by Abra Taylor
Today his impatience was marked; his scowl suggested that he thought Domini was taking too long to disrobe. The terry robe was where she had left it some days before. She threw it over her shoulders without putting it on and went to the platform immediately.
'You won't need this for now,' he said roughly as his hand came into contact with the garment. He whisked the robe away before she eased on to her perch, feeling as vulnerable as she had on the very first day. But his hands remained those of a sculptor, not a lover, as they ranged over her body, quickly adjusting the curve of her thigh, the languid bend of her knee, the curl of a hand resting open-palmed beside her cheek, the head slightly turned to one side. For once there was nothing difficult about the pose: it was the sensuous posture of a reclining woman, as Domini had guessed.
Sander spent some moments moving back and forth between Domini and the armature, feeling measurements to ascertain that his proportions were indeed correct. Because today she was not occupied in holding some stressful position, she was more than ever aware of the rough texture of his fingers as they roamed lightly over this intimate part or that. And she knew that her body's quick responses must be detectable to Sander too.
At last he shrouded the sculpture with large damp cloths and a plastic sheet. Between sessions it would remain protected to prevent drying; the moistness in the clay would have to be maintained until the sculpture was cast. Then he relaxed and came to sit on the edge of the platform, once more using the damp towel to wipe the clay mixture from his hands. 'Don't move yet,' he said. 'I want you to understand this pose you're doing, because mood is very important in sculpture, and what I feel in your face is what will go into the finished work. Have you any idea what your pose is supposed to express?'
'Not really,' Domini said, although she thought she knew.
'You're not sleeping,' he said, his voice low and murmurous, the quality of it more lulling than at any time in Domini's memory. 'And no, you haven't just made love. If either of those were the conditions, I'd have loosened your hair. You're waiting for your lover, Domini. And that's what I want to feel in your face. The invitation in the lips, the tremulous expectancy. I'll want you to pretend you're watching him undress, waiting for him to come across the room. The feeling should be languorous, expectant, the ardour smouldering just below the surface ... do I have to tell you more? You're not an innocent. You must know what it's like, that breathless moment before the lovemaking begins.'
Domini licked her lips. It was as if he was making love to her with his voice, wooing her in a way she was helpless to resist. Even had she wanted to, she could not have broken the magnetic tension in the air; he exerted his domination without touching her at all.
'Try for the mood,' he commanded softly and reached his fingertips forward to Domini's face. Her moistened lips greeted his touch. Unsmilingly, with a sensual expression on his face, he ran a finger around the curve of them, spreading the moisture to each edge. He tested the polished surface of her teeth, felt the soft indentation of her upper lip, ran a finger into the little valley above her chin.
'Part your lips a little more,' he commanded in a voice so husky that its vibrations seemed to echo in Domini's core. Drugged with longing, she obeyed, believing it was only a prelude to the moment when his lips would descend. Waiting and wanting, she gazed at the hooded dark eyes, the sensuous, arrogant curve of his mouth, the bend of his head as he leaned over the place where she lay. On his strongly sculpted face the stamp of pride and bitterness had been replaced by a slumbrous passion, a dark burning of desire.
He touched her eyelids, her cheek, her jaw, to determine her expression. 'I think you have it now,' he said softly. 'A woman who wants to be made love to . . . I'm sure I feel that in your face. I wonder if the rest of you is as ready for the moment of mating?'
Without lowering his head, he passed his hand downward to her breast, grazing the nipples to assure himself that what he wanted, she wanted too. And then he rose swiftly to his feet and turned his back, filling Domini with an aching emptiness because there had been no completion of the kiss she wanted and expected.
'Put on your robe now,' he directed in a toneless voice. 'That's enough modelling for today.'
Sick with the longings he had awakened, Domini raised herself on one elbow. 'Sander,' she whispered in a low tortured plea that betrayed the need that now washed through her like a cresting wave, flooding her limbs, driving even pride before it.
