Page 26 of What a Lord Wants

The unspoken words hung in the air between them, the silence broken only by a low roll of thunder in the distance.

“I don’t want to lose you as a model,” he admitted. “I thought it was the sense of curiosity and excitement in you that I wanted to paint, that contradictory look of innocent seduction.” He felt rather than heard her soft intake of air and continued in a quiet, low voice, one that matched the muted sound of the falling rain. “But it’s so much more than that. It’s the vitality in you, the sparkle…just begging to be painted.”

As his gaze trailed slowly over her, he felt as if he were truly seeing her for the first time. All the complexity of emotion inside her was starkly visible on her face, all of it endowing her with a sense of vulnerability that had him wanting to protect her at the same time that he wanted to expose her to the world.

The contradictions she embodied sent him reeling.

“That’s what I want to convey on the canvas.” His eyes fixed on hers, and he uttered the challenge with a confidence that pulsated inside him. “You want to feel special? If you give me the chance, Eve, I will make youimmortal.”

For a moment, neither of them moved. Their gazes locked as the rain fell over the old carriage house and murmured in a soft hum against the walls and window. His heart ticked away the seconds, terrified with each one that passed that she would say no.

“Yes,” she agreed breathlessly, barely a sound passing over her lips.

That single whispered word tightened a coil of longing inside him, one that was more than physical lust. More than just his desire to emerge from Vincenzo’s shadow.

If he could capture her essence on the canvas the way she’d captured him—a masterpiece.

And yet…“Eventually,” he warned her solemnly, “you’ll have to undress completely in order for me to paint you the way I want.”

“I know.”

He suspected that when that time came, he’d have another grand fight on his hands. But for now, their tenuous compromise held.

He nodded toward the screen. “Go dress.” When she started forward, he added, “And leave your hair down.”

She hesitated mid-step but didn’t turn to face him. As if she suspected what the sight of her did to him, with her hair lying half dried down her back like that. Then she nodded and slipped behind the screen.

He hung his head in his hands and gulped down deep breaths of air to steady himself.

Madness, that’s what this was…Sheer madness! To dress his nude model in breeches and stays so she wouldn’t be naked—what would Giuseppe Carracci say tothatif the old man were here to see what his star apprentice had come to? Just so he could keep an untried model in his employ.

Acompromise?He choked back a bitter laugh. How many hundreds of times over the years had he told himself that an artist should never compromise? That his art had to be pure, his vision the sole focus of his creativity? Well, he’d just let a willowy, ginger-haired gel who wore her emotions in her eyes steal that focus away. And it stunned him.

“How do you do it?” she asked quietly from behind the screen, the silence stretching between them perhaps too much for her to bear. “How do you make scenes come alive on a flat canvas, with just paint and a brush?”

He lifted his head to stare at the screen and gave an ironic smile. “God only knows.”

“I’m serious,” she scolded lightly over the soft rustle of fabric. “You keep saying that you see so much in me—”

“I do.” More than she realized.

“But how do you actually do it? If I tried to paint the same picture, it wouldn’t be nearly as grand, even if I put the exact same colors in the exact same spots.”

“Practice,” he answered, only half jokingly. “Years and years of practice.”

“There’s more to it than that. There must be.”

When she stepped out from behind the screen, he forgot to breathe.

Never in the history of the world had a pair of boy’s breeches been as seductive as that pair. He’d been right about the material being form-fitting, but he’d never realized until that moment how round her hips were, how thin her waist beneath the long stays that reached down to the tops of her thighs. How full her bust as the plump tops of her breasts pushed up beneath the tight ties. And her hair, tumbling down her back like that…

Sweet Lucifer.

Misunderstanding the intensity of his stare, she nervously folded her arms in front of her chest and dropped her gaze to the floor. “Am I dressed all right, then, for what you have in mind?”

For what he had in mind at that very moment as his cock pulsed longingly, she was far too overdressed, and he wanted nothing more than to help her right back out of them. With his teeth.

“Fine.” His voice squeaked in a way that he hadn’t heard since he was fourteen.Christ.