Текст книги "Reckless In Love"
Автор книги: Bella Andre
Соавторы: Jennifer Skully
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Текущая страница: 15 (всего у книги 21 страниц)
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Sketchbooks slid off Charlie’s lap in her surprise, one falling open to the drawing from the night of the gala. Sebastian marched into the small room, filling it, overwhelming it, his face shadowed and his eyes dark. He’d pulled a pair of sweats over his lean hips, leaving his chest bare and beautiful. Her mouth went dry, from the sight of him as much as from the knowledge that she’d been snooping through his private sketchbooks.
“I woke up with an idea,” she explained. “I wanted to get it down before I forgot.” It was long forgotten now, and she didn’t even care, not when she’d discovered something more precious than diamonds. “I couldn’t find any paper in the bedroom, so I came in here.”
His features were hard, immobile, like a piece of metal she hadn’t yet welded into submission. “How long have you been looking through my things?” His voice was as hard as his face. It could break rocks.
Worse, it could break her. Right in two. Straight through the center of her heart. The heart she’d just given to him.
All the hurt she’d worked to push away rushed back. “I was only planning to take a blank piece to write some notes on, but then...” She waved a hand at the sketch still face-up on the floor. “I saw a drawing of myself. And I was—”
Before she could let him know how moved she was by his talent and the incredible emotion he’d captured in every single sketch, he grabbed the pads off the floor and the side table, then snatched the one she held right out of her hand.
“They’re not for public consumption.” He tossed the sketchbooks in the drawer of a small bureau against the wall.
“Public consumption?” The words burned her throat as they came out in a horrible echo.
“They’re private.”
It was pure instinct for Charlie to push past him and leave, to run as far and as fast as she could. Far enough for her to figure out how to weld the break in the heart he’d just ripped apart. But how could she forget what he’d said to her as they made love? I love you, Charlie. I’ve never loved anyone the way I love you. Never knew I could love like this. He’d told her he loved her. With his words, his body. Despite the way he’d lashed out at her, she truly believed his drawings revealed how much he loved her, over and over again with every single stroke of his pencil. But now, he was trying to push her away, trying to make sure she never asked him about these drawings.
Well, it was going to take a hell of a lot more than that to make her leave. She wouldn’t walk away from him.
But she would get him to tell her why he hid his beautiful art in a tiny room where no one would ever see it.
* * *
“Private.” Charlie spoke softly now, but her voice curled around his insides, her hurt tangible. “How would you feel if I never allowed anyone to see my work? If I refused to show it for public consumption?”
Sebastian clenched his fists on the dresser into which he’d thrown all his secret thoughts and feelings. He couldn’t believe what he’d just said to her. Especially when he knew firsthand how rough, angry words could hurt more than anything else.
“I’m sorry, Charlie.” He straightened, turned, feeling like his bones were cracking. “So damned sorry. I didn’t mean it. Not any of it.” He’d screwed up again, despite the vow he’d made to himself only hours ago to do anything for her.
“I should have asked instead of prying.” Her hand on his arm was so soft, so warm, so strong, the faint scent of his loving still clinging to her. “Your sketches are beautiful, Sebastian. I wish you’d shown them to me. You should be proud. They’re not just drawings you do in your spare time. They’re works of art.”
“You’re the work of art,” he said to the carpet beneath his feet. He couldn’t even gaze at the perfection in her face that he hadn’t been able to capture.
She pressed her fingers into his arm, urging him to look at her. “Don’t shrug me off.” She held his gaze for a long moment, her eyes darkly serious. “You’re a very talented artist. Very.”
He respected her artistic vision more than that of anyone he’d ever met, yet somehow she had a blind spot for him, even after she’d seen all his imperfections. Not only in his drawing skills, but also in the way he’d failed her mother. He’d promised he would fix things and he hadn’t. He wanted to shove the thoughts and feelings away, back inside the dark, secret place where he’d kept them for so long. But with Charlie...
Sebastian had never been able to hold back with her.
