Art-Crossed Love

by Libby Rice

  “So?” Scarlet burst out. “Where are you getting with Cole, who won’t let you paint what you paint?”

  Lissa said nothing.

  When Scarlet went on, Cole could detect her frustration through the phone and the door. “Dali didn’t do impressionist paintings of lily pads,” she insisted, “and Monet didn’t take on bizarre surrealism. You paint in the abstract. Act like it. This deal you’ve made with Cole is a game that can’t mine your best work. Why are you trying so hard?”

  A harsh clank reverberated through the wood at his ear, rather like a shot glass slamming to a dresser. Guess Lissa had decided to drink alone.

  “Thanks,” Lissa said on a choking cough.

  “I’m sorry—”

  “No, I mean it. You stuck with me through the hard stuff. My other private-school friends faded to black when I shipped out to the figurative wrong side of the tracks. You came closer, loyal as ever.”

  Cole’s head spun with the rapid-fire topic shift. What did Lissa mean by “hard stuff?” Did Scarlet know about the bullying?

  “We made it,” Lissa said, “through schools in different worlds, colleges on opposite ends of the country, and a decade of my failed attempts at artistic discovery. You’ve been my best friend. Most of the time you’ve been my only friend.”

  “But?” Scarlet asked.

  Cole smiled in the dark. He’d only met Scarlet once in New York. Then and now, she’d proven herself a smart woman, one who knew a mouthful of compliments from Lissa Blanc was the hors d’oeuvre, not the main course.

  “But Cole isn’t a game.” Exactly. “He’s merely stubborn and fucked up and totally inflexible.”

  Let’s not forget “sexy” and “bonable.”

  Cole stood completely still, pressing silent fingers into the doorjamb, unwilling to miss either a blessing or a curse from this woman who doled out plenty of both.

  “My little bargain with him,” Lissa continued, “doesn’t have to be permanent. The point is to get us working together, communicating, compromising. Eventually he’ll come to appreciate my point of view. He has to because I’m right.”

  Don’t count on it.

  “And I do need him,” Lissa went on. “You know my last show in Manhattan, on opening night, when we both met Cole?” Her pragmatic cheer had dimmed considerably. Defeat charred the edges of her speech. “Time Out NY called my works ‘glancing’ and ‘uneasy’ with ‘shortcuts designed to disguise limited skills.’ Apparently I’m a ‘hipster fuck-off’ who ‘barely passes muster as a painter.’”

  Cole twitched, dragging his head along the door before he could tamp down the outrage that surfaced on Lissa’s behalf. Her work might not appeal to him personally, but she had talent in spades. Who the hell were these people who attacked with such casual cruelty?

  Me. The admission powered into his conscience against his will. He’d repeatedly cut at Lissa with comments that were only marginally more palatable.

  Her voice low and wary, Scarlet waded in. “Lissa, honey, don’t pay attention—”

  “My father wouldn’t be giving me a gallery, Scarlet. It would be a museum because I couldn’t sell a single work with reviews like that. Dad means well, but the path of least resistance is killing my reputation. I can’t balance on the Picasso pedestal he puts me on, so he’s out. Yet I do need help, so Cole’s in.”

  Did she? Lissa relegated herself to the land of the needy and incompetent with too much ease. Fuck the critics—again, like him—who’d been so convincing.

  “Here?” Lissa continued. “Once upon a time, someone here liked my paintings. Maybe that person was Kate and not Cole, but I either resign myself to selling to the sycophants chasing after Robert Blanc—them and only them—or I break out with something completely different. Cole might be a repressed devil with a difficult past, an unforgiving set of expectations, and an irresistible tongue, but he can help me.”

  Stomach still churning, Cole acknowledged that Lissa might be grasping to stay positive, but she had no shortage of conviction. He’d preferred to think of her as a self-important, egotistical little trust funder. Unexpected compassion over the very real obstacles she’d faced gentled his judgment and tamed his plans for the altercation barreling their way.

  “Bottoms up, Scar.” Another cringe-worthy clank of glass against wood. “They say psychopaths are predisposed for career success. If that’s true, here’s to a man who can’t possibly let me down.”

