Page 16 of What a Lord Wants

He took her chin in his fingers and turned her back to look at him. “But simply being beautiful isn’t necessarily what an artist wants in a model.”

“Just in his mistress.”

When his eyes narrowed in displeasure, she regretted the slip.

“Non essere gelosa, mia bella,” he scolded gently. “Constance isn’t as delicate as you.”

Certainly not with those claws she kept hidden beneath kid gloves.

“And she lacks your light.”

She caught her breath. Herlight?

“With Constance, a man is shown sexuality, but with you, he’s tempted by sensuality. Her appeal is lust. Yours is allure.” He released her chin. “I have special plans for you.”

“Oh?” The jealousy inside her melted into a low heat.

He reached behind her and took a book from the shelf. It fell open in his hands to a well-worn crease in the spine, revealing on the right side a page covered in handwritten notes and on the left—

“Sleeping Venus,” he told her. “The first reclining nude in European art.”

Her eyes moved over the painting of the naked female figure, delicately asleep on a pile of red and white silk. “It’s beautiful.”

“Finished by Titian after Giorgione’s death.” He turned the page to reveal another leaf covered in notes and a painting on the left. “Cranach'sRiver Nymph at the Fountain.”

A second sleeping woman. “They all seem very relaxed.”

His eyes gleamed at her wry comment as he turned another page. “Titian’s own masterpiece in the form,The Venus of Urbino.”

Eve’s breath hitched as her eyes fell on the naked female at the center of the painting. “That one’s not asleep,” she forced out around the knot in her throat, her eyes trailing over the blatantly sexual figure.

“Indeed not, and daring to stare straight back,” he murmured. “Alluring, sensual, confident…Every inch of her a goddess, one knowing the viewer is shamelessly looking at her and enjoying what he sees.” He flipped through another few pages, skipping decades of history between each page turn. “Ruben’sThe Hermit and Angelica, Velasquez’sVenus at Her Mirror…Boucher'sLouisa O’Murphy, in which the woman isn’t a goddess being looked upon with desire but a mistress to be looked upon with lust. By the time that one was painted, the woman was no longer a goddess to be worshipped at a distance but a flesh and blood woman to be made love to.”

Eve stared at the naked woman, not facing up like the others—not facing the viewer at all, in fact—but turned onto her belly and draped across the cushions of a settee in a pose of complete submission. She rested on the same soft red and white silks from Giorgione’sSleeping Venus, her legs parted, her body pliable and lush. As Eve stared at the painting, the heat of the blush returned to her cheeks, so did an aching that blossomed low in her belly.

“By the time we get to Goya and Ingres—”

As he flipped the pages, Eve saw the scandalous Goya painting that had shaken Europe nearly two decades earlier, the one of a woman lying fully nude with no attempt to cover any of her nakedness. She, too, stared boldly out at the viewer, but this time with a wanton expression of lustful invitation.

“—we have no idea who the women are, but they are common and ordinary, perhaps even prostitutes. Certainly not a goddess or a king’s mistress. And the way they stare so boldly at the viewer, so world-weary and brazen—”

“I see.” She looked away from the painting.

He closed the book and handed it to her. “Artists no longer portray seduction as art but as a commodity.”

“I don’t understand.” She set both books aside, certain the tingling in her fingertips came from the erotic nature of the paintings within. “What does that have to do with me?”

“I want to paint a woman who encompasses all of the best elements of the form. The secret allure of spying on Giorgiano’s Venus but with the knowledge that the woman in the painting is accessible to an ordinary man. The sexual temptation of Goya and Ingres tempered by hints of innocence and curiosity. A woman who doesn’t boldly dare the viewer to make love to her but one who issues a demure invitation to please and be pleased, who is all the more desirable because of it.” His eyes gleamed intensely. “I want to paint a divine goddess who invites human pleasures.”

Her heart pounded, her breath coming shallow and fast. She had no idea what to say.

“You’re that woman, Eve,” he confided in a low voice, as if sharing a secret.

And certainly not tothat.

“I’ve been dreaming of this painting for years, wanting to create something new in the vision of the masters, yet one that transcends the current artistic sensibilities that strive only to shock rather than seduce, to alarm rather than arouse.” He reached up slowly to touch her lips and trace their outline with his fingertip. Yet Eve knew he wasn’t a man seeing her as a woman, but an artist looking at his model, deciding the best way to portray her features to capture the light he saw in her. “And I plan on doing it with an artistic brilliance that hasn’t been seen since Titian.”

“You’re quite sure of yourself.” Her lips brushed against his fingers.