Beguiled and Bedazzled

by Victoria Gordon

  And she was thumped back down on her tailbone, landing so hard her teeth clicked together.

  This isn’t getting the sketching done, Ms Ferrar.’

  And his voice was hoarse, almost menacing, though ragged with unquestionable emotion. Before she could speak he was up and moving back across the room, leaving her slumped with her head on her knee, no longer tense but trembling now, at least in the pit of her stomach, at the centre of her womanhood.

  It was of little satisfaction to hear his voice audibly shaking a bit too, as he gruffly ordered her to lift her right arm a bit, turn her head slightly to the right, shift her rump here, her shoulders there...

  The sound of his pencils briskly swishing across the sketch pad seemed to vibrate like a wind through the room, but the sensation of his touch was more of an echo, continuing to vibrate through her body, keeping her mind in a maelstrom of confusion as she mechanically obeyed his orders in silence, until with an explosive grunt of what seemed to be satisfaction he threw down pencil and paper and marched towards the door, not even so much as looking at her.

  ‘I’m going to step out and visit the dog,’ he said quietly over his shoulder. ‘That’ll give you the privacy to get something on, and then maybe you could make us a coffee and I’ll give you a progress report on your father’s maybe birthday present. OK?’

  Colleen muttered her assent, then leapt to her feet once the door had closed and shrugged into her sweatshirt as quickly as if she’d been freezing, although it wasn’t being cold that made her continue to tremble. It was the memory of his touch, the feel of his breath against her cheek.. .and her own uncertainty now about what it all meant.

  Had it been, she wondered, a calculated move to disorient her, to impress upon her his ability to arouse with such consummate ease? Or had it, perhaps, unbelievably, surprised Devon Burns as much as it had her?

  There might have been no handy pile of sawdust as he’d mentioned in the restaurant, but it hadn’t been needed either! He could have taken her — there and then — and she would have helped him, welcomed it! Beyond all question he must have known that, perhaps had even deliberately arranged it so. But to what possible purpose?

  She looked at the sketch pad, moved a step in that direction, then gave herself a mental shake and turned away towards the kitchen instead. She filled the kettle and turned it on, spooned instant coffee into cups, and gradually, deliberately, gave vent to the feelings of anger that came from having been so obviously manipulated.

  By the time Burns returned she was standing over the coffee-table, sketch-book in hand, all feelings of anger dissipated by the sheer artistry of what she was looking at. There were broad general views, but most stirring were detail sketches of such small specific areas—the bend of an elbow, the wing-like curve of a shoulder blade, the fall of hair against a nubble of spine.

  She looked up as he entered, half expecting to see some sign of protest or objection, but he only raised one eyebrow and smiled, a weary gesture that revealed in an instant how much mental effort had been put into the work she was seeing.

  ‘What do you think?’ he asked softly. ‘Went well, I think, once we finally got going.’

  ‘I ... I should say so,’ was all Colleen could muster. The sketches she’d looked at were beyond that description, far beyond it. ‘You look exhausted, though.’

  Burns glanced at his wrist-watch, then flexed his right wrist obviously. And now his smile was wider. ‘We were at it for a fair while. I’m actually surprised you’re not just a bit stiff now too. You did marvellously, by the way.’

  ‘Thank you, I think,’ she replied. ‘Now come and sit down and have your coffee before it cools.’

  He slid into an armchair in what seemed to be one single fluid movement, picked up his cup, sipped at the coffee, put it back down again and leaned back in the chair to look at her.

  ‘I promised you a progress report,’ he said. ‘And I’m sure you’ll be pleased to know I should have no problems now getting the Huon pine piece I promised you done in time for your father’s birthday. Whether you’ll like it or not...’ He shrugged, then grinned. ‘Well, I like it anyway. So far.’

  Colleen nodded, touched by the sudden awareness that their entire relationship had changed somehow, that the tenseness and friction of it was diminished, altered.

  ‘You’ve been busy, then, since I ... saw you last?’

