Fast & Loose

by Elizabeth Bevarly

  Surrounded by the art and artists that made up her world, Lulu was clearly in her element. He’d actually felt her physically relax as they entered the darkened room, and she seemed to genuinely breathe more easily in this rarefied air. It was funny, because the atmosphere had had the opposite effect on Cole. While he considered himself a chameleon in many ways and could make himself at least look at home in just about any environment, this one eluded him.

  It wasn’t that Lulu’s friends and colleagues were unwelcoming. On the contrary, whenever she’d introduced him to someone, they’d been warm, friendly, and open. None had pestered him about his trainer status, either, even though many knew who he was. He ought to feel more comfortable here than he had in any number of other situations this week. But the whole creative vibe was one that made him a little nervous. That artistic types could create something that was often transcendently beautiful out of virtually nothing was just getting too close to the whole Meeting His Maker thing.

  Funny, though, how he didn’t feel that way when he was around Lulu. Maybe because she was a maker he’d gotten to know beforehand. And maybe because she was a maker he wanted to get to know better.

  “You don’t like it, do you?” she asked now, her disappointment in his pedestrianism clear.

  “I’m sorry,” he told her. “I’m sure it’s brilliant. It’s just not my thing.”

  She made an Oh, well gesture with her shoulders. “That’s okay. Art is subjective. But if you hate my stuff, will you promise to pretend you like it?”

  “I love your stuff,” he said. “I already told you that.”

  “I know, but I thought you were just pretending to like it.”

  “No,” he assured her. “Like I said, I’m not the foremost authority on art, but it doesn’t take a genius to see how gifted you are.”

  She smiled shyly at the praise. “Thanks.”

  “In fact, I’d like to see more of it. Do you have a studio somewhere? I mean, I didn’t see anyplace at your house that looks like you work there.”

  “No, I don’t work at home. I do actually have a studio. It’s not far from here.”

  “When can I come by?”

  Her smile fell. “Gee, I don’t know, Cole. I get kind of wiggy about having people in my studio. There’s a lot of work in progress there, and I don’t like sharing it with anyone until it’s done.”

  “But seeing work in progress is so fascinating,” he objected. “Work in progress is so much more spontaneous and genuine than the finished product. It’s so much purer. In a lot of ways, the work in progress is more honest than the finished product.”

  She arched her brows in surprise. “Wow. That’s really pithy. You sound like a real connoisseur.”

  He laughed. “Actually, I was thinking about horses. About the whole process of going from foal to yearling to race status. That’s a different kind of work in progress, but you ask me, it’s still art.”

  “I totally agree,” she said, brightening. “It’s performance art. Only in that case, it’s the horse’s body and its natural movements as an art form.”

  He looked at the, ah, piece on the platform again. The four bodies were in a different position than they had been in before, but Cole had missed the actual motion. Did that mean he’d missed the art? Dang. Too bad.

  “So can I come to your studio sometime?” he asked again.

  She didn’t answer at first, but dropped her gaze to the glass of wine she’d been nursing since their arrival. Which, he supposed, was an answer itself.

  So he added, “It’s just that you can learn a lot more about people when you see them in the environment they love most. The environment they’re most comfortable in.”

  Finally, but still without looking up, she told him, “But that’s just the point, Cole. It’s not an easy thing you’re asking. Almost no one has ever visited my studio. I’m very protective of it. And of my art. They’re both like extensions of myself, you know? My art and my studio and my creative process…All of them are a big part of me, and I don’t share them that easily.”

  “But you make your living selling your art, don’t you? You have to share it eventually.”

  She nodded. “Yeah, but the only pieces that go out in the world are the ones I choose to put there. And only when I’m ready to share them with others. The only pieces I sell are the ones I know are perfect. Or as close to perfect as I can make them. It’s the flawed ones that I don’t want anyone to ever see. And my studio, Cole…” She rolled her eyes and shuddered for effect, an action he supposed was meant to be comical, but instead looked more fearful than she probably knew. “My studio is full of flawed pieces. My process is a messy process.” She dropped her gaze again as she continued, “A lot of times, I have no idea what I’m doing. A lot of times, I make huge mistakes.”

