Текст книги "Seven Nights to Surrender"
Автор книги: Jeanette Grey
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Текущая страница: 12 (всего у книги 20 страниц)
He’d looked down, only to see nothing but air underneath him, and he hadn’t been willing to spend another minute in that fucking box, trying to live up to the expectations of a criminal, of a man who had ruined lives and ruined everything they’d worked for. Even their family name had become a joke.
So he’d gotten out, and if his sister couldn’t see why he wasn’t willing to get back in . . .
He curled his hand into a fist and worked his jaw. “I’ll come back to New York when I’m ready to.”
“And when will that be?”
If the pounding in his heart and the cold sweat on the back of his neck were anything to go by, not for a while. “I don’t know.”
A long couple of seconds passed. “We’ve only got a few months left before the board becomes permanent. If you don’t step up, McConnell stays at the helm, and you know Dad trusted him as far as he could throw him—”
Rylan straightened his spine and widened his eyes, incredulous. “And I’m supposed to care about who Dad trusted?”
“Look, I know you’re still angry.”
“Damn right I am.”
“But it’s your company now! I’m not old enough to take over, but you are. If you give a shit about our family, about anything—”
“If Dad had given a shit about our family he wouldn’t have fucked it over in the first place. He wouldn’t have fucked us over, he—” He snapped, shoving the side of his fist into the wall, and fuck. He hadn’t let himself get so worked up about this in a year. He forced his fingers to unclench, forced his lungs to expand and contract. Between them, in the space above the center of his ribs, his father’s ring hung from its chain, searing like a metal brand against his chest.
Why the hell had he answered the phone in the first place?
When Lexie spoke again, her voice was measured in a way that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up on end. “You care. You pretend you don’t. You fuck off to Europe to avoid all your responsibilities. But. You. Care.”
He’d cared too much.
He laughed, and the sound was shaky in his throat. “You always did like to believe the best about everyone.”
He tore the phone from his ear, ignoring whatever else Lexie was trying to say, hanging up before he could dig himself in any deeper. When he’d blanked the screen again, he stared at it for a long, aching moment, until his vision flipped and he wasn’t seeing the empty screen but instead was staring at his own reflection in the glass.
After all the shit he’d given Lex about her voice. He had his father’s face and his mother’s eyes. Had their faithlessness and their morals, and every single thing he’d come to resent them for.
He turned his phone over so the dull plastic case was facing him. Then tossed the damned thing on the bed before he could throw it through the window.
chapter SIXTEEN
Kate was practically walking on air as she stepped off the elevator on their floor. She’d filled her sketchbook. Finished it. Images of Montmartre and Sacred Heart and the view from the top of the hill. Little cafés and giant cityscapes, and for the first time, there was this certainty buzzing through her veins. The drawings were good. More than that, they were her.
She couldn’t wait to tell Rylan how well her day had gone. To see that conviction in his eyes when he told her she could do this after all.
At the door to their room, she rucked her shirt up and reached into the security wallet she still kept strapped around her waist. She grasped the keycard between two fingers and slipped it into the door, pausing long enough for the light to flash green before turning the handle and striding through.
“Hey!” She dropped her bag on the bed and skipped across the carpet. Rylan was at the little desk in the corner, his back to her. She tugged at the chair to spin it around. But when she saw his face, she paused, drawing her hand back. “Are you okay?”
There was something haunted to his eyes—a weariness she’d caught a glimpse of in the past, but not like this. Shadows under his cheekbones and a tightness to his jaw. A coiled anger, an old anger.
For the briefest fraction of a second, he reminded her of her dad.
She blinked and it was gone, but she was already backing away. He reached out, wrapping his hand around her wrist before she could retreat any more. With what looked like effort, he twitched the corners of his mouth upward, but it wasn’t a real smile. She knew what those looked like on him now.
“I’m fine,” he said. The sharpest edges of his expression bled away, but now that she’d seen them, the signs of his agitation were everywhere, in the corners of his eyes and the set of his lips. His thumb stroked across the bone of her wrist. “Sorry. Was just thinking about some things.”
“Things?” She arched her brows, but something inside her was shaking. She fought to push it down. To joke with him the way she normally would. “Like what? Torture?”
He laughed at that, and it made a little of the tension in her shoulders ease. “Close.”
