ColorMeBad (8 page)

That mouth sparked some rebellious flame in her soul,
stirred up by unsatisfied arousal and the determination not to let him have it
all his own way. She sank down to the floor with him, straddling his trousered
hips and thrusting her hands beneath the cloth of his black coat. Her mouth
claimed his and kept him occupied while her hands pulled the coat from his
shoulders, down his arms to his wrists. She arched her hips in a teasing stroke
and felt him gasp into her mouth—at the same time, she twisted the fabric of
the coat tightly in one hand, effectively pinioning his arms behind him.

Rushmore realized what had happened and went still—except
for his cock, which twitched even beneath the fabric layers that separated
them.

Hecuba smiled though the shadows were deeper down here than
they’d been when she was standing. She knew very well Rushmore could break her
hold if he truly wanted to, but he didn’t. His every muscle was tensed, thighs
taut beneath her, his breath a harsh sound against the soft night air. Hecuba’s
pulse ticked slightly upward—this was new and interesting.

She leaned in to brush her lips against Rushmore’s ear while
with her free hand she began unraveling the knot at his neck. “That’s two of
your cravats I have now,” she said, pulling the linen free.

“Where is the other?” Rushmore asked.

“In my trouser pocket, wrinkling itself to death,” Hecuba
said, her hand busy on the fine gold buttons of his waistcoat. She pressed her
mouth to the side of his neck and admitted, “I didn’t dare to ask the servants
to clean and press it.” He gave a low moan that turned to a gasp when she
scraped him with her teeth. “What on earth would I be doing with a gentleman’s
cravat?”

“For one thing,” Rushmore said, low and intense, “you could
tie it around my wrists instead of the coat.”

Hecuba looked at his face, shrouded in darkness. “Would that
please you?” she asked.

“Would it please you to have me at your mercy?” he
countered.

Hecuba slid her hand down and squeezed his cock where it
tented up from his trousers. Rushmore made a strangled sound as his head fell
back.

“Aren’t you at my mercy already?” she teased.

In the darkness, with the light behind him, it seemed he
moved more swiftly than humanly possible. In one breath he pulled his hands
free of the coat and her grip, heaved her up from the floor and tumbled her
onto the bed. Hecuba barely had time to gasp in surprise before she was pinned
facedown beneath him. Another moment after that, he’d pulled the cravat from
her clutching fingers and knotted it firmly around both the bedpost and her
right wrist.

A roaring filled her ears and the blood surged in her veins.
Danger
, she sang to herself and was surprised to feel an echo of that
word throb between her legs. She could feel that greedy part of herself growing
even wetter at the tension in her bound arm, the feel of the sheets against her
bare breasts and the warmth of his breath on the back of her neck. It made her
shiver deliciously.

Experimentally she pushed herself up with her other hand,
only to stop when her bare back met his semi-clothed chest. “You missed your
chance to be in command,” he said and, dear heavens, when he bit lightly at the
back of her neck she felt it in every inch of her body.

“I won’t be so lax in future,” she breathed. He chuckled
briefly in response before a wash of cold air told her he’d moved away. A
moment later she felt the second cravat—not around her other wrist, as she’d
half expected, but encircling her left ankle. She tugged on her bonds and found
that a limited range of motion was possible—if she moved lower on the bed, she
could tuck both her knees beneath her, though the position required her to
stretch her right arm to its full length.

Fabric sounds caught her attention and Hecuba turned to
watch over her shoulder as Rushmore began to shed his clothing. His black
trousers fell away like husks from some late-blooming flower, his white shirt
and smallclothes luminous in the silver light. Soon those garments too were
cast away and he stood in nothing more than his own gleaming skin.

Hecuba realized this was the first time both of them had
been completely unclothed. But it was difficult in the low light to fix his
image in her mind as intensely as she wanted to. “Could you do me a favor and
light a candle, Rushmore?” she asked.

“The prisoner should be wary of making requests,” he replied
in low tones. “Every favor comes at a price.” Instead of reaching for the
nearby taper, he walked to the fireplace and prodded the sleepy embers into a
proper flame, his tall form a shadow against the ruddy light.

