Wild Ride: A Changing Gears Novel (15 page)

“Good. That’s great. Now, let’s help you project that feeling.”

“Project horny?”

“Sure—great art comes from the subject as well as the artist, you know. Where would da Vinci be if Mona Lisa was in a pissy mood that day? Would she wear the most famous scowl in history?”

She chuckled softly.

“Don’t move,” he admonished, opening her knee a little wider.

Duncan picked up a charcoal pencil and glanced over at her, squinted, then turned to the clean paper he’d clipped to his easel.

“Tell me about how you feel at this moment.”

“I feel like a woman who’s about to get the best sex of her life.” Sooner, she hoped, rather than later. She felt as though her entire body were a sex organ thrumming.

“You’re a smart woman.” Cocky bastard. “Now close your eyes and tell me how you feel about the way I’ve posed you.”

She closed her eyes. Sure, he was a game player, but it was a lot of fun when she played along and from the pronounced bulge in his pants, he was torturing himself with this teasing, too. She breathed in slowly and really concentrated.

She felt the air on her naked body, currents shifting like whispers against her skin. She felt the warmth and press of her own hands against her body like pockets of heat. “You’ve placed my hands near my breasts and between my legs, but not close enough to touch myself, and that seems to focus my attention on those areas.”

“That’s exactly where I want your attention.” She had a damn good idea that—artist or no artist—his attention was firmly focused on her erogenous zones too.

“There’s something about having my hands right there but being unable to move that makes me feel—constricted.”

“Constricted?” A thought interrupted her as she pictured herself, lying here naked, and imagined the resulting painting.

Her eyes flew open and she glared up at him. “Who will see this picture?”

“No one but me. Right now it’s only a sketch. For my private collection. Relax and go back to what you were saying. You feel constricted.”

“Yes.” She didn’t dare shrug, heeding his reminder not to move and enjoying the idea of being forced to remain still. “I can’t move. It doesn’t matter that it’s only my mind stopping my body from moving, I still feel — bound.”

“Bound? Like a slave?” It was the tone that went with the words that ticked her excitement up a notch.

She imagined how a love slave might feel, imagined herself the pampered object of desire, but still an object. As a modern woman and a feminist, naturally she found the very notion abhorrent—but as a momentary fantasy, playing a love slave was powerfully exciting. He could do what he liked with her.

“Yes,” she whispered.

“Good. Work with that.” Brushes of all shapes and sizes thrust from his pocket but he only used the pencil, so she heard the scratching sound of charcoal on paper. “I want you to close your eyes, imagine you’re in that very position, lying on a–”

Almost dreamily she finished the sentence. “A dark red velvet divan.” She saw him, then, the dark prince whose slave she was, eyes narrowed, assessing his newest acquisition. He’d purchased her, or perhaps she was a gift. It didn’t matter. In her fantasy she was helpless, belonging to him only for his pleasure. He looked a lot like Duncan Forbes.

She shivered at the thought, smelled incense, heard the soft swish of robes as her dark prince approached. Every nerve in her body tightened and her skin seemed to prickle with the knowledge that he would touch her any way he liked. But she must remain passive.

A moment passed, another. She felt the air shift, grow heavier; she was no longer alone in her own space. She wanted to open her eyes and yet didn’t.

She heard movement, scraping sounds, and then the scratching of pencil on paper was much closer. He’d moved toward her.

For a few minutes there was no sound but those of the artist at work, sometimes the scratching was rapid, sometimes he paused and she felt his gaze on her.

Then she felt the air around her naked torso shift and she felt something brush across her left nipple, a soft, slightly rough stroke, like a calloused finger stroking her. She felt her nipple bloom to life as she recognized the touch of a brush.

Her eyes flew open.

Duncan was squatting beside her, a broad-headed sable paint brush in hand, a gaze of intent concentration on his face as he brushed her nipple.

“What are you doing?”

He grinned up at her, all sexy mischief, his eyes twinkling with it. “I want a certain look.”

He didn’t stop what he was doing and the sliding swirl of the brush on her sensitive skin was intoxicating.

“Stop moving,” he ordered.

“It was just my head.” But the teasing strokes had her so hot it was even more of an effort to keep still.