Touching his face felt like a risk, like pushing past some kind of boundary. She did it anyway, wary, half expecting him to flinch. He did, a little bit, but allowed the contact. She swallowed to try to slake the sudden dryness in her throat. “Really, though. You okay?”
“Fine.”
She almost believed it.
He turned his neck, shifting to press a kiss to her palm, lips lingering there for a long moment. He closed his eyes. When he opened them again, they seemed clearer. He let go of her wrist to settle both hands on her hips. “How about you? How was your day? Get everything done you wanted to?”
She took a deep breath, the tremor inside of her melting away.
The dark look in his eyes might have echoed an expression she’d seen before, one that had haunted her for years. But it had only been an echo. Her father. Aaron. Any of them. Their bad moods didn’t end with them getting a hold of themselves and focusing on how she was doing.
She was safe here.
She slid her palm down past his neck and collarbone to rest against his heart. “It was good. I drew a lot.”
“Yeah? Can I see?”
A nervous flutter fired off behind her ribs, but she nodded.
Slipping out of his grasp, she headed over to the bed. She opened her bag and pulled out her book, planning to flip it to the work she’d done today, but before she could, he plucked it from her grasp. He sunk down to sit on the bed and opened to the very first page.
It wasn’t just nerves anymore, beating inside her chest. “There’s a lot of old crap in there.”
Old crap she’d put so much time and energy and dedication into, and letting them be seen like this . . . It was like letting him see all the unfinished edges of her. A work in progress, and he’d already witnessed her naïveté in other situations. In his bed and with her hands between her legs.
She fought the instinct to rip the book from his grip.
Oblivious to how she was churning up inside, he turned the pages slowly, gazing at each with an appraising set to his jaw. Her face went another shade warmer with every amateurish imitation of another artist’s style, every mistake in perspective. Every sketch that betrayed exactly what a mess she was and how little she knew.
“Really.” Her voice was rough. “Some of those are ancient.”
He lifted up a single finger and shook his head, asking her to be quiet without saying a word.
She resigned herself to her fate. Picking at her fingernails, she moved to sit beside him, close but not quite touching. He’d told her he liked the couple of drawings she’d shown him before, and he’d expressed such confidence in her ability to hack it in grad school. But he hadn’t really known, then, had he? He hadn’t seen enough to make that kind of statement, and the idea that he might take it back now, after having seen more, made her stomach clench. It hardened further about halfway through the book, when the quality of the images changed. That had been about when she’d started thinking about what she was going to do after college, a hundred futures spinning out in front of her. Grad school and office jobs. Huge risks and life sentences.
And then the image she’d drawn the day Professor Lin had pulled her aside. Told her that if she didn’t define herself, she’d never make it as an artist. That she’d never sell.
He paused, hand hovering at the corner of the page.
“You were angry,” he said. It was the first comment he had made.
“Scared,” she corrected.
“I can see that.”
He flipped past the pictures she had already shown him from the day she’d sketched outside of Notre Dame, and then he was looking at the first one she’d done today. His brow furrowed, and he turned his head to look at her. “You went back to Sacred Heart?”
“Yeah?” She didn’t mean it to come out like a question, but it did.
The way he was staring at her, it was as if he could see right through her. He didn’t look angry or exhausted anymore, not the way he had when she’d come through the door. But he didn’t look like the confident, oversexed guy she’d taken a chance on, either.
His gaze held for a moment that felt like it went on and on. Then he lifted a hand, the tip of it stained gray from the charcoal on the edges of her sketchbook. He cupped her cheek and leaned in. The kiss, when it came, was a simple, chaste press of lips on lips, but there was a weight to it. An unspoken moment of connection, of understanding. She’d seen what he’d seen on that hilltop. Had tucked it away and treasured it, and when she’d most needed to recapture some sort of inspiration, some impetus to make something with her hands . . .
That’s where she’d gone.
He let her go, drawing back, but the heat of his gaze lingered even as he returned his attention to the page. He flipped to the next and then the next, and she held her breath. This was the one she’d felt so good about, after her first set of false starts. The one she’d done with the memory of his presence flowing from her fingertips, imbuing every stroke and shade with life.
Ghosting his fingers over the dark, black marks, tracing without touching or smudging, he followed the swooping arcs she’d mapped onto the paper. For a long time, he stared at it.