Hecuba’s mouth went dry. Suddenly she was forcefully
conscious of how many muscles it took for her body to pull in a breath. She
felt every one of them seize and stiffen at the easy power and dark grace of
her lover’s silhouette.

With unhurried ease, Rushmore moved away from the hearth,
and the shadow became a man once more. Firelight gilded the planes of his chest
and the muscles of his flanks as he found a sheath and pulled it onto his cock.
Hecuba’s fingers twitched with the remembered feel of him, hard and hot against
her palm.

Provokingly he stopped by the side of the bed, just out of
reach of the hand she’d stretched out to touch him. “Oh no,” he teased. “You’ll
have to be patient, Jones.”

Hecuba tamped down a growl of frustration. “You have more
than enough patience for both of us,” she said. “And you’re wasting the hours
of the night.”

One corner of his mouth lifted at her sharp tone, but he did
not laugh. “It does feel like we’re perpetually running out of time, doesn’t
it?” he replied. Hecuba steeled herself against the dismay in his voice, which
was too near an echo of her own secret fears. He stepped behind her, where he
could reach her but she couldn’t return the caress. Hecuba opened her mouth to
protest again but was soothed when he threaded his fingers into her hair,
pulling it free of its confinement and letting it cascade down her shoulders.
His mouth followed, tracing a leisurely path on the skin of her back. Hecuba
sighed, then groaned when one hand slid around her hips and his fingers found
that throbbing, aching place where she needed his touch most desperately.

Rushmore moved behind her on the bed, knees to either side
of her hips. His naked chest blanketed her, sending warmth through her every
nerve and fiber. His hand never paused in its rhythm. “I could spend hours like
this,” he murmured as she arched into the stroke of his fingers. “Teasing that
lovely cunt of yours, toying with you, seeing just how damn wet and hungry you
can be.” Hecuba’s left hand grasped his knee and held it, firm as an anchor.

She could hear his smile as he continued. “Eventually I’d
slide into you, inch by inch, drawing out every tiny mote of pleasure. Seeing
how many times I could make you come, losing count and starting over again.” He
slid one finger into her body and curled it just so. Hecuba gasped and bucked
against him. Rushmore made a strangled sound in his throat and nipped at her
shoulder then smoothed over the bite with a kiss.

But the mask had fallen. All the teasing speeches in the
world couldn’t hide the heaving breaths that shook him or the racing of his
pulse where his flesh met hers. Hecuba knew he was as close to the brink as she
was. All she had to do was push him just a little.

Without hesitation, Hecuba raked her nails over the skin of
his thigh.

Rushmore cursed and lost control.

He slipped his fingers free and drove her forward and down,
her bound left leg stretching taut, her right leg splaying wide. His weight
kept her pinned, his breath hot on the back of her neck. Hecuba cried out as
his cock pushed inside her, sliding along her inner walls, hitting that same
spot his finger had found earlier. This—
this
—was what she’d needed. The
deep drive forward, the long pull back, the way he sped up when her cunt
clenched down on his shaft.

Hecuba wrapped her bound right hand around the linen and
held on tight.

And then Rushmore gave a cry and surged forward, his cock
throbbing, his every muscle rigid, choked sounds wrenched from his throat as he
came, the warmth of his seed palpable even through the sheath. When he stopped
shuddering he slid from her body and untied the cravats. Hecuba, empty and
puzzled, turned to watch as he pulled off the soiled sheath. “I’m so sorry,
Jones,” he said, shaking his head. “You were completely right—I moved too
slowly and denied myself for too long.”

Every bit of Hecuba’s body was still pulsing so she tilted
her head at him and asked, “Do we have to be done?”

Rushmore looked up at her, his eyebrows arched in surprise.
“I suppose not,” he admitted as though the idea were a novelty. Hecuba’s legs
shifted restlessly and his gaze sharpened. “Not at all, in fact,” he said,
promise lacing his voice like poison in wine.

And that was how Hecuba Jones found herself flat on her back
in the bed, with Rushmore’s mouth hot and hungry on her cunt.

This was not the gentle, semi-worshipful experience from
before. There was something fierce and feral about it, a long wild note that
found its resonance and echo deep inside Hecuba herself. She arched her hips up
hard from the bed and twisted her fingers in his hair, begging shamelessly for
more. He responded by plunging two fingers into her channel while his lips
closed around her aching clitoris. He held nothing back and before she knew it
her body was clenching and coming in endless, wrenching waves.

