NOCTE (Nocte Trilogy #1)(42)

“Lay back,” he tells me brusquely. He gets up and comes to me, bending and moving my hair over my shoulder. His hand brushes my skin and a fire erupts, a heat, a raging lava-like liquid, churning in my belly, and I ache for him to lay down with me, to feel him next to me.

But he doesn’t. He stares down at me, studying me.

“Arch your back a bit,” he tells me. So I do. He slides a small pillow behind it.

“Bite your lip,” he tells me. “Not hard. Just enough to look like you’re thinking about something. Fantasizing, maybe.”

Oh God. I can totally do that.

He smiles, just a little, and returns to his seat.

His hands move across the page, quickly, then slowly. He looks up at me, his eyes so so dark, then he returns his attention to the page.

The electricity in this room is charged. It’s real. It’s smothering. It’s exhilarating. I can’t breathe.

Dare meets my gaze.

“Are you okay?”

I nod. “I am now.”

Now that I’m here. Now that you aren’t rejecting me. Now that you see me.

The edge of his lip curves up, and he swoops his hand, then bends his head in concentration.

“So what brought on this scene from Titanic?” Dare asks me tritely, eyeing me above the top of his paper. I feel a blush spread from my forehead to my chest and I look away.

“I’m not…it’s not,” I practically stammer. The cool air drifts over my body, forming goose-bumps everywhere.

Dare pauses. “No?”

I shake my head. “No. I just wanted… to feel something else.”

“Something other than?” Dare waits.

“What I’ve been feeling,” I clarify. “Craziness. Sadness. I just want to be someone else just for a minute.”

Dare examines his picture, then sits back in his seat a minute.

“Why would you want to be anyone else?” he asks softly. “Calla Price is amazing.”

He stands up and comes to me, staring down. His expression is guarded and intense and he lingers above me. His dark eyes trace the outline of my naked hip, the curve of my thigh, and then suddenly, he follows his gaze with his finger. He runs it lightly from my knee to my hip, his fingertip scaldingly hot.

“You want me, don’t you?” I whisper, the words hesitant and afraid, hopeful and anxious.

His eyes are ablaze as he answers. “I’ve always wanted you.”

Any answer I can possibly give him his frozen in my throat, jammed against my tongue and so all I can do is move. I turn to give him better access, so that he can touch me, so that he can move his fingers and grip me tight and shove his tongue down my throat and…then he takes his finger away and offers me his hand.

I stare at his extended hand in confusion, but then let him pull me to my feet.

I stand toe to toe with him, my bare breasts almost pressed against his body. If I just rocked forward a little bit, his hips would be pressed to mine and….

He raises an eyebrow. “Do you want to see it?”

It. The picture. I forgot.

I nod, swallowing hard.

He hands me the picture and it’s beautiful.

I look like a model, draped casually over a settee. Dare made the curtains flutter in the wind behind me, and he created an ocean view through the windows. The light shines in on me and I seem like an ethereal creature, something otherworldly.

“It’s beautiful,” I breathe.

“You are,” he agrees. He hands me my shirt and I hesitate.

I don’t want to put it on. I want.. I want… I want… Dare.

But his expression is no-nonsense and professional and he’s not touching me anymore.

Now isn’t the time.

I put my clothes on and hug the picture to my chest.

“Can I keep it?”

“Of course.”

He turns to move the chaise back to where it belongs and I pause.

“I was just thinking…” I begin. “That I’d like to go to Warrenton Beach today. Would you like to go, too?”

Dare narrows his eyes, but there’s laughter in them. “Is this you, trying to get a bike ride in addition to a portrait?”

I narrow my own. “Is this you, offering to give me one?”

Dare hesitates, and something in his eyes is troubling, something unsure, but finally he shrugs. “I don’t see why not. It doesn’t look like rain.”

He heads toward his bedroom.

“I’ll grab a shirt.”

If you must.

He calls out at me.

“If you look in that chest by the door, you’ll find an extra helmet.”

I do as he says, and sure enough, there’s one there.

“Why do you have an extra?” I ask, pulling it out and closing the lid.

“Because you mentioned that you might want a ride,” he answers, re-emerging from his room, a shirt in his hand. “Safety first, and all that.”

He pulls the shirt over his head, and I’m not sure what I’m more enthralled with. His rippling abs, or the fact that he bought me a helmet.

Specifically for me.

It’s enough to make my stomach flip.

“Thanks,” I murmur.

He throws a look in my direction that can only be classified as sizzling. His near-black eyes spark with heat, and it’s enough to set my nerve-endings on fire.