Drawing Lessons

by Julia Gabriel

  “When I was blindfolded this afternoon, I tried to imagine how you would look beneath me.” He smiled wryly, shaking his head. “My imagination is pathetic. Utterly lacking.”

  “I thought great artists could see everything. That’s what I’ve been told.”

  “Oh, I’m going to see everything, Marie. And one day I am going to paint you like this, in the moment before I make love to you.” He ran his thumbs over her eyelashes, trying to isolate the feathery touch of each one. “I want to capture this look in your eyes. Desire and disbelief.”

  He bent his head over her breasts, and she shivered as his breath caressed her skin. “Will you trust me?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she whispered in reply. She did trust him, oddly enough, certainly more than she had ever trusted Richard. “I trust you.”

  When his lips brushed her nipple, a rush of heat surged through her, every solid part of her body melting into hot, liquid need. He took her nipple between his soft lips, teasing it up into a hard peak, then his mouth began to explore every inch of the skin around it. As his breath warmed her skin, she arched her back, pushing her breasts toward him. She wanted more. She needed more, in a way she had never needed more from any man.

  “Patience, Marie,” he murmured against her skin.

  He ran his tongue along the underside of her breast, then traced a hot line back up to her nipple where his own patience seemed to run out. He closed his mouth over her dark rosy nipple and began to suck, devouring her, pulling every pinprick of desire up to the surface of her skin. Marie felt her hips loosen and open. She ran her hands along his back, pulled his hips down toward her own. She wanted him inside her. She wanted to be filled with as much of Luc Marchand as she could take.

  His moan of pleasure vibrated hot against her breast. She felt the tip of his tongue roll her nipple.

  “Luc,” she whispered.

  “Patience, ma chérie,” he said, lifting his head from her breast. “You have two of these, you know.”

  “You don’t have to touch every—” The words disappeared from her brain at the sight of Luc’s lips closing around her other breast.

  “Yes,” he murmured. “I do have to touch every inch of you.”

  “Luc ... please. It’s too soon ... you’re going to make me—”

  He slipped his hand between her legs. “That’s the whole point of this, Marie.”

  She gasped as he gently spread her open with his fingers, then began rubbing a knuckle against her most sensitive spot. Her mind was nothing but swirling darkness and light, teetering on the knife’s edge of fear and want. What Luc was doing to her body, no one had ever done before and she wanted it more than anything she’d ever wanted. He was the oasis—finally—in her desert of desire. He was taking her with him into a wilderness of pleasure and she was going—willingly—even as she knew she might never find her way back out.

  “Marie, let go,” Luc commanded, his voice cracking. “Take this from me.”

  She rocked her hips against him, harder and faster, until her body fell apart beneath him, her need shattered into a million tiny pieces, fragile and glistening.

  He kissed his way up her sternum and into the curve of her neck until his mouth settled over her lips. She couldn’t move, her limbs collapsed, spent, on the mat.

  “How was that, ma chérie?”

  She smiled blissfully against his lips. “Good.”

  “Hmm. You shouldn’t be able to speak after. I think I can do better.”

  “I don’t need better than that.”

  “I’m going to give you better.”

  Marie closed her eyes, enjoying the sensation of her body floating back down to earth. Luc’s lips disappeared from hers, only to reappear on her stomach. His tongue traced a slow, lazy circle around her navel.

  “You have to promise me not to forget to breathe, Marie,” he said.

  “Mmm.”

  “Promise me, Marie.”

  “Promise ...” Luc had been right. There was a kind of orgasm that could make one’s body feel like it had just disintegrated, and she’d just had it. If she died right now, she’d die happy.

  Luc’s thumbs were working circles over the points of her hips, around and around, but she was barely aware of it. It wasn’t until he pushed her legs open, that her mind began to re-engage. She tried to close her legs but he held them open.

  “We’re not finished, Marie.”

  “You can ...” Marie struggled to form words.

  “I can what?”

  “Make love to me.”

  “That’s what I’m doing.” He chuckled, deep and sexy.

