Slow Seduction (Struck by Lightning) (18 page)

I had on a hat and sunglasses just in case, which was probably silly and useless, but I didn’t want to take unnecessary chances. I paused for a moment to look at the front of the gallery café now that the paper had been taken out of all the windows. The letters
THE ARTIWORKS
were carved into the wooden sign and filled with gold.

I turned to go to the door to the flat, though, and nearly ran into a man in a stained white undershirt.

“Karina,” he said.

It was Damon George, looking like he hadn’t slept or shaved in several days. “Damon, are you all right?”

“I will be. Had to make sure this was delivered on time.” Behind him two men were carefully carrying a large, square, paper-wrapped parcel. I assumed it was a painting. “I’m going to go have a shower and a nap now.”

“You don’t look well.” I could see dark circles under his eyes, and one of his eyelids twitched.

“I’ll be all right. See you tonight.” He gave me a weak wave and wandered back to the truck he had arrived in. The two deliverymen helped him up into the passenger seat, and then away they went.

Odd. I wondered if he had spent every waking moment since I’d last seen him working on the painting. Up until that moment, I’d half-wondered if he actually painted, or if the photo shoot had all been an excuse to push me.

I went upstairs, not wanting to get caught in the gallery, and told Paulina what I had just seen. She was in the kitchen, glazing the tops of a hundred tiny éclairs with chocolate. She called Michel downstairs, who assured her the painting was fine and he was hanging it.

My stomach was starting to fill up with butterflies, so much that I couldn’t even sneak an éclair off the tray when Paulina urged me to. How many hours until the performance? What was I going to do?

I went up to my room and checked my e-mail. There was one from Jill saying she had run her phone battery down and was on her way to the airport. Mom was out of surgery and doing well. At least that was one less thing to worry about at the moment.

Then I caught Becky on video chat. “Ahh, Becks! I have so much to tell you!”

She grabbed her laptop with urgency, and her face grew huge on my screen. “Oh my God, Rina! I got a message from Paul saying she thought maybe you might meet him, and then I’ve heard nothing since! What is going on over there?”

“Where to start? The short version is the gallery is opening tonight, and through the people I met in York we got him to agree to do a glass installation for it, and he’s here in London right this second, just down the street, actually.”

The image on my screen went blurry as she bounced herself onto her bed from her desk chair. She lay sideways facing her computer as she talked. “And so you’re going to, what, go talk to him? Right?”

I bit my lip, trying to figure out how to explain my plan.

“Wait, no, let me guess. It always has to be more complicated than that,” she said, as her cat came into the frame and lay down in front of her. She petted him.

“Yeah, it’s complicated. See, the art installation that he did? I’m convinced it’s about me, that it’s an expression of how obsessed he is with me. I think if I try to talk to him, he’ll run away again. But if I show him? I’m planning to do an interpretive dance as one of the three Muses, and then, um, interact with the sculpture.”

“Is interact a euphemism?”

“Maybe?” I cringed a little. “It’s hard to put it all into words.” I needed to show him I belonged in his world and in his vision. I would show him how well I knew him and his art, too. And I would show how willing I was to be the target, the recipient, of all that primal male sexual energy, violent as it might be. And the fact that the shoes fit me…Could it be that he was that obsessed with me, down to my shoe size? Or was it a kind of wishful-thinking invitation on his part? Or both?

The more I thought about it the more certain I was that he pictured me in the midst of that glass, in the negative space created by the great wave.

I explained as much of it to Becky as I could. The Hokusai reference intrigued her. “Hey, listen to this,” she said, as she pulled up biographical information on Hokusai on her screen and read it to me. “
Hokusai was known by at least thirty names during his lifetime. Although the use of multiple names was a common practice of Japanese artists of the time, the number of names he used far exceeds that of any other major Japanese artist.
” She grinned. “Sound like someone we know? Also there’s this. 
His father never made Hokusai an heir, so it is possible that his mother was a concubine.
”

James had never mentioned his father to me once, though he’d told me about his mother a few times. “Interesting. Well, with any luck, I’ll get to ask him soon whether the reference is real or if I just imagined it. Here, let me e-mail you the photos we got for the setup.”

“So what gave you the idea to do a dance?”

“I always liked dancing. The only reason I quit was I didn’t really have time. And I wasn’t as good as a lot of the dancers who were serious about it.”

