Flirting with Forever

by Gwyn Cready

  “It must be a very grand honor to be the king’s portraitist.”

  Lely made an indeterminate noise. “Words do not do it justice.”

  He had decided on velvet the color of chestnuts for draping the chaise, and it was the edges of this material Cam now gripped. Despite all her years in the art world, she was unprepared to be the focus of a master’s efforts.

  “Um, how would you like me?”

  He gave her a brief smile. “Given your comment on the wedding night, I’m unsure how to answer. To what are you used? How does your fiancé pose you?”

  “My fiancé does not pose me.”

  He laid down his mixing knife and gave her a careful look. “Do you mean to say you have not posed? Ever?”

  She flushed. “No.”

  “Then I suppose it truly shall be like a wedding night.”

  The warmth rose to her ears and scalp. She reached for the glass of Rhenish, which had been refilled in her absence.

  “Have your last,” he said. “I should like to have you lying down.”

  With a sharp inhale, she set the glass on the table and reclined on the chaise, finding a place among the pillows tucked against the rise at the back. The curtain of olive silk rolled in a graceful wave across her legs. She lifted a heel under her hips to anchor her against the velvet. The other foot peeked from the fabric. Several pillows buoyed her back. A small one supported her neck. It was wondrously comfortable. And then, of course, the way that he looked at her was making her feel pretty at home as well.

  “You will have to do without the head pillow when I block in your face. After that, when I begin your body, you may have it again.”

  “All right.”

  “It may hurt a bit at the beginning, but after that, I promise, you may relax and enjoy.”

  “The metaphor is growing uncomfortably warm.”

  Peter let out a small, deep laugh. “The chain is lovely.”

  She touched it, flustered. No matter what Jacket had said when he’d placed it around her neck, it represented an offer on his part, an offer about which she was strongly conflicted. She wished Peter had not seen it, though she couldn’t quite express why.

  “Is there a pendant with it?” he asked. “It might make an interesting point of focus. And if it is a gift from him, it will please him to—”

  “No,” she said. “’Tis mine. I’m glad you reminded me, though. I was going to take it off.” She twisted her body until she’d blocked his view, unclasped the chain, and slipped it and the ring into the pocket of the dressing gown.

  He gave her a warm smile and picked up his palette. “Now loosen your gown, if you please.”

  If I please? She reached for her belt, wondering what other commands he thought she would follow without question that evening. She loosened the tie with one hand and let it drop. Immediately the silk resettled, falling in an unrestrained heap that ran from her shoulder to her hip. The fabric gaped, exposing an easy swath of white muslin, which, in turn, followed the curve of her breast. She could feel the air on her sternum. She wondered if he could see the beating of her heart.

  “How do you want me to look?” she asked.

  “I do not want you to look. I want you to think.”

  “Think?”

  “Aye. The portrait is for him, aye?”

  “Aye.”

  “You are to imagine him. When he looks at this painting he will possess you. Each time he sets eyes on it, he will know he, among all men, has triumphed in winning your hand. This is his Troy. Do you understand?”

  “Aye.” Her voice was barely a whisper. What she wanted to think about was Peter, not Jacket.

  “You are to show him what it is to be possessed.”

  A tall assignment. She thought of Jacket on that long-ago night in the ladies’ lounge. He had possessed her. No question. He had filled her senses and loosened her tongue and made her mistress of some very surprising behavior.

  She watched Peter mix his paints and wondered if he’d possessed Ursula in such a manner. Had Ursula broken his heart? Or had their relationship been at an end when she’d fallen into the arms of the man Nell mentioned? What had she said his name was? Old Pauly?

  The color on Peter’s brush was dark. He would have to do the underpainting first, the base from which the bright of her hair, face, and gown would rise. The easel blocked much of his body, but she could see his face, which took on a quiet intensity as he calculated the ratios of his arrangement. Part of her was noting the workings of a seventeenth-century master, but the other part of her, fueled by the potency of the wine and Peter’s noble gesture with Miss Quinn, was heading in an entirely different direction.

  She watched the movement of his thigh, the nearly imperceptible flexing of muscle as he worked, and the fine, muscled calf below. Nell had said Cam resembled Ursula. There were certain sorts of men who were besotted with red hair, just as there were certain sorts of women besotted with artists. She wondered if Peter was imagining Ursula laid out here. She wondered if Peter had painted Ursula nude, and if he had, if it had evolved to fevered lovemaking, right here on this chaise?

  The picture of Peter crouched over her, his powerful hips, stripped of their proprietous wool breeks, moving to a hastening beat, danced in her mind. She liked this mixture of strong wine, a man who knew how to make a woman feel like she was the only person on Earth, and a very active imagination.

  “I am about to begin,” he said in a low voice.

  Yes.

  The first scratch of brush on canvas sent an electric shock through her. It was as if he had drawn the bristles down her flesh. A delicious tingle slithered through every nerve, and a welcome warmth bloomed under her gown where her heel was tucked between her legs. She took another long sip.

  “You are perfect,” he said. “’Tis exactly what I want.”