  She felt his hair brush her hips as his head moved lower. “No,” she protested and tried to close her legs again.

  In an instant, Luc’s head was hovering above hers, his hands caressing her cheeks. “No what, Marie? You don’t want me to make love to you anymore?”

  She opened her eyes to see confusion darkening his face. “I don’t want you to look at me ... there.”

  His eyebrows lifted, just for a moment, then lowered. “Why not?”

  She shrugged. “It’s ...” her words trailed away.

  He ran his thumb gently over her well-kissed lower lip, then frowned. “Please don’t tell me that no one has ever looked at your body.”

  “Not ... not that close.”

  Luc closed his eyes, and took a deep breath, trying to control the anger he felt swelling like a hot bubble in his chest. He wasn’t angry with Marie. But the men in her life, that was a different matter.

  He opened his eyes and looked intently at her. “So no one, not even your husband—” he ground out the word like it was a bad taste in his mouth, “has ever made love to you with his mouth? Never kissed you intimately?” He rubbed his erection against her pubic bone. “Here?” He could see the shyness, the reticence, clouding her eyes again.

  “No,” she whispered, closing her eyes against his gaze.

  “Ah, Marie.” His kisses were soft against her eyelids. “You have not been giving yourself to men who deserve you. Not that I deserve you either, but I would be honored if you were to allow me to be the first man to see all of you.”

  She said nothing.

  “When I paint you, Marie, I will show you how I see you. But I am only half of the tableau here. You have to allow yourself to be seen. Trust me, Marie. Trust my eyes.”

  He felt her legs part beneath him, just an inch or two at first, then she allowed them to fall open completely. He brushed his mouth against her ear. “Merci, Marie. Merci.”

  He lowered his head and parted her flesh again. He ran his tongue flat and hard against her, flicking the tip of his tongue against the swollen bud of her clitoris, her body bucking against his mouth. He felt a low throaty moan roll down into her hips as she pushed herself into his mouth. He kissed her, slowly, patiently pulling more and more of her desire down into this one, concentrated spot. Marie whimpered helplessly, her hips now rocking back and forth against his mouth.

  “Come for me, Marie. Show me what your orgasm looks like.”

  He felt her tremble beneath his hands, then a softly rolling shudder began to take over her body until she cried out and her back arched off the floor. He kissed every quake and exhausted, sated sigh from her. He had wanted to make love to this woman since the very first morning she knocked on his studio door, and here he was making love to her twice in one day.

  He drank in the sight of her body stretched out before him as he rolled on a condom. Her hair was fanned out around her lovely face, her eyes closed, her lips curved in sweet contentment. He laid a gentle kiss on the tip of her nose.

  “Marie, have you fallen asleep on me?”

  Her eyes fluttered open and she looked unabashedly into his.

  “What are you seeing, Marie?” he asked. He brushed a lock of hair from her cheek.

  “A man,” she said quietly.

  He traced her eyebrow with his thumb. “You can do better than that.”

  Her eyes s
hone dark with desire. He felt a delicate ankle hook over his calf. “I see a man who wants me,” she whispered.

  “Bon,” Luc replied as his lips hungrily covered hers. The abandon with which she kissed him back split open the last shell protecting his desire. The first time they’d made love, he had allowed her to take from him—and she had taken only a small measure of what he could offer. Now he wanted to give Marie all the pleasure, all the ecstasy, he was capable of—more than she would ever willingly take for herself. He ran his hand along the length of her body, then cupped it around her bottom, tilting her hips open.

  “Marie,” he breathed against her lips, “I need to feel you closer.” He felt her hands settle lightly, then more firmly, on his lower back. She pulled him into her and he went, letting himself sink helplessly into her warmth. He inhaled sharply as every ounce of desire he’d ever felt pooled deep in his groin, then he kissed her fiercely, trying to say with his lips all that he was afraid to say with words.

