That question took him from left field. “No.” After she’d walked in the studio, he hadn’t needed a model. Every organic curve in this new collection was a result of him closing his eyes and thinking of her hips, thighs, breasts, the curve of her mouth, or the gleam in her eye.
The piece he was working on today was all about how her stiff clit haunted him. It didn’t look like a piece of the female anatomy, but he wanted it to represent the agony at how he felt at waiting until she was done working with him to fuck her. To love her.
He needed to focus on her when she was here. Yesterday, she’d organized all his payments and invoices so Grandpa Rogelio wouldn’t have a coronary the next time he attempted to do his taxes.
She was wringing her hands as though she was nervous. “Are you all right?”
Her laugh was quasi-hysterical. Never a good sign. “I just—”
He wanted to rush over to her and hold her. Even more than he wanted to have sex with her, he wanted to comfort her. It should scare him, wanting so much more than casual fun with this woman, but he was beyond caring. He was on fire with her, and he couldn’t get enough of being around her. When it was time to cut things off to keep himself from hurting her, he would know. He had to.
“Tell me what’s wrong.” He didn’t mean for it to sound like an order, and maybe he didn’t want her to tell him what was wrong. Maybe she was going to quit, and tell him she never wanted to see him again? If she thought he’d been ignoring her for any other reason than to avoid throwing her on the ground and taking her like a beast, he would lose it. He was so close to losing it right now.
“I want to model for you.”
He turned his back on her now. She was actually trying to fucking kill him. If she took off her clothes for him, he wouldn’t be able to look at her without ejaculating in his pants. He’d felt a fraction of her soft skin, all of it in front of him would be his death.
But he couldn’t stay turned away: he had to make sure she knew he couldn’t do it because of him. Not because she was anything less than exquisite.
He was too late. Her watery gaze met his, and he snapped, went to her right away, and grabbed her upper arms. “I want you to model for me.” He pulled her close so she could feel how much he ached for her. “But I’m not going to be able to keep my promise and not fuck you if you take all your clothes off for me, precious girl.”
“That’s so hot.” She licked her lower lip, and it felt as though she’d burned his skin with it. The way he wanted her, anything she did could be sexy. “No one has ever wanted me that much.”
“That Simon fucker was an idiot.” But he felt lucky that he was the one who got to discover Letty Gonzalez. He was actually glad that Simon was a dumbass, and Letty wasn’t still with him. “But I’m in pain, Letty. You have to give me three more days.”
“Unless I want to give the signal.” She smiled up at him. “We never talked about what the signal was.”
“The signal is you telling me you need me.”
She stepped closer, and they couldn’t fit a sheet of paper between their bodies. “What if I need this?”
“You just need me to draw you?”
Nodding she nuzzled his neck. Gooseflesh rose all over his skin. He dropped his arms, clenching his fists and grinding his back teeth. Sweat dripped on the back of his neck that had nothing to do with the fact that he’d been working with a blowtorch moments ago.
“I need you to draw me, Max.”
“Letty, do you know how hard it will be to draw you and not touch you?”
“I was kind of hoping it would be impossible.”
“Fold your clothes and put them on the chair.”
Chapter 8
Asking Max to draw her might be the bravest thing Letty had ever done. Or the dumbest. She couldn’t be sure. Bravery definitely included sweating and shaking and feeling really nauseous, didn’t it?
She’d almost backed out when he’d turned his back on her. All of the texts from Elena, egging her on and making very salient points about how this would be a constructive and possibly revolutionary experience for her psyche had almost fled until he’d pulled her close to his body and made her feel how hard he was.
There was nothing sexier to her than being wanted by Max. Knowing that he was in pain from how much he wanted to touch her added to how much she already wanted him to do this.
Still, her fingers hesitated at the hem of her top. What if he only wanted her before he knew she had cellulite? She shook her head and pulled her spine up a few centimeters. If he didn’t want her because of dimples, he didn’t deserve her. At least, that was the case according to Elena.
Checking to see that he was still retrieving a sketch pad and pencils, she ripped the Band-Aid off and stripped. Even with the warmth from him using a blowtorch on metal in the other half of the studio, the metal shop, a chill coursed over her skin at being totally naked in the enormous space.
She covered as much of her breasts as she could with her hands and sat on the edge of a cloth-covered box. Waiting and hoping he hurried up before she lost her nerve.
When he came back into the room, she was trying to suck in her stomach. She felt his gaze go to the rolls of flesh there, and it was all she could do not to flee.
“Stop it.” As though her sucking in offended him. That was almost as hot as the ridge trying to punch its way through his fly. He approached her painfully slow, like she was prey and he was toying with her. “Look at me.”
“Okay.”
“When I’m done drawing you, you’re going to see yourself the way I do, I swear it.”
“You can’t make that kind of promise.” She uncovered her breasts when he nodded at her hands. “You can’t change my mind.”