“This style seems to involve a lot of brushwork,” she said, trying not to gasp as the brush swirled and dipped, tickling, soothing, arousing as it stroked her breast and then drew back to her nipple, which appeared shockingly red as it bloomed beneath his brush.

“Like I said, I’m in my Van Gogh period.”

“Ah, that explains it.”

“He was manic, you know,” Duncan said, moving to the other breast, turning her into a living canvas painted with invisible paint.

“Bipolar. Yes.”

“Painted almost eighty paintings in the last few months of his life. At one point he painted a canvas a day.”

“Is that one of them?” She couldn’t move to gesture so she said, “The painting with the olive trees and that farmhouse?”

The brush stilled. He glanced sharply at her. “Yes. How did you know?”

“I didn’t.” But there’d been all those homes in Europe, all those galleries. “Maybe the style?”

“You’ve got a good eye.” And the odd moment passed.

He teased the brush down toward her belly. She wanted him hitting a certain spot and she wanted it badly.

“Are you a fast painter?”

“I believe in attention to detail,” he said, as though he weren’t picking up on her need when she knew damn well he was.

He took another brush from his pocket and lightly traced each of her ribs. Sensation radiated all over her body and she bit back a whimper.
“Don’t move,” he warned softly, as he brushed her skin, moving slowly lower.

“I am going to make you pay for this,” she informed him from behind clenched teeth. She was going to think up something so diabolical, he’d barely be able to walk when she was done.

“Oh, I hope so,” he replied, not looking at all frightened of the consequences. “Some of Van Gogh’s paintings went missing during the war. Hidden or looted and never seen again.”

The soft, silky stroking was driving her mad with a mixture of white-hot desire, need, and frustration.

“Is that what your book is about?” she asked, trying to find words when her mouth only wanted to moan.

There was a pause and the brush stopped moving for a second. Then he said, “Yes. In part.” He reached her belly and she felt her skin prickle with goose flesh as the brush teased her, traced the diamond stud in her navel.

As the brush headed toward her most secret parts all her tortured senses centered on that wide open space he’d created when he posed her with her legs apart.

Never in her life had she felt this hot, this needy. This vulnerable.

His eyes gleamed with unholy delight and she knew he was as aware of her distress as though he shared it.

Holding her gaze, he took a brand new brush out of his pocket with long strands of silky black. While she watched, hardly daring to believe he’d do it, he dipped the tip of the brush inside her and trailed the wetness up to her throbbing center.

Nothing, not all the will in the world, could keep her hips still. She jerked helplessly as he swirled the silky, soft strands around and over.
All her nerve endings, every scrap of sensation, was centered in her core. She longed for the soft tease of that brush, knowing she was going to explode momentarily.

He cast a quick, intimate glance up at her face; then, with utter concentration, slowly brought the now-wet brush and flicked it back and forth across her hot button.

“Unhhhn” she cried.

“Shhh. Hold still,” he answered. Oh, like that was possible.

The threat of death couldn’t stop her moving when the agonizing delight of the soft, wet strands brushed across her again and again. So wildly did her hips buck that he ended up “painting” part of her thigh.

“Tsk, tsk. I usually keep a damp rag handy for little mistakes.” He shrugged. “I don’t have a damp rag, but–” And he leaned forward and licked her.

“Oh, oh, yes,” she cried, as the soft, wet slide of his tongue rolled over her. There was no more teasing, no more torment; she knew he was as far beyond it as she when he cupped her hips in his strong hands and this time physically held her still as he licked at her with strong, regular strokes and she rose to a dizzying height.

She was going crazy as his tongue licked and then filled the empty, wet place that hungered until her head and shoulders came right up off the couch as she cried out, her entire body convulsing in climax.

He held her through it, sucking the last of her orgasm right out of her until she fell, limp and gasping, back to the couch. In seconds, he’d fumbled a condom from somewhere close.

He was naked and sheathed before she’d come anywhere near back to earth, and, kneeling at the end of the couch between her thighs, once more he cupped her hips and lifted her.

She put her forearms down and pushed, thrusting her hips up until he could slide in deep and hard. He hit the magic spot deep inside that was still throbbing while she wrapped her legs around his waist and rocked her pelvis back and forth against him.

