Flirting With Forever (16 page)

“It must be a very grand honor to be the king’s portraitist.”

Lely made an indeterminate noise. “Words do not do it justice.”

He had decided on velvet the color of chestnuts for draping the chaise, and it was the edges of this material Cam now gripped. Despite al her years in the art world, she was unprepared to be the focus of a master’s efforts.

“Um, how would you like me?”

He gave her a brief smile. “Given your comment on the wedding night, I’m unsure how to answer. To what are you used? How does your fiancé pose you?”

“My fiancé does not pose me.”

He laid down his mixing knife and gave her a careful look. “Do you mean to say you have not posed? Ever?”

She flushed. “No.”

“Then I suppose it truly shal be like a wedding night.”

The warmth rose to her ears and scalp. She reached for the glass of Rhenish, which had been refil ed in her absence.

“Have your last,” he said. “I should like to have you lying down.”

With a sharp inhale, she set the glass on the table and reclined on the chaise, finding a place among the pil ows tucked against the rise at the back. The curtain of olive silk rol ed in a graceful wave across her legs. She lifted a heel under her hips to anchor her against the velvet. The other foot peeked from the fabric. Several pil ows buoyed her back. A smal one supported her neck. It was wondrously comfortable. And then, of course, the way that he looked at her was making her feel pretty at home as wel .

“You wil have to do without the head pil ow when I block in your face. After that, when I begin your body, you may have it again.”

“Al right.”

“It may hurt a bit at the beginning, but after that, I promise, you may relax and enjoy.”

“The metaphor is growing uncomfortably warm.”

Peter let out a smal , deep laugh. “The chain is lovely.”

She touched it, flustered. No matter what Jacket had said when he’d placed it around her neck, it represented an offer on his part, an offer about which she was strongly conflicted. She wished Peter had not seen it. Though she couldn’t quite express why, she wished it had gone unnoticed.

“Is there a pendant with it?” he asked. “It might make an interesting point of focus. And if it is a gift from him, it wil please him to—”

“No,” she said. “’Tis mine. I’m glad you reminded me, though. I was going to take it off.” She twisted her body until she’d blocked his view, unclasped the chain and slipped it and the ring into the pocket of the dressing gown.

He gave her a warm smile and picked up his palette.

“Now loosen your gown, if you please.”

If I please? She reached for her belt, wondering what other commands he thought she would fol ow without question that evening. She loosened the tie with one hand and let it drop. Immediately the silk resettled, fal ing in an unrestrained heap that ran from her shoulder to her hip. The fabric gaped, exposing an easy swath of white muslin, which, in turn, fol owed the curve of her breast. She could feel the air on her sternum. She wondered if he could see the beating of her heart.

“How do you want me to look?” she asked.

“I do not want you to look. I want you to think.”

“Think?”

“Aye. The portrait is for him, aye?”

“Aye.”

“You are to imagine him. When he looks at this painting he wil possess you. Each time he sets eyes on it, he wil know he, among al men, has triumphed to take your hand.

This is his Troy. Do you understand?”

“Aye.” Her voice was barely a whisper. What she wanted to think about was Peter, not Jacket.

“You are to show him what it is to be possessed.”

A tal assignment. She thought of Jacket on that long-ago night in the ladies’ lounge. He
had
possessed her. No question. He had fil ed her senses and loosened her tongue and made her mistress of some very surprising behavior.

She watched Peter mix his paints and wondered if he had possessed Ursula in such a manner. Had Ursula broken his heart? Or had their relationship been at an end when she’d fal en into the arms of the man Nel mentioned.

What had she said his name was? Old Pauly?

The color on his brush was dark. He would have to do the underpainting first, the base from which the bright of her hair, face and gown would rise. The easel blocked much of his body, but she could see his face, which took on a quiet intensity as he calculated the ratios of his arrangement.

Part of her was noting the workings of a seventeenth-century master, but the other part of her, fueled by the potency of the wine and Peter’s noble gesture with Miss Quinn, was heading in an entirely different direction.

She watched the movement of his thigh, the nearly imperceptible flexing of muscle as he worked, and the fine, muscled calf below. Nel had said Cam resembled Ursula.

There were certain sorts of men who were besotted with red hair, just as there were certain sorts of women besotted with artists. She wondered if Peter was imagining Ursula laid out here. She wondered if Peter had painted Ursula nude, and if he had, if it had evolved to fevered lovemaking, right here on this chaise?

The picture of Peter crouched over her, his powerful hips, stripped of their proprietous wool breeks, moving to hastening beat, danced in her mind. She was liking this mixture of strong wine, a man who knew how to make a woman feel like she was the only person on Earth and a very active imagination.

“I am about to begin,” he said in a low voice.

Yes.

The first scratch of brush on canvas sent an electric shock through her. It was as if he had drawn the brush down her flesh. A delicious tingle slithered through every nerve, and a welcome warmth bloomed under her gown where her heel was tucked between her legs. She took another long sip.

“You are perfect,” he said. “’Tis exactly what I want.”

Exactly what he wanted. She closed her eyes and smiled. There was something powerful y seductive in that phrase. The image returned readily—Peter, with his hand on her face, guiding her hungry mouth to his. When his hand in the vision ventured lower, her own nipples tightened.

Cam wondered if Peter could see the change through the thin muslin. She found herself reveling in the notion and grinned. Lost in time? Why not make the best of it? She settled her weight more firmly upon that heel.

The brushstrokes continued. Peter worked briskly, and every scrape translated to the rustle of silk as flesh met flesh. In her mind, he took her hips and held them hard as he plumbed her depths.

A wild heat rose between her legs, and Cam found herself responding as easily to the image in her head as she might to the real thing.