“I’m not an artist.” The truth felt like razor blades on his tongue, but he made himself go on. “There are so many mistakes. I can’t capture exactly what I see. I can’t figure out how to make the drawings perfect no matter how hard I try.”
“You made me beautiful even though I’m not perfect.” She reached up to touch the tiny frown line between her eyes. “I suppose I could have a doctor stick a needle into me to get rid of this, but if you ask me, perfection doesn’t have nearly as much character as real.”
“God, no, don’t ever let a doctor with a needle near your face.” He gently slid a finger over the same mark. “I love that line. It shows your concentration, your dedication.”
“And your drawings show so much about you, Sebastian. How you see people.”
“They show the imperfection in my own abilities.”
Closer now, her heat shot toward him like the pilot arc of one of her machines. He wanted to bury himself in her warmth.
“Sebastian.” She ran her thumb over his lip as she said his name, her voice warm and husky. “Your drawings made me feel beautiful and cared for. And understood.”
“Putting my pencil on the paper usually helps me figure people out. I’m simply analyzing people. I’m not an artist. Not like you.”
“You are.” She paused for a moment before adding, “The drawings of your parents are beautiful too. I feel as though I’ve met them now. Does drawing them help you remember them?”
He shook his head, fast, almost violently. “No, I’d remember everything, even without the sketches.” Especially all his failures with them. “I guess I’ve never given up trying to figure out what I could have done for them.”
An even deeper understanding lit her eyes. Then she pressed against him, rising on her toes to whisper, “Have all your drawings helped you figure me out?” She curled her arms around his neck.
“Not yet.” His answer was muffled in her hair. “But I’m working on it.”
“Maybe you just need to put a few more hours in, only this time instead of using pencil and paper, you could draw on my skin with your fingers.”
His hands were already on her, burrowing beneath the shirt she’d borrowed, shoving it off her shoulders. “I can draw with my tongue as well.”
“Draw with everything, Sebastian. Absolutely everything.”
He picked her up, her body as light as a down pillow in his arms. He needed her love to banish the darkness of his thoughts and the things he’d so stupidly said to her. After laying her carefully on his bed, he stripped off the sweats he’d pulled on.
“Now, let’s see,” he murmured like a painter studying his canvas. “A line here.” His tongue marked a streak from one beautiful, rose-tipped nipple to the other. “Geometric designs, I think.”
She laughed, then shivered as he drew tongue circles around her nipple.
“We need more than one paintbrush.” And his fingers joined the play. He traced her supple skin, her flesh quivering beneath his strokes.
“You make beautiful art—” She gasped as his touch painted a line straight down between her legs. “—but your work is also highly stimulating.”
“It will take hours to cover every inch.” Hours of bliss, hours of begging her forgiveness for his lapse into the anger and fear of the past, hours of loving her.
Her body was his sketchbook and he filled every inch until her body shuddered under his tongue, around his fingers. She tangled his hair, arched into him, and as she wrapped herself all around him, he prayed she felt his love for her in every kiss, every caress, every breath.
* * *
Charlie had long since fallen into an exhausted sleep in his arms and the sun was peeking over the horizon. Yet Sebastian still couldn’t sleep.
She’d told him how beautiful his drawings were, how talented he was, that his sketches shouldn’t be shoved in the back of a drawer like a dirty little secret. But if he truly had talent, then by now he should know how to help her fully realize her potential. He should have figured out how to convince her to step into the light and accept everything the world could give her.
He’d sensed her hesitation at the gala as people all but threw commissions at her, begging her to create sculptures for them. It was the same hesitation he’d felt with her more than a dozen times since then. It was almost as if she didn’t want to be a huge success.
Sebastian frowned. Could he be reading her wrong? Was it possible she could be the one artist on earth who wasn’t looking for acclaim or accolades? Or were all his screwups with her coloring everything else? First he’d blown it big time by offering to pay for her mother’s care right after the first time they made love. Then tonight he’d lashed out at her for discovering a secret he shouldn’t have kept from her in the first place. The fact that she hadn’t walked out on him was a true miracle...and more than he deserved.