There was tension in the broad set of his shoulders. 'Yes, I intend to make love to you. But this isn't the right place ... you know full well we might be interrupted. I'm taking you up to my bedroom, Domini Greey, because no one ever walks in on me there, not even Miranda. Now put on your robe and come, and be quick about it.'
It was not a request but a command, a harsh and arrogant one at that. But it only echoed the command of Domini's own body, passionate by nature and too long deprived of passion. Without a word she rose, slipped on her robe, and followed Sander up the stairs.
Because it was still early afternoon, there was light enough in the bedroom. He closed the door and walked across to the bed, stripping the covers back in one fluid movement. Then he turned to face Domini, desire darkening his face and turning his breathing heavy. 'Come here,' he ordered in a rough voice that sent heat thrilling through Domini's lower limbs.
Again she obeyed the pull of her body and her heart. Moving across the room, she came to a halt inches from the man she now knew she loved, and looked up at him expectantly, her eyes feverish with wanting. His unbuttoned shirt revealed the firm flesh she longed to feel, the crispness of hair that disappeared beneath the beltline of his trousers. Something told her not to touch, not yet, although she could not have said why.
He raised his hands and pushed the robe from her shoulders, allowing it to slide unchecked to the floor. Not yet kissing her, he reached for the pins that fastened her hair and extracted them slowly, one by one. Then he ran his long strong artist's fingers through the freed mass, pulling it forward so that the gold of it spilled over her breasts, and through the curtain of hair his roughened fingertips sought the ripe swell of the breasts themselves, the caress expert, unhurried, supremely arousing against her nipples. If he was impatient, it showed in no way in the sensuous expression of his mouth.
And Domini knew that he intended to teach her to make love lingeringly and beautifully, as she had wanted to be taught so many years before. Instinctively she knew she was right to contain her own urgency, allowing Sander to do with her as he wished; a man of his particular mould and virility would not wish the advances to be made by her. Once, she had been too forward, and she would not make the same mistake again. This time she would leave the pace to him.
And so she stood, longing for his kiss and his mastery but willing to wait for the moment when it came. All the same, by the time he bent his mouth to hers, hands sunk into her hair to shape the curve of her ears, she was in a tremble of need that knew no bounds. Not breaking the kiss that started gently and deepened slowly, he lowered her to the bed and came down beside her, still fully clad but for the opening of his shirt, where the disturbing textures now abraded Domini's bare breasts. Against her thigh, she could feel the mounting male power of him, leashed only by the confines of heavy cloth. And now he twined one hand more urgently in her hair and his kiss became passionately probing, betraying his true hunger even as his other hand moved. It slid downward over the slender hollows of her waist, not halting until it reached a more intimate goal.
The contact was electric. Although she had sworn to herself that she would respond at the pace he set, Domini gasped and arched extravagantly against his hand because she could not do otherwise with shock waves invading her core. He lifted his head, ending the joining of their lips.
'So wild, so soon?' he murmured into her ear, the expelled breath against her lobe only serving to quicken her passion. He had not changed the placement of his hand. As if he knew what urges were possessing her, Sander laughed softly an
d triumphantly, the laugh of a conqueror who knows the conquest has been made and can afford to take the spoils at his leisure. He dragged his tongue temptingly across her lips, evading the parted eagerness of them with a forbearance that was a deliberate torture to her. Then with his hand he began a slow, expert stroking that caused Domini to moan and writhe, all thoughts of curbing her responses now flown completely out of her mind.
'There's a pleasure to be had in putting off pleasure,' he murmured as his head slid downward and his mouth moved to her breast. He seized a taut crest gently between his teeth, slowly increased the pressure, then found it softly with his lazy tongue tip. Domini gasped again, a long, shuddering gasp that travelled the length of her naked body. It was the first time his lips had ever touched her in such a way, and as he began to caress her breasts in earnest, hungrily seeking the nipples even as the expert feathering of his hand continued to arouse, Domini reacted with a wildness and ardour she could not possibly conceal. Her fists clenched against his chest, ungentle in their urgency; her hips strained upward to invite the moment nature intended her to know. At once he withdrew his touch, again with the husky laugh of a victor.
