The Reluctant Nude

by Meg Maguire

  “No.” It was triggering something much different. A breed of sensation Fallon had spent her entire adult life avoiding.

  “You’re very cold.”

  “I have low blood pressure,” Fallon offered. “Unless you meant that figuratively.”

  “No, just your hands,” he said carefully, focused on their point of contact. His fingertips traced small circles over her knuckles. He slid them up to her forearms, raising all the tiny hairs, raising the fear bubbling in her core. She began to shake hard.

  “Oh.” Max’s eyes widened and he yanked his hands away, holding them at a safe distance. “You’re not ready for this,” he said, alarmed. It wasn’t an expression she’d ever seen him wear before.

  “No, I can do it. I have to. I’ll do whatever we have to do to get this statue made. Keep going.”

  “That’s enough for today.”

  “No. It’s fine.” Fallon’s anxiety spiraled. “If this ridiculous project fails, it’s not going to be because of me.”

  “I understand. But understand too, that this is useless to me right now. I don’t need to feel your body. I need to feel you, all that energy. I cannot do this if you are a mess. You’re not ready yet.”

  Anxiety spiked to anger. “I’m doing my best.”

  “Well I’m not carving you when you’re like this. I may as well sculpt you out of sand, you feel so unstable.”

  Fallon pressed her palms to her neck. “God, this is so stupid.”

  “What is stupid?”

  “This. All your energy nonsense. The way you make everything so freaking intense and complicated and weird.”

  “I can’t help that.” His calmness looked as if it was taking a concerted effort.

  Fallon groaned.

  “Why are you angry?” he demanded. “I’m trying to make you as comfortable as I can, yes?”

  “Well, you’re failing.” Fallon narrowed her eyes. “You make me very, very uncomfortable. You’re going to have to work around it, because it’s not going to change.”

  Max stepped away, scraping a chair across the floor and sitting, burying his head in his hands, defeated. He rubbed his eyes and stared up again. “I thought we were making so much progress.”

  “We still would be if you’d just keep going. I’m going to be uncomfortable, doing this. Deal with it. I am.”

  “You have no clue what this is about, do you?”

  “I’m proud to say that everything about you is incomprehensible to me,” Fallon cut back. “Especially all this touching BS. But I’m going along with it. Try and extend me the same courtesy, okay?”

  Max stood, face steely, patience abandoned. He leaned his back against the rail of the spiral staircase and held Fallon’s eyes.

  “What?” she said.

  “Touch me, then.”

  “You?”

  He nodded, neutral.

  “That’s supposed to help?” Her gaze zigzagged over him.

  “Maybe. Maybe not. But try it, Little Miss Scientist. Suspend your empirical disbelief for me.”

  “If that’s what it takes to keep this project moving forward, fine.” She nodded and took a couple of steps closer, studying his face, his arms, the black hair at the collar of his shirt.

  “Fine,” Max agreed, that wicked gleam coming to his eyes. “Fair is fair.”

  He peeled his shirt up from the waist, revealing that body so maddeningly adept at making Fallon’s heart skip a beat. Tossing it aside, he reached down and unbuckled his thick belt. Fallon felt her eyes widen, embarrassed but transfixed as he lowered the zipper and eased his jeans down over slim, toned hips. The garment dropped to the floor and Max stepped out, toying with the waistband of his gray boxer briefs, eyes glued to Fallon’s, demanding her answer to an unspoken question.

  “No. Stop there.” Even as she said it, her eyes roamed to his arms, his navel, the bulge between his thighs. She stopped breathing for several seconds.

  “Go on, then.” His voice was shallow and sharp, a challenge. “Touch me. You can bind my hands if you like.” As if to illustrate this offer, he crossed his wrists and raised them, grasping the iron bars of the staircase behind his head, so disturbingly reminiscent of Fallon’s dreams. A slow smile overtook his lips.

  She swallowed and shook her head. “No, thank you.”

  He caught her eyes with his. “This isn’t about sex, you know.”

  Like hell it wasn’t.

  “This is about sensation,” he said. “Connection.”