  Cole curled a finger under her chin and gently nudged her head up so that she was looking at him. “But it’s the flaws, Lulu, that are the most interesting. And sometimes it’s the biggest mistakes that lead to the greatest discoveries.”

  She said nothing in response to that, only met his gaze in silence. But her lips parted fractionally, as if she wanted to say something but was afraid to put voice to it. Thanks to the darkness of the gallery—and the even darker corner into which they had wandered—her pupils were wide and dark, yet somehow her eyes seemed brighter, too. Two faint spots of color bloomed on her cheeks as he studied her, and her breathing suddenly seemed to quicken, her breasts rising and falling noticeably above the scooped neck of her dress. Her spicy scent teased his senses, taunting him, tempting him, making him want things he really shouldn’t be wanting in a public place, even if it was a corner of that place that was dark. And secluded. And quiet.

  He started to say something else, something about perfection being overrated, because once you achieved it, what was the point of going on? Instead, before he even realized what he intended, he was dipping his head to brush his lips over Lulu’s, once, twice, three times, four. Then he was cupping her face in both hands and slanting his mouth over hers to kiss her more deeply. She covered his hands with hers and kissed him back, firing a shot of something hot and needy right to his core.

  It was damned near close to perfect. But not quite. So what else could he do but go on?

  The second kiss was even better than the first, maybe because this time they each took a step closer and their bodies touched as well as their hands. Or maybe this time it was because they were both a little more confident. A little more daring. A little more passionate. This time, Cole dropped a hand to her bare shoulder, skimming his thumb along her collarbone…back and forth and back again…softly, leisurely, methodically. He dragged his fingertips to the base of her throat, then brushed his bent knuckles up over her tender flesh until he could curl his hand over her nape and kiss her more deeply.

  She was so soft, so warm, so responsive. He gently nipped her lower lip, making her gasp, rolling his tongue into her mouth when she did. She accepted him enthusiastically, opening her mouth wider, inviting him deeper still. As he intensified the kiss, he dropped his other hand, too, moving it down over her other shoulder, flattening his palm on the warm skin above the neck of her dress. Then he nudged it even lower, splaying his fingers wide over her breast.

  For a long moment, they seemed suspended that way, his tongue in her mouth, her breast in his hand, the fire in his belly raging out of control. Then she was pulling away, tugging away the hand on her breast and ducking her head in a way that left his mouth at her temple. So he kissed her there instead. He understood. They were in a public place, even if it was a darkened corner, and there were people here she knew well, among whom she didn’t want to generate chatter. But that one embrace had only enflamed Cole with the desire for more, and there was no way he was going to spend the rest of the evening A) pretending it didn’t happen or B) pretending it wasn’t going to happen again.

  So he lowered his mouth to her ear and said, “Let’s get out of here.”

&nb
sp; He was prepared for her to say no, that they couldn’t leave yet. And he told himself if she did, he’d stay. For five more minutes, and then they were outta there. Instead, she nodded silently and laced the fingers of their clasped hands together. She said nothing to him as they threaded their way back through the gallery toward the exit, only smiled at the handful of people she knew and lightly bid them good night, sounding no more flustered by what had happened than she would be by reading the program they’d been handed at the door upon arrival.

  They made the short walk to Cole’s car in silence, too. He watched her closely as he unlocked her door and handed her in, but she never once made eye contact with him. He watched her through the windshield as he rounded the front of the car to the driver’s side, but she kept her gaze firmly focused on her lap. Once he was seated inside, she lifted her gaze to look straight ahead. But still she said not a word.

  So after starting the car, he turned to look at her and asked, “Where to?”

  Still gazing straight ahead, she said, “Home. Take me home.”