He tightened his arms around her, renewing his vow to get things right with her from now on—and to make sure he gave her absolutely everything she deserved. No matter what.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Sebastian had made Charlie’s body his work of art into the small hours of the morning, bringing her to ecstasy so many times she’d lost count. But even if she’d never had the pleasure of making love with him, she would still think he was a true artist in every sense of the word.
She had to find a way to make him believe that. And she knew where it had to start—with getting him to realize he didn’t have to be Mr. Perfect. Was da Vinci perfect? Michelangelo? Of course not. And neither was she, with her dinosaurs built out of bullet-riddled road signs. That didn’t mean she wasn’t an artist. It didn’t mean he wasn’t either.
It was obvious his need to be perfect all came down to his parents. He was still broken up over not being able to save them. The drawings of his father, though, revealed so much. The lines on his face exposed not only weakness, but cruelty too. Sebastian had never mentioned a mean streak, but Charlie suspected there was more to the story than he’d admitted on stage—or to her. More, maybe, than Sebastian even wanted to admit to himself.
It was easy to spend all her time thinking about Sebastian. Wanting to give back as much as he’d already given to her. Just plain wanting him. But she needed to hustle on building the horses if she ever hoped to start the dinosaur for Noah.
Pulling down her face shield, she sparked up. The horses’ legs needed to appear like fine machinery, pumping, working, galloping headlong. They didn’t care that their master had been thrown to the ground in a heap or that the chariot was a broken shell they dragged behind them. They simply needed to fly. Just like Sebastian.
The day grew hot as she worked, and the protective gear and torch turned the heat on high, but still she lost track of time. She relished both the physicality of it and the ability to let her creativity run completely free. She’d just finished off a weld, its line clean and smooth, when a feeling struck her, a sense of something not quite right with her lead stallion.
She frowned and walked a wide circle around it. She’d sometimes asked her students to weigh in on a sculpture and had always been pleased by their insights. She still hadn’t made a decision about the fall session—whether to keep one leg in her old world or to take the huge and scary step fully into Sebastian’s world. And thinking about her students now made her stomach clench.
Pushing the thought away, she refocused on the horse and finally isolated the problem. Her prize stallion was bowlegged. Had she gotten the angle of his knee joints wrong? Or made his chest too wide?
“What’s wrong?”
She almost dropped the torch in her surprise. Thank God she’d already turned it off. Laying it down, she flipped up her face mask. Her heart was racing as fast as her galloping stallions, and it wasn’t only from the scare. It was Sebastian, all dressed up in a dark business suit and tie, his hair perfect, every-absolutely-freaking-thing perfect about him. She could feel his gaze sketching her body, as if he were running his fingertips over her.
“You scared me.” Putting the face shield on the bench, she tugged off her gloves. “What if I’d been using my torch?”
“I wouldn’t have said anything if you were,” he drawled. “I just thought I’d bring you a refreshing bottle of beer.” He set two imports on the workbench.
She wasn’t normally a beer drinker, but with the heat of the day, her work, and Sebastian making her feel so temptingly hot... “God, that sounds good.” As good as having him here with her in the studio, close enough to touch, to taste.
“So tell me what’s wrong.”
She pointed at her horse. “He’s bowlegged.”
“He looks fine.”
She traced the lines of both legs with her hands to show him...and a memory of Sebastian’s sleek muscles beneath her fingers sizzled over her skin.
He stepped in close, his male scent surrounding her, making her a tiny bit crazy. “You’re right, he’s totally bowlegged.”
Laughter burst out of her. She wasn’t a tiny bit crazy for him. She was over-the-top completely crazy.
“But he’s good this way.” Sebastian threaded his fingers through the tips of her hair. She loved that he couldn’t do anything without touching her at the same time. “He’s the handicapped horse that Ben-Hur gave a chance.”
See? He was making up a story, like all great artists did. “Ben-Hur’s kindness would have meant he was gambling with his life.”
“That makes it even better. Kindness trumping both the win and safety.” He was close, so close behind her. She wanted to take him to the floor and tear off all his perfect, polished clothes.