  “Fine,” she muttered, feeling as though she was both winning and losing this strange battle of wills. With a steadying breath, she fanned her fingers and set them on his shoulders. The heat of him shocked her anew. Max kept solemn, eyes following her hands as she grazed his neck then traced the tattoo along his collarbone. Clavicula, read the miniscule label. She ran her palms up and down those powerful biceps. His chest was hard and warm under her palms, and she felt his heart beating fast, giving him away behind his veneer of self-control. She melted into the act as she surveyed his tight abdomen, flesh tensing at her touch. She cupped the crests of his hips, feeling the power there, finding it so very easy to picture these muscles pumping hard, flanked by her own legs.

  “Keep going,” he whispered, the rasp in his voice sounding unintentional. “Do you feel what I’m talking about? Do you feel my energy?”

  She nodded, awestruck. His entire body was vibrating, imperceptible but nevertheless unmistakable. “I can feel it.”

  Fallon’s curious hands explored his ribs and waist, the outsides of his thighs. She blushed, then let herself touch his backside. Hard, like the rest of him. His hips tensed. Behind the soft cotton of his briefs, he was growing for her. Her blush deepened, warming not just her cheeks, but her breasts and belly and down between her legs. Her fingertips flirted with the dark curls that trailed from his navel down, mere centimeters from the rigid curve of his erection.

  “You still say this isn’t about sex?” she asked softly.

  Max’s mouth quirked to one side.

  “Do you want me to keep going?” As her thumb edged along his waistband, she wasn’t sure what answer she was hoping for.

  “What do you want?” he asked, breath short.

  His body was so close and ready. No man had ever made Fallon feel this way so…violently before. Ever. Not even close.

  “Have you proven your point yet?” She feigned contempt, studying his powerful body as haughtily as she could muster.

  “Nearly.”

  She moved on, palms surveying his chest and shoulders again, up to the powerful arms bracketing his face. Those arms… She wanted to see them like in her dreams, tensed and fearsome and struggling against restraints.

  From this close, all Max had to do was close the few inches that separated their faces. Fallon gasped as his lips took hers. Heat flooded her chest, but her body’s curiosity was no match for her shock and she pulled away.

  “Don’t ever do that again,” she warned, voice low. She hoped her tone would read as anger, not arousal. She swallowed.

  Max stared at her for a few breaths, then released the bars of the stairway. It took a concerted effort for Fallon to wrestle her attention from the flexing contours of his bare torso, and elsewhere. She glued her eyes to his.

  “You’re walking a very fine line.” She ran her hand over her lips. “And cooperation-wise, don’t think for a moment you just did yourself any favors.”

  “How many lovers have you had?” Max asked, apropos of nothing. So typically Max.

  Fallon kept herself cool, casual, unscandalized. “None of your business.”

  He smiled. “You’re not a virgin?”

  “Of course not.”

  “But you seem unimpressed by the whole idea, yes?”

  She shrugged even as her cheeks heated. Having these questions posed was unnerving enough but having them posed by this man, practically naked, still noticeably aroused, his body—his mere proximity—so adept at flustering her…


  She composed herself. “It’s a bit overrated. I’ve got better things to pour my energy into.”

  “Why is it you so dislike being touched?” Max asked, eyes narrowing with curiosity.

  “You lack a certain amount of tact, did you know that?”

  “I hope no one has mistreated you,” he said.

  “No. It’s just…it’s like being pawed at. It’s a mess. Sex is just a big, overrated mess.”

  “How Victorian you are. Do you know what I think, Fallon?” Goddamn, why did it always feel so raw, hearing her name in this man’s scratchy baritone?

  “I’m happy to say I’ve got absolutely no idea what you’re thinking.”

  “I think you have had poor men,” he said.

  “And I think you’re getting too personal.”

  He dropped his dark gaze. “Very well…”

  Fallon hissed out a breath, exasperated. “No. Go on. You’re obviously dying to share your opinions on the topic of my sex life.”

  “I’m sure I know nothing of it.”

