I can’t believe he’s letting me.
I watch him swallow hard, his Adam’s apple moving in his throat, while he does as I instruct. When the room has been darkened, he pulls a seat up in front of me, his sketchbook in his hand.
“Are you ready?” he asks, his voice level. He keeps his eyes on my face.
I shake my head.
“Not yet.”
And then I take off my bra.
Dare clears his throat and opens his sketchbook, the picture of a professional, and I swear I feel ten thousand flames lapping at my body as every inch of me flushes.
I stand up and shove my shorts to the floor.
Dare doesn’t move. It doesn’t even look like he’s breathing.
His eyes are frozen on me, appreciation flaring to life in them, and then he stares into my eyes, his gaze deep and dark.
“Calla,” he begins again, and he starts to move, to get up.
“Don’t,” I tell him sharply. “Please. I need this. I want to be…distracted.”
His eyes seem guarded now as he studies me, but he still stands up. He walks to his closet and comes back with one of his dress shirts. A white button-up. He hands it to me.
“Put this on,” he tells me. “Leave it unbuttoned.”
My heart pounds as I do what he asks.
He waits, then adjusts the opening of the shirt to fall just right against my skin, so that only the top curves of my br**sts show. He buttons one button there, and then pulls the shirt open so that my belly button and hip are exposed.
He settles back into his chair.
“So I’m a distraction, then?” he asks simply, bringing his pencil to the page and drawing a flowing line. The beginning of my hip.
I flush. “You’re far more than a distraction. But today… I need distracted.” I swallow and his eyes meet mine, then he looks away.
“Lay back,” he tells me brusquely. He gets up and comes to me, bending and moving my hair over my shoulder. His hand brushes my skin and a fire erupts, a heat, a raging lava-like liquid, churning in my belly, and I ache for him to lay down with me, to feel him next to me.
But he doesn’t. He stares down at me, studying me.
“Arch your back a bit,” he tells me. So I do. He slides a small pillow behind it.
“Bite your lip,” he tells me. “Not hard. Just enough to look like you’re thinking about something. Fantasizing, maybe.”
Oh God. I can totally do that.
He smiles, just a little, and returns to his seat.
His hands move across the page, quickly, then slowly. He looks up at me, his eyes so so dark, then he returns his attention to the page.
The electricity in this room is charged. It’s real. It’s smothering. It’s exhilarating. I can’t breathe.
Dare meets my gaze.
“Are you okay?”
I nod. “I am now.”
Now that I’m here. Now that you aren’t rejecting me. Now that you see me.
The edge of his lip curves up, and he swoops his hand, then bends his head in concentration.
“So what brought on this scene from Titanic?” Dare asks me tritely, eyeing me above the top of his paper. I feel a blush spread from my forehead to my chest and I look away.
“I’m not…it’s not,” I practically stammer. The cool air drifts over my body, forming goose-bumps everywhere.
Dare pauses. “No?”
I shake my head. “No. I just wanted… to feel something else.”
“Something other than?” Dare waits.
“What I’ve been feeling,” I clarify. “Craziness. Sadness. I just want to be someone else just for a minute.”
Dare examines his picture, then sits back in his seat a minute.
“Why would you want to be anyone else?” he asks softly. “Calla Price is amazing.”
He stands up and comes to me, staring down. His expression is guarded and intense and he lingers above me. His dark eyes trace the outline of my na**d hip, the curve of my thigh, and then suddenly, he follows his gaze with his finger. He runs it lightly from my knee to my hip, his fingertip scaldingly hot.
“You want me, don’t you?” I whisper, the words hesitant and afraid, hopeful and anxious.
His eyes are ablaze as he answers. “I’ve always wanted you.”
Any answer I can possibly give him his frozen in my throat, jammed against my tongue and so all I can do is move. I turn to give him better access, so that he can touch me, so that he can move his fingers and grip me tight and shove his tongue down my throat and…then he takes his finger away and offers me his hand.
I stare at his extended hand in confusion, but then let him pull me to my feet.
I stand toe to toe with him, my bare br**sts almost pressed against his body. If I just rocked forward a little bit, his h*ps would be pressed to mine and….
He raises an eyebrow. “Do you want to see it?”
It. The picture. I forgot.
I nod, swallowing hard.
He hands me the picture and it’s beautiful.
I look like a model, draped casually over a settee. Dare made the curtains flutter in the wind behind me, and he created an ocean view through the windows. The light shines in on me and I seem like an ethereal creature, something otherworldly.
“It’s beautiful,” I breathe.
“You are,” he agrees. He hands me my shirt and I hesitate.
I don’t want to put it on. I want.. I want… I want… Dare.
But his expression is no-nonsense and professional and he’s not touching me anymore.
Now isn’t the time.
I put my clothes on and hug the picture to my chest.
“Can I keep it?”
“Of course.”
He turns to move the chaise back to where it belongs and I pause.
“I was just thinking…” I begin. “That I’d like to go to Warrenton Beach today. Would you like to go, too?”
Dare narrows his eyes, but there’s laughter in them. “Is this you, trying to get a bike ride in addition to a portrait?”
I narrow my own. “Is this you, offering to give me one?”
Dare hesitates, and something in his eyes is troubling, something unsure, but finally he shrugs. “I don’t see why not. It doesn’t look like rain.”
He heads toward his bedroom.