Page 61 of Dangerous Passion

Grace’s eyes were tracking the light drifts. “So beautiful,” she murmured.

“Hmm.” He’d buried his face in her hair, nose next to the soft skin behind her ear. Why look outside when he could watch her in the dark glass? It was just snow, for fuck’s sake. He’d once nearly died from exposure in a snowstorm when he was still living on the streets. Snow was cold and wet.

Better to be warm and dry.

She shook his arm a little. “Look, Drake. Look out.” He reluctantly dragged his ghost eyes from her ghost eyes to focus on the scene outside.

She held her hands out, as if to encompass the entire scene. “I want to paint it, just like this. All silver and midnight black, the buildings gleaming mysteriously in the darkness. Look down, Drake. See the fog rising? It makes the buildings look like islands in the sky, doesn’t it? I’ll paint it with the contrast between the billowing fog and the slanting snow with a monochrome palette. You’ll love it, I promise.”

Drake froze.

For a second, something terrifying had happened. All those hours over the past year simply staring at her paintings had caused a shift in his perception. For a second, he’d seen the scene throughhereyes. Not merely snow, which he hated and considered a nuisance at best, life-threatening at times. He’d seen past his hatred of snow to the landscape beyond.

It was magical, this landscape, seen through her eyes. A rich fantasy land of silvery darkness. Her eyes were tracking the snow and he followed her gaze in the reflection of the dark glass. She was imprinting what she was seeing andsome time in the future—maybe tomorrow or next month or next year—a masterpiece would form beneath her clever hands and he would look at it forever. Only this time, he would look at it and remember the exact instant she got the inspiration.

By some mysterious alchemy, she was changing him. Opening his heart to the beauty of the world. It was frightening and he wasn’t altogether certain he liked the thought, but there it was.

He was looking at the black and silver shapes, the misty fog, the slanting snow and finding them fascinating instead of calculating how much the bad weather would impact his business.

The world was vastly more mysterious and beautiful than he knew.

For the past fifteen years, he’d lived in locked-down conditions in his homes, traveling only under the tightest security he could devise, from car to plane to hotel and back. His life was work and sleep, with little in between, living in sterile and controlled surroundings. His world had narrowed to walls, whether of a hotel room or a car or a plane didn’t make any difference. The outside world had become an abstraction, a mere construct to include in his calculations.

She met his eyes again in the glass, a small smile on her lips, as if she understood what she’d done to him.

She’d fucking changed him, that’s what she’d done.

This woman had reached down inside him, with her art and her beauty and her kindness, and pulled him inside out. He didn’t much like it, but he couldn’t deny it. He was changing, feeling the ground beneath him shifting in a terrifying and exhilarating dance.

“Lean forward,” he said, his voice suddenly guttural. “Brace yourself against the window.”

Startled, Grace watched him in the window as she leaned forward. He felt her narrow rib cage arch as she placed both hands on the pane. He put a foot between hers and forced her to open her legs, fitting himself more snugly against her.

He’d been erect the whole time, but now she could feel him surging against her, his dick swelling as he pulled her tightly against him.

He couldn’t wait one second more. She was in his head. He had to be in her body.

He watched her carefully in the window. She was pressed against the pane. Her breasts would be cold, but he was keeping her warm from behind. And his dick would warm her up.

He undid his loose cargo pants, grabbed a condom from a side pocket, then kicked them away when they fell to the floor. He whipped his sweater up and off, eyes never leaving hers in the reflection.

“Open your legs more, Grace,” he whispered.

She obeyed immediately, kicking his excitement up, making his blood flow hot and thick through his veins.

It was going to be rough.

Oh God.It was going to be rough.

Grace watched her lover’s face in the dark window, the image more ghostly than if it were a mirror, as if he were insubstantial. Yet Drake wasn’t insubstantial at all. He was male power and male muscle, treading this earth more heavily than most.

She could feel him hot and heavy at her back, his handsholding her tightly. He opened her legs with his and fitted himself against her.

Each time they made love, there was this startled moment when she realized just how big he was, long and thick and as hard as steel. In the beginning he had been so careful with her, entering her slowly, by degrees.

Lately, though, he let his excitement get the better of him, understanding that her arousal grew each time they made love.

His control was paper-thin now. Grace knew this moment was coming, but now that it was here, fear tempered her excitement. Up until now, though he’d brought her to orgasm over and over again, Drake had been in utter control of himself.

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