  “Of course you don’t,” she snapped, staring him down. Why didn’t he put his frigging clothes back on already?

  He raised his eyes again to meet her angry ones, face placid. “But I wonder if maybe you oughtn’t be on top?”

  “Oh?” Her hands clenched into fists at her hips.

  “You seem worried. Uncomfortable about these men’s hands on you. I think maybe you need your man, your lover, flat on his back. Hands tied. At your mercy.”

  Get out of my head. “Do I?”

  “It’s only a guess.” He crossed his strong arms over his chest, businesslike. “How do you please yourself?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “When you touch yourself—”

  “That’s too far.”

  He paused, running the very tip of his tongue over the corner of his lips. Then, “Your fingers?”

  “Don’t.”

  “A toy?” he pressed on, brazen. “The bedding?”

  “If you don’t shut your mouth I’ll shut it for you,” she said coldly—as cold as her cheeks were blazing hot.

  He smiled tightly. “Of course.”

  “Good.”

  “Just promise me that you do.”

  She made her eyes into slits, a warning.

  Max pursed his lips a moment. “Have you had a man’s tongue?”

  Fallon fought a short battle between pride and shock. “Of course I have.”

  “And it couldn’t make up for all those clumsy, pawing hands?”

  She shrugged, trying to appear blasé. “I wasn’t all that impressed.”

  “That is a real shame.”

  “Don’t look so smug. I bet you think you can fix me, don’t you? What, one night in your bed and I’ll transform into some enlightened nymphomaniac?”

  “I am not so presumptuous.”

  “Your smile says different. And you’re the most presumptuous man I think I’ve ever met.”

  “Who is this statue for?” Max asked, surprising her. He hadn’t asked that in over a week. “Who is Donald Forrester to you?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “I doubt that. He’s someone who wants you very much. An old lover? A prospective one? I wonder why it is he cannot simply settle for the real thing.”

  “Because he can’t have the real thing,” she said through quaking lips. “Ever.”

  He finally stepped into his jeans and hiked them up his legs. “Ah.”

  “Ah?”

  “You don’t love him?” he asked.

  “No. And you already knew that.”

  “Do you love someone else? Someone who is gone, or who you cannot have? Another woman’s man, perhaps? Or another woman?”

  “I don’t love anyone,” she said. “Not like that.”

  He buckled his belt. “Have you? Did you?”

  She hesitated, feeling the warmth in her cheeks again. “No. Never.”

  He nodded, somber. “But this man, he loves you?”

  “No. I don’t know. Not love… It’s very complicated.”

  Max nodded, slowly, and turned away.

  She studied his tattoos. Infraspinatus fossa. Scapula. She addressed his back. “Don’t act like you pity me.”

  “You read so much into the spaces between words.”

  “My sex life is none of your business, anyway.”

  He turned to face her again, catching her eyes in that inescapable pull. “Right now, and for the next ten weeks, your body and its history are the center of my universe. Everything.” He gestured, fingertips to his chest then waving out to encompass the studio. “It is all in your orbit. And you—your body—you’re as cold as the stone I’m using to render it.”

  Fallon bit back a hundred retorts as a flash of heat and anger coursed through her pulse points. She took a deep breath, and slapped him.

  Only a slight flare of his nostrils and a coloring where her palm struck evidenced Max’s surprise. He didn’t speak for several breaths.

  He licked his lips and cracked a tiny smile. “Better.”

  Max let Fallon luxuriate in her anger for some time. He let himself luxuriate in what had happened. She’d surprised him—he hadn’t expected her to agree to touch him. He certainly hadn’t expected to catch her enjoying it. Reveling in it.

  For the past two weeks, he’d been easy on her. She was good company, he’d discovered. Clever, and a pleasurable if contrary conversationalist, the sort of person he’d been missing for a long time now. He’d dismissed his inclination to unnerve her at every opportunity. Whatever reward brought and kept her here, it was strong, and she wouldn’t be scared off by him. She’d be a challenge, but she wouldn’t waste his time, he didn’t think. Not on purpose, at least. He’d get there with her. Professional and symbiotic, he’d concluded. Acceptable.

