Chapter 7 #2
She set the first lines with care, blocking the shapes, mapping shadow and light. Her breath evened with the work. The act of seeing steadied her. He watched her watch him, and it was like stepping out onto a narrow bridge over a drop that thrilled and frightened in equal measure.
“Whenever I tell you to shift or hold still… please comply.”
“I am a model of obedience,” he said, and his smile sharpened, beautiful and dangerous. “You will paint my cock.”
She swallowed. “Your…cock?”
“Hmm.” The earl looked like a man fighting back deep amusement. He loosened the fall of his trousers and drew his manhood free. Darcy’s breath caught. She had never seen a man this way.
“Red, this is my cock.”
She parted her lips to claim she already knew—but thought better of offering a lie.
Her breath caught instead, heat rushing to her cheeks as her gaze flicked downward before darting back.
A hundred questions sparked in her mind, none of which she dared ask aloud.
Curiosity tangled with a flustered thrill low in her belly, but she held her ground, refusing to look away.
His cock was thick and long, the skin flushed and satiny, the head sleek.
When his hand closed around himself and slid once, slow and assured, something pulsed low in her belly in answer.
Lord Raine settled deeper into the chaise, letting the shadows kiss his torso while the lamplight gilded the length in his palm.
His thighs eased wider. He looked, in that quiet arrogance, like some pagan god at his ease.
Her cheeks no longer burned. The artist in her stepped forward. Marble came to mind, the antique torsos in engravings she had studied by candlelight, the way light loved muscle and hollow. Only those sculptures had never told the whole truth. This did.
He watched her with narrowed eyes, pleasure and curiosity mingling. “Still steady, Red.”
“Quite,” she said, and was astonished to find it true. “You are, in fact, exquisite to paint.”
His grip tightened along the thick length of his cock.
He tipped his head, so the lamp caught the upper half of his face, throwing his cheekbones into a fierce, elegant plane and leaving his mouth—curved in that sensual, knowing smirk—fully revealed.
He looked devastatingly carnal, beauty honed to a weapon; all indolent power and dark promise.
This was how she wanted him—how she needed him—on the canvas: wickedly at ease, shadow and light conspiring over skin, a pagan god reclining and entirely aware of his own allure.
She adjusted the easel a fraction of an inch and began to work.
The first lines came quickly, confident strokes placing the geometry of him: the clean bracket of shoulder and arm, the strong angle of hip, the long column of thigh.
She marked the fall of shadow where his ribs met his belly, the way the lamplight slid along the vein at his temple and found the ridge of his collarbone.
She took the measure of his hand upon himself, the tension in the tendons of his wrist, the indulgent set of his mouth.
He had the look of a man who knew every language of pleasure and when to speak each.
The earl did not fidget. His breath fell slow and even, though his fist tightened now and then, a small confession in the stillness.
She mixed a warmer tone and deepened the planes, her brush learning him as her eyes did.
The room contracted to canvas and man, to pigment and skin.
Music from the salon throbbed distantly like a human pulse; within the walls, there was only the soft drag of brush on ground and the whisper of his thumb moving.
“You are a rake,” Darcy said, almost startled, her thoughts came out. “One of those wicked men mothers warn their daughters about.”
“Am I?” His voice was quiet.
She did not look up. “Yes. My canvas does not flatter, and it does not lie. You are indolent and dangerous. You have spent years perfecting this effortless creature. Beautiful, and entirely aware of it. The sort of man who would ruin a woman and make her thank him for the lesson.”
A rough thread of amusement entered his tone. “Is that so?”
“Yes,” she said, laying a fine stroke where light met shadow. “Though I am certain there is another facet to you that you do not show here.”
“You can deduce all that from painting me?”
“Art is a window into the soul,” she answered softly.
He said nothing. The silence felt like a hand laid lightly at the back of her neck, warm and attentive.
The steady stroke of his hand continued, measured and merciless.
She lost all sense of modesty, of fright, of anything except the rightness of the line.
She shifted closer, not to him but to the truth of him on the canvas, catching the insolence in the tilt of his head, the intent in his eyes, the heat low in his belly that she could almost feel across the air.
Time thinned. The first study took shape. Light and shadow held him, irreverent and wicked, a man made for sin and practiced in bestowing it. She paused at last to breathe and to look, really look, at what her hand had done.
A knock sounded. She rubbed the nape of her neck. The earl set himself to rights; in a few moments, all his sharp sensuality was concealed, and he appeared again the well-dressed gentleman.
“Come in.”
Rebecca entered, her gaze flicking between them. “It has been over three hours.”
Startled, Darcy glanced at the mantel clock. Nearly two in the morning. She had been lost in bringing him to life.
Rebecca crossed to the easel, looked, and drew in a breath. “This is… my word, this is extraordinary. I have never seen anything so vivid and so carnal.”
The earl came to stand beside her and considered the canvas. Most of his face lay in shadow; what the eye found was the sinful creature she had seen in him, rendered without apology.
“How talented you are, Red,” he said softly, as if tasting something rare.
“Does that mean I’m hired?”
“You are hired,” Madame Rebecca said, clearly delighted.
Darcy cleared her throat gently. “Will this be counted among the eight commissioned pieces?”
Rebecca’s smile deepened. “No, my dear. Tonight was merely your introduction.”
“Then the artwork belongs to me,” Darcy said softly. “Should either Madame Rebecca or my lord wishes to acquire it… I’ll consider selling.”
Rebecca laughed, the sound rich with amusement. “Oh, I do like you.”
Darcy felt the instant he decided she had met whatever measure he had set. The idle amusement in his gaze eased into something like interest, and the notion of such a man finding her interesting was, quite inexplicably, terrifying.