Page 54 of What a Lord Wants

He rested his cheek against her soft belly and closed his eyes, to let the wonder of her fill him up.

After a long moment, when she’d regained her breath and her trembling subsided, she whispered, “Dom?”

“Hmm?”

“That’s…not all, is it?”

The hesitancy in her voice surprised him. Turning his head, he gazed up at her over her flushed body. He carefully kept his face inscrutable. “You didn’t find that pleasing?”

“I didn’t mean that! I meant—” She looked away, and he smiled that she’d suddenly grown shy given what she’d just allowed him to do. “Of course, I did.” Her whisper was as soft as the candlelight flickering across her bare flesh. “It was heaven.”

Hiding his own pleasure at that, he placed a kiss to her belly. When she trembled with fresh desire, he bit back a groan. She already had him hard as stone, with no way to find release tonight except by his own hand. If she kept this up, he’d be dead of frustration by dawn.

“Then what’s wrong?” he asked.

She idly ran her fingers through the hair at his temple, having no idea what even that little touch did to him. Or how much he wanted her hands on him everywhere.

She watched her fingers, not daring to make eye contact. “I know what happens between men and women, how they join bodies and…” She swallowed nervously. “I’ve heard it’s wonderful.”

“It is.” He fought back a grin. Of course her sister had told her about sex. The woman was married to a Carlisle, after all, and was most certainly happy in her marriage.

“I want to do that with you.”

He froze. All of him except his cock, which jumped eagerly at the invitation.

She continued softly, “I want it to be you, the man who…You make me feel special and beautiful.”

She was all that, and so much more. Which was why he could never do as she asked.

“I trust you.”

Those three words were a knife-plunge into his heart.

Good God, how could she make him so happy and so miserable at the same time? Yet there she was, the most delectable temptation he’d ever been offered. His for the taking.

And all it would cost was his artist’s soul.

“Oh, Eve.” He shifted a safe distance away, but even then he couldn’t resist reaching to run his hand through her hair one more time, those red tresses that seemed to change with the weather, that now looked golden brown in the candlelight. Unable to bear looking into her eyes, he could force out nothing more than a raspy, “No.”

Her breath hitched. “You don’t…want that?”

“I want that so much more than you realize.” He dropped his hand away from her, then stood and turned away before she saw for herself exactly how much. She’d aroused him before with her kisses, but nothing like this. He was harder than a steel rod, painfully so.

When his gaze landed on the canvas, the sight was better than a jump in a cold river for tamping down his desire. Because if he gave in and made love to her, tonight would destroy everything he’d worked his entire adult life to achieve.

She would steal away his passion,allof it, in a way no other woman had ever done. Not even Elena. And then what would he have left for his art?

Behind him, fabric rustled softly as she moved off the chaise and slipped on her robe.Thank God. He was a gentleman—barely. But even he had his limits. If she kept offering herself, he might grow too weak to keep refusing.

He ran a shaking hand through his hair. “But we cannot do what you’re asking—Icannot.”

“You’re Vincenzo. I’m pretty sure you can.” A forced teasing colored her voice, which grew closer until she was standing right behind him. “And quite expertly, too.”

He bit back a curse. Was she daring him now? His fault, really. She’d worn him down with her arguments when he’d refused to paint her and again when he’d refused to kiss her, and she’d gotten what she’d wanted both times. Now, like a demanding muse, she was certain she could wrest from him anything she desired.

But he could never give her that.

He strode away, to put the distance of the studio between them, and pretended to busy himself with the paints and brushes he’d used at the canvas.Hadto keep his hands busy, or he’d reach for her again. And if he reached for her again—