“Is that really true? Or is this another one of those Karina-doesn’t-know-what-she-wants situations?”

“I don’t know. It’s hard to tell how good you are or not.” I shrugged. “Like I said, I always liked doing it. I’ve been practicing and practicing. I’m so sore! I forgot how to use half those muscles.”

“Please tell me someone will be taking video. I want to see this!”

“Even the, uh, interactive part?”

“Oh. Is it going to be really graphic? Will I be embarrassed to watch it?”

“I’m not sure, honestly. My skirt will hide what’s going on, I think. I mean, it might look worse than it actually is, but I’m going to do my best to make it look very erotic.”

“Good to know. Okay.”

“I mean, my boss from the museum and my coworkers are all going to be there. One of them is even bringing his mother, but I can’t really think about that. The only person in the audience who matters is James.” I blinked and sat back suddenly.

“What? What did you just realize?”

“Another guy I know, Damon George, showed up today with a painting. But I never told him about the gallery opening. How did he find out about it?” Clearly he had known for a while if he’d had time to plan the photo shoot with me and create a painting.

“That’s the guy you said was the rich donor, right?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m sure he heard through the art world, then. Paul and Misha are blasting it all over the place, you know. It’s not like the show is a secret.”

“I’m sure you’re right.”

I kept her distracting me for as long as I could, listening to her tell me about how her class was going, and taking Milo to the vet, and how hot a summer it had been in New York, until Michel knocked on my door because it was time to get into costume.

He himself was already in his garb for the evening, which was a flower-print housedress, complete with frilled apron. He had curled his hair and was wearing large cat-eye glasses. If not for the spot where he had a bit of razor burn on his neck, he could have easily been mistaken for a happy, thick-armed, middle-aged housewife.

We put Helen and Linae into their gowns first and gave them their masks, and they went downstairs to hang around and mingle. Linae also said she was going to quickly check that Peter wasn’t being stupid. Apparently he had cut himself on a piece of glass while they were working on the installation. The edges were truly sharp. My plan was to stay upstairs until Michel called me at the last minute before my performance.

“How do you know Damon George?” I asked him, as he stitched a loose glass chip into place.

“He’s well known for his art philanthropy,” Michel said. “Some of the funds for the renovation are from him.”

“Really? Out of the blue? Or did you know him before?”

“We knew him before, but when he found out you were living with us, he called up and demanded to know the details. Checking your references, I believe, but he was very intrigued by the gallery project.”

I flashed back suddenly to a conversation James and I had about whether donors could be taken seriously as artists themselves. “And he convinced you to hang a painting of his?”

“I didn’t need much convincing, chérie. Did you ever look at the signature on the painting of Paul and me? It’s a bit messy, but it says
Georgiades
.”

“So Damon was in that crowd of twentysomethings who followed you and Paul around?”

“It’s not uncommon for the children of the very rich to end up in art school. They can indulge in an impractical education,” he said.

“So he knows James, too.”

“They met, at least. They might have been rivals if James had not left for other pursuits shortly thereafter.” He sat back and handed me the gown to pull on over the bodysuit.

“Damon didn’t tell me any of this.”

“Of course he didn’t.”

I put on the gown and Michel fussed over it, making sure it hung properly. “Is Damon any good at painting?”

“Did you think we would commission a portrait from a man who was not?” Michel asked, somewhat amused. “Very strong technically, also very good with oils. His only drawback is his lack of a subject. He used to paint himself most of the time. Nothing else held equal interest. As you can imagine, the art world was less interested in the self-portraits of an unknown than Damon’s ego could handle.”

I held in a laugh. Poor Damon. “Well, I’m glad he chipped in.”

“When you go downstairs you will see what he painted. I think it is by far his best painting yet, but I must say, Karina, it is recognizably you there with him.”

“Is it? I did model for the reference photos.”

“It is an outstanding painting. All right, chérie. I must go. I will call you when it is time for your grand entrance.”

He bustled off then to play host. Out his window I could hear people on the sidewalk, chatting and buzzing. I snuck a look. A short line of people had formed waiting to get in.

I went back up to my room. I had at least an hour to wait, probably more like two.

Becky was offline now, probably out for the afternoon. There was nothing new from Jill. I sent e-mails to all the last-known addresses I had for Troy, all but one of which bounced immediately.

And then, because I couldn’t think of anything else to do with myself, I checked how comments were going on the story I had posted to that LL fan site. I had disabled the e-mail notifications a while ago because I’d gotten such a deluge.