Good God, where are you going with this, girl?

It had been six months since she and Jacket had made love, and during that time she’d had no desire to go to bed with anyone. The part of her that responded blindly to the cal of lust had been muted that day after she’d opened their bedroom door. Yet here she was constructing an interlude as erotic as those in the novels she’d read.

There was a strange freedom to being cast into another time that she’d never felt before. It was as if she were in a dream of her own making, with no one to justify her actions to but herself. This, she decided, could be a very dangerous thing.

She turned, and a nipple brushed the carved wood of the arm, sending a magnificent plume of heat through her. But the wood was Peter’s finger, and she longed for his touch.

She moved gently, no more than the motion of inhaling and exhaling, and let him rub the tender flesh. He taunted her.

She could feel his throb, let her fingers ride the satiny flesh.

He drew up beside her, spoon to spoon, and rol ed the nipple slowly, kissing her neck and ear, the barest scent of vanil a reaching her nose as she stretched against him like a cat.

Oh, the Rhenish is definitely working.

She stole a glance at Peter. He was laboring intently now, brushing the paint on with short, expert strokes. She closed her eyes and opened them again, and this time he was looking at her. Her breath caught, and he looked away.

“Is he in your thoughts, Mrs. Post? I do not wish to shock, and you wil pardon me for saying this, but as you carry yourself with far too confident a grace to be a maiden, I intend to speak plain. You must be
filled
with him, do you understand?”

His brown eyes deepened in color, and she felt her blood pound in her ears. “Aye, I understand.”

“Some women cannot do it. But I see you have no fear.”

“‘No fear’ might be overstating things.” Her heart was thumping so hard she wondered if he could hear it.

“There are certain things I can do to enhance the effect—

if such an aid is needed.”

Blood roared in her ears. What had he seen? What was he offering? She thought of his mouth on hers, a welcome hand between her thighs. “What?”

“There are tricks. A wash of rose madder on the cheeks, a pinwheel of gold in the eye.”

She flushed deeply at her mistake, so deeply that for an instant the world blurred.

He saw her embarrassment, and guessed its source.

“To that end, milady, I have but one aid, though it is

“To that end, milady, I have but one aid, though it is extremely adaptable.”

She closed her eyes, too embarrassed to look at him.

“Aye?”

“To be honest, ’tis not my practice to share this with my sitters. It is far more potent, I think, if it happens without their notice, but you are a woman of the world. I assure you, it wil work for you if you let it.”

“What, sir? What?”

“I can help bring your lover to mind through judicious use of his, er, methods of seduction—only the most proper ones, of course.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning,” he said shortly, “I can pour, I can praise, I can command. If I strike the note that brings him to mind, you wil respond. Which path shal I fol ow?”

Jacket had charmed and cajoled, and when he hurt her feelings, he had charmed more. Cam would not waste a thought on that now. But the right words from Peter could turn what she wanted—what she had already begun—from a flame into a fire.

“
I
can pour,” she said. “Command me.”

For a moment he said nothing, then he nodded and stepped behind the easel. “Remove your gown.”

Flames roared through her. She sat up, finished the rest of the wine and poured another. Then she loosened the silk and let it slide off the muslin.

He turned toward the canvas with a wry chuckle. “The muslin as wel , please.”

Sheer terror flooded every nerve. “I am not comfortable with that.”

“You have contrived to put yourself on a painter’s chaise in a remote studio. That is the natural outcome.”

Her hands shook as she brushed one shoulder off and then the other. The fabric slipped to her waist.

“Madam—”

“No more. Please.”

His eyes did a slow review. She felt adrift and more than a little frightened.

“Your breasts are generous. Offer them with generosity.”

She pressed her shoulders back, wincing with vulnerability, and felt her nipples lift higher. She tried to master her breathing, but every nerve in her body was firing at once.

She, Cam Stratford, who had never sunbathed topless, who had never skinny-dipped, who wouldn’t even get in a hot tub alone with Jacket, had taken the plunge. She could feel both the heat of the fire and the cool of the evening on her skin, and she held herself stil . It was thril ing to be exposed, and to pretend, even for a quarter hour, that she was always this bold.

“That’s right,” he said. “Now angle them toward me.”

She wished he would take her in his arms. She wanted to feel him command her with his hands, not just his words.

“I do not think,” she said with only a smal crack in her voice, “this wil be a painting for the dining hal .”

“A private gal ery, I should think. Though I would not put it past any man to let it fal into the sight of his acquaintances.

How can they covet what they do not know exists?”

She imagined this painting hanging in Lely’s private office, or tipped against the wal of one of his workshops, open to any curious eye, or in his bedroom where he could admire it while the real sitting took place across his lap.

She wondered in how many rooms she could bring him pleasure.

“Your man is here. He stands over you. He is drunk, perhaps too drunk. Wil he sleep or serve?”

“Serve,” she said huskily.

“Offer. And make it clear. He is barely able to stand.”

And there was Peter in her head, pul ing at his boots, smel ing of whiskey. He would need no encouragement. He would lower his breeks, scrabble at his shirttails and thrust his way inside her, making up in blunt determination what he lacked in elegance.

She settled back on the pil ows and turned her body seductively toward this unseen lover. The muslin at her waist was slipping, and she lifted the knee nearest Peter to stop it.

The fabric, so thin it undoubtedly offered a fine view of hip and thigh, ruffled slightly in the draft from the windows, but it was al the coverage she had, and she would not let it go. She laid her right arm along the rise of her hip. It was a brazen pose, and she was stil quaking, but she liked the glow that had sprung up in Peter’s eyes.

He considered her from head to foot. “’Tis a very fine offer,” he said at last. “Very fine indeed. Let him take it, shal we, while I begin.”