Except that’s bullshit. My eyes follow her discarded bra down so I can watch her underwear settle around her feet, then her calves as she steps out of them and nudges them to the side. I start at the bottom and take it to the top. Long, supple legs flow up to round, full hips, a flat stomach, full, perfect breasts, and a trembling, coquettish challenge in her eyes. She’s biting her lip until the skin turns white and she doesn’t even realize it.
“What the fuck are you doing?”
She puts her hands on her hips. The motion is hesitant, her entire being quivering with adolescent bravado. I can barely speak with all the blood rushing from my brain. She’s fighting not to cover herself, wrap her arms around her chest, and squirm awkwardly to try to undo what she’s done. Her nipples tighten into needy points, and I want them in my mouth as I thrust inside her.
“Oh, so you’re fine with drawing my imaginary tits, but there’s something wrong with the real thing? If you’re going to draw me naked, you might as well represent me honestly.”
The truth is, I didn’t do her justice. She’s gorgeous. Classical sculptors aspired for thousands of years to carve breasts as perfect as hers, and they all failed. Her flawless body astonishes me. I haven’t felt this way in years, if ever. My cock throbs in my jeans, screaming at me to take her now. We stand locked in place for an awkward eternity, her display a challenge and an invitation. In my mind’s eye, her belly swells, her breasts grow heavier.
“Are you going to let me pose, or not?”
I’m a virgin. The words ring in my head. Why did she say that? Just blurt it out like that? Was she trying to tell me that I’m privileged? She didn’t need to explain that.
“Put your clothes on.”
She ignores my order with a defiant smirk. “Where do you want me?”
“Out of my cabin.”
“Naked?” she says. “I’ll freeze.”
When she says the word, I stumble over my own thoughts. My brain is starving, and my dick is close to taking control. She has a runner’s youthful body, sweeping curves and languid lines. She is an artist’s dream, the perfect model. Her every movement is a symphony of light and shadow. The faint freckles on her shoulders and stark contrast of olive tan and creamy pale skin a challenge to my skill.
I want to paint her and I want to fuck her. “Clothes. Now.”
“You don’t mean that.”
The look on her face is opaque, her intentions lost by her clumsy attempts at seduction, pursed lips, and exaggerated stare. Her eyes plead far too loudly.
She’s cute and precious and utterly fuckable. I can’t stop thinking about how she would feel around my cock, the way her body would react to taking me. I have zero doubt that she’s never been with a man before…even if she hadn’t blurted out that she’s a virgin.
She sits on the stool by the window and every tiny motion of her body is a struggle with the urge to conceal herself again. It only makes her more enticing.
“You want me to paint you?”
“Draw me like one of your French girls,” she says.
I look her in the eye, because if I don’t keep them on her face, I will stare at her tits. If I stare at her tits, I will put my hands on them. And if I put my hands on them, my tongue will follow, and then I’ll have to taste her everywhere. It won’t stop until we’re tangled on the floor and I’m inside her.
She purses her lips and I imagine them wrapped around my cock, pressed hard as her cheeks hollow from sucking me down. I don’t know whether I’d knot my hand in her hair and thrust, or caress her as she kneels between my legs.
“Are you supposed to stare at your subject like that?” She flinches slightly when I grab her arm. “What are you doing?”
The hint of fearful anticipation in her voice as the back part of her brain thinks, Yes, this is actually happening, tinges her voice beautifully. I soften my grip on her skin but turn her on the stool, positioning her arm and then her legs.
“Can you hold this pose?”
I should be ashamed. I have her posed to squeeze her magnificent breasts between her arms and arch her back. She shifts slightly on the stool and looks at me. I see it in her eyes, her sexuality awakening there like the first hint of a sunrise. This is perfect. She’s perfect, and the sight of her wicked thoughts framed by her youthful face makes me want to explode.
“I think so,” she says. “It’s a little provocative, don’t you think?”