“We should leave the horse like this,” he insisted softly.
“Even though he’s not perfect?” Desire hummed through her voice, but she kept herself in check.
“He’s perfect the way he is.” He dropped a kiss on her neck, heating her all the way through despite the two fans blowing over them. “I know what you’re doing, by the way. You’re saying that art isn’t about perfection.”
“It’s about heart.” She leaned back, letting him put his arms around her, then turned her face up to his. She wanted him, but just as badly, she wanted the moment he trusted her enough to share all the things he’d been holding back. “Is my plan working?”
He drew her tightly against him, all hard male muscle and heat. “Oh yeah. It’s definitely working.”
She wriggled, tantalizing them both. But she knew he hadn’t gotten her real message. Soon, she promised herself, she’d make sure he understood how amazing he was, exactly the way he was, no perfection necessary. “What message am I sending now?”
“That you’re hot and I should strip off every last stitch of your clothes.”
She had so much to do, and so much she wanted to help him see about himself. But wherever Sebastian was, something delicious and sexy was bound to ensue. And she could never resist him. “Anyone ever tell you how smart you are?”
He was already busy trailing his fingers to the smock’s buttons and undoing them. As for her? Despite making love over and over again last night, she ached for him, so desperate and full of desire that her voice was a little breathless. “What are you doing here, anyway? Don’t you have important meetings?”
“I couldn’t stay away from you.”
His simple, sweet words dissolved what was left of rational thought. The horse’s bowed legs could stay bowed for another couple of hours. Sebastian’s eyes were molten, his body all hard edges against her as he shoved the smock off her shoulders and let it fall. Then he unhooked the buckles of her overalls and flipped back the straps.
Charlie shimmied. Everything fell to her feet, and she kicked it all aside.
“Holy hell.” A pulse beat rapidly at his throat.
She wore nothing but panties, bra, and her steel-toed boots. In the heat of his eyes and the flare of his nostrils like a fine racehorse ready to run, she’d never felt sexier.
He dove on her, her face between his hands as he consumed her mouth, deep, hard, fast. She grabbed his lapels before her knees buckled beneath her. Hauling her up, he pulled her legs around his waist, and whispered, “Hang on, baby.”
God, yes, she would hang on. And she would make him see that everything he did was perfect simply because he was the one doing it.
Because, oh my, the things he did to her. She couldn’t live without them.
She couldn’t live without him.
* * *
Carrying Charlie to the workbench, Sebastian remembered the day he’d first touched her and all the things he’d been dying to do but hadn’t.
“This is crazy,” she whispered as he licked the swell of her breasts.
Snap and the flimsy bra fell away. “Completely reckless.”
“Any of your employees could walk in.”
“They could,” he agreed with a wicked grin. “But they won’t.” It was long past lunchtime and there was no reason for anyone to come down here. Besides, he was too far gone to care if they did.
“How can you be sure?”
Even as she asked the question, she was threading her hands into his hair and arching her breasts closer to his mouth. But he made himself lift his head. “I’ll stop if you want me to.”
“Don’t you dare.”
Sweet Lord, she was exquisite. Her hair falling loose from its knot, the face shield leaving dents on her forehead, the adorable lines of concentration between her eyebrows.
“I couldn’t get a lick of work done today, Charlie.” He emphasized the word lick with a long, slow swipe of his tongue across her nipple. “All I could think about was taking you.” He trailed his fingers down to her hips, laid his thumbs along the creases of her thighs, so close but not yet touching. “Loving you.”
She dragged his head up to take his mouth. Kissing her was heaven. With long, drugged swigs of her, he immersed himself in her taste and her scent as she pulled him tight, her legs trapping him against her center.
She went back on her hands, her breasts rising and falling with gasps of breath. “I want you just like this. In your suit. All your clothes on. And me in nothing at all.”
“Except the steel-toes.”
“Sure,” she agreed with a naughty little smile, “we can keep the boots.”
