The Reluctant Nude (15 page)

“I have been told that before.” He thought a moment. “I think it’s because I spent so much of my life being told whatever it was people thought I wanted to hear. Back when everyone wanted to be my friend or my agent or my lover or my dealer. I had to get very good at finding out the truth without listening to the words people actually use. You do that too, you know. You do it to me, except your guesses are always wrong.”

“So can you already guess what my fantasies are?”

He shook his head. “I’m a detective, not a psychic. So you will just have to tell me.”

“Well…it’s not really a fantasy, even. I don’t really sit around and think about sex like that. Or I didn’t use to. But there’s this dream I keep having, almost every night.”

“For how long?”

“Since…since the first week I was here, I think. Since way before I
wanted
to dream about you. Then even worse, after that day you made me touch you.”

“How do I compare in actuality?” he asked, grinning.

“Well, it’s hard to say. You don’t always get to do much in my dreams.” She bit her lip, embarrassed that she was even considering telling him this.

“Oh, no?”

“No. You’re usually…tied down, in the dreams.”

She watched his reaction, a subtle raising of his eyebrows followed by another smirk.

“And what do
you
do, in these dreams?” He lowered himself and ran his tongue over her collarbone, kissed her neck.

“Um, all sorts of stuff.”

“Tell me.” His voice so close to her ear was like a drug. “No, wait—show me.”

“I don’t know if I’m ready for all that,” Fallon said as he pulled away. She could see in his eyes that he was already anticipating the scenario. He knelt wide, straddling her legs, and with a distinctly evil smile he reached down and unbuckled his belt. He slid out the length of worn black leather and folded it neatly, handing it to Fallon.

She swallowed. “I don’t know.”

“Just try.” He moved to her side, lying down and looking expectant. “Right here? Is my bed okay?”

She nodded shyly. “Yeah, it’s always your bed.”

“That is very handy. What else?”

Her cheeks burned. “You…you have to talk in French.”

“I speak French in your dreams?”

“Well, kind of. Made-up dream French.”

“I wonder what it is I’m saying to you in these dreams,” he said, amused.

Fallon sat up and knelt. She ran her eyes over his bare torso and arms, baffled by what she might do with him if she agreed to this.

Max shifted, raising his arms. He slid them between the metal bars of his headboard like an invitation. “Go on.”

She stared at him a moment longer then finally said, “Okay. But I might panic and just sit here, looking at you.”

“You do whatever you want.”

She swung her leg across to straddle his chest and leaned over the headboard. Her hands shook as she wound the leather around his wrists and secured the buckle. Crawling backward, she knelt between his thighs, studying him for a long moment. This man, all hers. He watched her, then said something softly in French that she didn’t understand.

Fallon ran her palms over his thighs, feeling all the strength there. Then his stomach, lean and muscular, and the hips she’d watched perform for her so capably. She smiled. She touched his cock, rock-hard behind his jeans, and felt his impatience mount with each caress, until the entire length of his body was tight and strained, just as she’d dreamed. His voice grew deeper, muttering more exotic words between dark sighs and moans. Fallon felt high in a way she’d never experienced before. Max’s arms tensed, tugging against the headboard.

“Wow,” she murmured, not meaning to say it out loud. She laughed. The reality of this situation energized her. She moved aside to unzip his pants and tug them down his legs.

“Fallon.” His face in the dim, warm light was hungry.

She scooted close between his thighs, coaxing his legs over hers, laying them open, making him helpless. For a long time she teased him, rubbing him through his underwear, fondling and pulling and reveling in the power she held in her hand. With every passing second he lost more control. With each minute he grew hotter and more desperate until his chest and stomach were damp with sweat and his hips were thrusting him into her hands, wild with need. His words came fast and harsh and she could guess a good many of them.

When she thought he’d suffered enough, Fallon slid back onto her knees and slowly, cruelly, eased his briefs down his legs. She breathed him in, his smell and his need and his mounting insanity. Intoxicating. She felt wicked, still safe in her underwear while this strong, willful man lay naked and bound and at her mercy. Those brilliant, helpless hands. She grinned at him.

His eyes were wild, jaw set. She watched his arms struggle as they did in her dreams. Between his legs she studied the spoils of this intimate war, irrefutable proof of her conquest. Hard and thick and beading with the evidence of his desire. She took him in her fist and stroked until he was writhing.

