Page 42 of Flirting with Forever

She waited for the lighthearted aside or the suggestive comment, but none came.

When the rush of her blood quieted, she heard him at last.

He was painting.

* * *

Peter held his arm steady. He knew what he’d seen. He’d seen it often enough on the faces in his bed. He had asked her to think of her fiancé, and she had taken him at his word.

He wondered what it would be like to be the man who engendered such a look of desire. He wondered what it would be like to loosen that hair and let it slip through his fingers. He wondered at the fine fire of a woman that had such intoxicating heedlessness in her. But most, of all he wondered why any painter, even the most brick-headed picket-post scrub, had not taken the opportunity to paint his lover, even once. Painting one’s lover was the most exquisite act of lovemaking. Not just in the carnal sense, though it was that and more, but in the giving of love, the elevation of one’s partner above all others.

It had hurt her, he knew, to admit this portrait was her first. He wished he had not made such an assumption, let alone voiced it, but now that he knew, it pleased him deeply that he would be the one to show her this joy.

Peter had painted Ursula many times. His favorite was a painting in which she appears four times, once unclothed and with her back to him as a classical goddess, once in the maternal guise of a Madonna, once as the rich wife of a painter, and finally, with her breasts bared and looking straight at him, as the woman who had turned his bed into an inferno of pleasure and his heart into a willing supplicant.

His eyes returned to the chaise and the woman, eyes closed, who lay there.

She wasn’t Ursula. The carmine hair did not make her so, nor did the unfettered tongue, though he would be lying if he did not admit both captured his attention. No, this woman was unto herself. A proud, spirited woman, perhaps from a background like his, who had used her wits to insert herself into his diary, who had not hesitated to save his skin with the king, and who had now allowed him to witness her most private imaginings. It was a most provocative act—most provocative—and even if he could not be the man filling her head, to have witnessed the stripping bare of her desires was an aphrodisiac, in this case a very potent one.

He gazed at the tightly quilted flesh of her nipples, and his brush, once abstracted, stopped entirely. God, he ached with desire, something he hadn’t felt in so long. If he weren’t so pained, he would laugh at the comedy of it. Lustful at last, but for a woman who could never be his.

He tried to turn his mind to the painting, even going so far as to consciously draw the sable down the canvas, but he could not.

He wanted to take those wild summer berries in his mouth and hear the noise she’d make, and suckle those glistening fingers to taste the melon there. He wondered if that hair would wrap like silk around his fingers, if he could draw a ringlet across that peaked, pinched flesh.

The last vision flooded his head, and he was overcome. He couldn’t stop himself. He would command what he saw for his painting even if he couldn’t command it for his bed.

Her eyes flew open as he drew near. Was she fearful? Modest? He no longer cared. If her fiancé could provoke so much wanton desire in a woman, he would have no objection to enjoying her exactly as Peter wanted to portray her. He pulled a pin from the mass of curls, and she gasped, which made the ache in his belly redouble. He caught the tendrils as they dropped and fanned them over her skin, cinnamon on porcelain, and where the ringlet caught her nipple, cinnamon on cinnamon. It was all he could do to keep from taking that silk-wrapped flesh and teasing it until she opened her legs to him.

But he held himself in check. Slowly the burn receded, replaced by a tingling in his fingers. Now that he had her exactly as he’d imagined her, he wanted to paint.

He took a deep breath, stepped to the easel, and realized that for the first time in years Ursula was miles from his thoughts.

Eighteen

Cam watched him work. The sun had set, and she knew there was not enough light to work, yet he continued. She could tell by the way his eyes shone when he peered over the top of the canvas that he liked her. He had watched her, and he had remained at his easel. Apparently he was not given to impulse when the impulse was to serve himself. He was the rarest of men: one she could trust.

Which is not to say that if he had taken her in his arms and carried her off to that seducing couch on the other side of the fire she would have protested. No, she would have welcomed it and enjoyed every moment. But the fact that he had not taken advantage of her in her recent improvidence—when he clearly could have—meant he was willing to respect the fact she was involved with someone else, or as she preferred to think, he would court her until he’d driven the thought of her fiancé out of her head. Either way, it suggested he was an honorable man who put their relationship above his desire. It was surprising and attractive.

His brush worked the canvas, still sending sparks to her fingers and toes. She had to admit she enjoyed posing for him, even now, after the foolish escapade, and as unrealistic as it might be, she found herself imagining an endless series of afternoons, nestled among these pillows as he painted, telling her she was beautiful.

“It’s growing cooler,” he said. “Are you all right?”

“Aye. Thank you. The wine, you know…” She lifted a finger toward the glass.

“Indeed.” He smiled. “At some point it might be easier if you told me your name.”

She stirred, flustered. “Cam.”

“Cam,” he repeated, nodding his approval. “As in the Aeneid?”

“The Aeneid?”

“Cam, well, Camilla, fought the Trojans. Though she was a mortal, Virgil described her as having mythical powers. She was so fast she could run across the sea without getting her feet wet. It was as if she could be in two places at the same time.”

Cam thought of her office and that Amazon screen. She hoped she could get to that phone soon.

“Does he live in England, your fiancé?”