  There had been dozens of women before Marie, but none he had wanted as much, none who had inspired him quite the way his déesse did. He moved slowly inside her and he could imagine nothing more beautiful. No sun-kissed landscape, no delicate wash of watercolor, no porcelain-veined marble. Together, he and his goddess were heading toward the very edge of beauty, that place where light disappeared, where consciousness fell colorless and notes were heard without sound.

  He was close to it now, and he pushed harder, sweeping her desire up into his. He felt his lips moving around her name—marie marie marie chérie chérie déesse—until there was everything and nothing and their bodies came apart, atoms swirling in gasps of breath like pointillist dots of color pulsing, shimmering, glistening.

  Chapter 13

  Marie floated through the week, her feet completely unacquainted with the ground. Nothing rattled her. Not her mother, even after the tenth or eleventh oh-so-casual mention of Richard. Not the marketing professor who dropped a surprise quiz on the class. And how was she supposed to study, anyhow, when she had other things on her mind?

  Not even getting caught in a sudden downpour on Connecticut Avenue without an umbrella and no available cab in sight—just as Maya Redfearn happened to drive by. Sometimes Marie wondered whether Maya was tracking the GPS on her phone, so uncanny it was how she always managed to be in the right place at the right time. So she had ended up looking like a drowned rat in Wednesday’s J Street Chronicle? Who gave a rat’s ass, really?

  Nishi was right. Maya was sleeping with Richard. She, Marie Witherspoon, was sleeping with Luc Marchand. Definitely a step up. She smiled. Maya had no idea what she was missing.

  “Marie, dear?” Eileen Witherspoon interrupted Marie’s Thursday afternoon reverie, striding into her office without knocking.

  Marie attempted to put a thoughtful look on her face and began shuffling through files on her desk—even as she wondered why she bothered. If her mother wanted her to be busier, she’d give her more projects to manage. The truth was, of course, that her mother didn’t particularly want Marie working there at all. In her mind, it was just a way for Marie to pay the rent until she and Richard reconciled.

  A small white envelope dropped flat onto her desk. She flipped it over and saw the Kennedy Center’s logo.

  “What’s this?” she asked, looking up at her mother. Had her mother been wearing that outfit this morning? She hadn’t noticed, so lost she was in thoughts of Luc. “Is that a new suit?” Her mother was wearing a royal blue St. John skirt and jacket, practically a uniform for power women in Washington.

  Eileen nodded toward the envelope. “The Cantons can’t use these tickets for tomorrow night. Would you like them?”

  “You and dad don’t want them?”

  “You know your father detests the ballet. He falls asleep during the Nutcracker every year. Take Nishi or one of your classmates.”

  Surprised she’s not suggesting you-know-who.

  “Well, thanks. I’ll send Mrs. Canton a note.” But Eileen Witherspoon was already halfway out the door, on to more important matters than her daughter and disposing of an important donor’s cultural largesse.

  Marie flipped open the envelope and slid the tickets out. Box seats for American Ballet Theatre, Friday night. Her eyes widened as she counted the tickets. She had the entire box. She rang up Nishi.

  “Do you and Imran want to go to the ballet with me tomorrow night? My mother just gave me the Cantons’ box seats. It’s ABT.”

  “Imran would strangle himself with a toe shoe ribbon before going to the ballet. And I’ve been working late all week. I owe him a night.”

  “Oh. Do you have any clients who could use them? I’ve got four tickets.”

  “Why don’t you ask your artist friend?”

  Marie was silent for a minute. She hadn’t thought of that, asking Luc. But that would involve seeing him outside of his studio. She wasn’t sure their “friendship” extended that far. Sex, sure—he was a man after all. But he might not want to make a habit of seeing her outside “office” hours. First the Phillips, now the Kennedy Center? She suspected that might be a step too far for Luc Marchand.

  “I’m wink-winking on my end,” Nishi added.

  “I don’t know. What if someone saw us?”

  “Exactly! What a poke in the eye to Maya and Richard if someone sees you at the Kennedy Center with a hunk of a man like that. In fact, take a selfie and send it to me. I’ll put it out there. We’ll scoop the J Street Chronicle. That’ll really chap her ass.”