“
Suce-moi.
”

Fallon didn’t need a translation for
that
one. She teased him a few beats longer and took him.

Then she was lost. In his taste, in his guttural sounds, in a haze of the most divine pleasure she’d ever experienced. All while doing something she didn’t normally enjoy. This pleasure should have been his but she felt it selfishly in her own body. She took him, slow and deep and greedy, feeling invincible. She teased his head with her tongue until his bound fists rattled the headboard.

Fallon was so far gone she didn’t recognize the sound of the belt buckle hitting the floor. When Max’s strong hands grabbed her shoulders, she gasped. He pulled her up along his body until he was between her legs, hot and still wet from her mouth, big and hard against her panties.

“That’s cheating,” she whispered. As his hands guided her hips she abandoned the protest. His mouth took hers, rough and explicit as he made her ride him. When he finally broke away she stared at his face, his features transformed. Possessed. His lips and cheeks were flushed, eyes unsteady, brow slick with sweat. Between her legs, Fallon’s pleasure grew until she thought she’d catch fire.

“Oh my God.”

“Come for me,” he commanded, forcing the friction.

Her panties were drenched, her body aching for him, the motions so frantic, so rough. He drew her back a couple of inches and teased her with his head, threatening the penetration her core demanded.

“Max—”

“Come on.” His voice was cruel and triumphant.

Fallon felt gravity reverse and suddenly he was above her. Strong arms flanking her shoulders, hard cock rubbing with long thrusts then shattering her every last nerve as the climax not only arrived, but tore through her like a force of nature. She heard her moans blend with his in animal harmony, felt him push her shirt up and then his hot, slick release as he shot on her belly.

He stayed braced above her for several long, panting breaths, his eyes closed, chest heaving. Eventually he rolled off of her to one side.

“Dear God, what are you doing to me?” He turned his head to hers, opened his eyes and smiled.

“
Me?
Doing to
you
?” She poked him inelegantly in the shoulder, still catching her own breath.

“You,” he confirmed. “More dangerous than silica inhalation and tendonitis combined.”

“How very poetic.”

Something in his expression as Max stared up into the skylight made her think he wasn’t joking. There was that tension in his face again, a worried quality to his darting eyes.

“Max?”

“Hmm?”

“Everything okay over there? You look…preoccupied.”

He rolled over and pressed his forehead into her shoulder. “Everything is lovely,” he said, warming her arm with his breath.

“You’re a crappy liar. Why do you look so anxious?”

He exhaled deeply. “Your statue is supposed to be done in the next month.”

“Yeah. Is that a problem?”

He didn’t answer for a very long time.

“Max?”

“After I finish it, you’re going away.”

She closed her eyes. “Yeah, I am.”

“That makes me feel rather self-pitiful, you see.”

She ran her palm over his cheek and his hair. “I didn’t used to be the sort of person who’d say something pathetic like this… But why? What’s so amazing about me?”

He pulled his face back a couple inches. “What do you mean?”

“What is it about me that you seem to find so compelling? Shouldn’t you be with some Parisian cellist or something?”

“I could say the same thing to you. Where is your engineer? Your golden retriever…? What’s your answer? Why are we in this bed together?”

“Pheromones.” Fallon laughed to let him know she didn’t have a real answer for him. “We’re biologically predisposed to each other. How about that?”

“That is as good an explanation as any. How strong are these pheromones? Will they let you go all the way back to New York and forget about me?”

Fallon sucked on her lower lip and stared up into the stars.

“Oh, she has reached her capacity for earnestness.” Max tucked himself against her again. “Now we have to go back to fucking and talking about the weather.”

“Shut up,” she whispered.

“We can’t talk about what I want to talk about,” he said in a paper-thin imitation of levity. “We can’t talk about what happens after the statue is done. We can’t talk about the future or family or how much I’m bloody going to miss her—”

Fallon rolled out of bed and went to the stairs.

“Where are you going?”

“To clean myself up,” she said evenly, and he let her escape down the steps.

Fallon padded through the dusty studio to the bathroom. She sat on the toilet lid for a long time, fists jammed into her cheeks like a four-year-old as the tears fell. After ten minutes she splashed her face with cold water and combed her fingers through her hair.

She crept back up the stairs and found Max exactly as she’d left him. His eyes followed her as she lay back down.