Comments were still coming in. They were mostly more of the same, praising either how hot the story was, the writing, or expressing how much they missed him, too.

Am I special?
I wondered.
He made an entire world love him and left them. Do I deserve to be the one who gets him back?

I had to stop thinking that way. To keep myself positive, I tried to imagine sitting down and talking with him later, maybe over breakfast or tea. Yes, tea at a fancy restaurant here in London, a long, leisurely meal where everyone’s relaxed. What would I ask him?

I started to write down a list of questions, which grew quite long.

My phone rang and I jumped, I was so deep in thought. It was Michel.

“Showtime, chérie,” he said. “Your music is cued.”

P
aulina had helped me pick the music. I wanted something instrumental that started slow and then got faster toward the end, something with lots of drums, preferably, and that wasn’t too long. We’d found the perfect thing on a soundtrack album she had, which she said James had worked on in Japan under another name, but which the deeply devoted fans had found out about. The song used Japanese taiko drums, beginning with the small ones, played lightly, and ending with the huge ones, sounding like thunder. That matched my interpretation of the glass crest as Hokusai’s great wave.

My other two “Muses” were waiting at the bottom of the stairs to the flat. We adjusted each other’s masks and they giggled a little as Michel opened the door to check on us.

“Ready?”

“As we’ll ever be,” I said, swallowing hard. The butterflies were gone now, replaced by a lump in my stomach, but at least I was calm. It was time to go through with it and then see what would happen.

Michel signaled someone inside the café, the lights went down, and we entered through the ArtiWorks front door, the first tappings and beats of the music beginning.

The other two had flowers in their hands, and they scattered them into the audience as we made our way to the cleared area that was our stage at the foot of the huge red and white glass sculpture. This was the first time I had seen the art lit properly, with some of the lights glowing from underneath it, including one tiny LED right at the tip of the phallic part. Intense.

We moved through the steps we had rehearsed, holding hands and dancing in a circle the way the Muses are sometimes shown in paintings, and then the other two faded off to the sides as I shed my gown and one of them took it with her. Maybe fairy wings wouldn’t have been bad after all, I thought, since it was like I was emerging from a chrysalis.

The music got faster and I began to spin in place, the petal pieces of my skirt flaring up to expose the bottom of the bodysuit, then a quick run to stage left, then back to stage right, a leg lift and scissor kick at each. Now I was the wave, the water, and what I did with one little toe rippled through my body to break like a wave out one arm or the other or up my spine, throwing my head back. The dance was as sensual as I could make it.

I moved toward the glass then, repeating many of the same motions I had done at the edge of the audience, but now my arms unfurled between the stalactites of red glass hanging down like teeth. Peter had cut himself on one of these pieces, some of them sheared and broken. I was careful not to touch the edges. Bleeding would definitely put a damper on my plan.

I then focused my movements on the phallic piece. Unlike the jagged parts, it was utterly smooth, and I ran my palm in a circle over the bulbous end, both as part of the sensuality of the dance and to check that it was as smooth as it looked. It was. I rubbed against it with one hip, then the other, then did a long slide into a crouch, running my pubic bone down the nearly waist-high shaft, then back up again, teasing it the way I would had it been a cock, teasing the audience the same way. I was teasing myself, too, making myself wet and aroused. I ground my clit against the hard tip, my hips moving in an obscene circle. I heard a gasp over the sound of the drums growing louder. Almost time.

As the music came to a crescendo, the drums thundering and the cymbals crashing, I turned around. The angle of the phallic part was such that it would work better from behind. I slid my feet into the shoes, unsnapping the crotch of the bodysuit with one hand and easing the glass tip into me with the other. Let the audience think I was miming it; I wasn’t. The sculpture had mounted me. My mouth fell open and fresh sweat broke out across my face as I pushed myself back, forcing it deeper. It was large enough to be a challenge, large enough that some of those watching would probably be certain I was faking taking it in. Wouldn’t they?

I pushed back once more, an involuntary sound breaking from my throat as the final cymbal crashed and I flung my arms forward into my final pose. The lights went black and the audience erupted into applause.