'Do you think I'll let you escape so quickly?' he murmured in a low, husky voice. 'You're too importunate, my lovely friend. Hasn't anyone ever taught you that half the pleasure lies in getting there?'
Alternately tormenting her and gratifying her, he led her to the brink again and again. As his parted mouth ranged her nakedness, plundering it, lingering and lifting, his tempting incendiary kisses sent a flash fire raging in her blood, until her weakness became wantonness. She began to clutch at his hair, dig her fingers into his shoulders, tear at the shirt that still covered his muscles too well. And at last, satisfied that she would reach no higher heights, he relented.
Still containing his own desire, he began to bring her to the breathtaking conclusion. She resisted nothing, invited everything with responses as uninhibited as the lips that seared over her vulnerable flesh. Where his torrid mouth travelled, her skin ignited, and when he moved onward to kindle new flames, the moist imprint he left behind left erotic fires burning in her flesh. His hands were like brands that roamed and aroused as masterfully as his lips, firing her blood, turning her restless thighs to molten gold.
And all too soon, brought to mindlessness by the burning intimacies of his mouth and the expertness of his caresses, the fire in her exploded, consuming her in a final skyrocketing burst of ecstasy that sent her hips arching higher and caused her fingers to clench hurtfully in his hair.
She cried out in the moment of release, although by then she was so wild with wanting that she could not have said what words she cried. And then, limp and clinging, she shuddered helplessly as she floated back to earth.
At last, radiant with satisfaction, she opened her eyes and turned her head to look at him, the well of her love deepened because he had reined his ardour to give full freedom to hers. So her instincts had been right years ago: Sander was indeed a man good at teaching a woman what it was to be a woman. She knew he had taught her skilfully and well, taking time to arouse every sensory response she possessed.
He had detached himself and lay a little apart with one loosely curled hand resting over closed eyes. His expression almost approximated pain, and Domini thought she knew why.
She reached out to touch him with light fingers. 'Make love to me,' she whispered, wanting to satisfy his deep need as he had satisfied hers.
His mouth turned callous, matching the sudden flare of his nostrils. He uncovered his eyes and opened them. Lighted by the daylight from the gable window, they seemed to glow as they turned unseeingly towards her. 'Fair is fair,' he said tersely. 'I just made love to you. Isn't it your turn to make love to me?'
Domini stared, shocked at the sudden change in him. No more the considerate lover, he had become the arrogant man locked into a prison of bitterness and pride. She sat up, only to have hard fingers feel for and then curl around her wrist, preventing any attempt at departure.
'Can you leave me like this ... unsatisfied?' He pulled her hand to his waist and below, forcing it against the cloth concealing the potent contours of his manhood. For a long moment he held her fingers in place with a grip of steel.
'I don't think you could be so heartless,' he mocked as he finally released her wrist. 'Now undress me.'
He had read her well. Domini could not leave him now, and not only because she would be leaving him in a state of arousal. Already the touch of him had sent frissons of new excitement chasing over the surface of her skin. He might be trying to demean her by ordering her to remove his clothes, but that was exactly what the primitive part of Domini wanted to do.
Less disturbed than Sander might have hoped, Domini smiled a smile he could not see. Now that she understood that his intent was to hurt her for some twisted reason of his own, she thought she knew exactly how to deal with him. She simply returned her hand to its resting place of a moment before.
His reaction was sudden and violent. Expecting reticence, not forwardness, he practically jack-knifed to a sitting position, sucking in his breath in a long unsteady rasp. Unable in his blindness to foresee her actions, he had been taken totally by surprise, and the surprise robbed him of whatever self-control remained to him.