Her foot brushes my leg as she shifts on the stool. I’m close enough to smell her. I taste the tang of my un-flowery soap clinging to her skin, mingling with her light scent. Her hips touch my cock through my jeans and I shudder all over. It takes everything I have not to spin her around, throw her legs over my shoulders, and fuck her brains out.
Except I can’t. She’s not ready for that. The idea has never excited me before. I’ve never been with a virgin, never had any interest in it, but since she’s told me, it’s all I can think about.
“A little adjustment,” I tell her. It’s an excuse to touch her between her shoulder blades.
Her tits are so close. I think of the weight of them in my hands, the feeling of her lips pressed to mine. She looks hungry. Her body edges toward me without moving when I draw closer, our auras mingling.
I step back and the effort is like ripping my own arm off. Sitting on the sofa gives me the perfect excuse to cross one leg over the other to hide my raging erection. The sketch I started goes in the hearth, crumpled up so I can start over.
“You’ve posed before?” I ask as the image on the paper starts to take shape.
“With my clothes on.” Her voice softens into a confession. “I’ve been asked to sit for nudes before but I never did it. This is the first time a man has seen me naked.”
She swallows hard. I watch her throat bob, and her whole body shifts just slightly. The pencil stops moving in my hand as I focus on the subtle way her breasts move with her shallow breathing. I could paint every breath she takes and it would not be a wasted life.
“What’s wrong?”
“Trying to capture some detail,” I tell her, glancing down to continue the sketch.
“Why did you draw me with vines and stuff in my hair?”
I can’t let her rattle me. I don’t even know why I’m doing this…
Yes you do, you pervert.
It’s an excuse to stare at her naked. Doesn’t every artist dream of capturing a beautiful nude and then fucking the living daylights out of her?
“You keep licking your lips.”
I posed her so her legs would block my view of the sweet treasure between them. If I can’t see her soft lower lips, I can’t imagine them swelling around my cock as I take her.
Focus, Lucas.
My chest is already aching. Once isn’t going to be enough. She could be my favorite subject. I need to capture her as she was when she first stripped, her first fumbling steps into the raw power of a naked woman’s sensuality. I also need to capture her growing into her confidence with every breath.
“Can I see it?”
“No.”
“Are you going to tease me?”
I can’t help but smile. Her amateurish attempts at seduction take me back. I remember when I was so inexperienced that one little hint like that would make me cream my jeans.
She deserves that, a man who knows restraint.
“Don’t move,” I snap at her when she starts to shift.
“I’m freezing and my butt is going to have a permanent indentation from this stool.”
I smirk. Her ass could crack walnuts. She has nothing to worry about, except my overwhelming desire to squeeze it. She is shivering, though, and not from nervousness at exposing herself. That’s passed. I speed up my work; this won’t be a finished piece, just the first of many.
I need to keep her here. I’ll need a dozen studies of her in various poses before paint touches canvas. I have to do her justice.
Or is that just an excuse? The longer she’s here, the more li
kely I am to break down and take her. That was her plan the moment she bared herself to me. There is some nagging doubt somewhere that it’s all a ploy to exploit my connections.
She has talents, though. That pretty little head of hers is far from empty. I went through her photographs, all of them, and not just the ones of me. She has a natural gift for choosing and framing subjects.
Fuck, I’m so horny for this girl it hurts.
“That’s enough for now. Get dressed and warm up.”
Her inexperience shows. She squeezes her tits before she stands up, steps too hard so as to make herself jiggle. Then she bends at the hips with her long legs held taut as she scoops up her bra and panties from the floor.
God damn me to hell. I take a good look, and my mind floods with a dozen fantasies at once; her ass bouncing against my stomach as I fuck her from behind. Splaying her out on the bed, watching her wriggle as I finger her, the look in her eyes as I enter her. How warm and silky smooth she’d feel under my hands.
After she tugs her hoodie back on, she turns and looks at me. “So, am I a good model?”
“Maybe if you talked less.” My tone is light, teasing.
“Ha ha.” Then she shivers. “Can you put more wood on the fire?”
“Are you going to chop it for me?” I growl.