After a few moments he pulled her close. He pushed his face against her collarbone, and she knew he was asking to be forgiven. She patted his hair in a lazy, permissive way, telling him she wasn’t angry. He kissed her throat, light then seductive. His tongue lapped her dried tears as his hand cradled her head. He kissed her ear, her jaw, her mouth. He crawled on top of her and kissed her until the intensity was almost too much to bear. When she started to cry again he pulled away, but she tugged his face back to hers.

Max was hesitant but he gave in to her insistence. She cried softly as they made love, her climax punctuated by a body-racking sob. Her tears tapered off then, giving Max whatever permission he needed to take pleasure in this. He took her deep and slow and in near-silence and as he came he breathed her name against her temple, so quiet it felt like telepathy.

When he lay down she turned him to face away from her, sliding her body along his, a hand on his ribs and her face by his ear. She felt his breathing deepen beneath her palm, listened to the sounds as he swallowed and exhaled. Such a perfect machine, the human body. The one fact their two disparate fields might agree on.

She felt him drift off to sleep.

“Max?” she asked softly.

He didn’t stir.

“I’ll miss you too.”

Chapter Eleven

Things got worse over the next two weeks.

Max was unraveling so tangibly that Fallon felt as if she were watching time-lapse photography documenting his decline. He looked pale and exhausted by the end of each session, physically unwell. At first she thought he must have the flu. Then he’d come back to life by the time dinner was ready, that same strong, self-possessed man returning until the following morning when the next set of coffee mugs were set in the sink and the work began again. He seemed so defeated sometimes that Fallon didn’t have it in her to point out that it was mid-November, that the statue still looked ages from complete.

Two more days,
she kept thinking. Two more days and she’d start making demands. Then two days later she’d look at his eyes, as dark and worn and haunted as those of a man approaching death.

Presently she adjusted herself. The final pose that Max had chosen was seductive but tasteful. It called for Fallon to recline on one hip, propping her trunk up on an elbow, the other hand draped on her waist. She liked this pose, though the elbow in question wasn’t quite so fond of it. She was lying across the worktable, her body on par with the marble that separated her and Max.

“Hang on.” She refolded the towel she’d been leaning on.

“Let’s break.”

“I’m okay.”

They had this exchange about five times a day. Max pushed her to take breaks, she pushed him to keep working. He had the momentum of a man trapped hip-deep in quicksand. Every effort he made seemed both desperate and futile.

“You look so frigging tired, Max.”

He met her stare and held the particle mask up for a moment to show her a weak grin.

She pushed herself to sitting and slid off the table. “I’ll make some coffee.”

He nodded.

“Are you sure you don’t have mono or something?” She was teasing him, but he could no doubt hear the fear just beneath the surface, as surely as she could feel it in her chest. She crossed her arms and aimed a tense, frustrated smile at him. “You worry me sometimes.”

Max set down his chisel and hammer and pushed the mask to the top of his head. His eyes were trained on hers as he freed his tool belt, a wickedness turning his expression dark in the most inviting way, bringing him instantly back to life.

“What?” she asked, still standing between the marble and the table.

Max wheeled the statue to one side. “Come here.” A growl.

She stepped slowly to meet him and let him draw her into a deep kiss, his mask falling to the ground. His clothed body against her bare skin felt like some delicious game, their no-touching-during-work-hours rule be damned. It felt too good, too great a relief, just to feel his energy return like this. She let his tongue do all those wonderful things that brought a blush to her skin, and he made sounds for her, firing up all her hidden synapses. His mouth drowned out the voices of protest in her mind, the ones nagging her about schedules and dates and the responsibilities she kept conveniently forgetting.

Max pulled away, grabbing the hand towel he kept in a bowl of water on the edge of the table and mopping the dust from his hands. He tossed it aside and pulled Fallon against him again.

“Wow.” He’d been rough in bed with Fallon at her request, but his approach had always been cautious before. Not now. It felt so right—this energy matched his face and his eyes and their dark promises. She could already feel her body priming for him.

He spoke against her mouth. “Christ, I want you.” His stare was fiery and urgent, his lips parted, fingers rough on her back. Behind all the seduction and intensity, Max radiated unmistakable happiness. He drew her into his kisses and walked them backward until the edge of the worktable pressed against Fallon’s butt. With strong hands still wrapped in their cotton tape, he lifted her and set her on the table, pushing his hips between her legs.