Slowly she drifted back into herself, languid and glowing
with satisfaction. Rushmore wrapped the blankets around them both and Hecuba
curled lazily into the warmth of him. “Stay with me for a while?” he asked.

“Just for a moment,” she agreed and closed her eyes against
the fading firelight.

Rosy light, warm skin and hair like fire—John filled his
hands and pulled Hecuba smoothly on top of him. She smiled and mumbled
something sleepy as she leaned down and kissed him, her fingers sliding down
his chest, then lower, her smile as luminous as the morning sunlight…

Morning. Something worrisome ate at the fuzzy edges of his
thoughts, undermining his pleasure.

A discreet knock sounded on the door—Vickery, the valet,
punctual as ever.

Both people in the bed came shockingly awake. Hecuba dove
for her scattered clothing while John lunged for the door just as it began to
swing open. He caught the corner and held it firm while the valet blinked
owlishly through the six-inch gap.

“Vickery,” said John, “I must insist that you close your
eyes.”

“Of course, sir,” the man murmured and stood calmly with
eyes screwed shut while Hecuba yanked on her shirt and trousers.

Thank God his bedroom was only one story higher than the
ground. John wrenched the window open and helped to lower Hecuba as far as he
could before she leapt lightly to the garden path below. She took the time to
flash him one laughing grin before she vanished around the corner toward the
servants’ gate and the alley beyond.

John was left behind like Rapunzel in the tower. He shut the
window and, just in case, pulled shut the curtains.

“Thank you, Vickery,” he said. “You may open your eyes
again.”

The valet shut the door behind him and began to lay out a
set of clothing—buff trousers, red waistcoat and dark brown jacket, John was
relieved to see. The valet’s former employer had been a confirmed dandy and
every so often John had to reject a color combination as too risky or
eye-catching. He preferred to display bright hues in his paintings rather than
on his person. “I did not realize that you had taken to hosting visitors so late,
sir,” said Vickery while John pulled on socks and smallclothes. “Please do not
hesitate to ask me if you should need refreshments on such nights. Your guest’s
identity would of course remain a guarded secret.”

John fumbled the shirt he was pulling over his head and had
to fight his way through the neck. “Really?” he asked. A suspicion rose within
him like smoke. “Was the Marquis of Berthet in the habit of hosting such
entertainments?” he asked.

“I couldn’t say, sir,” Vickery murmured.

* * * * *

“So,” said the earl, “who is she?”

John swallowed a mouthful of egg and goggled at his brother,
who wore an irksomely knowing grin. “I beg your pardon?”

Simon laughed and slid into the nearest chair at the
breakfast table. “The woman who’s lately bewitched you of course. Don’t pretend
there isn’t one.”

John simply stared, fork tilting down in his slack fingers.

Simon leaned closer to press his point. “One, you’ve barely
ventured out of the house, not to your club, not to the opera, not even to the
homes of your bohemian friends. Even at last night’s dinner party you vanished
before midnight. Two, despite this newfound domesticity, you look like you’ve
forgotten how to sleep. Circles beneath your eyes, sentences trailing off
unfinished, a constant air of distraction. Three, you’ve had paint beneath your
fingernails every day for a fortnight.” The earl sat back in his chair,
smugness rolling off him like mist. “It’s plain as a pikestaff,” he said.
“You’ve found a muse.”

John’s breath escaped him in a rush of relief. A muse—but
not a lover. “I can’t tell you who she is,” he said.

The earl quirked one aristocratic eyebrow. “Because I
wouldn’t approve?”

“Because
she
wouldn’t approve,” John returned.

The earl chuckled. “And now I’m imagining you in thrall to
some ancient duchess—imperious, dignified and sharp of tongue.”

John had a blinding vision of Hecuba at sixty, clad in
violet, glaring at someone with that narrow-eyed gaze of hers and pursing her
lips in suspicion. That bright hair threaded with gray, her skin papered with
lines, each one a testament to the experience of some thought, some moment,
some deed. He ached to think he’d never see her like that.