Finally, he started moving through the pages again. She watched from over his shoulder, her breath coming more easily now. These pictures didn’t give her that cringing feeling she got looking at her own work sometimes. She was proud of these. When he reached the last one, he flicked back through them, stopping on the one she’d drawn from the top of the hill.
“These are incredible,” he said.
The urge to demur stole over her, even as she flushed with the praise. He’d believed in her before, and he believed in her now. It pushed away the doubt that always plagued her. Made the spark of her inspiration ignite. “I was just playing with something. An idea.” She pointed to the web of lines he’d been drawn to before. “Tying everything together.”
“It’s great. Really.” He shifted to look at her. “It’s really, really great.”
And what could she say to that?
He shook his head, as if he could sense her discomfort at taking a compliment. “I love the way you see things. And these . . . Not that the rest of your stuff wasn’t good, but the stuff you did today. It’s something different.”
Her lungs felt tight, a warmth and an excitement fit to burst behind her breast. These images had felt different. Still, it hadn’t just been her and her skill. “It’s the city. Paris. It’s beautiful.”
“No.” There was such certainty to his voice. It stopped her cold. “It’s you.” He shook his head. “I don’t know how you can possibly even consider not going to grad school for this. You’ve got this . . .”
He trailed off. Don’t say talent, don’t say talent. People always said that, and she hated it. It demeaned all the work that went into what she did.
His mouth curled up into a soft, sad smile, and suddenly he wasn’t talking about her future anymore. “It’s how you see things, Kate. In these pictures, the ones you made today . . . It’s like I can see through your eyes.”
And there was an aching note now. She glanced up to meet his eyes.
All the edges of him were on display again. Not as jagged as before, not as tired. But they were there, and it struck her: She had no idea who this man was. What had happened to him to put those shadows in his eyes. How he felt or where he’d come from.
She wanted to, though. Desperately.
His gaze burned. As if he could hear her thoughts, he closed the book. He grazed a single fingertip along her temple beside her eye.
And then he asked her, “How do you see me?”
The strangest part was, it sounded like he actually wanted to know.
She blinked, once, then twice. With trembling hands, but with a surety she didn’t know how to name, she reached for her bag and the supplies that it contained. For the fresh sketchbook she’d picked up on her way back to the hotel.
Because she had wanted this. From the very first time she’d laid eyes on him, she’d been itching for this.
“I don’t know.” She turned it to the blank first page. “But I’d like to find out.”
Rylan glanced between Kate’s face and her hands. What she was offering was clear, and it was what he’d asked for, wasn’t it?
God, but his mood was twisted right now. He wanted to be here, enjoying their last couple of days together, but after Lexie’s call, all he could think about were his shirked obligations. His mother’s face and his father’s betrayals and everything he was missing back home. Everything he’d run away from.
All he could see was his own reflection staring back at him, and it was ugly. He didn’t even want to look into his own damn eyes.
And there was a part of him, an angry, sullen piece of his soul, that wanted Kate to draw him. He wanted to look at himself through her pretty brown eyes and see the same callousness and apathy he’d been accused of so many times this year. To see it all confirmed would be a relief almost—a sign that his decision to sit here wasting his life alone was as good a choice as any.
He set her sketchbook aside before he could crush the pages with his grip.
He wanted her to draw him. And he wanted her to see something in him worth holding on to.
“Okay,” he said finally, mouth dry and palms sweating. He managed a vague half smile. “What should I do?”
“Just get someplace comfortable. Sitting in that chair maybe. Or lying down?”
“Whatever you want.”
She looked away, cheeks flushing.
That was interesting.
He ducked to put himself in her line of sight, quirking one eyebrow up. “What do you want?”
“Well, we—” She fidgeted, fussing with the binding of her sketchpad. It seemed to take her actual physical effort to meet his gaze. “We could do a figure drawing.”
“Which means?”
“Drawing your”—she gestured vaguely at his torso—“figure.”
It struck him all at once. “You want to draw me naked?”
She fake-smacked him with the book. “Well, it sounds dirty when you say it that way.”
“It sounds dirty if you say it any way.”
“It’s not.” A seriousness bled into her tone. She lifted her chin. “You’re—you’re beautiful. All the muscles, and your jaw and your . . . you.”