  Excellent, Cole thought. He couldn’t imagine a more perfect place to make love to her the first time—or the second or third—than the bedroom in her house that was both hers and his.

  She turned to look at him then. “Bree’s apartment, I mean.”

  Wait a minute. That wasn’t home. “Bree’s?” he said.

  She nodded. “It’s been a long night. It’s time to go home.”

  “Yeah, but your house is—”

  “My house is being rented right now,” she told him. “For now, my home is at Bree’s.” His confusion—hell, his disappointment—must have shown on his face, because she added, “We can’t do what you’re thinking you want to do.”

  The hell they couldn’t. Had it not been for the fact that they’d been standing in a public place, they’d be doing it right now. Aloud, however, he said, “I’m not thinking I want to make love to you, Lulu. I do want to make love to you.” She closed her eyes when he said it so baldly. In spite of that—or maybe because of it—he added, “And the way you responded to me back there, I think you’re more than thinking about it, too.”

  “All I did was kiss you,” she said softly. “That doesn’t mean I want to fall into bed with you.”

  “Fair enough,” he said. “But you didn’t want to stop what was happening any more than I did.”

  “No,” she admitted.

  “Then kiss me again.”

  She closed her eyes at that, too. But she only said, “We’re in the middle of a parking lot, just as exposed as we were inside.”

  Oh, the ideas that popped into his head when she said that. Instead of putting voice to them, though—instead of putting voice to anything—Cole threw the car into gear.

  He’d become fairly familiar with the area around Lulu’s house by now, and found his way back to the neighborhood with little problem. It helped that Bardstown Road stretched virtually from one end of the city to the other, and that the street the gallery was on was only a few blocks away from it, though quite a few miles from where Lulu lived. It wasn’t a problem, though, because it wasn’t to Lulu’s house Cole was headed. However, neither was it to Bree’s apartment. Instead, once he got his bearings and began to recognize his surroundings, he turned several blocks before arriving at Bree’s place—and he turned east instead of west.

  Lulu, who had said not a word since leaving the parking lot, snapped out of her silence when he did. “You took a wrong turn back there.”

  Cole feigned confusion. “Did I?”

  “Yeah, you should have turned right, not left. And you turned too soon.”

  He shook his head. “Sorry. Out-of-towner. I’ll try to find a place to turn around.”

  He did find a place to turn around. Then he found a few more places to turn around. Lulu kept trying to give him directions, but he played the man card and insisted he didn’t need directions, that this was a shortcut he’d discovered and that he knew perfectly well where he was going. Until finally, they arrived exactly where he wanted to be.

  “Well, would you look at that,” he said as he braked to a stop in a wide paved area to the side of the road. “Somehow we got lost in the park.”

  “We’re not lost,” Lulu said wearily. “I know Cherokee Park like the back of my hand. I can get you out.”

  Yeah, he’d figured that. So he looked down at the dashboard and said, “Uh-oh. I think we’re out of gas.”

  “What?”

  He pointed at the gas gauge. “See for yourself.”

  She scooted across the seat and leaned across Cole to look at the gauge on the other side of the steering wheel and saw what he himself already knew. That the red needle was firmly planted at three-quarters of a tank. When she turned to look at him, her mouth open to, presumably, demand to know what he was talking about, he met her gaze levelly and threaded the fingers of one hand through her hair. The silky curls wound around them in invitation, and he couldn’t help thinking it was a gesture he hoped the rest of her felt like offering, too.

  Very softly, very tentatively, very hopefully, he said, “Kiss me again, Lulu. There’s no one looking now.”

  LULU’S MOUTH WENT DRY AT COLE’S QUIET REQUEST. There was no demand in his voice, no insistence, no expectation. There was only petition, solicitude, and longing. It should have been easy to tell him no. He’d contrived this whole episode. He’d never been lost, and they had enough gas to drive to Cincinnati and back. She shouldn’t have any trouble returning to the other side of the big car’s long front seat—much bigger and longer than other cars and seats Lulu had found herself in and on as a teenager steaming up the windows in this very park. She wasn’t a kid anymore, she reminded herself, and she didn’t have to resort to parking at Chauffeur’s Rest to deal with adolescent hormones. She was a grown woman with her own home, and her hormones were totally under control. Or at least, they had been. Until Cole had told her to kiss him.