  The door flew open before Cole could beat an outraged retreat.

  ******

  “You,” Lissa spat, clutching at her satin robe in an effort to hide the fact that she’d given Cole enough credit to make his spying a surprise. The kind of surprise that found her wearing a short robe and even shorter nighty. Only a faint bumping at the door had tipped her off. The sound had come from much higher than Sasha’s usual head-butted knocks.

  “Speaking of psychopaths,” she told Scarlet in her most cutting what-a-coincidence voice, “Gotta go.”

  Lissa hung up with a forceful finger-flick against her touchscreen, sorry she couldn’t slam a weighty, old-school receiver into a cradle. Cole had stayed away when she’d been yelling her questions to the ceiling. Now he’d gotten a load of her private affairs and, if the way his blue eyes had darkened from the sea in morning to the sky at night meant anything, her less-than-demure and more-than-chilled nipples.

  He crowded her backward into the bedroom, using his big body to herd her toward the bed. “Psychopath?” The low rumble couldn’t be called pleased, but no matter. Cole forgot that he, not she, was in the wrong.

  “Let me think.” Lissa tapped her temple with an index finger. “Cunning. Manipulative. Someone who knows the difference between right and wrong, but dismisses it as applying to”—she cleared her throat—“him. Egocentric. Untruthful.”

  Thinking on it, she warmed to the idea. Cole wore faded jeans and a crisp, white undershirt. The unassuming clothing magnified the lean, rolling muscle prowling in her direction. Like so many times before, words became her defense. “I question whether you exhibit above-average intelligence or charm, but I’ll concede you have, at least in the past, demonstrated an ability to love and feel guilt. All in all, so many factors tend toward—”

  “Are you done?”

  “Depends.” On how fast and how hard he groveled. Or possibly the removal of his shirt. She couldn’t say which.

  She let a bright smile steal over her face, hopefully duping him into assuming the best. “Utter lack of shame. Antisocial behavior. And my personal favorite—a failure to accept the consequences, resulting…”

  The backs of his fingers trailed along her jaw and then her bottom lip, killing the end of her brilliant insult. Before she could adjust to the touch, he softly pressed his lips to hers in a sweet, closed-mouth kiss. “I’m sorry,” he breathed on the breakaway. “I was wrong. I shouldn’t have stayed once I heard you talking. Yet I couldn’t go.”

  Groveling accomplished. “Okay, only a mini-psychopath,” she grumbled. When he’d kissed her downstairs, she’d pitted her overwhelming need against the knowledge that he’d later regret getting close. Very little time had passed, but this touch, this kiss, didn’t have the same vibe. The attraction had mutated into something more acceptable, driven by chemistry and curiosity, not simple fuck-on-the-table lust.

  Which, frankly, was way scarier.

  Cole didn’t reach out again. He moseyed over to the nightstand where her—actually, his—bottle and shot glass awaited. “You’re right. I like vodka.”

  Picking up the bottle, he poured a shot, first into the glass and then down his throat in a smooth, undulating swallow. He set the small tumbler back on the stand with precise movements before patting the rim. “That’s how you place a glass on antique wood.”

  She couldn’t resist. “Pathological egocentricity?”

  “More like being right.”

  Their banter had eased into flirtation, and Lissa wondered if she should press her advanta
ge, Rhea’s recent admissions buzzing in her head. Moments. Betrayal.

  When she opened her mouth, Cole said, “Shhh. It’s my turn. You’ve been asking questions since you landed on my front porch.”

  A heartbeat passed while he considered her quietly, head cocked, then, “Does Scarlet know you downplay everything bad about your life?”

  Lissa could pretend to misunderstand, but Cole had heard, heard her thank Scarlet for being a friend without the slightest implication that the friendship had been her savior during the hardest of times. Combine that with what he already knew and…

  “No.”

  “So when you recognized her for being there for you, you meant it in a general sense. Scarlet doesn’t know what happened when you went off the rails via education-by-tax-dollar while she continued along with education-by-tax-advantaged-savings-account.”