  Exactly what he wanted. She closed her eyes and smiled. There was something powerfully seductive in that phrase. The image returned readily—Peter, with his hand on her face, guiding her hungry mouth to his. When his hand in the vision ventured lower, her own nipples tightened. Cam wondered if Peter could see the change through the thin muslin. She found herself reveling in the notion and grinned. Lost in time? Why not make the best of it? She settled her weight more firmly upon that heel.

  The brushstrokes continued. Peter worked briskly, and every scrape translated to the rustle of silk as flesh met flesh. In her mind, he took her hips and held them hard as he plumbed their depths.

  A wild heat rose between her legs, and Cam found herself responding as easily to the image in her head as she might to the real thing.

  Good God, where are you going with this, girl?

  It had been six months since she and Jacket had made love, and during that time she’d had no desire to go to bed with anyone. The part of her that responded blindly to the call of lust had been muted that day after she’d opened their bedroom door. Yet here she was constructing an interlude as erotic as those in the novels she’d read.

  There was a strange freedom to being cast into another time that she’d never felt before. It was as if she were in a dream of her own making, with no one to justify her actions to but herself. This, she decided, could be a very dangerous thing.

  She turned, and a nipple brushed the carved wood of the arm, sending a magnificent plume of heat through her. But the wood was Peter’s finger, and she longed for his touch. She moved gently, no more than the motion of inhaling and exhaling, and let him rub the tender flesh. He taunted her. She could feel his throb, let her fingers ride the satiny flesh. He drew up beside her, spoon to spoon, and rolled the nipple slowly, kissing her neck and ear, the barest scent of vanilla reaching her nose as she stretched against him like a cat.

  Oh, the Rhenish is definitely working.

  She stole a glance at Peter. He was laboring intently now, brushing the p
aint on with short, expert strokes. She closed her eyes and opened them again, and this time he was looking at her. Her breath caught, and he looked away.

  “Is he in your thoughts, Mrs. Post? I do not wish to shock, and you will pardon me for saying this, but as you carry yourself with far too confident a grace to be a maiden, I intend to speak plain. You must be filled with him, do you understand?”

  His brown eyes deepened in color, and she felt her pulse quicken. “Aye, I understand.”

  “Some women cannot do it. But I see you have no fear.”

  “‘No fear’ might be overstating things.” Her heart was thumping so hard she wondered if he could hear it.

  “There are certain things I can do to enhance the effect—if such an aid is needed.”

  Blood roared in her ears. What had he seen? What was he offering? She thought of his mouth on hers, a welcome hand between her thighs. “What?”

  “There are tricks. A wash of rose madder on the cheeks, a pinwheel of gold in the eye.”

  She flushed deeply at her mistake, so deeply that for an instant the world blurred.

  He saw her embarrassment, and guessed its source. “To that end, milady, I have but one aid, though it is extremely adaptable.”

  She closed her eyes, too embarrassed to look at him. “Aye?”

  “To be honest, ’tis not my practice to share this with my sitters. It is far more potent, I think, if it happens without their notice, but you are a woman of the world. I assure you, it will work for you if you let it.”

  “What, sir? What?”

  “I can help bring your lover to mind through judicious use of his, er, methods of seduction—only the most proper ones, of course.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning,” he said shortly, “I can pour, I can praise, I can command. If I strike the note that brings him to mind, you will respond. Which path shall I follow?”

  Jacket had charmed and cajoled, and after he hurt her feelings, he had charmed her even more. Cam would not waste a thought on that now. But the right words from Peter could turn what she wanted—what she had already begun—from a flame into a fire.

  “I can pour,” she said. “You command me.”

  For a moment he said nothing, then he nodded and stepped behind the easel. “Remove your gown.”

  Flames roared through her. She sat up, finished the rest of the wine, and poured another. Then she loosened the silk and let it slide off the muslin.

  He turned toward the canvas with a wry chuckle. “The muslin as well, please.”

  Sheer terror flooded every nerve. “I’m not comfortable with that.”

  “You have contrived to put yourself on a painter’s chaise in a remote studio. That is the natural outcome.”

  Her hands shook as she brushed one shoulder off and then the other. The fabric slipped to her waist.

  “Madam—”

  “No more. Please.”

  His eyes did a slow review. She felt adrift and more than a little frightened.

  “Your breasts are generous. Offer them with generosity.”

  She pressed her shoulders back, wincing with vulnerability, and felt her nipples lift higher. She tried to master her breathing, but every nerve in her body was firing at once. She, Cam Stratford, who had never sunbathed topless, who had never skinny-dipped, who wouldn’t even get in a hot tub alone with Jacket, had taken the plunge. She could feel both the heat of the fire and the cool of the evening on her skin, and she held herself still. It was thrilling to be exposed, and to pretend, even for a quarter hour, that she was always this bold.

  “That’s right,” he said. “Now angle yourself toward me.”

  She wished he would take her in his arms. She wanted to feel him command her with his hands, not just his words.

  “I doubt,” she said with only a small crack in her voice, “this will be a painting for the dining room.”

  “A private gallery, I should think. Though I would not put it past any man to let it fall into the sight of his acquaintances. How can they covet what they do not know exists?”

