“No,” she answered.
“So, you were on your way out,” he concluded.
“Well, not really.” A faint blush crept up her face. “I just went upstairs and changed out of my painting clothes.”
Really? He raised an eyebrow. Fascinated not only by her blushing but also by her lack of coyness. “I brought the official proposal for you.”
It was only then that Laetitia noticed that in his outstretched hand there was a navy envelope with The Blue Dot logo stamped in silver on the top left corner. Oh, my God. “Please, come in.”
1:59 p.m.
His fingertip tapped on the envelope as he announced the new clause he, Alistair, and their legal team had devised. “The Blue Dot has only one opening on its annual schedule in November 2016. It’s yours, if you sign with us.”
His lips moved in a way that made her recall their toe-curling kisses on the same sofa she was sitting on now.
She cleared her throat. The immediate offer of an exposition on the gallery schedule would not have been in her wildest dreams. “There’ll be plenty of time to do a new series.”
“Sure.” He could feel her yielding but was wise enough to hide his smile. The thought of her on his arm at a successful opening night was heady, and his whole body started to throb with need. “However, a VIP exposition would be perfect to start your career with us. They’re not for everyone, you know. It’ll be a challenge.”
She picked at a nonexistent fleck on her sweater to avoid looking at him, because everything about him dazed her. From his sensualness to his absolute way of showing her the logic of his proposal. Her heart rate increased. “And you think I can do it?”
“I’m sure.” He didn’t know how he could have been feeling so sulky; it had been a long time since he had faced such enticing challenge. “The paintings you have will suffice to fill an intimate room on the gallery’s second floor. Selected buyers, a handful of critics, those who matter. For just eight hours.”
“Eight?” her tone was full of disappointment.
“Aye, but you’ve not seen any eight hours like those before,” he chuckled. “You’ll be working yourself to the bone, in London, twenty-four seven, two weeks before and a week more at least after it.”
“With you?”
He began examining the situation from a whole new angle. This might actually turn out to be more fun than work. With heavy-lidded eyes, like a lion, he seemed content enough to allow his prey to flounder and panic, wondering how and when he would strike. “If you so wish.”
In silence, she lifted a hand to massage her left temple, where he noticed two minuscule whitened scars. Then she settled more comfortably sideways, pulling her legs under herself. “I quite like the idea.”
He creased his brows and leaned forward. “But?”
What if I can’t take the time off? “When?”
“In seven days.” His tone was flat, unwavering.
“What about my job?” She looked up at him, eyes wide. “I can’t possibly take holidays without advance notice.”
“I’m sure the baron would find a replacement for you.” One of his half smiles appeared. “In fact, he indicated he owed you vacations, and that it was time you took some.”
“He did?” She chewed on her bottom lip. To be where she was now, Laetitia had gone through a long healing process of building layer upon layer of new skin over a deep puncture wound, something she wasn’t keen on risking opening.
Then she realized that something else belonged to her, something much more important she would also be putting at risk if she kept avoiding making choices: her future.
Laetitia gave him a full-fledged smile. “Do you have a pen?”
CHAPTER 20
He put his empty glass of water on the table beside the envelope, which held the contract she had signed. “Now, let’s move to the other matter at hand.”
She didn’t know how he had scooted so close to her without her noticing. His oak-chocolate scent was all around her, clouding her senses. “Other?”
“Us having a personal relationship.” His sea-green eyes were liquid pools of desire.
Laetitia’s heart tripped end over end. She was not certain if she should fear Tavish or not. His unpracticed, roguish smiles were endearing; the power that lay beneath his veneer of civility was scary. But it was the possessive and protective way he stared at her and the look in his eyes as if he somewhat understood her secrets that frightened the most.
She was terrified she would disappoint him. She pointed to her chest. “Here be dragons.” A den full of them. Especially if the past comes back to haunt me.
Here be monsters. “You’re not going to scare me off with your dragons,” he quipped, “and I’ll be careful not to show you mine.”
