Page 33 of Canvas of Lies
“Oh,” she said, the word escaping her lips on a soft exhalation.
When I continued to kiss a line down her throat, she lifted her chin and closed her eyes. It hadn’t been a long conversation, but I was already tired of talking about artwork and secrets and plots. Here she was, straddling my lap, warm and soft and inviting. With her head tipped back, her hair fell nearly to my thighs in a waterfall of silky golden curls.
“Sweet Kitten,” I whispered, making my way back up the other side, “do you have any idea what you do to me?”
She shifted her pelvis against mine, smirking as she lifted her head. “I think I’m getting the idea.”
I took her hand and pressed it flat against my chest. “Here, too.”
With a sharp intake of breath, she dropped her forehead to mine and closed her eyes. I’d always assumed she knew how important she was to me, knew how much I wanted her. Now I felt like I had years of misunderstandings to correct, oceans of feelings I needed to convey.
“You don’t have a fireplace here,” she said after a minute, twisting her head to glance around.
I laughed, unfazed by the sudden change of subject. Her brain had always worked at a faster speed than anyone I knew. Just because I couldn’t always follow the connections in her head didn’t mean they weren’t there.
“No, I don’t. What made you think of that?”
She flushed. “Nothing.”
“Oh, you cannot possibly believe I’ll let you get away with that.”
After biting her lip, she finally said, “Just one of the things I used to daydream about.”
“You mean fantasize?” I studied the pink staining her cheeks and neck. “I’m going to need to hear more about these daydreams.”
“Just, um, things I thought we’d grow up and do together. Champagne on New Year’s Eve, reading in front of a fireplace.”
“What else?”
“There might have been a hot tub version after I started reading romance novels,” she admitted.
“No hot tub here, either. I hadn’t realized just how lacking this place was until you got here. Maybe I’ll upgrade one day.”
Instead of replying, Kat slumped down against my chest, her forehead resting to one side of my Adam’s apple. My hands left her hips to stroke slowly up and down her back. The sudden silence didn’t bother me any more than the zigzagging conversation.
I knew exactly what she felt, because I felt it, too. After half a lifetime of simply accepting what was between us as children, we’d spent the other half denying it, ignoring it, trying to get past it. Now here we were, in the middle of nowhere, together.
It might have been funny if it wasn't so strange and overwhelmingly potent.
While I held her, my thoughts tangled and meandered. After two years of planning and plotting, could I just . . . let it go? Accept that I would never see the painting again? Leverage aside, it had been in my family for generations, passed down from firstborn to firstborn, the tales told like a bedtime story from one cradle to the next.
I’d spent my life loving it—but the same could be said for loving Kat.
If the tradeoff of accepting defeat was a chance at a real relationship with her instead of a series of stolen moments like this one, then I’d have to think long and hard about what I would risk to get the painting back. I wouldn’t have considered it before that exact moment in time, but now I had to.
I wanted the painting,andI wanted Kat. I just didn’t know if there was a way for me to have both.
A few minutes later, I set the conundrum firmly aside. She was involved now—beyond serving as a willing hostage, beyond being collateral damage. Knowing her as I did, there wasn’t a chance in hellshewould ever agree to just let the painting go.
If anyone held a more intense grudge against Aidan Willoughby than I did, it was the man’s only child.
Kat gave a soft sigh against my throat. “Should we make a list of options?”
“Not yet,” I said, twirling a lock of her hair around my finger.
“Are we just going to hide away here and have lots of wild sex?”
I laughed and drew back to bounce my eyebrows at her. “Fuck, you’re onto me. Now that I’ve had a taste of you, it’s all I can think about.”
