlled me, but I wanted him to keep on moving against me and stimulating me even more, so I saved the slap for later. Knowing Sanford, I'd certainly find a chance to use it on him at some point in the near future.

Once we finished, I rushed home, ignoring Whiskers' meows of protest at being hustled out of the house, just as he'd found the perfect spot in his sunbeam. I still insisted on dragging my cat home with me each night, just in case he somehow managed to get stuck or hurt himself on a nighttime excursion in the Winterhearst mansion. Sanford once tried pointing out that I was being silly, since Whiskers explored the place all day anyway, but I suspected that he just wanted to keep the big orange tabby around for himself.

I set out an open can of wet cat food for the ungrateful animal and threw myself into the shower, despairing at the state of my hair. I'd have to just pull it into a ponytail, still damp, and hope for the best, I decided. I swiped some mascara on after getting out of the shower, found a blouse that managed to show off a bit of cleavage without making me look too overweight, and settled for a pair of dark jeans because I didn't have any nicer pants that were clean. I didn't look anything like a model, but Sanford would have to settle for me as I looked. If he'd given me more time to get ready, he could be going out with someone a bit more put together.

I stopped in front of the mirror one last time, groaning at the little strand of brown hair that refused to stay tucked away with its fellows. Right. A date, and I looked like I'd just gotten out of the shower after a long day of work. That was the truth, and Sanford knew it, but I still wished that I was thinner, that I carried more weight in my chest instead of my hips, that I was younger, that I was more impressive.

Oh well. I'd be able to drown my sorrows in pasta, at least.

Chapter Twenty

*

I'd been prepared to describe that dinner date as "horrible", but to my surprise, it turned out to be decidedly "not horrible."

No, even more than that, it was... fun? Is that right?

Sanford came by to pick me up right at six. This time, he drove his car, instead of Winston. "I decided to give him the night off," he explained when I asked. "After all, we don't need him for anything, and he can go enjoy himself."

A part of me suspected that Sanford just didn't want to worry about Winston walking in on us when he took me back to his house afterwards. After all, nothing kills the mood when your butler shows up halfway through sex, asking if he can do anything to help, maybe bring you some Gatorade, am I right?

We headed over to the restaurant, and Sanford even opened up the door for me after we found a parking space. I frowned up at him, even as I accepted his hand to help me up out of the low-slung luxury automobile.

"I'm suspicious," I said to him. "You're being strangely nice to me."

He shrugged. "Who knows? Maybe I conked my head when you were on top of me earlier this afternoon. You probably whacked me with one of those boobs that you've got on display right now."