Page 46 of Here Comes Trouble
She held his gaze as he stared her down, the dare behind his words clear in his expression.
‘Okay.’ Before she lost her nerve, she pulled the ruined T-shirt up over her head and dropped it on the floor next to her.
Xander’s brows shot up in surprise. ‘What’s this? Not going feral on me, are you?’ he asked, his voice catching as she reached round and unhooked her bra with shaking fingers, letting it fall to the ground beside her. Closing her eyes, she willed her erratic breathing to normalise. She could swear she felt the heat of his gaze sweeping her upper body, taking in the fullness of her breasts and the hard jut of her nipples as she stood there in front of him.
Totally exposed.
Totally vulnerable.
Something cool and soft swept over her left breast and she gasped in shock at the alien sensation.
Snapping open her eyes, she saw that Xander was running the tip of his paintbrush over her skin, circling the bud of her nipple in slow, seductive strokes. She shivered with pleasure as he flicked it upwards, then began to make wider sweeping circles around her breasts.
Her skin felt so sensitive she trembled every time he moved his brush to a new area.
Without moving his gaze from her face, Xander backed away to where his easel stood propped up in the middle of the room. Reaching down, he grabbed his palette loaded with paint and walked back to where she stood.
By now she was shaking with nerves, but she made herself stand there, rooted to the spot, unflinching as he tested her nerve.
Without saying a word, he unpopped the buttons of her jeans with his spare hand and slid them down her legs until they pooled in a heap at her feet. Next, he slipped his cool fingers into the waistband of her knickers and slid those down too, with slow, excruciating care, until she stood naked before him.
His gaze glided up and down her body and she shifted on her feet, but steadfastly kept her arms at her sides, allowing him to look.
‘Beautiful,’ he murmured, his voice low and deep.
He covered her body in paint, keeping his strokes long and slow until she thought she’d go crazy with it. She wanted to feel him, sliding against her skin, the paint lubricating their movement, so she reached for him and he helped her undress him, casting off the remainder of his clothes.
After slicking her hands over her paint-covered body, she pressed them against his chest, leaving a stark handprint over each pec, delighting in his sharp intake of breath as she then swiped her palms over and over his nipples. Looking up into his handsome face, she caught his eye and grinned, then swiped more paint across his stomach and down his arms, laughing at his comical expression, until he stopped her by pulling her close and kissing her hard, skin sliding against skin, making a sucking sound as they came apart and pressed back together.
Jess laughed in glee. ‘You’re going to have to come for a swim now to wash all this off.’
Xander raised an eyebrow. ‘Later,’ he said, his voice seductively low, ‘once we’ve explored just how dirty we can get.’
* * *
Xander woke early again the next day and got up to see the sun rising on the other side of the lake, spreading its soft rays across the water and tipping the buildings with a warm, honey-coloured glow.
Looking back at the bed where Jess lay, the sheet barely covering her naked body, he felt a harmony he hadn’t experienced in a very long time. She looked so relaxed, so peaceful, so content.
He could only just make out the shadowed profile of her face in the gentle glow of the morning light. Her arms and legs lay splayed towards each corner of the bed as if she was anchored there, her spirit trapped in the amazing body she’d loathed so much. As he moved towards her, his tired eyes played tricks on him in the low-level light and a double image of her appeared in his vision, as if that fighting spirit of hers had risen like a dark angel from where she lay trapped and was hovering above her body.
He had a moment of pure, clear inspiration as his imagination twisted the image so her freed spirit, stripped of all her inhibitions, was floating above her fully clothed form as she lay sleeping.
It was the final image he needed for the exhibition.
Hands shaking, he picked up his sketchpad and pencil, sat in the chair at the end of the bed and began to draw.
In that moment, he wanted things to stay like this forever, but he knew with a sinking feeling in his chest, that life wasn’t like that – he wasn’t like that – and when the time came for her to leave, he would say goodbye without putting up a fight.
He really needed to pull himself together and focus his attention on finishing his pictures for the exhibition now or he was never going to hit his deadline. He couldn’t go on the way he was, unfocused and unprofessional or it would be the end of his career as an artist. People would forget about him, and he really couldn’t allow that to happen.
The thought of running out of money and having to work a real job again, like the soul-destroying ones he’d done to stay alive as a teenager, filled him with cold dread. He was terrified by the idea of not feeling special or revered any more – of being ordinary again.
He couldn’t let this thing with Jess get in the way. Whatever had happened between them didn’t feel like the usual artist/muse relationship, and it made him uneasy. This fling with her had rejuvenated him but he needed to step away from it now.
This had to be the beginning of the end.
* * *