“And you’re so . . .” Her hand fluttered over her heart as if it hurt. She suddenly didn’t know how to explain it to him and fumbled around for words.
“Handsome?”
“Intense.” She slapped his arm and stopped trying to think about what to say and just let whatever wanted to come out, come out. “I’ve never felt such . . .” Passion. I’ve never felt this heat. “I haven’t done this in a long while, and I only know the basics.”
“I’ll gladly teach ye.” He cupped her chin in his hand, loving the silk feel of her skin.
Meeting his gaze felt like touching a live wire: devastating, stimulating. She wondered if she would be burned by so much charging electricity.
“But you are going off on a tangent. And I’m getting confused here. What does all this have to do with my intensity?” He tilted his head, and a midnight-black lock fell over his eye. “If it’s nae, it’s nae. You just have to say the word. I doona understand why you’re making this so complicated.”
“Easy for you to say. You’re a man. And pleasure is complicated.”
“Despite what you think, men are complicated, too. You’re also a passionate, intense woman.” Whatever the point of this conversation was, Tavish had no clue. His thumb grazed across her cheek, tempting her to give into her body’s wants, but she looked down. “Sorry if I am blunt, but if I only wanted sex, I’d have seduced you already. Are you . . . a virgin?”
Her head snapped up, not believing this man would be so confused, much less voice the feeling and ask such a question. “No. I just think I’m not relationship material.”
Then Tavish did something that she wouldn’t ever forget as long as she lived.
For the first time in her company, he laughed out loud. More of a rough rumble than a laugh, really, revealing he didn’t do it often. He was so handsome when he laughed that she caught her breath.
She opened her mouth—to say what, she didn’t know—just to close it again. She should have been annoyed that he was laughing at her, but she wasn’t.
“Not relationship material?” he said, still laughing. “For Christ’s sake, Laetitia, what kind of excuse is that?”
Laetitia considered his question, but in fact she was loving the exhilarating feelings coursing through her veins. She didn’t remember a time, a day—if she had ever had one since she fled Ireland—of having a man seeing her not only as desirable but also an intelligent woman, nor a day when she had been willing to be kissed, touched, and made love to. “I need to know you better.”
“So do I.”
“I need more than a few hours in impersonal, public restaurants and suddenly jumping in bed in a flurry of lust.”
“You are not only mistaking and underrating physical pleasure but also how much two people can learn about each other in bed.” His sea-green eyes darkened with arousal as they explored her face.
A small, nervous laugh left her.
“I’ll take you out to dinner, listen to your voice, tell you things.” His voice dropped to a murmur as his hands ran over her ribs and circled her waist. “I’ll kiss you. I’ll touch you. Then I’ll make love to you. All night, all morning, through the weekend.”
You will, will you? Her whole body tensed
under his caresses.
“I’ll love you with my mouth.” He bent his head. With his mouth close to her ear, he breathed, “With my tongue and my fingers. With my cock.”
She was restless with anticipation as his fingers crept down her buttocks.
“I’ll love you tenderly and slowly.” His nibbling of her earlobe sent shivers along her spine. “I’ll fuck you hard and fast. In all ways. Until you scream, until you forget your name and remember only mine. Do you like the idea?”
Conjuring an immediate answer was impossible; his thumbs were running up and down from her waist to the start of her ribs and it took a moment for her to say, “What if I say I want you to slowly talk me through it?”
“How much help do you think you’ll need?” The hint of the soft flirtation was there in her voice now, and he didn’t miss it.
“It might take an effort on your part.” Her breaths started to come out in quick, small pants.
He tugged at her hair. “Let’s say this is my field of expertise.”
Lust shot through him at alarming speed as Laetitia reciprocated with a little tug of her own. He pushed her headband back, fingers dipping in the mass of her hair, pushing the locks up, and holding them in one hand. “Such lovely elfin ears. I’ve been waiting to kiss them.”