“I’m beginning to see that.” He smirked. In the past eleven days, she’d noticed him smiling more and more. But it was rusty and stunted sometimes. Not now. If he could give her some confidence by looking at her like he did, maybe she could give him a few more smiles. “Now if you could only make your stubbornness work for you.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“If you could just get stubborn about the fact that you’re beautiful—” He pressed a pencil to the pad he had balanced on his knee. “We’d be in business.”
She barely kept herself from saying, “I’m not beautiful.” That retort came up so easily, yet two people—Max and her sister—insisted that she was beautiful. If two people thought something, maybe that was a belief system. And maybe should have a little faith in that belief system. People believed weirder things in churches all around the city. They believed that the son of a sky deity was born from a virgin and died so that all the sins ever committed could be forgiven. If people could believe in sky deities and virgin births, why couldn’t she believe she was beautiful?
Instead of letting her mother’s ever-present, critical voice in the back of her head talk her out of her new religion, she focused on Max. Every few seconds, he looked up at her. His gaze lingered over her shoulders and arms, then he looked back down and made marks on the paper. A few moments later, he squinted his eyes and checked out her breasts. They were way too big to squint at, but maybe he was drawing nipples.
Despite the fact that she didn’t really even like looking at her own naked body in a mirror, she was dying to see Max’s drawing. Maybe that would be her baptism into seeing herself as beautiful?
“Max?”
His gaze snapped to hers. “Don’t make me stop now. I’m just getting to the good parts. All of them.” He winked at her, and she wasn’t sure if he’d winked in years. It was another one of those rusted-out emotional reactions he sometimes had. His awkward wink made both of his eyes blink closed, but the right one more than the left. It was definitely meant to be a wink.
She must have been quiet for too long because he said, “Did you need something or can I get back to m
y drawing?” The way he said it warmed her up, everywhere.
“Can you maybe talk to me while you’re doing it?”
“Are you still worried that I won’t like what I see?”
“No.” She shrugged, which earned her a stern look. “I just would feel better if you told me what you were drawing.”
“I’m better with this.” He tapped the paper with his pencil. “But I’ll try.”
“Thank you.” She smiled at him.
“Stay doing that.”
“Doing what?”
“Smiling?”
“You want to make a drawing of me smiling?” She would have thought he’d prefer that pouty look that she’d copied from all of Elena’s magazine covers.
“Yes. It’s currently my favorite thing your mouth does.”
“Currently?”
“I’m guessing I’ll like the way it looks when my cock’s in it even better.”
Crude as he was, warmth pooled in her belly and wetness flooded her pussy. Hot.
“Your nipples got harder when I said that.” He made a long mark on the page and turned to a new one. “I’m going to have to start over.”
“We don’t have all day. You can’t possibly start over every time my body reacts to something you say.” She reacted to everything he said, even when it wasn’t about her nipples. His voice felt like a remote control that could turn her on.
“Oh, yes we can.” He started drawing again, moving faster this time. “I’ll take all the time I need to memorize every inch of that gorgeous body. Putting it on paper is just in case you ever take it out of my sight, which is questionable.”
“I’ll have to put clothes on eventually.”
“Eventually will have to wait.”
“How long?”
“How long have you worked for me?”
“Eleven days.”
“I’m going to need at least twenty-two to have enough drawings to make up for lost time.”
“That’s most of a month.”
“If it takes that long, it takes that long.”
“You’re just going to draw me for three weeks?”
“If you’d give me the damned signal, I’d draw on you.” He looked up at her and gave her a less rusty wink. “With my tongue.”
She flushed but kept his gaze.
“There go the nipples again.” There went the nipples and her racing heart and the wetness between her legs. Everything he said and did just did it for her. And, as turned on as she was, she was ready to pretend she believed that she was beautiful.
It had taken herculean strength to wait eleven days to have Max, and she was through waiting. There was honesty in the way he looked at her, the way he’d touched her the first time and the care that he’d taken with her since. If she couldn’t trust herself with Max, she couldn’t trust herself with anyone.
His pen poised over the paper to strike through this last drawing, she said, “Signal!”
“Thank fuck.” He threw the sketch pad and pencil across the table and stalked over to her.
Before she got another word out, he knelt on the floor in front of her and his mouth covered hers. This time, he consumed her. His hands were like homing devices for her ass. He palmed both cheeks and hitched her body close to his.
Being naked while he was clothed quickly became an untenable situation. She didn’t dare look, but she for sure left a wet spot on his T-shirt. Although his kiss was aggressive and overwhelming, he didn’t seem to be in a rush. Over the past week and a half, she’d watched him work. More than once, she’d wondered if he did everything like he did art—totally absorbed, but methodical. The way he slowly worked his hands over her hips and up her back gave her the answer. He brought every bit of intensity to the way he touched her as he did to bending metal.
