Chapter Fourteen

Patience let his hands skim over her body as he undressed her, layer by layer. As each one fell away, her power grew. She became more and more her true self.

When she was nude, he raked his eyes over her, down slowly, then back up again. “Why don’t you take the settee by the windows?”

She crept forward and stood to the side of the glass and as far back as she could while still being able to peer out. The windows were tall and narrow, without coverings of any kind. Below them was a walled garden. So many shades of green, and all in one small, enclosed space.

Ashcroft came to stand next to her. “Are you hoping someone will see you or will not?”

Pausing to consider, she skimmed the tips of her fingers back and forth over her chest. She turned her head toward him. “I think I prefer only you to see me in the flesh. The paintings, however…”

The paintings. That they might someday be viewed by other people sent a rush of arousal between her thighs. Exposing herself for no other reason than the pleasure of being seen and giving pleasure in turn.

The marquess flashed a smile. “I understand. I have a very appreciative gaze.”

She sat and leaned sideways luxuriously, one arm tucked behind her head, and the other resting on a thigh.

“Perfect. Can you stay like that for a spell?”

He brought his things close and set to work, glancing at her, dabbing at his paints, and brushing on the canvas.

Partway through, Patience rose to walk about the room. Sitting was far more work than she’d have believed. “May I see what you’ve been working on?”

Giles held out his hand, inviting her look. “As you please, of course.”

She looked through the sketches he’d been working on, four in all. They were all similar, but all different. One focused more carefully on form. One on her face. One on color. The last merely depicted mechanical lines, which came together to form a human body. “It’s incredible what you can capture in so little time.”

He put his painting things away and took out drawing supplies.

“My aim is to do you justice.” This time when he glanced at her, it was less with the eye of an artist and more with the eye of a man.

Patience went warm. “I can’t believe of all of these, there isn’t something to develop you won’t be satisfied with.”

“Satisfied?” His head went to one side, and he considered. “I don’t think that’s something I could ever be. If I were satisfied, I would stop painting.”

“That seems…” She frowned and twirled a loose curl of hair, studying the color of the strands in one of the sketches. “Defeating.”

“Oh, no, it’s anything but. I strive. With each painting I complete, I strive to be better than the last. There is never something I don’t want to improve. Never anything I don’t want to try capturing that I’ve never captured before.” His face assumed a faraway look. “Every day on the Italian peninsula, the light was different. It changed by the hour. For the first months of my stay, I couldn’t get enough. I was in agony thinking I might miss the way the morning light hit on a vase if I looked away for even a second.”

He rubbed his brow and continued. “I had to come to terms with the fact that I couldn’t have everything, no matter how much I wanted it. I decided then to focus—to be selective about what I chose. When I make a choice to complete a painting, I strive to make it the very best I can.”

The Italian peninsula. She wasn’t unfamiliar with the people from all over the world who traveled in and out of London’s harbors almost daily. But it sounded as far away as the moon.

“That’s why you spend so much time sketching.”

This went far beyond her father’s all-consuming passion—obsession, really—with ships and all things related to the navy and men upon the sea.

“Precisely.” The marquess smiled. He raised his brows at her. “Ready to resume?”

Patience took her place on the settee. He took a chair this time, one leg over the other, board on his knee, ready to draw.

He studied her. “Perhaps…leg bent this time?”

She repositioned her back leg. He stared between them, eyes hooded with pure wickedness, half grin upon his lips leaving no question as to the direction of his thoughts. “There. I should like to draw that.”

A rush of heat plumped her quim.

He raised his brows in question. “Shall I?”

She wiggled, horribly aroused by the mere suggestion and on fire with a new sort of self-awareness. “Draw it?”

“Draw it. They’d be for me alone, now and forever. Should you ever desire them destroyed, they’d be burned at once. Which goes for every likeness I’ve done of you, I should add. Nobody will see them without your permission, and they will only exist so long as you’re happy knowing they do.”

The man could be wicked one moment and direly earnest the next. His work wasn’t a joke to him. Neither was she.

Patience swallowed, daringly exposing herself further. “Go on, then. Draw it.”

The way he brushed the lines over the paper was more like caressing the page. He went slower than when he’d drawn her face that night in the carriage. Studying more carefully. Making bolder, more deliberate strokes. The styling suited the subject.

He offered her the first rendering. She stared at it. “I don’t think I can do this any longer.” Setting the paper aside, she slipped her fingers downward. “I can’t stand it. I need to be touched or I will die.”

…

Far be it from Giles to let a woman suffer.

He could have taken her quick and hard, the sort of fast and unbridled coupling to leave them both breathless, boneless, and happily sore.

It was tearing him apart—this overpowering need to send them spiraling over the cliffs into the light and fire of pleasure as quickly as possible, while desperate to restrain himself so he wouldn’t miss a moment of savoring her.

He set his drawing things aside and stood over her. There was nothing like the sight of a woman with her hand between her legs. He reached down to stroke the hardness under his falls.

First, he had to taste her. Giles knelt and buried his head between her thighs. Oh, give glory to the Creator. Sweet, sweet heaven. Pussy. What greater gift could there be under the sun? Warm. Wet. Perfumed. And the variety was nothing short of wondrous.

A man could live his life without it. But what would be the point?

Giles kissed her, gently opening his mouth and running his tongue up and down, over and through. Silken nectar. She moaned and moved her hips. He sucked harder.

The blaze between them built. He reached down to unbutton his falls so he could stroke himself as he continued pleasuring her.

She tensed and trembled. Oh yes. Nearing another climax. One day he’d draw her while she touched herself. If he could capture her on paper as she appeared in the middle of pleasure…

With one final stroke, she cried out, body jerking and rocking as the sensations took her.

He moved to cover her, pushing himself between her legs and nudging inside. Eager, his cock flexed. She welcomed him into her arms and hitched her ankles around his calves. Her fingers sank into the flesh of his backside as she pulled him deeper, faster. “I want this so much.”

A woman whose passions might match his.

Inside her warmth, her body gripped his with the perfect amount of tension. Like they had been formed to complement one another. Two instruments tuned to perfect harmony.

He moved over her, stroking slowly and devouring her mouth with his. She was soft and womanly. Skin smooth. His hands would never tire of roaming her body any sooner than his cock would tire of being squeezed and cradled by her passage.

Tearing himself out in time took a measure of reason that didn’t seem possible to possess in his pleasure-fogged brain. But withdraw he did, and poured himself onto her thigh.