  Marie covered her mouth to prevent her laughter from spilling out into the hallway. The idea of scooping Maya was tempting, if unwise.

  “Seriously, Marie. It would serve the two of them right. You don’t have to hide away from them. All I ask is that you wear something fabulous so no one mistakes you for his assistant or something.”

  “Or an usher.”

  “Or one of those women who used to take ballet when they were little and all but wear a tutu to the performance. Don’t do that. Gotta go, dear. Call him. I’m daring you.”

  Marie stared at the tickets on her desk, ignoring the chirping of her email piling up. Nishi was right, as usual. Why do I have to keep a low profile when I’m not the one who created this situation?

  What was the worst that could happen? He said no and never slept with her again. He probably wasn’t going to sleep with her again anyway, now that she had “seen” him—and he had satisfied his masculine curiosity. On the other hand, if he said yes and someone saw them together and it got back to Richard and Maya ... well, score one for Marie Witherspoon.

  She scrolled through her contacts, took a deep breath, took another deep breath and tapped Luc’s name. He probably wasn’t home anyway.

  “Bonjour.”

  “Mr. Marchand!” she blurted out, surprised to actually hear his voice on the other end. Stupid! Mister? You slept with the man.

  “Please call me Luc, Marie.”

  “Sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”

  “You don’t have to be nervous around me.”

  I do when you can read my mind from forty miles away.

  “To what do I owe the pleasure of this call?”

  “I have some tickets to the Kennedy Center for tomorrow night.” Be generic about it. “I was hoping you might care to accompany me.”

  Her heart dropped at the silence on the other end.

  “Are you asking me out on a date, Marie?”

  “Well, um. Not really. It’s just the ballet. Someone gave me free tickets. But they’re box seats and I have all the seats in the box so it would be very private. No one would see you—”

  She heard his deep, throaty chuckle on the other end.

  “I don’t care whether someone sees me at the ballet or not, Marie. But I’ll only go if you admit that you’re asking me out on a date.”

  Her heart was pounding now, her throat dry as paper. She took a deep breath to clear her head and ensure that she didn’t keel over from oxygen deprivation
. She knew it had been a mistake to ask him. He was going to extort things from her, some odd drawing lesson or humiliating personal admission.

  “Are you inviting me on a date, yes or no, Marie?”

  “Um, yes?”

  “Um yes or yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I accept. What time?”

  * * *

  Marie lied to her mother on Friday afternoon and told her she was meeting Nishi at the Kennedy Center. Then Maeve called a cab for her. In the cab, she pulled off her sweater, transforming the sweet navy skirt she had worn all day at the office into a sexy halter dress that clung to her curves on top and swirled around her bare legs. The neckline plunged in a deep vee between her breasts, revealing a wide swath of creamy skin. She couldn’t wait to see Luc’s face when he saw it. He had never seen her in anything but business attire or jeans. Or, well, nothing at all. She smiled to herself as she rolled up the sweater and stuffed it into her purse, followed by her workday pumps. She pulled out a pair of silver, heeled sandals with straps that wound beguilingly around her slender ankles.

  She unclasped her hair from its barrette and fluffed it out around her shoulders. The deep indigo shade of the dress set off her hair nicely. She wouldn’t mind if Luc were to run his hands through her hair tonight. A chill skittered down her spine, just thinking about it. Then she applied just the faintest swipe of lipstick. Enough to give her lips some color but not enough to discourage a man from kissing her. She definitely wanted to be kissed again by Luc Marchand. Her heart raced with impatience as the cab slowly made its way down Wisconsin Avenue, into the heart of Georgetown. Traffic was Friday night heavy with employees trying to get out of the city and suburbanites coming in to the bars and restaurants. Georgetown on the weekend attracted a diverse crowd—college students from all over, tourists, young singles, the well-heeled—but it wasn’t Marie’s favorite neighborhood. Too noisy, too crowded and no parking.

  She glanced at her watch every twenty seconds or so. There was plenty of time before the curtain rose, but what if Luc didn’t wait? He struck her as a man for whom punctuality was of the utmost importance.