Some of the ugliness that had been festering in his heart all afternoon melted away.
She shrugged, looking down again. “You are,” she insisted. And she was so brave. He’d never given her enough credit for that. “The first day I met you, part of why I took that cup of coffee was your—your jaw. You were like a statue, and I wanted to get to look at you a little longer.” Twisting at her knuckle, she bit her lip. “And then I got to touch you, too, and see you without your clothes, and you’re just– I’d like to. If you’ll let me.”
Finally, she glanced up again, and his breath caught. Gears turned over in his mind, words rising up to the surface, but for once in his life, he couldn’t seem to get them to spill forth.
Her face fell. “Or not. If it makes you uncomfortable, or . . .”
And what could he do? He reached out before she could turn away from him, putting a hand on her face and holding her steady as he leaned in for a kiss. Her lips were so sweet, made all the more so by the foreign warmth inside of him he couldn’t seem to tamp down. And why should he?
Pulling back from the kiss, he touched his brow to hers. “I think that’s the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me.” When she scoffed, he insisted, “It is.”
Sure, he’d gotten compliments before. He’d had people—women—tell him he looked good. But this was something else altogether.
So he tried to treat it with the respect it deserved. “I’d be honored.”
It wasn’t a line and it wasn’t a lie. He pressed his lips to hers once more, then backed away.
“You want to do this now?” he asked.
“Sure. I mean, I’ve got all my things.”
They had a couple of hours before they typically wandered off in search of dinner. He couldn’t think of any reasons to delay.
“Okay.” He nodded and stood, setting his fingers to the collar of his shirt.
And it was strange, wasn’t it? The still-racing beating of his heart and the desert of his throat. He’d gotten naked in front of more women than he cared to count. He wasn’t shy about his body. He’d worked hard for it and kept it in the best possible condition. It wasn’t as if he’d ever been shy in front of Kate. Hell, just this morning, he’d been wheedling to try to get his clothes off in front of her. So why was this giving him pause?
Behind him, she was fussing with something or other. He snuck a glance over his shoulder and spied a neat little row of materials arranged across the desk. Turning around again, he took a deep breath.
Tucking his thumb into the placket of his shirt, he slipped each button through its hole, then shrugged the fabric off. He actually took the time to hang it up, and cursed at himself in his head. Stalling. It was ridiculous—why was he stalling? He tore off his undershirt and dropped it to the ground. Took off shoes and socks, and unfastened his belt. Biting the bullet, he shoved his jeans and his boxers down as one and stepped out of them.
He turned to Kate with as much bravado as he could muster. All he had to do was make a dickhead comment about his—well, his dick, and everything would be fine. Normal.
But he met her gaze, and fuck. There was a warmth to it that was more than simple aesthetic appreciation.
Alarm bells sounded off like klaxons in his mind. He slept with tourists, with women passing through. He’d disappointed enough people, and he didn’t have anything to offer a nice girl. It was better to stay unattached. Free.
But in a few short days, this girl had wound herself around him, and there wasn’t any point denying it. He’d sunk his teeth in, too.
When it was over, it was going to bleed.
Right now, though, she was still looking at him like that. Any pervy joke he would have made died in his throat.
“Where do you want me?” he asked.
“Lie down.” She gestured to where she had turned down the bed.
He let her direct him until he was positioned how she wanted him, with a handful of pillows propping him up. One arm extended toward her and the other bent under his head. Legs splayed out across the sheets.
“Perfect,” she said after a moment, and she sounded as hoarse as he felt. “Do you think you can hold that for a while?”
He shifted in minute ways, but the discomfort he felt wasn’t physical. “Yeah. I think so.”
“Let me know when you need a break.”
“Sure.”
He lay there in silence for a long minute as she arranged herself in the chair, getting her sketchbook settled in her lap and selecting an instrument to draw with. And then, as far as he could tell, she just stared at him.
He had to turn his gaze away.
The skritch-skritch of pencil on paper told him she’d started working, and he had to fight the instinct to fidget all over again. Relax. Calm. He sank into the bed the best he could.
But no matter how deeply he breathed or how hard he focused on letting his mind drift, the simple truth was there.
He’d been naked a thousand times before. But he’d never felt it.
Not like this.
chapter SEVENTEEN
There was a certain kind of focused, aware calm that settled over Kate when she was really in the zone. Staring at the excess of riches laid out in front of her right now, though, she wasn’t focused. She wasn’t calm.