  The truth shrank Lissa’s shoulders inward, but she straightened. “Scarlet had her own problems. She didn’t need mine.”

  “You at least knew about hers,” he said smoothly. “Why not spread the burden?”

  Because feelings of worthlessness were hard to share, especially with extremely worthy people.

  Shrugging it off, Lissa said, “I don’t dwell in the past.” She let a silent like you linger between them. “I focus on the future.” A prudent choice, since most found her past distinctly lacking. “Try it sometime.”

  Normally she’d have softened the demand with “please,” or “maybe,” but she’d noticed Cole reacted better to terse commands. Give him softness, and he exploited it like a manipulative kid wooing a helicopter parent.

  He arched a tawny brow. “With you?”

  “Anyone, anytime. Let go, Cole.”

  “Ah.” He poured another shot. Drank it. Set the glass down with extreme care. “There is one thing I’d like to do in the future, as you say.” He came forward to where she’d sat on the edge of the bed. Nudging between her knees, he bent low and said against her ear, “You called this a ‘lick it, slam it, suck it’ kind of day. So far I think we’ve left it at ‘slam it.’ In the future, I’d like to get on with the ‘licking’ and the ‘sucking.’”

  “Mmm.” She almost moaned outright, barely managing to make the sound imitate mild intrigue.

  “Lissa”—he whispered now, and the low sound vibrated against her throat—“it’s the future.”

  His tongue traced along her collarbone. “There’s a lick.” Then he pulled that same wet heat along the vee of her robe. She barely noticed his hands untie the sash until the material fell away, firing the tips of her already throbbing breasts in its sweeping wake.

  Deep, uneven breaths coaxed her through the flare of expertly-stoked sensation. All the while, she reminded herself that the pleasure he gave had started to fit a pattern—Cole distracted her with intimacy when he either felt strong, and generally negative, emotion or when he wanted to weaken her for some personal coup. The man used sex like she used words—a defense mechanism.

  On the mountain, he’d talked of fucking when his frustration had won out. Downstairs, he gone round the smexy bend in an apparent venting of his spleen. In the hall right after her arrival, he’d spoken of his operational dick, but only to warn her away.

  So she wasn’t surprised when he started to talk.

  “I didn’t want to like you, Lissa, but these breasts defy dislike.”

  All right, she hadn’t expected that. His mouth still worked along the bodice of her nightgown—if the wisp of cloth deserved such a distinguished title—while his hands moved to her knees. They circled round and round, never moving up or down, soothing the skittishness she pretended not to feel.

  “But I wonder”—yep, here comes the end run—“why you seek to fix me, when you’re equally broken.”

  She heard the question but couldn’t formulate a response other than, “Ooooh,” because he’d gone from using his mouth to enunciate the last syllable, slow and easy, to enveloping one of her achy nipples through the silken threads of her gown.

  “There’s a suck.” He drew back, allowing the heat of his next words to wash over the sodden material. “Hmmm? Why must I get better while you refuse to acknowledge ever being hurt? Such a double standard.”

  The hands stroking her knees finally began to travel upward. Lissa’s head whirled in the web Cole spun with his leading questions, the leisurely movements, the smell of the citrus shampoo that lingered in his ruffled hair, even the way his jeans scratched her inner thighs as his fingers made their way to the same skin.

  “Not true,” she managed on a ragged exhale. “I told you—”

  The quiet cluck of his tongue halted her feeble excuse. “Yes, you did, didn’t you?” Wet heat scorched her other nipple, again through her nightgown, before it was gone. “You said some revealing things.”

  A tickling sensation swept across her core. Oh God, he’d arrived. Outside her wispy panties, Cole walked his fingers back and forth with barely-detectable pressure. Up and down. Up. And. Down.

  “I have a theory.” He spoke into her chest in a rough, mesmerizing lilt. The tender strokes between her thighs stopped, but the back of his hand stayed put, now pressing inward and releasing in a rhythm that set her teeth on edge. “You went through hell after you transferred schools. There because your family had experienced a dip in income, you still had more than your classmates. Out of jealousy or immaturity or whatever fucking thing allows young people to reject others’ differences, they drilled you—physically and mentally—with the idea that individual Lissa was useless and lacked practically all value.”

