Flirting With Forever by Gwyn Cready (new books to read TXT) 📕

Blood roared in her ears. What had he seen? What was he offering? She thought of his mouth on hers, a welcome hand between her thighs. “What?”

“There are tricks. A wash of rose madder on the cheeks, a pinwheel of gold in the eye.”

She flushed deeply at her mistake, so deeply that for an instant the world blurred.

He saw her embarrassment, and guessed its source.

“To that end, milady, I have but one aid, though it is

“To that end, milady, I have but one aid, though it is extremely adaptable.”

She closed her eyes, too embarrassed to look at him.

“Aye?”

“To be honest, ’tis not my practice to share this with my sitters. It is far more potent, I think, if it happens without their notice, but you are a woman of the world. I assure you, it wil work for you if you let it.”

“What, sir? What?”

“I can help bring your lover to mind through judicious use of his, er, methods of seduction—only the most proper ones, of course.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning,” he said shortly, “I can pour, I can praise, I can command. If I strike the note that brings him to mind, you wil respond. Which path shal I fol ow?”

Jacket had charmed and cajoled, and when he hurt her feelings, he had charmed more. Cam would not waste a thought on that now. But the right words from Peter could turn what she wanted—what she had already begun—from a flame into a fire.

“I can pour,” she said. “Command me.”

For a moment he said nothing, then he nodded and stepped behind the easel. “Remove your gown.”

Flames roared through her. She sat up, finished the rest of the wine and poured another. Then she loosened the silk and let it slide off the muslin.

He turned toward the canvas with a wry chuckle. “The muslin as wel , please.”

Sheer terror flooded every nerve. “I am not comfortable with that.”

“You have contrived to put yourself on a painter’s chaise in a remote studio. That is the natural outcome.”

Her hands shook as she brushed one shoulder off and then the other. The fabric slipped to her waist.

“Madam—”

“No more. Please.”

His eyes did a slow review. She felt adrift and more than a little frightened.

“Your breasts are generous. Offer them with generosity.”

She pressed her shoulders back, wincing with vulnerability, and felt her nipples lift higher. She tried to master her breathing, but every nerve in her body was firing at once.

She, Cam Stratford, who had never sunbathed topless, who had never skinny-dipped, who wouldn’t even get in a hot tub alone with Jacket, had taken the plunge. She could feel both the heat of the fire and the cool of the evening on her skin, and she held herself stil . It was thril ing to be exposed, and to pretend, even for a quarter hour, that she was always this bold.

“That’s right,” he said. “Now angle them toward me.”

She wished he would take her in his arms. She wanted to feel him command her with his hands, not just his words.

“I do not think,” she said with only a smal crack in her voice, “this wil be a painting for the dining hal .”

“A private gal ery, I should think. Though I would not put it past any man to let it fal into the sight of his acquaintances.

How can they covet what they do not know exists?”

She imagined this painting hanging in Lely’s private office, or tipped against the wal of one of his workshops, open to any curious eye, or in his bedroom where he could admire it while the real sitting took place across his lap.

She wondered in how many rooms she could bring him pleasure.

“Your man is here. He stands over you. He is drunk, perhaps too drunk. Wil he sleep or serve?”

“Serve,” she said huskily.

“Offer. And make it clear. He is barely able to stand.”

And there was Peter in her head, pul ing at his boots, smel ing of whiskey. He would need no encouragement. He would lower his breeks, scrabble at his shirttails and thrust his way inside her, making up in blunt determination what he lacked in elegance.

She settled back on the pil ows and turned her body seductively toward this unseen lover. The muslin at her waist was slipping, and she lifted the knee nearest Peter to stop it.

The fabric, so thin it undoubtedly offered a fine view of hip and thigh, ruffled slightly in the draft from the windows, but it was al the coverage she had, and she would not