She makes a swing with an imaginary axe and thrusts out her flawless ass. I have to ball up my hands to stop from giving her a hard smack on that bubble. The burn on her skin and the look on her face would be worth it. She has a bratty streak, this one. Maybe something about me brings that out.
“First you trespass, then you use up all my hot water, and now you want to burn up all my wood. I figure you expect me to feed you, too.”
Stupid testosterone-fueled urges to protect her flood my veins and harden my cock again. Once a woman has displayed her nude body, you can never look at her the same again. I look at her baggy top and know there’s a goddess hiding underneath.
A goddess who isn’t wearing a bra. She’s still holding it. “You might as well feed me.”
The only thing I want to feast on tonight is her, to feel her uncoil beneath me. The idea throbs in my head. Virgin, virgin, virgin. What if she’s never come before? I picture her flushed and sweaty, her unfocused eyes full of reverence, desire, worship.
She sweeps around the kitchen island and stands next to me while I start up the stove. “What is that?”
“It runs on propane.”
“Like the little ones at camp.”
I give her an exasperated look.
She shrugs. “What are we having?”
I want to have you. Her eyes are so bright and innocent.
Damn it all to hell, I can’t fucking stand it.
I lean in to kiss her. Alexa parts her lips. The warm sweetness of her breath is intoxicating, and the flood of sensation turns me all around. Her body molds to mine. My hand is in her hair, her legs around my waist, my fingers digging into her ass as my cock throbs against her stomach.
Still I don’t kiss her.
I almost throw her onto the kitchen counter and fuck her right there, but I push her back. “We’re having pork chops. Then I’m taking you back.”
She blinks, confused. “But it’s too dark.”
I look at the window. She’s right. Damn it. “You can sleep here tonight. There’s a spare bedroom. And then you’re going back where you came from first thing in the morning if I have to drag you.”
She smiles, a big grin that melts something in my chest.
Chapter 5
Alexa
The cold sheets can’t cool my burning body. All night I toss and turn, seized with a mad desire to tiptoe into Lucas’ room and slip into bed with him. Sitting on that stool, naked, while a man I just met sketched me was the most erotic experience in my life. He barely touched me, but I felt every stroke of his pencil. Occasionally his eyes would flick up to study me. Though it wasn’t warm in the living room, his burning gaze was enough to make my thighs slick. Lucas capturing my every detail while I sat there in the nude was so much more thrilling than the boys in college and their slobbering kisses. He drew me for over an hour, and when he was done his lips hovered a fraction of a centimeter away from mine.
He was really going to kiss me.
I closed my eyes and waited, heart pounding. I could almost taste his flaming heat, and then he pulled away. I told him I wanted to be his model, but I want much, much more than that.
Giving up on sleep, I throw back the covers and stand. I pick up the phone sitting on my nightstand. No new messages, even though I texted Jessica that wasn’t coming home for the night and that I’d decided to bunk with a kind stranger I met in the woods. Her reply came at 2 a.m.: K.
Seriously, that’s all I get? Never mind all the red flags, I’m supposed to be her best friend. Maybe I should’ve worded it differently, but I think there’s a high probability she would’ve still sent me a k. Thanks for your concern, Jess.
Shaking my head, I pad through the cozy cabin in my bare feet and head toward the kitchen. It all comes down to priorities, I think. Girls my age are obsessed with having a good time. They’re stuck in the present. Me? I’m all about the future. Husband. Career. Family. Preferably in that order.
Too bad the guys my age don’t seem to give a damn about that. Not yet, anyway. Lucas on the other hand… He’s so gorgeous and talented, I thought for sure he’d be married. But no girlfriend, either? That’s crazy.
My tongue wets my lips. I enter the living room and pass the wonderful canvases. I pause near the easel. A shudder of pleasure runs through me when I remember him sitting behind it, watching me. It’s insane that he’s up here all alone.
Weak light filters into the cabin through the window. Gray sunshine illuminates the neat kitchen, and I take a second to admire how tidy everything is. I crack open the fridge and find it well stocked with plenty of meat and vegetables.
