Greer saw that Ford couldn’t break his gaze away, and she was glad. She’d been nervous when she’d first disrobed. But as they’d talked, she’d grown more and more comfortable reclining on the chaise lounge with its plump silk pillows and letting Ford’s gaze roam over her. She’d admired the planes of his face, taken in the thoughtful way he’d gazed at her—as if she were something mystical and marvelous to behold—and everything changed.
She became a woman on a mission: she wanted to seduce the English painter.
In the Dewberry ballroom he’d had her back under trying circumstances. He’d saved her chance to win Royal Bliss. And at the studio, hot as he’d looked in his white tuxedo jacket and the black bow tie, which he’d untied and carelessly draped around his neck, he’d been nothing but sensitive and kind.
Watching him paint, she couldn’t help but sense beneath his cool composure the hot, masculine tension in him that he’d generously unleashed to the world when he’d kissed her on the stage as if he were her man.
Hers.
“Greer—”
“Yes?”
Everything in her rejoiced when he took the two steps that separated them and cupped his hand over her bottom. She turned slightly to face him, leaned into him, and closed her eyes while he caressed her.
Bliss.
“I want you,” he said, his voice sounding the worse for wear.
She smiled into his shoulder. “I want you, too.”
He continued caressing her.
“You were a good egg tonight at the Dewberry.”
He chuckled. “I was, wasn’t I?”
“What if this … what we’re doing now—”
“This?” he asked, and kissed her neck.
“Yes,” she whispered, and let him knead her bottom and kiss her deeply, thoroughly, her bare belly pressed up against his tuxedo. She pulled back for air, and knew she was about to wreak havoc with her own plan to sleep with him, but that was how she was—it was her nature to be honest, to get everything out on the table. “We’re getting to be real friends now. What if this complicates things, and we stop helping each other? You need this portrait for your career. I need that gown—for less obvious reasons, I suppose. But they feel real to me.”
He brushed a thumb over her lip, back and forth. “What’s wrong with complicated? When it feels so good? Give me that over simple and sex-deprived any day.”
She laughed. “You have a point.”
“You’re like a lush flower,” he said in her ear. “A peony, I’d say. Blush pink at the moment. And so delicately beautiful.”
He kissed her again, his hand caressing her nipple. She gave a tiny moan and wrapped her arms around his waist. She lifted her thigh ever so slightly and pressed up between his legs. It was his turn to groan. She loved the sound.
“We don’t have much time,” she said.
“Midnight.” He picked her up and set her on the edge of the counter under the transom window, opened it to let in a great warm gust off the harbor. “You’ll be in bed by then.”
“The fresh air feels so good,” she said.
He kissed her. She wrapped her legs around his waist. He moved to her breasts, lavished them with kisses, and reached behind to break the grip she had on his waist with her ankles. He spread her legs open, kissed her belly, moved to her thighs. And then he nuzzled her center with confident attention until he pulled her bottom close to the edge and began a more intense yet playful game, teasing her until she scooted even farther forward of her own accord so as not to break contact. Her spine arched over his head and she moaned, almost oblivious with pleasure. But she remembered to at least run her fingers through his hair. He used his fingers then, deep inside her, and she let herself go.
Wave after wave took her. He stayed with her. And when she was done, she literally fell back on the counter, dazed and weak. “So much better than crème brulée,” she gasped.
He laughed. “I hope so.”
She laughed, too, and curled into a fetal position. “That was exquisite work.”
“It was entirely my pleasure.”
“I could go to sleep right here, right now.”
“Good.”
He was petting her hair. She shut her eyes and let him. She reveled in the attention. What had she done to deserve it? She didn’t know. And she didn’t care. Some things you shouldn’t have to earn.
The best things in life were free, she saw with a new clarity.
She forced herself to sit up. “Hey,” she said. “Let’s not forget about you.”
“Let’s forget about me,” he said back, his eyes teasing and warm. “You’re exhausted. Let me get you home. And we can take up where we left off next time.”
She yawned. “Are you always this nice?”
“No,” he said, with a wink. “So enjoy this enlightened, thoughtful version of me while you can. Plenty of times I make my own sort of demands.”
His message was unmistakably sexy.
“Oh,” she said, and kissed him. “I look forward to that.”
True to his word, he had her back to her apartment by eleven fifty. She was in bed with the lights out at midnight.