He didn’t mean to tear everything she owned, but she flipped all his switches. He couldn’t think and before he knew it, there were only shreds of satin in his fist...and the silky-smooth feel of her skin, her thighs urging him on. He’d wanted to taste her, savor her, make this last forever.
But he couldn’t wait.
She quickly undid his belt buckle and they unzipped together, he holding the zipper straight, she pulling the tab. A handful of beats later, he’d slid on protection, then he took her hips in his hands.
With one hard move, he thrust into her, so fast and deep she gasped his name. Sebastian.
For a few precious moments, he tried to slow it all down, to watch her, memorize her, savor her muscles tightening around him. Her color deepened, and heat rose off her flesh. She bit her lip, and her lids closed, fluttered, opened again, her eyes dazed with pleasure.
He moved, stroking that perfect spot inside her, then added the caress of his finger over her arousal. Then he lost himself completely in the clench of her slick heat around him. There was no holding back. He took her harder. Faster. Deeper. His lips found her mouth, and he swallowed her cries as she swallowed his. And they went up in flames together.
* * *
Charlie wasn’t sure how they ended up on the floor, with her straddling Sebastian. It was a good thing he didn’t seem to care that his suit pants were getting dirty. Because she couldn’t move. She was boneless and sated, wanting nothing more than to stay in his arms, keeping him buried deep inside her.
“Mmmm.” She breathed against his neck. “I’m glad you came back early today.”
He ran his heated gaze over her naked body. “No more than I am.”
As hard as it was to leave him, she pushed off, using his shoulders for leverage, then held out her hand to him. “I still have so much to do.”
He wrapped his fingers around hers and rolled to his feet, holding her close a moment, his hands all over her naked curves, his lips against her hair. “You’re just too tempting to resist.” He smiled down at her devilishly. “But I have to, don’t I?”
“Yes, you do.” Though a part of her prayed he wouldn’t. All she had to do was say the word... But she didn’t. They would have tonight, but the bow-legged stallion needed her now.
Sebastian left her to use the bathroom at the back of the workshop while Charlie scrambled into her clothes. The lingerie was toast, but she didn’t mind. She loved how wild he got, tearing off the satin. It was so sexy, so erotic...
“I have a brilliant idea.” She hadn’t heard him come up behind her, but now he trailed his free hand down her waist to the curve of her hip. “You should always work naked.”
She laughed. “Tempting.” Especially if he came home early to do that to her again. “But I play with torches all day, remember?”
“In my bedroom, then,” he murmured as he turned her in his arms to brush his lips over hers. “Naked. Just for me.” Then he kissed all the sense from her brain, until she couldn’t think of a single reason why she shouldn’t comply. “I’ll leave you alone soon,” he said, but he didn’t let her go, his hands resting at her hips, a tingling reminder. “But I wanted to talk with you about a couple of things.”
“Ah,” she teased, “so you did have ulterior motives for coming to see me today. It wasn’t just to bring me beer and love me senseless.”
“You are always my first motive. Everything else places a distant second.”
He always knew the perfect words to melt her, but she leaned back against the workbench. The couple of things he wanted to talk about were already making her wary, even before she heard what they were. It would be easier to listen if she wasn’t pressed tightly against him. Then again, just gazing at his beautiful face was distracting. “Hit me with those other motives.”
“I’m glad you and your mother let me help with the move into Magnolia Gardens. It’s clearly a much better place than Shady Lane.” He paused, as if he needed to let that sink in first. “But I thought we could probably spruce up the furniture in your mom’s room. Cushy chairs. A bigger TV. A bookshelf. And something that’s not plastic for the balcony.”
The topic threw Charlie off—this wasn’t what she’d expected at all—but it was clear from the expression on Sebastian’s face that he’d wanted to discuss it for some time. She fought back her instinctively defensive response, but ultimately couldn’t stop herself. “They recommend that residents bring stuff from home they’re comfortable with. But I didn’t have room at my place to store everything from the house she shared with my father.”
“We’ll get her something new, then.” He stroked the bare skin of her arm. It should have soothed her, but the subject was pushing her buttons.