His kiss exploded against her mouth, driving her back against the pillow. After that there was no pretence of waiting for Domini to undress him. He released her mouth long enough to tear off his clothes, baring the strong muscles, the virile thighs whose power she longed to feel. He came crushing down on her at once, knees intruding to push her legs into readiness, hands almost violent in their seizure of her exhilarated body, mouth already opening with desire as it descended to ravish hers. As his kiss took her he drove home with no waiting, his hard-muscled body claiming absolute and instant dominion over hers.
This time he seemed not to care for her response. Yet, wildly excited by his sensual savagery, she gave it. She wound her arms around his shoulders, laced her fingers in his hair, clung to his mouth, arched to the pulsing age-old rhythms of love. And at the end she matched his final passion with her own, finding once more the culmination of desire.
Afterwards they lay silent, Sander's face so totally forbidding that Domini dared not speak. She spent the time with her eyes learning all the intimate shapes of him, storing them in memory just as he sometimes seemed to memorize her with his hands. In the wake of passion a great sadness seized her as she contemplated how little he cared for her. At last she became conscious that the slant of the sun decreed that she ought to leave. She eased over Sander's naked body, for he lay on the outer edge of the bed.
He caught her as she slid to her feet, gripping her hips to prevent immediate departure. He came to a sitting position himself. Domini didn't try to pull away; she merely twisted within his arms in order to take one more lingering look at the man who had aroused her so.
'I have to go,' she said quietly.
'Will you be back tomorrow?'
In her unhappy reflections Domini had been wondering about that, but her voice made the decision for her. 'Yes,' she heard herself say. 'I will.'
For a moment he buried his face at her waist, and Domini thought she saw a small shudder travel over his shoulders. Then he released her, and she decided she must have been mistaken, for his expression was no warmer than before.
'Next time we have sex,' he rasped with deliberate and unkind emphasis on the last part of the phrase, 'remember that I can be much kinder if you don't cry out meaningless words at the end. As long as you avoid them from now on, I'll be more ... considerate.'
Domini paused midway through reaching for her robe. 'I don't know what you mean,' she said, honestly puzzled. And then she remembered that in one moment of rapture, she had given vent to some kind of feeling. 'What did I say?' she asked in a very low voice.
'Surely you can imagine.' His face was discouragingly enigmatic, his eyes brooding. 'Please spare me any repetitions, for I assure you
I have no intention of ever feeding you the same sort of lie that you fed me.'
Domini retrieved the robe, slipped into it, and fastened the belt, taking time with her answer because she knew full well what she must have said. And she knew that to let Sander know she loved him was to put herself too much into his power.
'It wasn't a lie exactly,' she said as casually as possible. 'Just the sort of thing one says in the heat of passion. Haven't you ever heard a woman say 'I love you' before? It doesn't have to mean a single thing.'
'It never does,' Sander returned bitterly, and Domini knew he must be thinking of Nicole.
Chapter 9
Winter slush had been replaced by weak spring sun, and weak spring sun had turned to cloying summer heat. Heavy coats had long since been shed, boots had been put in closets, and now bare-armed women complained about the abominable temperatures that sometimes scorched New York in June. Tubs of flowers appeared on the hot SoHo sidewalks, secondhand books were laid on outdoor tables for the delectation of passing browsers, and sales of air conditioners were brisk. The pavements were crowded, not with Christmas shoppers but with tourists. Architecturally minded visitors came cast-iron looking, taking pleasure in nineteenth-century lampposts and gargoyles and acanthus leaves and great arched windows; others came to sample the exotic extravagances in Dean & DeLuca's huge and fascinating food emporium. SoHo in summer was hot, alive, energetic, and colourful.
Domini had lost some weight. Her relationship with Sander occupied too much of her mind and too many of her afternoons, and because it was a relationship with no hope that she could see, it brought deep anguish, as well as moments of exquisite ecstasy when all the anguish seemed of no moment at all. Often she swore she would stay away from the small gallery, but just as often she found her heart and her body tugging her back.