Seven Years to Sin(59)
“It’s how you are. Bloody hell, Jess. I’ve been dying for you this last week. You had to have known this. You could not have missed the cockstand I’ve been sporting for the last several days.”
Her fingertips floated gently over the rendering. He’d made her beautiful, with softened features and warm eyes. She had never seen herself look lovelier. “Yes,” she breathed, distracted. “It would be impossible to ignore an appendage of that size when it’s prodding you in the back as your cock is wont to do when you lie with me.”
“Don’t jest,” he snapped. “Explain.”
“Do I truly look like this?”
“You do when you’re looking at me. If you don’t answer me, Jess, I cannot be held responsible for my actions.”
“Stuff and nonsense. I wanted you to know, with proof, that I desire your company for more than the multitude of orgasms you are so adept at eliciting.” Standing with the portfolio in hand, her breath left her in an audible rush. She flipped through the other portraits he’d drawn of her, awed by his talent and skill. “There is no mystery to me at all, is there? I do not wear my heart on my sleeve; I wear it on my face for all to see.”
“You needn’t sound so put out about it,” he muttered, coming to her. “I’m certain to regard you the same way.”
Jess looked at him then. “No, you don’t. You look at me like a feline about to pounce on its prey. While I yield and melt, you become sharp as a blade.”
“I’m a sexual man,” he said brashly. “That doesn’t mean I’m not soft on you. I should hope you see how I feel in other ways, if not on my features.”
“Yes, I do.” She shuffled his drawings, stilling when she found a picture of herself from a distant time. She was clearly younger and the parchment was yellowed with age, but what truly arrested her was the pure lust radiating from the rendering. Her eyes were wide and dark, her pupils dilated, her lips parted as if panting. The picture was a raw, intimate glimpse into the very heart of her craving for the man who stood beside her. “Alistair …”
“The night in the garden.”
“How can you possess an image of me like this, yet doubt my desire for you?”
He pulled the items from her hands and tossed them on the table. “I swear you will drive me insane. You deny me the means through which I feel the most connected to you in order to prove the depth of your affection?”
Her mouth curved wryly. “You are hot blooded. Sex is like eating and sleeping to you.”
His insatiability had been established early in their affair, and it helped to explain how he’d been physically able to prostitute himself. Sex for her was an intimate act, always. For Alistair, it was as necessary to his health as polishing his teeth and was equally inconsequential to his emotional state. That wasn’t to say she didn’t feel cherished when she shared his bed, but she knew he used the sexual act to achieve ends she didn’t fully understand.
He claimed the sale of his body had been born of necessity, and she believed him, but not for the reasons he presented. As young and randy as he’d been, as needful of funds as he had felt, those truths didn’t explain how he’d come to monetize himself as a commodity. That, she suspected, came from something within him. Not without. Whether it was due to Masterson or his absent father or something else entirely, Alistair had come to find value in himself through the prices others paid to be with him. She’d wanted to counter that experience by showing how she valued him in other, nonphysical ways, but it seemed he wasn’t yet ready for such demonstrations. Though he relentlessly and ruthlessly forced them both to reveal their most private and painful memories to each other, in the end, he still needed her touch and her lust to feel wanted.
He backed her into the bulkhead once again, thrusting his muscled thigh between her legs to pin her in place. With one hand pressed to the wood on either side of her head, he glared down at her. “You are severely trying my patience.”
“That isn’t my intent,” she said honestly, her body heating in response to the aggressive proximity of his. “Personally, I am so touched by your drawings and amazed by the purity of your talent that my heart aches.”
His firm lips brushed across her temple. “Do you ache elsewhere?” he asked gruffly, his stance altering so that his knee pressed against her sex.
For a moment, Jess closed her eyes and absorbed the feel of his hot, hard body and the beloved scent of his skin. His desire permeated through her pores, sinking into the very marrow of her bones, forging her into an uninhibited wanton capable of reaching between his legs and cupping the rigid, pulsing length of his penis.
Alistair jerked violently, his breath hissing between his teeth. “Christ.”
“I’ve wanted you from the moment I first saw you,” she confessed, licking her dry lips. “Every hour I want you more.”
His blue eyes were dark with need. “Have me every hour.” She stroked him through his breeches and smalls, her body softening and moistening in heated expectation. “Sex is innate to you; you exude it like a heady and addicting fragrance. But how can I distinguish myself from the other women who’ve desired you, unless I show you that I want more than your body?”
“What other women?”
That made her smile, but the severity of his features didn’t change. “Touch me,” she begged, feeling as if she’d inadvertently created a gulf between them.