She froze. In the frenzied lust, she had forgotten about her ears.
Before his fingers traced its contour, she put her hand over it. “They are ugly.”
“They are beautiful,” he tutted, shaking his head and taking her hand away.
“Beautiful?” Curiosity, strangeness, even repulsion. She remembered his waning smile and was waiting for any reaction but one of praise. Apart from that time with Tatiana, no one ever said her elfin ears were beautiful. Nonetheless, he did, and the lust was clear in those turbulent sea-green eyes.
“Aye, beautiful. They fit your wee size and heart-shaped face perfectly. Make you look like a lovely garden sprite,” he reinforced. He licked his lips and angled her head to nibble her earlobe, his kisses trailing down her neck and throat. “If you even went so far as to put wings on your back—”
“Wh-a-a-at?”
The way she elongated the word made his lips curl up. He whispered against her neck, “I doona care if you’ve altered—”
“I didn’t alter anything.” She pulled her head back. “I was born like this.”
Absentmindedly, he said, “I’ve never had a woman like you. So slender.” He traced the shell of her pointed ear, making her shiver. “A fhlùir.”
Although she was pretty sure that was either the strangest or the nicest thing anyone had ever told her, she said, “I’m not a flower.”
“Aye, a delicate flower. Slender. Slight. Slim. A snowdrop.” His fingers lifted her sweater and ran over her ribs. Her breath grew harried, her chest rising and falling under his touch, until his palm cupped her breast over her bra. “In comparison to me, you are fragile, even.”
“In comparison to you,” she panted in anticipation, when his forefinger just lightly brushed her throbbing nipple, “everything is small.”
“We are so much opposites, as if we were black and white,” he whispered, a hair’s breadth away from her mouth.
Her senses were so immersed in the warm, luscious velvet of his voice that before she knew what was happening, Tavish took her waist firmly between his hands and hauled her, airborne, into his arms, sitting her on his lap.
Her skirt bunched over her upper thighs. For a moment, her eyes flickered uncertainly over his face. “Tavish?”
He didn’t know what she was asking and couldn’t make sense of it right now, because all he could see was a fire burning in the violet-blue depths, an amethyst flame that was drawing him nearer and nearer with its spell.
“Laetitia,” he breathed on her lips before smashing them with a scorching kiss, branding her, tattooing her. With his smell, his mouth, his hands, and his body. Marking her as his.
A ripple of delicious pleasure zinged through her whole body, and she threw her arms around his neck and entangled her hands into his glorious hair, kissing him back, giving as much as taking. She forgot whatever she had said about intensity, a relationship, or even flurry lust. Right that very minute, right there, she wanted him to love her.
Laetitia felt so needy, she mentally urged his hands to strip her of her clothes and explore her body all over.
His mouth broke away from hers, and he ran his lips over her jaw. Her scent was strong, intoxicating. Bewitching. Lust clenched a hard fist around him and squeezed.
He didn’t want to be gentle; he wanted to take her urgently, with no finesse, no preliminaries. But there was something so breakable in her that he leashed the urges from his wild animal lust and let his lips move over hers gently, softly, from her mouth to her jaw and neck, feeling her shuddering under his lips.
She closed her eyes as the sensations, hot and wet, slid over her skin. When he closed his mouth over her earlobe and nibbled it, Laetitia couldn’t contain herself anymore. Unbidden, her legs wrapped tighter around his waist, and she shifted to better position herself on his stiffened manhood.
“Opposites. That suits. Perfectly,” he panted in her ear as his hips moved upward. “Black and white.”
“More like concave . . . and convex.” She dipped her hands in his hair, combing the silly locks. The bulge of his arousal fit perfectly on her sex, nudging it.
He ran his fingers down over her rib cage to the hemline of her sweater.
She hesitated. Her fingers closed around his wrists, but more in a caress than to still them.
The grip didn’t stop him. He took the sweater off in one motion.