Fallon caught their reflection in the mirror on the bathroom door several paces behind him. She yanked his undershirt up and over his head and watched his back muscles as he pressed against her, studied his tattoos and the faint red scratches left by her nails the night before.

She fumbled with his belt buckle until he took over, releasing it and unzipping his fly, forcing his jeans down enough to take himself out. He entered her deep, no hesitation. The thrusts came fast and hard and frantic.

“Max.” He felt amazing—even better than before, if such a thing were possible. She glanced down, taking in his skillful, explicit movements. Divine. His bare skin against hers—

“Oh shit, Max—stop.” She grabbed his shoulders.

His hips kept pumping. “What is it?”

“Stop stop stop. We need a condom.”

“In a minute,” he said in a distracted, desperate voice.

“No, not in minute—now.” She pushed him away, hard, and slid off the table. “You know I’m not using anything. And I’m not looking to have your artsy French love-child, so suit up.” She ran a hand over her forehead, trying to collect herself. Having sex with Max was like being intoxicated, and he was a dangerously hard drug to sober up from.

He looked to be struggling with his composure as well. “Would that really be the worst thing in the world?” he asked, cocking an eyebrow.

“What?”

“A child.” His flushed face was impossible to read.

“Yeah, Max, it would. A baby right now would be just about the worst thing that could happen to me. Or you. Or…us.”

“Why?”

Fallon’s eyes widened, and she took a step back from him, feeling naked, naked, naked.

“Why? Because we’re…we aren’t…
any
thing, really. And we live hundreds of miles away from each other.”

He replaced himself and buckled his belt. “We aren’t anything?”

She faltered. “Sorry. We’re lovers, obviously. And friends, sort of. I think. But we’re not…you know. A couple. We’d never be normal. Not normal enough to have a frigging baby, at any rate.” She took a deep breath and considered a horrifying possibility. “You weren’t trying to get me pregnant, were you?”

He shook his head, looking somber, and she knew he was telling her the truth. “Of course not.” His eyes lowered and his jaw tightened perceptibly.

“Well, thank God for that.” She wanted this conversation to go away—for it never to have happened to begin with. “Anyway… Maybe we should take that break.”

He nodded, still not looking at her. He turned away and replaced his shirt and began sweeping the marble chips from the floor.

“Have I hurt your feelings?” she asked carefully.

He still didn’t turn. “No. My feelings are just fine.”

“Good. I mean, I wasn’t saying having
your
baby would be the worst thing ever, just
a
baby. In general. I don’t know if I even want children.”

“Oh.”

She walked to her clothes, dusted her butt off and began redressing. “I’d be a terrible mother.” She felt his eyes on her, that tingling in her nerve endings.

“Why do you think that?”

She shrugged. She yanked her thermal shirt on. Armor.

“You have never mentioned your own parents to me,” he said.

“No, I haven’t. There’s a reason for that.” Her tone made it plain that she didn’t care to share that reason. She buttoned her pants and tugged on a sock.

“I’m not allowed to ask, then?”

“You can ask, but I don’t like to talk about it.”

“Did they hurt you?”

Something in Max’s voice broke Fallon’s heart. There was such a sharp, genuine concern in his words that it made her breath catch.

“No. They didn’t hurt me. They weren’t
there
to hurt me.”

“You were neglected?”

“No, Max. I don’t have any parents. I grew up in foster care.”

“Oh.”

She exhaled, staring down at the floor. “I don’t like talking about it. It wasn’t the most traumatic thing ever, it just isn’t my idea of a fun conversation. I’m not like you. I don’t get off on bad memories.” She felt her cheeks heat with regret a second too late.

Max didn’t reply.

“I’m sorry. That was harsh. But I’d like to drop it, just the same. Please.”

“Your aunt, who you’ve mentioned…”

“I call her my aunt. Her name was Gloria. Gloria Engels. She was my foster mother, but not until I was fifteen. I felt like I was too old to call anybody ‘Mom’ by then.”

“Tell me about her.”

“Max…”

“Please.”

“Fine.” She sighed and leaned on the edge of the table. “She took in lots of kids. She and her late husband. They couldn’t have their own, so they fostered dozens of hard-to-place teenagers, for years and years. Her husband passed away well before I moved in there. Gloria must have been in her midsixties by then. She was amazing, like something out of a frigging Disney movie.”

He nodded. “And this woman, she has something to do with this statue, somehow.”

Fallon maintained eye contact but didn’t reply.

