Page 52 of What a Lord Wants

“I can’t,” he rasped out, although he desperately wanted to.

“Yes, you can.”

With an awkward laugh of incredulous disbelief, he turned away in an attempt to tamp down his lust. She had no idea how great a temptation she posed to him, both as an artist and a man.

He pointed at the easel. “That painting can never be shown. You’ll be recognized, and your reputation trulywillbe destroyed.”

“Then paint it for yourself,” she answered, undeterred. “Prove to yourself that you’re the great artist everyone proclaims you to be.” Her bare shoulders melted against the velvet beneath her as she whispered, “Because I already know how brilliant you are.”

His chest swelled with more masculine pride than he had a right to feel.

Uncertainty touched her voice. “Youdowant to paint me like this, don’t you?”

“Yes.”More than I want to breathe.

“Then paint me.”

He shook his head as he began to pace back and forth across the studio like a restless lion in a cage. Her eyes followed him patiently, a soft pleading in their honey-amber depths.

Grasping at any excuse he could, he halted in mid-stride and jabbed a finger toward the lantern hanging by its peg. “The light is wrong—allwrong. The lamplight will color your skin, the shadows—”

“Am I not pretty enough by lamplight?”

He groaned in frustration. Pretty enough? With the way the light shined golden on her bare skin and lit her hair like flames of burnished gold…Not pretty.Sublime.

“Tonight is all the time we have left,” she quietly stated the obvious, as if explaining that rain fell down and winters were cold. “Do you want to spend it arguing with me or painting me?”

All they had left, a few precious hours…Something inside him broke. Succumbing to her enticement, he strode to the easel and whisked away the cloth. Her image stared back at him from the canvas, still unfinished.

But not for long.

He hurried around the studio to gather all the lamps, lanterns, and candles he possessed, lighting them and placing them around her so that no shadows darkened any inch of her. He adjusted her arm beneath her head, brushed his fingers through her hair to move it just so, lifted her chin ever so slightly, spread her fingers wider across her abdomen…

He tried to forget the allure of her as he worked.Impossible.He was a damned fool to think he could. After all, it was that very allure that he wanted to capture.

But as he picked up his brushes and positioned the palette on his forearm, he lost himself in his work. He went deeper into himself than he’d ever gone before, until he existed as nothing but the stroke of the brush, the trail of color, the emerging beauty…He lost track of the hours, each one slipping away toward dawn, immersing himself in his painting. In her.

The lantern on the post sputtered and died, the oil used up.

The soft noise jolted him from his reverie. His eyes darted up to meet hers, momentarily confused. He’d forgotten that he was the artist, not a man in the painting who had happened along and found her by blissful accident, half-awakened from innocent slumber in her bedroom.

Then she smiled at him and brought him completely back to present. “Is it finished?”

Blinking rapidly, he tore his eyes away from her, to look at the canvas. “There are more layers to add with glazes, a thinning of lines…”

But the figure was finally whole.A masterpiece.

He murmured to himself as his eyes took it all in, “Perfect.”

Eve remained where she lay on the chaise as if, like him, she couldn’t yet bring herself to acknowledge that it was over.

Not bothering to wipe the paint from his hands, he slowly moved around the studio, putting out the lanterns and lamps one by one, until only a single flickering candle remained burning in its wrought iron stand just behind the chaise.

He looked down at her and caught his breath. She’d been beautiful in the lamplight, but in the shadows…a goddess.

Hisgoddess.

He knelt in front of her. Her breath quickened beneath his shameless gaze until it matched his own. So much more than desire—neverhad he wanted a woman as much as he wanted her. More than a craving to bury himself between her thighs and find pleasure, he wanted to fill himself with her essence and carry her inside him always, to draw on for inspiration.