  But then dear God, those hands on his bare skin. Max hadn’t seen that coming. He wasn’t a prurient man. He wouldn’t have pushed her to that if he’d known how…affirmatively his body would respond. But then those hands—smooth and cool, like glass lost at sea for unnumbered years, the opposite of his calloused, scar-rasped ones. He clenched and unclenched his fists in wonder, remembering how impossibly soft her fingertips had been.

  She’d set him on fire with that cool touch. The contact had made him give in to fantasies he’d been diplomatically suppressing for two weeks. His wrists, actually bound. Her hands, touching, teasing. Peeling his briefs down, taking him in her hands and stroking until his cock ached for relief. Her eyes on him, equally greedy. He’d caught those eyes on him before, curious and carnal, but always cold. But this time…this time she’d looked so hungry he’d just about felt her lips wrapped around him.

  Across the studio, Fallon stared out a skinny louvered window, one of many Max had scavenged and installed in his unending quest for better light. She toyed with the mechanism, the wooden slats casting shadows in wide stripes, then narrow ones, then wide again, across her head and shoulders. She looked calmer but she still buzzed with that electricity he’d felt in her fingertips. He walked over as casually as he could affect.

  She turned to look up at him for a moment. She flipped the slats closed with a snap and wandered to the front of the house.

  “Aren’t you going to apologize for hitting me?” he asked provocatively, following her.

  “Aren’t you going to apologize for enjoying that experiment just a little too much?” She turned enough to showcase her condemning expression and stopped before the bay window beside the front door, keeping her back to him.

  “Don’t act like your halo is so polished,” he murmured, letting her hear how close he stood behind her. “That touch was not so scientific.”

  “Think whatever you want to. But don’t ever kiss me again.”

  “I said I wouldn’t.”

  “I’m not convinced you’re a man of your word. Now that I’ve seen what passes for ‘connection’ in your book.”

  Max put his fingertips on her shoulder. S
he spun around slowly, more in search of a face-off than to be agreeable, he suspected. She glanced at his hand as if it were a spider.

  “You aren’t shaking.” He pressed his palm flat against her.

  She watched, unreadable.

  He contemplated his next move. He rubbed his thumb along her clavicle. She was steady. He watched her swallow then traced a curled finger down her jugular. Her chin started to tremble.

  Max gave her plump earlobe the briefest tweak and took his hands back, tucking them into his pockets. “What did you feel when you touched me?” he asked, stripping any challenge out of his voice and steeping it in pure curiosity.

  Fallon looked down, at either his crotch or his safely pocketed hands. “You’re very warm,” she offered with a shrug. Her cheeks and lips flared pink.

  “When I touch you.” Max reached out his hands again, inching them forward until he touched her elbows. “You are like fireworks.” He slid his palms up, slipping them inside her T-shirt sleeves and cupping her smooth shoulders. That skin. As petal-soft as a cliché. “You are like those little sticks, dipped in magnesium. That children use?”

  “Sparklers,” she said, breath short.

  “Yes. Your hands felt like sparklers, running up and down my body.”

  “That sounds very painful.” She faked flippancy rather poorly, in Max’s opinion.

  “Well, perhaps to you. I thought it felt very nice.” He kneaded the balls of her shoulders tenderly, daring her to start shaking again. When she didn’t, he let her go, satisfied that this was progress. Dissatisfied that such a caress wasn’t allowed to culminate in another kiss.

  “It’s probably nearly four now.” He knew perfectly well it was two-thirty. “Why don’t we call it a day?”

  “Fine by me.” She skirted past him to gather her jacket and bag.

  “You did very well today, you know.”

  “Yes, at least one of us can keep things professional,” she said evenly.

  He was charmed by her nerve. “How delightful for me that obedience is a requisite of your position. I admire your work ethic.”

  She narrowed her eyes a final time and let him open the door for her.

  “Thank you for lunch.”

  “Thank you for dessert,” he said, so happy to be flirting with a woman for the first time in a very long while.