In his arms, she felt every bit as precious as the endearment he’d used for her a few times. Willing him to move enough to get his clothes off, she bucked her hips against him, the friction against her clit making her groan with pleasure. He made her feel needy and demanding when he touched her. It was a wonder she hadn’t humped his leg since the first time, like randomly in the middle of the day.
“You need more, precious girl?”
“Yes.” She felt as though she always needed more with this man.
Taking her by surprise, he palmed her core with one of his big hands. She pressed her body against him, needing to show him how much her body reacted to him. Watching him draw her, with his hungry gaze and almost worshipful words had gotten her mind fully on board. He might lose interest at some point—sick of the novelty of being with someone like her—and that might destroy her new belief that she was beautiful. But, everything in her was ready for him to give her a taste of religious experience.
“We should go upstairs.”
She couldn’t wait that long. He had to know that. If he stopped now, she’d start throwing things. “Don’t stop.”
He chuckled again, the sound a dark stroke across her skin. “I wasn’t going to stop.” He kissed behind her ear, and she pulled at his T-shirt until he pulled it off from behind his head. “But I want to eat this pussy. It’s so wet for me, it’s the least I can do.”
“You can still do that.”
“Not here.” His skin seemed to ripple as she ran her hands over the breadth of his chest, scraping his chest hair every which way. “I want to lay you out and suck on your clit for at least seven days out of my twenty-two.”
“I’m all on board for that.”
“It would hurt your back on this floor.” He pinched both nipples and squeezed until she dug her nails into his chest. “It’s going to have to wait.”
He kissed her again, and then picked her up. Too shocked to worry about him throwing out his back, she wrapped her legs around his waist. She wasn’t in the air too long, because he put her down on one of his worktables.
As soon as he moved an inch away, she went for his button fly. She thanked all the as-yet undiscovered deities of her new religion that he wasn’t wearing underwear. “Didn’t have any clean ones.” She wasn’t even going to chide him for his failure to keep up with his laundry. That wasn’t her place. Her place was riding his cock.
In answer, she licked over his shoulder, tasting the clean sweat on his skin. “Thank goodness.”
He pulled her head back, cradling her jaw in his hands like he had a couple of times before. Just like when he’d done it previously, it grounded her in the moment with him.
Before he said anything, she started to freak out. They were naked together in broad daylight. He’d just seen everything, drawn it.
And he still wanted her. It felt so much like a miracle, she thought she’d cry.
“What’s wrong?” He searched her face for an answer. “Do you want to stop?”
“No.” If he stopped, she might have to kill him. Temporary insanity driven by lust for a man who shouldn’t want her but did.
“Then, why are you crying?”
“They’re happy tears.”
Although confounded, on the way to her mouth, he kissed the tears that managed to fall from her cheek, and his fingers found her core again. He thrust one finger inside and groaned. Even his finger felt big inside her. She knew she’d stretch to accommodate his cock, but she let herself fall into the sensation of being filled up. His thumb found her clit and stroked it lightly. His gentle touch was so frustrating that she tore her mouth from his, and said, “Harder.”
His raspy laugh as he complied nearly put her over the edge. Before long, he had her chanting and begging for more. Her orgasm gathered where he stroked her, and she let go and chased it. He wanted her, thought she was beautiful. That was her new religion, and she was taking its most precious sacrament.
When it broke over her, her sweaty skin bursting with pleasure, she chanted his name.
* * * *
As soon as they were done fucking the first time, Max was going to have to grab his sketch pad so he could remember the image of Letty coming all over his hand. Her mouth in the same O-shape it would make around his dick before long. She threw her whole body into coming for him, and he wanted to eat her unbridled joy for lunch. The sound of his name echoed off the walls and rafters of the studio. People probably heard it on the street outside, but Max didn’t have it in him to give a fuck.
Her eyes blinked open after she took her full eon of pleasure. “Max.”
All slumped in his arms, it squeezed something in his chest to feel her let go with him. He felt as though he’d won something that no one else ever had. Being with Letty was like beating a world record. “I like it when you scream my name, my precious girl.”
“Only because you touch me so right.” He hissed when she ran one her palms over his dick. “I want this.”
Nothing, except finally getting to sink into all of Letty’s softness, felt better than her raw joy at being with him. When he’d slowed them down so he could take in the way she looked at him—impatient, open, sweet—he’d felt as though she was going to move away from him. And it gave him so much pleasure to erase that momentary fear from her body.
He could stand here, holding her naked body against him, a little bit of sweat on both of them, and the scent of her skin and her arousal on the air, forever. But his dick was harder than it had ever been, and his skin was on fire everywhere she touched him.
“Do you want more, precious girl?” He asked the question, hoping the answer was yes. That she wanted more from him than a quick boost to her severely damaged ego, but he had to hear it from her.
“More.” She shook her head, and his heart skipped. “I want everything.”
“You’re trying to kill me, aren’t you?”
She laughed, and the sound wrapped around the base of his cock and lazily stroked over him as sure as her hand. “Not until I’m done with you.”
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