But she was aware.
Incredibly, brilliantly aware of Rylan’s lips and eyes, the tousled mess of his hair and the stubble on his cheeks. He had the most gorgeous shoulders, taut with muscle without being bulky, and his biceps and forearms were sleek and strong. She’d always loved the feeling of his hands on her body, but she’d never truly taken in the shape of them before. Long fingers and blunt nails. The lines of tendons flexing underneath his skin.
And then there was the rest of him. With the subtle twist she’d made of his body, the crest of his hip stood out sharply, shadowing the hollow beneath it, pointing to the dips and curves of his abdominals. Solid thighs and well-formed calves. Hell, even his ankles and his feet were pretty, and she could scarcely catch her breath when she let her vision encompass the whole of him.
He wasn’t hard, which was possibly the weirdest thing. She’d seen him in various stages of erectness, even seen him gently deflating in the aftermath of orgasm, but completely soft like this was new. She couldn’t help the way her gaze kept being drawn back to it.
She’d touched that part of him. Had him on her tongue and in her hands and pressed up against her spine as he moaned into her ear.
And now it was hers to look at. As much as she wanted to.
With less than steady hands, she adjusted her book in her lap. She’d already done a quick couple of gesture sketches of him, waiting for him to settle. Tension lingered in his limbs, though, and she frowned. He wouldn’t be able to stay still for long if he didn’t relax.
“Do you want to stretch or anything?” she asked. “Get a drink?”
He blinked a couple of times, chest rising and sinking more rapidly. “Yeah, actually.” He sat up in slow increments, rolling his shoulders and flexing his feet.
Just for something to do, she stood and grabbed him a bottle of water.
“Thanks.” He took it from her and twisted off the top, lifting it to his mouth and taking a couple of careful, measured sips before setting it aside.
In the time she hadn’t been looking, he’d pulled the sheet up to his waist. Part of her wanted to tease. He’d seemed so confident in his own skin before, but now there was a self-consciousness to him.
It was just so . . . unlike him.
She picked at her thumb, unable to stop staring at the drape of the cloth across his groin. “We don’t have to do this, you know.”
“I know.” He looked down. “I’m fine.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah.”
“All right.” She returned to her chair and picked up her pencil again.
After another minute of twisting and stretching, he shoved the sheet away and settled back against the pillows. The pose wasn’t quite the same as the one she’d directed him into earlier, but that was almost better, honestly. What it lacked in drama it made up for in the way he eased into it, some of the stiffness from before bleeding away.
It was even more beautiful, and something in her heart stuttered.
“Is this okay?” he asked.
She looked up to find him gazing straight at her. It took a couple of tries to get the words to form. “It’s perfect.”
Flawed and perfect. Just like you.
She swallowed, forcing herself to relax her grip. She traced all the lines of his body in her mind one last time.
Then she turned the page and began.
It was easier, this time, to quiet his mind. He lay there, splayed out on the sheets, bare but for the chain around his neck.
He should have taken it off, probably. He hadn’t thought to at the time, and with the way she was sketching away, at this point it seemed too late. Sometimes, he wondered why he wore it at all.
The scratching of her pencil on the paper settled over him, and he drifted along on it. He didn’t want to throw her off by staring into her eyes, so he varied his gaze between her hands and the window and the ceiling above his head. Maybe he should have asked if he could pose with a book, or if they could turn on the television, only . . .
It didn’t seem right, did it? He wanted to know how she saw him. She should see him with his attention undiverted.
And more, there was an energy to it. A humming static to the air surrounding them, moving from her to him and back again. This was intimate.
This was exposure.
Trying to hold still, he sucked the inside of his cheek between his teeth and bit down hard.
Maybe this was how she imagined it would be, letting him inside of her. He’d let it go; every time she’d squirmed or looked uncomfortable at the idea, he’d been quick to back off. But for the first time, now, he thought maybe he understood it. He felt vulnerable, lying there naked for her inspection. It wasn’t sexual at all, but that was why it was so difficult for him. Sex he was good at. This—being open like this. It was something different, something he didn’t quite know how to do.
He unclenched his jaw before he could draw blood. If he told her how uneasy he was, she’d probably say that they could stop again. But he felt like he was on the cusp of a revelation. If he could find a way to work through this, it would mean something. To him and to her.
