This Heart of Mine (Chicago Stars #5)(78)
"Lilly…" He breathed her name in protest.
"I'm sorry…"
He had no patience for cowardice. He reached beneath her skirt and snagged her panties, then dropped to his knees and drew them off. He pressed his face into her skirt, against her… His warm breath seeped between her legs. It felt so good. She separated them, just a few inches, and let his breath touch her secret heart.
He pulled her down beside him on that hard limestone floor. Cupping her face in his hands, he kissed her. The deep, experienced kiss of a man who knew women well.
Together they fell back. Her skirt tangled at her waist. He ran his hands along her legs and pushed them far apart. Then he buried his face between them.
She drew up her ankles, let her knees fall open, and reveled in his lusty, vigorous feasting. Her orgasm was fierce and strong, taking her by surprise. By the time she'd recovered, he was naked.
His body was powerful and fine. She opened her arms, and he plunged inside her. With her fingers curled into his hair, she took his deepest kiss, wrapped her legs around him. Her spine dug into the hard floor beneath. She winced as he plunged again.
He stopped, stroked more gently, then turned them so his body took the punishment of the floor. "Better?" He reached up to cup her breasts as they swung before him.
"Better," she replied, finding a rhythm that pleased them both.
As they moved, the paints on the canvases seemed to swirl around them, the colors growing brighter, turning liquid. Their bodies worked together, awash in hot sensation. Finally neither of them could bear it any longer, and all the colors of the universe shattered in an explosion of bright, white light.
She came back to herself slowly. She was lying on top of him, her blouse and skirt bunched at her waist. She'd fallen under a spell. The man had cast a spell over her as surely as his paintings had.
He groaned. "I'm too old for floors."
She leaped off him, scrambling awkwardly to cover herself. "I'm sorry. I'm—I'm so heavy. I must have crushed you."
"Not this again." He rolled to his side, winced, and slowly rose to his feet. Unlike her, he didn't seem to be in any hurry to get his clothes back on. She refused to look. Instead, she pushed her crumpled skirt down, noticing at the same time that her panties lay on the floor at his feet. She couldn't manage her bra, so she pulled the front of her blouse together, only to have him catch her hands and still them over the buttons.
"You listen to me, Lilly Sherman. I've worked with hundreds of models over the years, but I've never had to stop painting to seduce one of them."
She started to say that she didn't believe him, but this was Liam Jenner, a man with no patience for niceties. "It's—it was crazy."
His expression grew fierce. "Your body is magnificent. It's lush and extravagant, exactly the way a woman's body should be. Did you see the way the light fell on your skin? On your breasts? They're outrageous, Lilly. Big. Fleshy. Bountiful. I couldn't ever get enough of painting them. Your nipples…" He settled his thumbs over them, rubbed, and his eyes burned with the same passion she'd seen when he painted. "They make me think of showers. Showers of rich, golden milk." She shivered at the intensity she heard in his husky whisper. "Spilling to the ground… turning into rivers… sparkling, golden rivers flowing to nourish continents of parched land."
Such an outlandish, excessive man. She didn't know what to do with a vision so outrageous.
"Your body, Lilly… don't you see? This is the body that gave birth to the human race."
His words ran counter to everything that the world she lived in preached. Diets. Denial. An obsession with female bone instead of female flesh. The culture of youth and thinness.
Of stinginess.
Of disfigurement.
Of fear.
For a fraction of a moment she glimpsed the truth. She saw a world so terrified of Woman's mystical power that nothing would do but to obliterate the very source of that power—the natural shape of her body.
The vision was too foreign to her experience, and it faded. "I—I have to go." Her heart hammered in her chest. She leaned down and grabbed her panties, threw them into her sewing basket, snatched up her quilt pieces. "This was… this was so irresponsible."
He smiled. "Am I likely to get you pregnant?"
"No. But there are other things."
"Neither of us is promiscuous. We've both learned the hard way that sex is too important."
"What do you call that?" She jabbed her hand toward the floor.
"Passion." He nodded toward the quilt pieces spilling from her basket. "Let me see what you're working on."
She couldn't imagine permitting a genius like Liam Jenner to see her simple craft project. Shaking her head, she made her way toward the door, but just before she got there, something made her stop and turn back.
He stood watching her. A smudge of blue paint marked his thigh near his groin. He was naked and magnificent.
"You were right," she said. "I'm fifty!"
His soft reply followed her out of the house and down the road.
"Too old to be such a coward."
Chapter 17
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Daphne packed her most necessary things: sunblock, a pair of lollipop-red water wings, a box of Band-Aids (because Benny was going to camp, too), her favorite crunchy cereal, a very loud whistle (because Benny was going to camp, too), crayons, one book for every day she'd be gone, opera glasses (because you never knew what you might want to see), a beach ball that said FORT LAUDERDALE, her plastic bucket and shovel, and a great big sheet of bubble wrap to pop if she got bored.