Still, she tried not to read any criticism into what he was saying, especially when she’d also thought about sprucing up her mother’s new bedroom a bit. “Mom would like that, I’m sure. Some pretty sheets and towels, in addition to the bedspread I was going to pick up for her. So it feels homey.” She was totally ready to switch focus to something that would make her less edgy—which she knew was her deal, not his. “What’s the other thing you wanted to talk about?”
“Actually,” he said, easing into her so he could rest his hands on her waist, “I wondered what you thought of the food at Magnolia Gardens.”
She could feel the frown between her brows and resisted the urge to scrub it away. “They had a great salad bar. Some stuff is probably better than others. I read that they have a brunch on Sundays with prime rib or turkey, baked ham or rack of lamb. I think it’s good.” She waited a beat, letting his hands on her ease her tension. Except that they didn’t, and she couldn’t help adding, “Didn’t you?”
She was working very hard to keep her voice light, but she heard the strain threaded through the question, Didn’t you? Because what she’d really meant was, Don’t you trust me to take care of my mom?
He seemed to battle with himself for a long moment, his fingers flexing against her, before he nodded. “You’re right. The food was fine, the gardens were great, and the doctors and the care seem good too.” He stroked her arm, once, twice, maybe trying to soothe them both this time. “The last thing is good news. Remember the couple at the gala with the house out in Woodside? She had the koi pond.”
“Vaguely.”
That was a lie. All she remembered about the gala was the way he’d shoved her up against the elevator wall, ravaged her mouth, then stripped her out of her dress in the penthouse. He’d taken her to heights she’d never dreamed possible.
At the same time, she was more than happy to leave behind the topic of her mom’s new nursing home. Sure, they might be able to find something better than Magnolia Gardens, but it would also cost even more than the shocking monthly amount she was currently paying. And though Sebastian could easily cover it, Charlie simply wasn’t ready to let him take over. Even if he had a miraculous capacity to overwhelm her resistance to whatever he wanted, she wasn’t going to bend on that one.
“The couple would like something with an Asian flair to sit by the pond. I said I’d set your creative juices loose on the idea.”
“A commission?” Charlie ran her fingertips over his jaw, loving the faint hint of five o’clock shadow bristling against her skin. She’d doubted anyone would call after the hotel gala, but in a matter of days, Sebastian had made things happen.
“Yeah.” He reached around her and grabbed one of the beers, popping the top for her. Then he raised his, tapping the bottle rims. “Here’s to getting all the commissions you’ll ever need.”
Need? What had happened to inspiration? She thrust the thought aside because she truly did need all this for her mother. And Sebastian was so excited for her.
“They sent me a photo of the pond.” He kissed the tip of her nose. “I’ll show you later. And there’s a party we should attend tomorrow night. We’ll make great contacts for you.”
Charlie sipped the brew. And it was surprisingly delicious. But another party? These galas could turn into work. And without an ounce of the fun part, like digging through junk shops and combing old worksites for the buried treasure left behind. Besides, she’d rather be working on the stallions. Or better yet, spending tomorrow night alone with Sebastian, making love in the workshop, in the hot tub, and in his bed. She wound her arms around his neck, the cool bottle dangling from her fingers, and pressed sinuously against him in anticipation of all that lovely, sweet sex.
“Charlie.” Her name was raw with need as it fell from his tongue. His wickedly talented tongue. “You want the commission?”
“Yes. I want it.” At least if the party was tomorrow night, she’d have time to find another dress. Considering his social circle, God forbid she should wear the same outfit twice. As for the koi pond, she’d happily think about a design for it later. “But right now?” She licked his earlobe, loving the growl deep in his throat. “I just want you.”
Again. It was so much easier to love Sebastian—with her hands, her mouth, her body, and her heart—than to deal with her emotions about her mom’s infirmities or Magnolia Gardens, or even the commissions.
She pulled his mouth down to hers and kissed him until she couldn’t think about anything else, until he grabbed both bottles and set them on the bench. Then he lifted her, and everything started all over again.
This was the only place she wanted to be—in Sebastian’s arms, thinking about nothing but him.