  ‘Enough.’ Another shrug, this one enigmatic, almost dismissive. ‘I’ve had a few other things to take care of as well, but ... yes, enough.’

  ‘And you’re happy, I gather, with what you’ve done today.’ Not really a question, although meant as one. She knew that he was happy with what he’d done; he’d already said so.

  ‘You’ve looked at the sketches ... what do you think?’

  ‘I’m no judge, but they certainly looked splendid to me,’ she said. ‘I was surprised at the.. .detail you seem to need, but I suppose it’s all part of the process.’

  ‘Every little bit helps. I’ll still need you to sit for me in the studio, but perhaps not for as long now.’

  ‘And there’s still the front to do,’ she muttered, hardly aware that she was speaking aloud. It wasn’t a complaint, merely an observation.

  Devon’s bark of laughter was like a thunderclap in the room. ‘And the sides,’ he said, eyes twinkling as he shook his head in genuine amusement. ‘Don’t forget the sides, whatever you do. Ah, Colleen, you’ve a rough trot ahead of you if being a model is all this traumatic.’

  Colleen grinned back at him; it had struck her as funny too, knowing how her muttered comment must have sounded. Knowing too that she hadn’t been complaining or worrying, merely...

  ‘I was just thinking that it’s easier for me to sit still than it is for you to draw,’ she replied in the calmest voice possible. ‘Now, have you got all you can handle for today, or do you want to go on?’

  One dark eyebrow raised itself into a question — the obvious question. Then he set down his coffee-cup, the entire movement seemingly in slow motion, it was so deliberate. He nodded, but didn’t speak.

  Right, then,’ she said, wishing that she felt as calm as she sounded, praying that her knees wouldn’t betray her as she got up and marched towards the sofa, pulling the sweatshirt over her head as she did so.

  ‘Right,’ he agreed, but when his eyes focused on her bared breasts the look was almost disappointingly professional. So was the voice which directed her into the positions he wanted.

  As she lifted her arms to fling the hair back over her shoulders, Colleen did fancy that she noticed just a tiny bit of tremble in the pencil in his fingers. She was probably imagining it, she thought, and hoped that she wasn’t.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Colleen’s voice echoed through the studio, seeming to scatter the dust motes that played in a shaft of sunlight from one of the many windows.

  ‘It isn’t fair. I’ve said it before and I still say it.’

  ‘What isn’t fair? That you should keep on trying to distract me, or that you should be so unsuccessful at it?’ Devon Burns replied. His amber eyes laughed at her, his even white teeth sharing the joke. The rest of him, hidden behind the screen that masked his work from Colleen’s view, probably did too, she thought.

  One dark eyebrow lifted, a corner of that incredibly mobile mouth twisted in thought, and she heard the gentle hiss of his chisel as it pared off some infinitesimal shaving from the wood in front of him — wood she could not see and therefore, perversely, wanted more and more to see.

  ‘There is no reason whatsoever why you have to be so secretive about all this,’ she insisted. ‘I just don’t think it’s fair that I’ve been posing for you for nearly a month now, and I never get to see what you’re doing!’

  ‘You’ll see it when it’s done.’

  ‘I might not live that long,’ she sulked. She looked down at her body, naked but for the bottom of her bikini, and gave an exaggerated shiver. ‘It’s cold in here. Isn’t it about time for a t
ea-break? Or is all this just an excuse for you to practise carving goose-bumps?’

  Burns laughed, but when his eyes roamed across her body, at first professionally but then with undisguised masculine appreciation, pausing at her slender waist, lingering to caress her breasts, the effect was startling even after all this time. The quickening pucker of her nipples under his gaze was definitely not goose-bumps!

  Colleen had come easily enough to accepting her model’s role. After her initial self-consciousness when he’d first sketched her at her flat, she had now relaxed to the point where she actually enjoyed the experience. Usually. But not when he looked at her that way, with eyes that plucked at her nipples, that turned her tummy to mush, her legs to jelly.