I held the pose, my chest heaving and my heart pounding, as the lights gradually came up inside the sculpture, only enough so that a stagehand in coveralls and heavy gloves could help me free of the art. I eased myself off of the glass inside me, and then he took me by my hands. I tried to step out of the shoes, avoiding the spiky “teeth” jutting up, but he picked me up and carried me free of the sculpture, around the espresso bar, and into the back room. I clung to his neck, my heart in my throat, hardly daring to hope that the reason his arms felt so familiar was something other than my wishful thinking.

By the time he was carrying me up the narrow stairs into the flat, I knew it was James. He set me on my feet when we reached the sitting room, kissing me as if his life depended on it. I sank my fingers into his hair, which was black today, and kissed him back. He threw off the gloves and fitted his hands around the curve of my ass, grinding me against the erection inside his coveralls. The portrait of Paulina and Michel that Damon had painted looked down on us like a pair of benevolent saints.

“My bedroom is upstairs,” I said.

“Take me there.” His voice was husky, barely controlled. I had a feeling if I didn’t hurry, he might change his mind and take me right there on the carpet of the sitting room.

I ran quickly up the stairs and he chased me, the work boots he was wearing thumping on the steps.

He caught up to me at the door of the room and we tumbled together onto the bed, knocking the phone onto the floor. He was struggling to kiss me again, while I was trying to get his coveralls open. His tongue plunged into my mouth as my hand made it inside and wrapped around his thick shaft.

I heard the sound of Velcro ripping as he shed most of the coveralls like a snake, baring himself down to his waist. I kept stroking him, milking a clear droplet of fluid at the tip.

He took my hands then and flattened them against the bed above my head with his own, pushing his way between my knees.

I gasped against his mouth as I felt the hot tip of his cock rubbing the slick inside of my thigh.

“Any demands this time?” he whispered, sliding it closer and closer to my center with each rock of his hips, until the head was gliding over my clit again and again.

“None,” I answered. “None but you.”

He continued to rock his hips, smearing my wetness up and down his shaft. “Do you have any idea what you do to me, Karina?” he breathed.

“Didn’t I just prove that I do?”

His answer was a growl, and the first few inches of him plunged into me. My breath caught, though, as he cruelly jerked it back again, leaving me empty. “You—!”

“Shhhh,” he whispered. “You’ve brought me to this point. You’ve set the demon loose. From here, I’m in control. Your only choice is surrender.”

“Yes, God yes. I surrender!”

“Good, good.” He buried his nose behind my ear and pushed my knees toward my shoulders, spreading me wide. He ran his cock slowly up and down my wet seam again, and I held as still as I could to let him. But I wanted to wrap my legs around him and pull him in!

He gave me the tip again, a few short, quick thrusts and pulled out, his head bent and watching the place where his cock tormented me. Then he put it in and thrust to the hilt, making me cry out, punishing me with the thrust and giving me everything I wanted at the same time.

He held still, pressing against me, all the way inside me, and looked into my eyes. “It would be very cruel of you to stop me now.”

“I was going to say the same thing to you.”

“So long as we understand each other.”

“I understand that you’re going to fuck the living daylights out of me.” I couldn’t catch my breath, so my words came out less suave than I was trying for. “Do you want me to beg? Is that it?”

“That won’t be necessary,” he murmured, brushing his cheek against mine and nuzzling my neck, one last tender moment before he clamped his hands atop my shoulders and thrust hard into me again. I was glad I had stretched both inside and out in training for the dance. Instead of pain, I felt only a deep electric pleasure, again and again as he settled into a rhythm of pulling free and then plunging into me again, his penetrations rough but regular.

It was everything I’d remembered from that perfect night before it had gone un-perfect, and everything I imagined tonight could be. I dug my hands into the futon, pressing my head back against it, trying to meet the force of his fucking.

When I realized I was growing close, I nearly hyperventilated, begging him silently in my mind to keep going, just like that, squeezing as hard as I could inside, trying to get more friction, more force, more of everything. He shifted position then, pushing himself upward so my face was against his breastbone as his cock ran roughly through my lower lips as he drove it downward, smacking my clit on each thrust. I cried out, an animal cry, as my whole lower body seemed to melt into pleasure, this orgasm boiling over and flowing like heat from my center.

As soon as the waves of pleasure began to ebb, he took one of my legs in his arms, turning me almost on my side, my other leg crooked. This angle was much harder to take, his cock burying itself in me sideways and feeling huge for it. But he was right. I would not ask him to stop. I had most certainly wanted this and I surrendered to it, to whatever he needed of me, whatever he could take from me. I cried out in both pain and ecstasy, abandoning myself to the unstoppable force that was James’s desire.

