“Luc,” she groaned.
“If it’s too much, take it off,” he said as he bared his teeth and scraped them lightly across the point of her hips. Then he pushed her arching hips back onto the blanket and held them there as he kissed lower and lower.
She couldn’t wait any longer. She cupped his head in her hands and pushed it down, between her legs. “Touch me. Please,” she begged. He didn’t need to coax open her thighs this time. She wrapped her quivering legs around his shoulders as he dipped his tongue into the heat between them.
“I never want another man to see this,” Luc growled. “Whatever your body needs, I will give it to you. All you have to do is ask. Promise me you’ll ask, Marie.”
By now, her ears were keenly attuned to the inflections in his voice and she recognized what she was hearing now. Luc Marchand was pleading with her. He wanted her, and only her.
“I promise, Luc. I’m yours for as long as you’ll have me.”
“I’m going to want you for a long time.”
He kissed the ache between her legs and she was lost in a torrent of sensation, beset on all sides by things her senses had been too lazy to notice before. The gentle pressure of the pillow beneath her head. The lingering scent of lavender on their skin. The sound of Luc’s breathing, ragged and barely under control. The way his tongue was both soft and hard against the softest place on her body. The way the air around her was dense with his patience and generosity.
That was love, wasn’t it? Surrounding another person with your patience and generosity. Putting their well-being ahead of your own, secure in the knowledge that they were doing the same for you. She had never loved someone before, not like this. She would have to figure this out, how to love Luc Marchand, this man who had been ill-treated by love in the past and yet had dared to open himself back up to her.
She would have to try to see him as he saw her. She would start today. Now.
She touched his head, wound a lock of his smooth hair around her finger. “Switch places with me,” she said.
He did as she asked, without a word. He took her hand and pulled her up, then slipped beneath her. Marie pressed her body on top of his, then pressed her lips to his mouth.
“You said I should ask if my body needed something.”
“Oui.”
“What if my heart needs something?”
“I will give that to you, as well. Of course.”
“My heart needs this. I want to see you, too.” She kissed his lips once more than slid her body over his until his erection caressed her face. She kissed him, exploring his hard length with her lips, softly, blindly. She found the vein and ran her tongue along it.
“Marie,” Luc groaned. “My heart may not survive this.”
“I know CPR. Don’t worry.”
“Have you ever actually resuscitated someone?”
“There’s a first time for everything.”
She kissed the tip, then slid her lips over him.
“Marie—”
She pulled him in and out of her mouth. With Richard, she had always hurried, wanting to get this over with, her mind elsewhere, ever alert for the signs that he was almost done so she could move away and avoid swallowing. With Luc, she would be patient and generous. She brushed her fingers over his tightly-coiled hair. She took note of every change in his breathing, the speed of his hips rocking beneath her. She pulled on him harder, tightened her lips.
“Marie. Please. I don’t want to come this way.”
She let her lips slide slowly off him, taking him into her hands to ease the change in temperature. His skin was like the softest silk, softer even than the blindfold she was wearing. She leaned her head to caress him with the scarf, warmed by her skin now.
He groaned again and she knew what his eyes looked like. Even with the blindfold tied around her head, she could see the expression in his eyes. It was the same one she’d seen after he kissed her that first day, kissed her to help her see colors better. Wild. Dark. Desperate.
She positioned her hips above his and eased him inside her. She moaned as he filled her inch by slow delicious inch. When her hips reached his again, she paused to savor the feeling of Luc inside her, completely, fully inside her. She began to rock her hips, letting him slide in and out of her. She gasped for air with each stroke.
“I didn’t know it would feel this way.”
“How does it feel, love? Tell me.”
“Like you’re touching me everywhere. Even though you’re barely touching me at all.”
She leaned over his chest and quickened her pace.
“I can’t wait, Luc.”
“Don’t wait.”
He pulled the blindfold off as she got closer and closer to the edge. He was watching her, studying her face, memorizing the details of the moment, looking for the planes and shadows, the light and dark ... he was planning to draw her like this. He saw her. She’d been planning to run away to another city so people would see her the way she really was, when the one person who had always seen her was right here. Seeing her right now.
When the orgasm hit her, she felt her body split open and fill with waves of light and air and color. She was flooded with a dancing swirl of color, almost too bright to bear, like looking into the sun. Luc had made her see color. Finally.
His hips bucked beneath her, into her, and she collapsed onto his sweating chest, spent physically and emotionally. She struggled to get her breathing under control, leaning her forehead on his shoulder, watching the colors fade and recede over the horizon in her mind.
“Ma chérie. My love.”
He caressed her cheek, then tugged gently at her parted lips. Someday I will paint you like this. He made that promise the evening he told her he was in love with her.
She looked at him tenderly. His eyes were no longer dark and desperate. Instead, they glowed, eager and hopeful with a question only she knew the answer to.
“Yes,” she whispered. “Draw me.”
Turn the page for a sneak preview of Chiaroscuro, the sequel to Drawing Lessons
An excerpt from Chiaroscuro, the sequel to Drawing Lessons …
Marie
The pain was its own anesthesia. I fought to stay alert as the gurney sped down the hallway. A tornado of French swirled around me, with the occasional lapse into English to speak to me. Valerie Marchand clutched my hand as she ran alongside. It wasn’t supposed to be her hand, though I was most grateful that she had been home when my water broke. Eternally grateful for all she’d done for me in the past nine months. Housed me, fed me, cried with me.