  The problem, she thought, was that he only looked; ever since the day she’d first bared herself to the waist for him to begin his sketches, Devon Burns had treated her with... ‘Circumspection’ was the only word for it. He didn’t make an issue of it, but she knew that she had suddenly become untouchable, inviolable. It was now a case of look but don’t touch, which was fine in its own way except that Burns had made almost an obsession of it!

  ‘You’ll survive,’ he said. ‘In fact I think you’re actually thriving on being a model. or else it’s just because you enjoy tempting and tormenting me every chance you get.’

  ‘I do no such thing!’ But she did, and Colleen knew in her heart of hearts that it was so. And more, she did it deliberately, enjoying the sensation of being able sometimes, if rarely, to change the expression in those amber eyes, to boot out the professional and see the naked lust of the man inside him.

  But sometimes, perhaps most times, she didn’t truly understand just who was tempting and tormenting whom! There were moments when she was certain — positive! — that Devon Burns was leading her gently down some invisible garden path, using the safety of the aura he had himself created to entice her into a false complacency, a trap that would one day snap shut without warning,

  ‘How could I possibly tempt and torment you?’ she asked, trying to instil in her voice a sense of innocence that had no fair place there. She knew all too well how she’d been doing it—although she wasn’t quite so certain just why! She was enormously attracted to this self-confessed misogynist, but her feminine vanity was bruised by the ease with which he seemed to discount her sexuality whenever she modelled for him.

  ‘I might as well be a sheep sitting here, for all the difference it makes,’ she continued. ‘And you know it too. When you’re working you’re oblivious to temptation, or would be if there was any — which there isn’t.’

  ‘Now you’re being paranoid,’ he growled, but didn’t even bother to look up. His eyes were fixed on his work, and Colleen felt certain that he was only half involved in the conversation.

  ‘Me paranoid?’ she cried. ‘You’ve got a nerve saying a thing like that when you’ve gone to all this effort to protect the secrecy of ... of whatever it is you’re doing! I mean, really! What do you think I’m going to do — contaminate your work just by looking at it?’

  She looked round his enormous studio, where various pieces of work in progress were hidden beneath shrouds of burlap sacking as was the makeshift screen he had erected to ensure that she could not see anything of the sculpture for which she posed.

  It was all quite ridiculous, she thought. Some of the pieces she had already seen. They hadn’t been shrouded on her very first visit to the studio, but now he had gone into this annoyingly secretive mode, just to be difficult.

  Now he paid attention. She looked over to see those amber eyes glaring at her.

  ‘I told you right from the start that I’m superstitious about anybody seeing work in progress,’ he growled. ‘And you understood it then and you understand it now. The only difference is that your female curiosity is playing up and you just can’t stand that, can you? Forbidden fruit, Colleen, and there are quite sufficient historical warnings about that. Not that I’d expect you to heed them, being as admittedly and undeniably female as you are, so it’s up to me to protect you from yourself.’

  And he grinned, the act transforming his face and denying the growl he had kept in his voice throughout.

  ‘Oh ... rubbish, rubbish, rhubarb, rhubarb,’ she snapped. ‘I’m surprised you’d admit to being that superstitious — a grown man like you. It’s quite ridiculous.’

  ‘It might be ridiculous, but it works for me,’ he replied without hesitation. ‘Why don’t you just put it down to my artistic temperament and stop fussing about it?’

  ‘Because it offends me, that’s why,’ she replied, knowing that she was being unreasonable, and also increasingly aware that she was becoming illogically cranky.

  ‘Did you get out of the wrong side of the bed this morning?’ he asked, but without raising his head this time, so that she couldn’t actually see the gleam in his eyes which she knew just had to be there. ‘Or was it, perhaps, the wrong bed entirely?’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ she said, unable or unwilling to believe what she’d just heard. Was this Devon Burns, boy misogynist, questioning her about...? ‘I think you’ve got a cheek,’ she snapped, realising that yes, he was indeed, it’s absolutely none of your business, for starters, and I’d like to know why you’re asking such a question in the first place.’

  ‘It seemed reasonable enough,’ he said with a shrug. ‘You’ve been extremely cranky ever since you got here, and I certainly haven’t given you any reason to be that way.’

