Chapter 15 #2
He got off the bed, taking his sketchbook with him. He brought the chair from the corner closer to the bed and sat on it.
She got off the bed, to retrieve the candlestick from the hallway. She would not let this be interrupted. While she was out,
she collected every other candle she found in the house. Two in the Great Room, and one each in the Wood Room, Blue Room,
and Bell Room. Whatever candles were in the Junk Room could stay in there. The house was quiet, calm, but that dead feeling
had dissipated. She breathed deeply.
She set the assortment of candlesticks, all brass of various heights and ornamentations, on the bedside table in the Bird Room. The quail lamp was temporarily moved to the mantel, between Barney the barn owl and the pheasant.
“So we don’t get interrupted,” she explained. “Shall I light them?”
“It would make for a beautiful sketch.”
She took the matches from the mantel, which were extra-long for starting fires in the fireplace, and lit each candle. As each
wick caught the flame, Thora silently claimed control over them. They were under her power, and not the other way around.
With the last candle aflame, it was her time to pose. Her robe slipped off her shoulders and pooled on the floor.
Lee said nothing, smiling encouragingly. She shucked off the rest of her pajamas, leaving only the long chain around her neck
with the key to Juniper looped through it. Despite working on books with all manner of threesomes, public sex, and light BDSM,
she’d never personally done anything this scandalous. She sat on the bed and reclined, arranging herself as Lee had suggested
to show off her right palm. Her other arm draped across her thigh.
Lee pulled the pencil from his notebook’s coil and began sketching.
“What do you like to talk about when you are drawing?”
“I let the conversation flow organically.”
“Something tells me that means you let the woman talk.”
He chuckled to himself and nodded. While she wanted to know more about his relationships with Cody and George, it felt inappropriate
to invoke their names in this space. She had to expand her curiosity about him.
“You didn’t know about my goals with my gossip column, and you still let me take credit for your comic. Why?”
“Credit is not important to me.”
Despite her bestselling boss and her fame-hungry ex-husband, she could easily relate. She was always happy to leave “Talk
of the Townsend” anonymous. The gossip spoke for itself. “What is important to you?”
He made a whistling noise and sketched for a few moments as he pondered the question. “Deep relationships.”
“And yet you’ve never had a girlfriend?”
His reply came quickly. “Not because it doesn’t matter to me.”
With these laconic answers about romance, she figured it was time to change her angle. “Why do you keep a piece of sea glass
by your bed?”
“It was a gift from my grandfather. He wanted to travel the world with me, he said, but his health didn’t allow for it. He
told me to take this piece of glass on all my adventures.” His voice didn’t waver. She could hear the unspoken conclusion
in his staunch tone, I’m taking this piece of glass on every fucking adventure.
“That’s a deep relationship.”
“Exactly.”
She was glad the room was warm now that she was nude. She could feel her cheeks growing rosy, both from the warmth and the
sensation of Lee’s eyes on her body.
“What do you say to a woman who’s quiet while you’re drawing?”
“I don’t find quiet uncomfortable. If the quiet makes her uncomfortable, I’ll trust she can remedy the situation herself.”
That gave Thora a good laugh. “Silence is not my strong suit.”
“I’ve noticed.”
“Does it bother you?”
“No more than birdsong bothers me. No more than the babbling of a brook bothers me. It’s nature. I like it.”
Thora was stunned. She felt annoying every day of her life, even though her chattiness was one source of her power. No one had ever made her feel at ease about it, not even Mack, who would definitely tell her to shut the fuck up on occasion.
“Why is that confusing to you?”
She hadn’t meant for her face to be easily read. But he was studying her intensely at the moment, so she couldn’t exactly
hide. Nor did she want to.
“It shouldn’t be confusing, you’re right. But it is. Honestly, it’s a little like my journey with my scar. It’s taking time
to truly accept my whole self exactly as I am. I’m clearly not there yet.”
In truth, time was not the key factor. If Lee hadn’t explicitly said that her personality was not a problem, she honestly
might have never believed it. Would his affirmation ring as true if it had come from someone else?
Some new conflicting feelings joined the pile. Maybe an unexamined need for validation from a man led her into an ill-advised
marriage. Feeling out of step with her cohort, who were kissing and dating and fucking without her for years and years, made
her rush to “catch up.”
Here she was, naked in front of a guy who was sure to complicate her life. Was she trying to catch up again on the sensuality
she’d been missing? Was she trying to bring more drama to her life? Was she craving his validation because he was a man?
“Where are you right now?” Lee said. “It’s not in the room with me.”
“Ugh, I’m all in my head. I feel lost.”
“Stay put and I’ll come find you,” Lee said.
Damn. Her words had the tendency to ping pong around a space, but his cut straight through her. She was a fancy mixed drink; he
was a shot of whiskey. And she liked that whiskey so, so much. That good burn, that deep warmth. She craved it.
“Can I see the drawing?” she asked.
“Not until I’m finished.”
“You like to take your time, don’t you?”
“Why would I rush?”
The double entendres were flying fast and furious. If he was going to drive her mad like this, she would return the favor.
As his gaze skimmed over her, she locked eyes with him. His smile was devilish. The candlelight made him look like the romantic
hero from a period film, one whom she had arranged a midnight assignation with.
“Do you always have the key to Juniper on you?” he asked.
“Always. Next to my heart. Not as if I could forget it, given my scar. But that I didn’t have control over.” She turned the
tables again. “Have you done these sketches while in the nude yourself?”
“I have.”
“Have you ever done one of these sketches and not had sex with the subject?”
“Hmm,” he responded, mulling over her question. “Not once, come to think of it.”
That answer filled the room, briefly rendering her silent. She’d pushed that snowball off the mountaintop, knowing the momentum
would only build. She’d deal with the chaos later and enjoy the ride now.
“Not that I set that expectation. I would never,” he added.
“But it’s the truth.”
“I don’t lie.”
So she heard earlier today. “Can I take this to mean you want to have sex with me?”
He avoided eye contact, furiously sketching. They had been downright eye-fucking after dinner, so why the sudden shyness?
“How much longer until you are finished with that sketch?” she asked.
The notebook landed on the mattress in front of her. She chuckled. It hadn’t been shyness at all; he’d been in a hurry.
He sketched as she imagined an architect might, with lots of straight lines that overlapped, creating curves. Thora had a
heart-shaped face with a sharp chin, and he captured it perfectly. Her nose was long and thin, with eyebrows that arched high
over her fairly small forehead. She often felt like her face was all cheek, but the way Lee captured it made it seem like
it had its own sense of balance. Her eyes beheld the viewer.
Is this how she was looking at him? If so, she had better bedroom eyes than she’d ever known.
Obviously rendering a curved body, with heavy breasts and a round belly, using mostly straight lines was a feat, but he did
achieve softness in the end. The detail he put into her breasts made her smile, compared to the relatively sparse details
of her hips and thighs. She appreciated his attention.
When she looked up from the notebook, Lee had risen from his chair, standing near her with imploring eyes. He was seeking
an invitation into the bed. And she wanted him there like she wanted her next breath, utterly and without question. She hitched
her fingers into the pocket of his pajama pants and pulled him onto the mattress with her.
The candlelit glow in the room was perfectly romantic, all traces of menace cleared by her intentions to take control.
The only sound in the room was the rustle of blankets and the quiet gasp when Lee pressed his lips to the side of her neck.
They were closing the loop on their morning. There would be no more interruption.
Lee positioned his thigh between Thora’s legs, and she rubbed against him. She was already turned on from their flirtatious talk, as was he based on the hard length she could feel against her.
Lee tended toward quiet, but that wasn’t what she wanted at this moment.