When the gurney hit the doors to the operating suite, her fingers fell away.
“I’ll be waiting outside. You’re doing great, Marie. She’s almost here.”
I wasn’t doing great. Not generally and certainly not at the present moment. The umbilical cord was wrapped around my baby’s neck. This wasn’t how she was supposed to be born. I had envisioned the birth of my first child as a happy, joyous moment. Physically painful, sure. But I would be surrounded by love as I struggled valiantly through labor, then overcome by a wonderful peace when my red-faced and wrinkled daughter was laid, swaddled in a blanket, into my arms. Followed by a passionate, grateful kiss.
Instead, I was headed into surgery alone—in a foreign country where I still barely spoke the language—to have my daughter cut out of me. They might as well cut out my heart while they were at it. It was a dead organ, and I had no more use for it.
I felt the wheels of the gurney lock into place, then a needle stab my arm. My legs and back and stomach were already numb from the epidural. My eyes struggled to focus on the whirl of activity around me, the doctor and nurses prepping for surgery. I was frantic to wipe my eyelashes but afraid to move my free arm and even more afraid to call attention to my tears. To my terror and cowardice and despair. A big blue screen appeared in front of my face, blocking my view of what was to happen next.
Even then, I had been certain he was going to burst throu
gh the doors at any moment, call my name, grab my hand. There would be apologies for being late and I would tearfully forgive him. But when I felt the tugging sensation in my abdomen and heard the startled cries of my daughter, I knew.
Luc Marchand—my lover and friend, my teacher, the only person who had ever really seen me, father of my child—wasn’t coming back.
* * *
Luc
I fucked up.
I. Fucked. Up. I wanted to shout it across the street, across Fifth Avenue, loud enough for her to hear over the noise of taxis and sirens and the madding crowd of university students. But I couldn’t. Nishi Bhat had been in town for the past week, and I had yet to catch Marie in public without her.
Nishi was Marie’s best friend, her advocate, her protector. She was damn good at all three of those jobs. Unfortunately for me. Nishi had once explained to me in great detail—and flawlessly in my own language—exactly what would happen to me if I ever hurt Marie.
Then I went and hurt Marie. About as badly as one could hurt a person you loved. I had given in to fear, caved to my own demons. I had failed to trust her when she had never done anything to make me doubt her trust.
My phone sat heavy in the pocket of my jeans, filled with voice mails and texts from my sister, my parents, Sam. Sam, a friend who had put up with so much shit from me over the years.
For the first two weeks I was gone, Sam had sent me a daily text. She’s not Grace. She’s not Grace. She’s not Grace. I hadn’t responded. Not to Sam or anyone. Then finally, god-fucking-dammit Luc! That was the last I’d heard from Sam until ten days ago when she texted me a newspaper article, and nothing else. No personal message, or hello or how are you. My voice mails to her went unanswered.
Well, I deserved it. I can’t argue that. I hadn’t drugged Marie and left her on a street corner late at night for an ambulance to find or threatened to kidnap her and dump her in rehab, smearing her name and reputation, as her ex-husband had. No, I had done something infinitely worse. I had promised to protect her and love her and be with her forever. Then I left.
So no way in hell was I going to even attempt to speak to Marie with Nishi Bhat right there. I may be an idiot, but I’m not stupid. My balls pulled up protectively into my body just at the thought.
Instead, I stood on the street every day at five o’clock and watched Marie exit the odd building she worked in, a great soaring cathedral of a skyscraper. Nishi was always waiting for her just outside the heavy, ponderous revolving door. Together they walked to the daycare center with the cheerful mural of dancing jungle animals outside, then home to Marie’s apartment.
Yes, this was creepy behavior. But I couldn’t help myself. Every day I hoped that today would be the day Nishi was gone, and Marie alone again. This wasn’t that day, either, and so I stood, helplessly, watching the two of them walk along the sidewalk on the other side of the street. Marie had cut her hair. Now it curled around the nape of her neck. Some days, she pulled it back neatly with a single barrette. Other days, like today, it bounced and swung in the wind. It was November so Marie was always bundled up in a coat. Leather boots hid her calves. It was like a suit of armor.
She looked happy, smiling and chatting with Nishi. What had I expected? To find her wan and pale, depressed, joyless? Marie was a stronger woman than that. Of course, she had picked herself up and put her life back together. And now here I was, hoping for another chance and hoping against hell that I wouldn’t fuck up her new life.
The list of things I didn’t know about her new life could have filled a library. What she did. Who she did it with. What she had named our daughter. My own sister had refused to tell me. Said a father shouldn’t have to ask what his daughter’s name is. Fair enough.
Why had she moved to Pittsburgh, of all places? What had happened to San Francisco? And, most important, did she even want to see me again? Would she ever let me see our daughter?
Julia Gabriel writes contemporary romance fiction. She lives in New England, where she teaches writing at a university and divides her time between writing, reading and quilting. Find out about new releases, read exclusive excerpts and more! Sign up for Julia’s email newsletter at http://www.authorjuliagabriel.com.
Books by Julia Gabriel
Falling for the Prodigal Son
Cupcakes & Chardonnay
Next to You
Drawing Lessons
Wild Beautiful Man
Drawing Lessons Page 28