  Damn her hormones anyway.

  Because they were the reason she didn’t say no. They were the reason she didn’t move back to her side of the car. They were the reason she tilted her head toward his. And they were the reason she kissed him. It was all her hormones’ fault that she did that. It had nothing to do with how much she wanted to kiss Cole, too.

  But kiss him she did, turning her body more fully toward him, lifting her hand to cup his rough jaw as her mouth covered his. He responded immediately, as she’d known he would, roping an arm around her waist and pulling her into his lap. He buried his other hand in her hair and tilted her head backward, filling her mouth with his tongue and her belly with heat.

  She lost herself after that. Utterly and completely. One minute, she was Lulu Flannery, paid buffer, and the next, she was that nameless, faceless creature who lived inside herself. The one who shaped glass into sensuous colors and shapes. The one who arranged words into erotic prose and fantasy. The one who felt things Lulu couldn’t let herself feel when she wasn’t creating, for fear that they would overwhelm her.

  And overwhelm her they did.

  When she felt Cole’s fingers strum over her rib cage and his palm curving under her breast, it was like a great wave of fire crashed over her. She uttered a low sound that was needy and demanding as she arched against him, and he responded with a feral growl of his own as he moved his hand higher, covering her completely. She didn’t object when he began to tug at her dress, pushing the off-the-shoulder garment lower, down her arm and over her breast, until she felt the warm rush of his breath against her naked flesh. Then she felt his mouth replace his hand on her breast, his tongue flattening over her nipple as he held her more firmly in his hand. Again and again, he dragged his tongue over her, then he opened his mouth wide and pulled as much of her tender flesh inside as he could. The damp pressure was almost more than she could bear, and when she tightened her fingers convulsively in his hair, she didn’t know if it was to push him away or pull him closer.

  Then he moved his hand l
ower again, over her hips and her thighs, finally finding the hem of her dress and immediately tugging it upward. Higher and higher she felt the garment rising, until she was shifting on his lap so that he could bunch it around her waist. He opened his hand over the curve of her fanny, rubbing his palm over the lace of her panties in wide circles, as if he were trying to imprint the pattern on his skin. When she instinctively pushed her body backward to greet his touch, he dipped his fingers beneath the lace, curving his palm this time over her naked flesh, and pressing his long middle finger into the delicate cleft of her behind. She gasped at the intrusion, but when he began to draw his hand away, she pushed her fanny back against his fingers harder, in the hope that he would do it again.

  Where had this come from? she wondered wildly as he pushed his hand lower again. She had only intended to kiss him, not succumb to a passion completely beyond her control, a passion unlike anything she had felt for a man before. But when his petition and solicitude had turned to confidence and expertise, she hadn’t been able to help herself. She’d never been with a man who was more certain of his actions. What was truly her undoing, though, was that he seemed to be even more certain of hers.

  As if proving that, he folded his fingers deeper into the cleft of her fanny again, scooting them lower this time. After pushing one long finger into the delicate opening he found there, only briefly enough to make her deliciously shocked and enticingly curious, he drove his fingers lower, between her legs, where she had grown damp and hot with wanting him. For long moments, he only fondled her wet, swollen flesh, something that made her rise from his lap to give him better access. Her new position put her breast at the level of his mouth, and as he licked and tugged at her nipple, he guided his finger into her slick canal. Lulu closed her eyes and bit her lip, waiting for him to repeat the action. When he did, she moaned in pleasure and tilted her head back. He moved the finger again, this time sucking her flesh deep, deep into his mouth. Lulu felt an almost forgotten heat building in her midsection, spiraling tighter with every passing moment.