Max leaned the broom against the wall and crossed his arms. “Tell me. Tell me why we’re here together. Tell me now what Donald Forrester is giving you in exchange for this statue.”

She stared at the ground, feeling disembodied.

“Tell me or I won’t pick those tools up ever again.”

Her head jerked up sharply. “Don’t you threaten me.”

“Tell me about threats, Fallon.”

She glared. “Fine…
Fine.
He owns Gloria’s house now—her estate in Connecticut. We’ve been fighting with each other for years, since way before she passed away and he bought it.”

Max crossed his arms. “Fighting over what?”

“Environmental things. Over all these development projects of his, ones I’m always trying to get halted because they’ll ruin wetlands or pollute waterways or erode some piece of coastline. We spent so much time in courtrooms together, we were almost like friends. Friends who hated each other, I guess. We weren’t close, just…civil. Familiar. We saw each other all the time and ate lunch together in the middle of these really ugly fights.” She took a deep breath. “Then he asked me out one day, and I said no. Then again, the next day. He asked me about a hundred times, and I said no a hundred times, and I thought he was just being a pain in the ass. Then Gloria died earlier this year and I missed a bunch of hearings during my bereavement leave. He knew what she was to me. When I got back after a couple weeks, I found out he’d bought her estate. Then he made a really disgusting offer and I hit him. Then he made a slightly less disgusting offer and I accepted. Then he contacted you.”

“What does he want to do to her home?” Max asked, one eye narrowing.

“If he gets his statue, he’ll give it to me. And I don’t know what I’d do with it. If he doesn’t, the idea is that he’ll tear it down, make it into a strip mall or throw up some condos, whatever will turn a profit. He’s not picky.”

Max gaped at her, the color draining from his face.

“So that’s why I’m here. Your work is the price of preserving my aunt’s memory.”

“How on earth do you expect me to be a part of this sickness?”

“How is this different from you wanting to preserve Erin’s worst memory, or any of the other painful things you’ve immortalized?”

“It’s different in a thousand ways.”

Her voice rose. “How?”

He shut his eyes tight, as though fending off a migraine.

“How, Max? Tell me how this is different. And don’t you dare say you’re not going to help me save her home—”

His eyes snapped back open. “I assumed this was about money. About you getting something out of the arrangement. Not you being exploited—having your own grief, or your
family
, used against you. This is different because you’re asking me to let some man take away your dignity in exchange for a scrap of human decency!”

“Bullshit.”

“This is different because I’m bloody in love with you and I
can’t. Do. This.
”

He was deteriorating before her eyes, every muscle and nerve strained to its breaking point. He picked the chisel back up, clutching the handle as though it held the key to his very sanity.
“I can’t reward some piece of shit, heartless old man with
my
work
and
your
body and let either of you think this is okay.”

“Goddamn it, Max, you don’t get it, do you? This is my
only
chance to save the memories of the three happy years of my entire, lousy childhood. Three good years out of eighteen! That’s all I got, and it’s because of her—”

“You think I can’t understand that? You think I, of all people, can’t understand how it feels to have your
childhood ripped from you
?” His eyes were wild, skin flushed, hand trembling.

“It’s not your business, Max. Why can’t you just stop with the drama and do your fucking job? What you promised to do?”

“You let me be
a party to this
?” His voice rose to a sharp bark. “You let me help someone blackmail you? And now that you tell me, you just expect me to go along with this?”

“It’s not blackmail.”

“Oh! A thousand pardons. What then? Extortion?”

“What do semantics matter? I came here for your help. I could have saved her home, and now you’re
fucking it all up
.” The tears arrived, streaming down Fallon’s face and making her words come out thick and sticky. Through her stinging eyes she saw his nostrils flare, some tiny attempt to muster self-control.

“This is what you’ve been keeping from me? About your aunt? You thought I couldn’t hear that? After everything I told you about my childhood?”

“I never twisted your arm—”

“Do you know how many people I’ve shared that with? In twenty years, under the influence of alcohol and drugs and infatuation and ego?” He grasped the neck of his T-shirt, as if fending off an invisible, strangling hand. “
None.
None until you! Until I came under
your. Bloody. Influence.
”
The hand holding the chisel shook. He met her eyes with his blazing ones and with a lightning-fast movement he flung the tool across the room where it collided with a shelf and shattered some anonymous clay figure in an explosion of ceramic shards.