An elbow in his side broke into his thoughts. “But more
likely it’s someone a little more succulent, eh? Some luscious young tart
pouting and preening while your cock all but punctures the canvas in front of
you.”

John pushed his plate away, his appetite abruptly gone.
“It’s not like that,” he said, though he could feel a betraying flush warming
his cheeks.

Simon shrugged this denial aside. “It must be convenient to
have such a means of seduction available to you—the rest of us have to use
shiny rocks and winning words to lure women into undressing. You just wave a
paintbrush at them and the clothes vanish.”

John ground his teeth together and managed not to respond.
But he could feel a coldness creeping into his bones, washing away last night’s
glow. For a moment he even thought that he could hate Simon for this—but the
thought burned out before it was more than half-lit and left only ash behind.

The earl swallowed a mouthful of egg. “When will you show us
the new paintings?”

“Why would I show them to you of all people?” John retorted.
“You’ve hated every brushstroke of every painting I’ve ever done. You’ve
disagreed with every goal I have as an artist.” He rose from the table with a
barely controlled shove. “These are some of the best and most personal works
I’ve ever done—why would I torture you with art you despise and torture myself
by listening to your disdain?”

He ignored the flash of regret on Simon’s face and strode
out of the room.

When he heard the front door open and shut a few minutes
later he knew his brother had left the house on some social errand or other.
Relieved, John hurried up the stairs to the attic. The morning sunlight was
rosy and warm and hopefully John could use it to chase away the melancholy that
shadowed him.

He prepared his pigments and removed his jacket, throwing a
smock over his real clothes to forestall the wrath of Vickery. Then he dragged
his easel closer to one of the windows and set on it a canvas whose background
was a swath of creased cream sheets and thick red curtains. It had always made
him nervous to paint from memory rather than from life, but this time his
brushstrokes were clear and confident as though his hands knew what he needed
though his brain did not.

Slowly Hecuba’s form took shape in an attitude he recalled
from the night before. She lay completely nude and lounging on her right side,
languid and sated, eyes mostly but not entirely closed—just a hint of color
beneath the lowered lids as though she were going to awake in the very next
moment. Her skin was warm, flushed, her hair a tangle of paler golds and
oranges than he’d used in
Circe
or for the water nymph.

John curled her left arm at her waist and stretched the
other out in a graceful line, the upper portion pillowing her head, the hand
hanging off the bed with fingers drowsily arched.
Aurora
, he would call
it, after the goddess of rosy-fingered dawn. He’d always thought her friendlier
than the other Olympians—more willing to take mortal lovers, more free to enjoy
the physical pleasures they brought her. Not all her paramours had stories that
ended happily, but she seemed to treat them with more warmth and affection than
did Apollo or Venus or the eternally callous Zeus.

At length he stood back and surveyed his own work. It was
nearly finished, but not quite. The curve of Hecuba’s hip, the length of her
leg, the delicate expression on her face, these were all just as he pictured
them. But something was missing…

His brush moved almost without conscious volition, gathering
zinc white and just a hint of Indian yellow for contrast. A few strokes, a few
shadows and there it was—his cravat, tied around her wrist, the linen’s creased
ends falling pale against the warmer color of the bedclothes.

There.
The rightness of it, the solidity of that
detail anchored the whole idea. The initial figure was a sleeping goddess,
ethereal and untouchable, but that cravat was tied around the arm of a living,
breathing woman of mortal flesh and blood. A woman bringing light and passion,
a woman who lit him up like a bonfire.

This was no casual love affair for him, not anymore.

And this painting was the closest he’d come to an honest
portrait in five years.

He’d always loved doing portraits but he’d stopped when his
past efforts had been made the butt of family jokes and constant teasing.
Little things, perhaps, no different than the much-repeated stories about his
brother’s school pranks or how his sister had learned to curse by eavesdropping
on the stableboys. John’s family, in short, treated his painting as something
he would eventually outgrow and put aside as childish and quaint. It seemed
like a hobby to them, a quirk, rather than the calling John knew it to be.