“Christ,” he said staring at her barely concealed chest. He was expecting a simple bra, not the tulle and lace that greeted him. Lewd, provocative images hit his brain and took over every thought. Nothing had ever felt this good, this quickly, or this intensely for him. He was in pain, so stiff he was.
She moaned his name out loud and arched herself for his lips. Her nipples were aching, craving his touch. Wanting more. And wanting it now. “Tavish.”
Blood began pumping through his veins, faster and harder. Tavish’s control was slowing, slipping through his hands, as Laetitia’s inhibitions got loose.
He groaned, and his mouth closed over her nipple, licking it through the lace.
“Tavish.” She moaned at the new sensations sending sparks shooting through her and ending abruptly between her legs. Her fingers pulled on his hair to keep him near.
His hand encircled her ankle and drew up over her silky leg in long, slow strokes. He raised his head to gaze at her and breathed, “Soft as a petal.”
Laetitia’s body jerked with pleasure.
And all hell broke loose.
“Laetiiiiiiiitia!” Marcella’s scream came out from the intercom and scared Cleopatra, who had entered the room.
Cleopatra jumped on the sofa, beside Laetitia, howling like a wailing ghost, and Tavish exploded out from there, with Laetitia in his arms.
“What the fuck!” He panted, gaping at the animal, who looked more like an alien than a cat.
“This is my cat, Cleo, and that is the intercom. Cleo is not dangerous. This intercom is,” Laetitia explained, squirming in his arms. “Please, put me down. I have to answer her before she screams her head off.”
“Jesus!” Tavish put Laetitia on her feet and narrowed his eyes at the cat. A Sphynx breed, with huge ears and no coat, Cleopatra had mismatching blue and green eyes and white skin. “You’re so ugly that you are kind of cute, Cat.”
“Not Cat. Cleo!” Laetitia grabbed her sweater and put it on, backward and inside out, while she struggled against the urge to let Marcella scream until her throat was raw. With a sigh, she picked up the receiver from the cradle and answered, “Yes, Mrs. Langley?”
Absentmindedly, Tavish scratched Cleopatra’s bald head between the ears, which felt like a warm chamois to the touch. Without ceremony, she had draped herself over his lap,
while he watched incredulously as Laetitia answered in a soft, almost subservient voice and solved what seemed to be a domestic squabble about how one of Marcella’s dresses had or hadn’t been pressed. His arousal throbbed, and he was irritated at having been interrupted, but what made him mad was the way Marcella had called her and, worse, how her shoulders had sagged, and on her face there was a resigned, almost defeated look when she cradled the receiver. He put Cleo on the sofa and walked to her. By sheer willpower alone, he didn’t pick up the intercom to tell Marcella to go to hell.
He touched her shoulder. “Laetitia?”
She jumped and nearly screamed.
What the hell?
“Sorry.” She closed her eyes, and her hand clutched at her chest. “You scared the daylights out of me!”
Johanna would have said “shit!” not “daylights.” Even the way she spoke, with a soft, lilting quality to her voice and an old fashioned sweetness, quite rare nowadays, was refreshing. The two of them could not have been more different. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”
Laetitia gave him a small smile. “No, it was silly of me.”
“I understood you had Mondays and Tuesdays free.”
Cleopatra followed him as he moved through the room, and when he didn’t pick her up, she gave him a mournful meow and pressed herself against Laetitia’s legs.
“I do.”
He raised an ink-black eyebrow. “Today is Monday.”
“The job pays really well, and they’re used to having me around,” she explained with a delicate shrug, picking up the cat in her arms. “I have never minded an interruption before.”
“I see,” he said, without seeing, really. “Are you done solving it?”
“Yes, I . . .” She looked up, shyly.
He stepped back. “Listen, Laetitia, I am worried about your commitment with the VIP.”
“I’m sorry we were . . . uh . . . interrupted,” she said, ashamed she was so dependent on her employer. “It won’t happen again.”