The person he had been a handful of days ago told him it would get him in her pants at last. But a newer voice said that didn’t matter. Whether he got off or not didn’t matter.
If he made it through this, and if she saw in him something worth seeing . . . he’d earn her trust.
How much that mattered to him made him tremble.
For a long moment, he closed his eyes, focusing on the sounds of marks being made on paper. Then he shifted his attention. He relaxed his toes and his calves and his glutes. Breathed air into his fingers and his arms. Quieted the beating of his heart.
He looked again to find her staring at him in a way that made him feel not exactly vivisected, but . . .
Seen.
She smiled at him uncertainly, and he answered with the slightest of shakes of his head.
He let his gaze go soft and aimed it at the gauzy curtains framing the doors out onto their balcony. He gave himself over to it.
And as she kept on drawing, he felt like, somehow, deep in the empty parts of him, he was getting everything he wanted in exchange.
Kate looked down at what she’d drawn and blinked. She tilted her head from side to side and shifted her legs. Rylan had taken two more breaks in the time she’d been working, but she had scarcely moved except to reach for different materials.
Now, it was like coming out of a fog, the haze of creation receding as she examined what she’d wrought.
And it was . . . good.
Really good, and she didn’t say that lightly. She knew better than to let herself get carried away. Ego was an ugly thing on an artist. But this was more than good. It was right. Exactly what she’d been going for when she’d set out to capture this man.
Holding the pad at arm’s length, she regarded it more critically. She’d gotten the shape of his nose, had left some of the details of his features vague while still suggesting the parts that needed to be seen. She’d captured the pride and the self-assuredness, but between those lines, the rest of him bled through.
Vulnerability. Anger. Hurt.
There was something coiled to the man she had drawn, and the lines she’d penciled in to anchor his form to the sheets only accentuated it. He looked like he was waiting. She didn’t know what for—or if he knew, even. But there was anticipation in the cant of his hips and the rigid set to his limbs. His pose spoke of relaxed ease, but it belied a readiness to walk right off the page and out of frame.
She tightened her jaw. She’d gotten that much right at least.
Shifting her gaze back to Rylan, she let the low ache that had been building in her chest all week come to the forefront. She had two full days left in Paris after today. She was the one who was going to leave. And he was going to let her.
“You okay?” His voice surprised her, interrupting the quiet that had descended on them.
“Yeah.” She nodded, pulling her thoughts back to the here and now. “I’m fine.”
“You sure?”
“Definitely.” She tapped the corner of the page with her nail. “You good for a few more minutes?”
“Sure.”
Putting the low curl of dread aside, she examined her work one more time. Made a couple of careful marks, darkening shadows and sharpening the appearance of a particular jut of muscle. She swept her gaze over it again, comparing it with the reality of the man in front of her. The drawing was as finished as it was going to be.
But she wasn’t done yet.
Hoping he wouldn’t mind, she turned the page, taking care not to smudge the work she’d just completed. She shifted in her chair to get a slightly different angle as she studied his face.
It wasn’t only dread filling her belly now. It wasn’t quite affection, either, though there was some of that there, too. It was deeper and warmer, and it hurt inside her chest.
Looking at him hurt.
So she channeled it.
With quick strokes, she tried to get down on paper how he made her feel, all twisted up and uncertain—like she was the one on display, exposed, even though he was the one stripped bare for her to see. Roughly intimating the shapes of his features, she focused on his eyes and his mouth, taking them apart into lines and shapes, distilling them into something she could understand.
But the end result didn’t help. It was a portrait of the same mystifying, beautiful, inscrutable man, and she wanted to crush the paper in her hands.
A fresh page and another try, and another and another, but none of them put her any closer. Frustration made her blood hot. It wasn’t the same angry, self-despairing aggravation that had nearly overtaken her up on Montmartre. It was knowing the solution to a puzzle lay just out of reach, and watching an hourglass about to run out of sand. She only had so much time.
To find herself, sure. But also to get some kind of grasp on what was happening to her, here, with him.
She turned the page once more. On the bed, he was getting restless, either because he’d gone too long without a break, or maybe because he could sense her distress. She had to calm the heck down. Now. Before it was too late and she’d lost her chance.