This constant disregard had wormed its way beneath John’s
skin and bitten deep. It had clumsied his fingers and filled his heart with a
creeping, deathless anxiety. How dare he think he was creating anything like
art? Wasn’t it all just a vain and expensive form of self-gratification?
Simon’s insinuations about nude models and prurient painters had insulted him
not because they were vulgar—though they certainly were—but because they
assumed that he could have no motive other than sexual for being interested in
painting people. In reality John was often transfixed by the way light fell on
someone’s hair or the angle at which another person held their head or the
movement of hands or the moment right before someone smiled, when you could see
it in their eyes but not yet in their mouth. There were entire gestural
languages there to be deciphered—masters had tried in centuries past and John
yearned to be counted among their number.

How appalling it was to think he’d let whole years pass in
quiet despair, a prisoner of fear and habit, when he could have been trying and
failing and learning. His time was not endless and he’d wasted quite enough of
it.

He wanted painting in his life again.

And he wanted Hecuba Jones. All of her. He was more than willing
to give all of himself in return—though he doubted the exchange was a fair one.
She’d already given him more than he could ever hope to repay.

His eye wandered over to a painting leaning against the
wall. It was the third C. F. Jones, he realized—Hecuba had forgotten to take it
with her this morning in her rush to escape.

There was certainly no way he could take it to her now.
They’d been formally introduced, certainly, but one did not go handing out
expensive paintings to ladies one had only publicly talked to once. It would be
a scandal, though probably not a ruinous one.

But, he realized with a grin, one could offer a lady a
bouquet. Even a debutante. Even a debutante one had only just met.

With no time to waste, John began promptly to work.

* * * * *

It was afternoon and Hecuba was staring at the wallpaper.
This was because the wallpaper, old and familiar though it was, was
significantly more interesting than Mr. Bertram Egley, who was sitting beside
Hecuba staring with puzzlement into his teacup.

“Do you think I’ve added enough lemon, Miss Jones?” he
inquired.

How many lemons do idiots usually take in their tea?
“I
couldn’t say,” Hecuba replied.

“I’m just not sure one slice is enough,” he replied,
sniffing at the rapidly cooling surface of the tea. “But two may be too many
and upset the balance of flavors.”

Hecuba regretted the fact that lemons were the sharpest
thing on the tea tray. “Mmm,” she murmured, as uninterested a sound she could
manage without being actually rude.

Mr. Egley’s philosophical inquisition continued
unfortunately. “Some people might add sugar to counteract the acidity of the
fruit, but I find that too much of that makes the beverage cloying and equally
unappetizing.” He sniffed again at the tea.

Hecuba drank from her own cup and wished it were deep enough
to drown herself in.

On the other side of the room, Mr. Egley’s elder brother
Harold was smiling at Evangeline, whose eyes were lowered demurely. Hecuba knew
her Aunt Pym hoped they would make a match of it, though tongues would wag if
Evangeline was betrothed before her elder sister. Anne was sitting beside her
mother, her eyes slightly glazed over, though her politely attentive expression
remained perfectly starched and unspoiled.

Mr. Bertram Egley began to critique the crumpets.

Hecuba’s knuckles went white as she folded her hands in her
lap. Teatime visits were the bane of her existence. Hour upon hour of rote
conversation, false smiles and tiny advances made toward mediocre ends. Hecuba
would have nothing to show for her time at the end of the day. And yet the
world expected her to flatter and please and ensnare some stiff-necked,
stiff-minded gentleman just so this endless cycle of tedium could swallow all
her remaining hours like the largest and laziest of monsters.

The sooner she was on her own, the better. She had half the
paintings she needed and an arrangement that would gain her the others. Once
she had collected all four, her real life could begin.

She had been in such a hurry this morning to leave
Rushmore’s house that she’d forgotten about the painting. But then she hadn’t
actually posed for a portrait last night, either—it was entirely possible that
Rushmore would insist on lengthening the whole affair by at least another night
so he might have the four paintings he demanded in return for her mother’s.
Hecuba allowed that an additional night with Rushmore was an enticing prospect.
But it could go no further than that.

She allowed as well that her dread of their separation was
getting stronger. She could feel its cold fingers wrapped around her beating
heart, squeezing and stifling the strength of that muscle. To tear herself free
of that grip would leave scars behind—scars that might never fully heal.