  But he was the reason, except she wasn’t about to admit that to him.

  ‘And, in case you hadn’t noticed, it doesn’t quite fit in with the seductress role you seem to have decided is part of being a model. Either you should be cranky — or seductive. Not both and certainly not both at the same time. It’s far too distracting, and frankly I’m getting a bit fed up with it.’

  ‘You ... you...’ She couldn’t get any further. Her mouth kept working but for some reason the words stayed jammed in behind her teeth, locked in by a growing sense of anger, frustration.. .and guilt. He was right about her playing the temptress role, but she couldn’t admit that, and wouldn’t!

  During the five, no, she mused, six — counting today — times she had modelled for him. Colleen had almost thought that she and Devon Burns might actually become friends. They had discussed a broad variety of things, found some common ground and some areas of discussion best left alone, but overall it had been a quite pleasurable experience.

  Except, of course, for his professionalism — the way he could spend hours looking at her and yet not looking at her, seeing her as a model but not as a woman, not as ... well, whatever.

  She’d been gratified by that attitude at first, especially during her debut performance as a half-naked model. But once her self-consciousness had been overcome... Damn him, she thought, he knew what the problem was, knew it and was playing on it, and had been all along. He’d ignored her vanity and deliberately used it along with her curiosity against her.

  ‘I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re on about,’ she insisted, but didn’t even dare attempt to meet his eyes.

  ‘Stop being obtuse, Colleen. You’ve been playing around with this temptress role right from the start,’ he said, laying down his chisel and rising to stretch in a movement that tightened the T-shirt across his muscular chest.

  He paused to adjust yet another burlap shroud carefully over the siren figure, casually brushed the sawdust from his fingers on jeans that fitted like a second skin, then stalked out from behind the screen and over to where he could loom ominously above her, arms folded across his chest, his entire presence dominant, masculine, almost menacing.

  ‘And you’ve done it deliberately. And you know you have,’ he said with a glowering scowl as he prowled her body with his eyes, flexing and unflexing his fingers as if to keep himself from reaching down and grabbing her. ‘And, what’s more, you’ve done it under the protection of my professional morality, which means you’ve been taking unfair advant
age ... very unfair advantage.’

  Again he prowled her body with his eyes, their expression both a caress and now, suddenly, a threat!

  His grin was wolfish. Colleen couldn’t be sure that he wasn’t putting on an act, and suddenly didn’t dare even to question it.

  ‘And then you accuse me of being unfair. Well, it isn’t me who’s flaunting myself, who’s being so deliberately tantalising,’ he said, drawling out the word, making a meal of it. ‘Tantalising! Wonderful word, that. Sounds a good deal nicer than it is, my dear Ms Ferrar; you might think about that.’

  Colleen started to reply, wanted to reply, but the words wouldn’t come. They couldn’t; he was right and they both knew it. What she didn’t know was what price she now might face for having pushed him too far.

  She almost laughed out loud at the thought. Price? That, surely, was a strange word for it, considering that she wanted nothing more than for him to drop his professional veneer and start seeing her as a woman, treating her as a woman. She watched him, calmly meeting his eyes and noticing the way his jaw muscles flexed as he ground his teeth in thought.

  ‘I want you. You know that,’ he said suddenly. ‘I’ve wanted you from the beginning, from the first instant I saw you ... delivered to me like a plump, tasty pigeon.’ And the gesture of licking his lips was, she feared, only half in jest.

  Colleen found herself cringing beneath his gaze; she felt powerless, without the will or ability to move. His eyes flickered across her, touching like a lash at every part of her body, as if aware of her arousal, then flashing up again to capture her eyes.

  ‘But what is it you really want, Colleen?’ he mused, not really asking her the question at all. ‘A present for your father, some esoteric fancy involving those bits of wood with their sentimental value? Or is it, I wonder, something more devious but far less complicated than that, something I very likely shouldn’t give you, but will anyway, I think, because I’ve had enough of your silly little female games. More than enough!’