He was gorgeous, looming above me, his face suffused with passion and need, his muscles taut. He was a force of nature plowing into me.

He forced himself to slow, though, to draw it out, lifting my leg as if he could get his cock to go even deeper.

“On your stomach,” he whispered, as if he couldn’t quite catch his breath.

I rolled over, wondering if this meant he was going to avail himself of the tighter hole there. But no, he continued to plunge his cock into my core, tickling my anus with a slick finger but not penetrating me.

He looked around then. I saw over my shoulder that his gaze came to rest on the dildo case. “You brought it with you?”

“Of course I did,” I said.

“Stay still. Don’t move.” He disengaged himself from me and went to the case and opened it.

I was expecting him to take out a glass dildo to torment me with, but instead he held up the string of pearls he’d once used. I’d nearly sold them to get the money together for the plane ticket, before Martindale had explained that he’d buy it. I was glad I hadn’t.

James wrapped the pearls around his cock, crisscrossing it and holding them in place so that his turgid flesh bulged under the beads when he closed the clasp with a click.

“On your back,” he said.

I complied hurriedly.

“Spread yourself. Show me you’re ready for this. Show me you want this.”

I reached between my legs and showed him everything. “Please, James.”

“Look me in the eyes, Karina. Look at me while I do this.”

He held my gaze as he rubbed his cock, now ribbed by the string of pearls, up and down along my slick seam and over my clit.

Then the head of his cock pressed inward, right into my center, stretching me as he slowly increased the pressure, as he forced his way inside bit by bit.

I couldn’t keep my hands where they were. I had to grab on to him, one shoulder, one arm, holding my breath as he pushed in. I know the pearls couldn’t have made him that much larger, but he felt huge, and as he began to fuck me with short jerks of his hips, I felt my arousal spike again. I was going to come if he kept that up.

He seemed to know it, continuing to stare into my eyes as he brought me closer and closer, his own lips trembling in a snarl of lust, holding himself back to keep control of me, too.

“Touch your clit,” he rasped.

“I don’t think I’ll need to—”

“That wasn’t a question!” His whisper was urgent.

“Yes, James!” I reached down with two fingers and massaged my clit, rocking my hips and driving his cock deeper into me. “Oh God!” It wasn’t painful, but I could feel I was being stretched. “Oh God, I’ve missed you.”

“I’ve missed you, too,” he whispered into my ear. “Now, I want you to come again. Touch yourself, Karina. Show me that passion. Show me the wanton desire that makes you do what you did tonight.”

He held himself still while I lifted my hips and forced myself up and down on his pearl-wrapped shaft. I closed my eyes then, losing myself in that sensation, my fingers sliding in time with the pump of my hips until I began to cry out, a deep wail of satisfaction coming from deep in my core. Oh God, I felt it in the soles of my feet and in the blood pumping through all my veins.

He could not hold back. I slid my palms down the toned plane of his bare back and over his buttocks and marveled at the feeling of his muscles bunching each time he thrust. He lost control then, fucking me wildly, and I heard a sound like raindrops, as the string of pearls broke and they were scattered onto the wooden floor.

He pulled free suddenly, scattering more pearls, and I sat partway up. He was already spurting onto me, shuddering and gasping, painting my thighs with his come. Was he afraid I had gone off the Pill?

He collapsed forward onto his hands, shaking all over, his head hanging.

“James? Are you all right?”

He cleared his throat and sat back, blinking. Then his eyes focused on me and his expression hardened. “Was that what you wanted, Karina?”

“What are you talking about? What I want is you.”

He made a dismissive noise and tried to climb off the bed. His legs were wobbly, and the coveralls were bunched around his ankles, tucked into his still fully laced work boots, which ruined that plan. Good. I grabbed hold of the sleeve of the coveralls. “Uh-uh,” I said. “You’re not running off this time.”

He glanced around the small bedroom. Since escape seemed impossible at that moment, he relented. “Here. Clean yourself up.” He could reach the bath towel that was hanging on the doorknob to the closet. He used one corner of it himself and then handed it to me. I wiped myself up and then sat up cross-legged on the bed, the petals of the skirt making me look almost respectable. He shifted until he was sitting beside me, some space between us, the coveralls pulled around his waist. Loose pearls rolled across the bedsheets.