What should I make him for breakfast?
A big guy like him probably eats his weight in protein every day. My eyes find a yellow carton of eggs and I grab it, smacking the door closed. Then I search his cupboards for a mixing bowl and find a clear glass one, cracking several eggs inside.
It’s as though I’m made for this kitchen. The whisk is in the sliding drawer exactly where I thought it’d be, and it’s not hard to find the rest of the ingredients. I don’t stop to think if he would mind. Cooking makes me feel at home, no matter where I am. It’s not a chore, especially if I’m doing it for someone I like. Photography is different. I have to think about the composition, the lighting, shutter speed, f-stop, everything. When I’m preparing a meal, my shoulders relax and my brain goes on autopilot. It’s meditative.
For a moment I stand there and absorb the silence. I forgot what it was like to have a kitchen all to myself. Living in California doesn’t exactly make it practical to rent a place on my own. The only way I could afford an apartment was to split it with Jess. I cringe, thinking of the cramped space back home. Jessica is nice enough, but the countertops are always cluttered with her empty Lean Cuisine boxes and rows of spices that she never uses. When her boyfriend comes over, I’m always the one who makes dinner. It’s not an imposition, really. I look at it as saving them from boxes of overly salted, prepackaged crap.
I swipe my hand over the granite counters, admiring the steel hood and the wide sink. This is a fucking kitchen. Thinking of the pile of dishes waiting for me back home, I look around. My heart aches with envy. It’s such a cozy place, and yet the kitchen’s big enough that I don’t feel cramped. There’s a wide window in the living room that lets the dappled sunshine pour through. I imagine waking up here every morning, planting a kiss on my husband’s rough cheek before making him breakfast like I always do. Then I’d fasten my hiking boots and step outside for a long walk, camera slung around my neck. How amazing would that be?
I’m still smiling at the idea when a voice booms from the living room. “What’s this?”
&n
bsp; Lucas stands in the hall, dressed in only a pair of dangerously low, hip-hugging sweats. The man is slabs and slabs of muscle, not an ounce of fat. He looks like he spends all day working his body to stay strong. From what I saw yesterday, I don’t doubt it for a second. He was chopping wood even though there was a stack leaning against his house. And I think if I hadn’t interrupted him, he would’ve kept going. It was as though he was punishing himself.
“Are you going to answer me, or are you going to keep staring?”
The sight of him is enough to make my words stumble over each other. I feel like a foolish young girl as I sweep my arm over the stove. “Breakfast.”
The tantalizing smell of bacon draws Lucas forward. There’s a scowl on his face that I decide is extremely sexy.
“Don’t worry,” I add quickly. “I’ll clean everything up. Promise.”
But the frown doesn’t vanish from his forehead and he doesn’t back down. He stops a foot away from me, hanging back as though afraid to get too close to me. “I’m the one who’s supposed to feed you.”
Why the hell does that sound like sex? It doesn’t. Stop it. “I-I don’t mind cooking. I do it all the time for Jess and her boyfriend.”
“Yeah, but you’re my guest.” He smiles. “Or trespasser. Whatever, it’s my job to make sure you don’t go hungry.”
I wonder if he’s the type of man who dotes on his woman. I’m getting that vibe, and it warms me to my toes. “You could still feed me,” I say in a coy voice.
His smile widens, dimples carving deep into his cheeks. “I bet you’d love that, wouldn’t you?”
How badly do you want to fuck me after seeing me naked? I wish I had the balls to ask him. I wish I could read his mind. I wish he’d close the distance between us.
But he doesn’t.
“I would.”
Lucas breaks eye contact and clears his throat. He pushes off the kitchen counter, turning away from me to head straight toward the freshly brewed coffee. He pours two cups as I ladle eggs onto his plate with several strips of bacon. He grunts a thank-you as I hand him his breakfast, and then I shut the burners off and join him at the table. Everything is already set with knives and forks. I even found raspberry jam in the fridge and set it in the middle, along with a stack of toast.
Riding Wood Page 3