  Ten minutes ago, Lissa might have bet her Jackson Pollock that when faced with this kind of psychobabble, she’d have shrugged absently and spouted something scathing and evasive. Perhaps, “Does your obsession with me make you uncomfortable?” or “Wanna hear my equally plausible theory about how leprechauns are actually the children, not the chasers, of rainbows?”

  But Cole’s fingertips were apparently made of truth serum, so her witty comments only floated in the inaccessible recesses of her mind, refusing to get close enough to grasp. “Such a psychic”—tongue—“mind.”

  “There’s more,” he said.

  I certainly hope so.

  She grasped at his hips, pulling him in until he touched the bed, so close she dislodged his hand from her center. Scooting her butt closer to the edge, she brought their bodies into contact, urging the ridge of his zipper into her sweet spot.

  Head thrown back, he groaned at the ceiling. “I knew you’d be like this—hot and needy and demanding.”

  Lissa whimpered, wanting to show him all about demanding in the most basic way imaginable.

  He snapped his head upright and lowered to his knees by the bed. “How about I give you what I know you want”—he stopped and swallowed, seeming to collect himself—“if you respond in kind.”

  Somehow, Lissa knew in her bones that responding “in kind” would not involve going to her knees like him.

  “Don’t worry,” he said, “I’ll make it a fair trade. Now”—he grasped the edges of her panties and began a slow slide down her legs—“why have you accepted your parents’ help when, clearly, you haven’t wanted to?”

  A crisp epithet rose to her lips but drowned when two of his fingers sank into that sleek spot that didn’t care what he asked. “It’s the only way…” she gasped.

  “Your skin is like wet, grasping silk. It likes me more, I think, than you do.” His caress settled into a pulsing stroke that mimicked his earlier touches to her panties. “The only way to what?” he prompted.

  Her abdomen clenched, and she bit down on her cheeks, hard. Answering would be fine at this point, but she refused to release the wail that would accompany any kind of speech. He’d done exactly as she’d predicted—snuck behind her plot to snatch the keys to his past with questions about her own, and used his hands and mouth in devious ways to win.

  Breath whistled through his teeth. “Lissa, don’t make me hold back. I don�
�t think I can.” He pushed her torso onto the bed, but not before she spied the sweat beading on his upper lip. Staring overhead, she could only feel him move. Light touches along her folds went deeper and deeper until he stroked into her channel with two fingers, all the way to the hilt.

  Instant fire tore through her. “Cole, please!” She bucked her pelvis into his hand, clenching so hard she felt him tug to withdraw.

  “Relax,” he coaxed. “Let me go. I’ll return. I promise.”

  But he didn’t. After forcing her traitorous muscles to loosen, Cole slid to the entrance of her body. There he circled, barely breaching the sensitive tissues with a knuckle, giving her only a hint of penetration. “You went to college in New York, right? Columbia?”

  She nodded frantically, trapping needy sobs in the back of her throat with quick pants.

  “During all that time, from sixteen on, you were painting. By college, though, your dad had completed several huge highway contracts all around New York and New Jersey. Finances would never be an issue again.”

  Enough. “Let me touch you, Cole.”

  His voice shook. “That’s not the trade, babe.” He leaned in and cinched the deal with one soft, teasing swirl of tongue.

  She bowed off the bed.

  Instantly, the steel band of his arm fanned across her abdomen. Patiently, he pressed her down and held. “You never told your family.” A feathering streak of heat skated up one side of her cleft. “You never told anyone.” Then down the other. “Forgetting proved impossible, especially when the money and those assumptions of worthlessness followed you into adulthood. Now you take your family’s help because some success is better than none, which is what you think you’d have on your own. And”—Jesus Christ, there was more?—“you feel obligated to accept because otherwise you’d have to explain how taking the help had hurt you in the past, and you refuse to punish them with the truth.”

  His fingers joined the fray, delivering on his earlier promise to return deep. Between his strong hands, slow tongue, and stubbled chin, Lissa didn’t have a chance against her release.