He filled her all the way, stretching and filling her until the dam burst again. As her inner walls clenched and kneaded him, she felt him go rigid, then the last jerking thrusts of release before he collapsed on top of her.

“That was quite a painting,” she finally said.

“My masterpiece.”

When she had her breath back she hopped up before he could stop her and checked out the sketch. It was rough yet, but the reclining figure contained such sexual energy she could feel it. He’d caught her eyes, she thought. Even though he’d made her keep them shut for most of the time, he’d painted them looking right at him. Challenging, erotic and soft all at once.

“I hate showing unfinished work,” he grumbled, coming up beside her.

“I love it,” she said softly.

“You want a glass of wine?” He clearly wanted to change the subject.

She kissed his chin. “Shower first?”

She’d come here intending to have sex, but wow! She hadn’t had a clue he could tease her like that and she’d respond so wildly.

The water pounded against skin that was still sensitive, so she tipped her head back and enjoyed the warmth cascading against her breasts and belly.

Over the pounding of the water and her own erotic thoughts, she didn’t hear the bathroom door open. Didn’t notice the bathtub curtain pull back slightly. Didn’t clue in that she wasn’t alone until big, warm hands cupped her soap-slick breasts.

Her slight gasp of surprise turned into a sigh of pleasure as his fingers toyed with the soapy peaks and then slid down her belly.

Between the soap and the shampoo, the warm water and their hands and mouths, the shower took some time. By unspoken mutual consent, they aroused and teased but didn’t take each other over the top. This time, they wanted to be in bed.

After the laughter and silliness, the paintbrushes and the torment, it was strangely intimate to slip naked between the sheets.

She turned to him and he pulled her against him, so warm and strong. He smelled of soap and shampoo, of excited male and just a little bit like paint.

She smiled into the kiss, reminded of the brush when her nipples rubbed against his chest hair.

His gorgeous dark blue eyes were glazed with passion, the dark flecks crowding together, clouding as he began to lose control. This time, they took each other slowly, with soft caresses and barely intelligible whispers, and she wondered, with a stab of premonition, what she’d ever do without him.

This was the danger zone, she realized. Lying here, well-loved and floating, dreamily blissed out. This was where a woman could fall into stupid patterns, like imagining what it would be like to wake to Duncan every day. To pose for him regularly, to cook for him when she felt like it, make sure he did his share of household chores.

Inside, she groaned. A couple of earth-shattering orgasms and she was planning laundry day.

It had to stop.

She should get out of this bed and get back to their usual relationship of antagonistic, wild attraction. In his bed, warm and soft, with him playing with her hair in an absent¬minded intimacy made her throat ache.

Damn it. She never should have slept with him. She wanted to fall in love with a man who was home for dinner every night at six. She planned to marry a guy whose idea of adventure was two weeks a year at a lakeside cottage.

Duncan Forbes was not a contender. He had wandering man written all over him.

She sighed, turning to gaze at the tough profile on the pillow beside her.

“What is it?”

“You are so bad for me.”

He sent her a look that reminded her she was still pulsing from a climax that had almost blown her head clear off.

She flapped her hand around above the sheet. “I have plans. A clearly mapped life path. You are a detour.”

His expression was hard to read but she definitely had his full attention. “I’ve traveled all over the world. I’ve always found the detours were the most fun.”

Irritation tickled beneath her breastbone. “Detours slow you down. I’m thirty. I have this damn biological clock ticking. I want things. Normal things like a home and family.”

His Adam’s apple took a quick trip from the top of his throat to the bottom as he swallowed.

“Oh, I’m not suggesting you for the job.” She laughed, a little breathlessly. “I know you’re not the settling type. But I am. I get distracted when you’re around.”

“Well, I’m not sure whose time I’m beating. Sergeant Tom fits the bill but–”

“That’s my point exactly. I need to move on, out of this town, and you’re distracting me from my mission.”

She’d half expected him to pull out of bed and sprint for his rented auto and the nearest airfield, so she was surprised when he pulled her in tight and kissed her lightly. “If there’s a woman in the world who could make a man settle, she’d be you.”

He felt so good, right here beside her. Why did he have to be the last man she should want? Keeping her tone light was more of an effort than she liked. “I know. You’re not the settling type.”