  She imagined this painting hanging in Lely’s private office or tipped against the wall of one of his workshops, open to any curious eye, or in his bedroom where he could admire it while the real sitting took place. She wondered in how many rooms she could bring him pleasure.

  “Your man is here. He stands over you. He is drunk, perhaps too drunk. Will he sleep or serve?”

  “Serve,” she said huskily.

  “Offer. And make it clear. He is barely able to stand.”

  And there was Peter in her head, pulling at his boots, smelling of whiskey. He would need no encouragement. He would lower his breeks, scrabble at his shirttails, and thrust his way inside her, making up in blunt determination what he lacked in elegance.

  She settled back on the pillows and turned her body seductively toward this unseen lover. The muslin at her waist was slipping, and she lifted the leg nearest Peter to stop it.

  The fabric, so thin it undoubtedly offered a fine view of hip and thigh, ruffled slightly in the draft from the windows, but it was all the coverage she had, and she would not let it go. She laid her right arm along the rise of her hip. It was a brazen pose, and she was still quaking, but she liked the glow that had sprung up in Peter’s eyes.

  He considered her from head to foot. “’Tis a very fine offer,” he said at last. “Very fine indeed. Let him take it, shall we, while I begin.”

  He picked up his palette, and she closed her eyes.

  The wine had loosened her scruples. She did not feel so frightened. She liked his eyes upon her and had a sudden overwhelming desire to make him ache. She very much liked his eyes upon her, but without the cover of the muslin she could not return to that gentle, inebriating rub against the arm of the chaise.

  Her nipples peaked instantly at the memory, and the brushstrokes stopped. She smiled, though the ache she had hoped to cause him had been visited upon her instead, sharper even than before. She rubbed her legs together, like an evening cricket, but the pain only magnified. It beat hard, like a heart, hotter with each thump. She brought the heel of the folded leg closer…closer.

  The throbbing pleasure of contact nearly made her cry out. Now if she could only lift herself against it, against his touch. She arched infinitesimally, and the charge went up her spine. She couldn’t let him see this. Or could she?

  Again she lifted and again. It was a slow undulation of her hips, that’s all. The instinctive movement to some internal music. In her mind, though, her private Peter suckled those nipples, drawing them into a pleasing tightness, while his hand caressed her hip, then her thigh, dipping easily between her legs. Slowly, slowly he stroked her, stoking the fire.

  Cam slitted her eyes. Peter gazed upon her, his attention undivided. What did he see? The bare-breasted fiancé of an unworthy painter or a woman openly disporting herself before a man she hardly knew. She willed him to see what she saw, to feel the primeval pounding of desire.

  Her lids fluttered shut, and the Peter of her dream was there waiting. His hands were in her hair, plucking her pins loose and combing out her curls. He spread them over her breasts, rubbing the strands between his palms and the taut flesh. She turned to meet his lips.

  “Beautiful,” the painting Peter said, and so did the one lying next to her, just before his tongue met hers. With a shift of her thighs, she let his fullness come between them, prodding her throbbing bud gently. Ignoring her trembling, he brought his hand to join it, a perfect triumvirate—hand, mouth, cock.

  At the easel, the painting Peter made a distracted noise. He retreated to the shelves, searching for something. When his back turned, she slid a finger under the muslin, hiding the motion behind her knee. Immediately the glow turned hot. And this was Peter’s hand, obliging her, but he was growing rougher—oh, so rough—and his need bigger a
nd bigger.

  Her nipples tightened into ridged nubs of iron.

  She pressed her legs together as hard as she could, lodging the roving fingers there like a cork. Oh, dare she? Dare she? Peter turned from the shelves, and she closed her eyes. She could feel the rhythmic shake of her breasts, the growing warmth in her hips and belly. Without warning, the blinding pleasure roared through her like a freight train. With prodigious effort, she clung to a semblance of rectitude, holding her legs and arm still and letting the heat that would have been dispelled with wild bucking set her body on fire.

  Hhhhhhhhhh, she said in a long, desperate exhale.

  With eyes shut tight, she cursed her foolishness. To have allowed him to bear witness to such an act now seemed wanton beyond description. Yet she regretted nothing at all she’d let the dream Peter do. If only she had not confused the dream world with the real.

  She waited for the lighthearted aside or the suggestive comment, but none came.

  When the rush of her blood quieted, she heard him at last.

  He was painting.

  * * *

  Peter held his arm steady. He knew what he’d seen. He’d seen it often enough on the faces in his bed. He had asked her to think of her fiancé, and she had taken him at his word.

  He wondered what it would be like to be the man who engendered such a look of desire. He wondered what it would be like to loosen that hair and let it slip through his fingers. He wondered at the fine fire of a woman that had such intoxicating heedlessness in her. But most, of all he wondered why any painter, even the most brick-headed picket-post scrub, had not taken the opportunity to paint his lover, even once. Painting one’s lover was the most exquisite act of lovemaking. Not just in the carnal sense, though it was that and more, but in the giving of love, the elevation of one’s partner above all others.