When he raised his head, he smoothed back her hair with both hands. "You're wrong. I don't think of you as anything but what you are, a beautiful woman. I know what you do. I do. Here"—he thumped the side of his head with the heel of his hand—"I can accept it. It's here"—he placed his hand over his heart—"that I can't."
He burrowed his nose into the side of her neck. "I don't like what you do. I admit it. Not for the reasons you think, but because I can't bear the thought of slime like Armand, or any man, any man, having the opportunity to look at what I crave to look at so much, what I crave to touch, to taste."
She uttered a short, joyful cry and turned her mouth toward his. "Ah, Shay, Shay," he breathed before he sealed their mouths together in a timeless kiss.
The air left his lungs and gushed into her mouth. She swallowed it greedily. Her arms lifted and closed around his neck as her head went back to allow him greater access to her mouth. He was voracious, roughly varying the angles of their lips, plunging deeply into the sweet crevice of her mouth with a debauching tongue.
She wove her fingers in his hair, pulling him closer, tasting him and loving the taste, loving the texture of his mouth. There had always been a part of herself she had held inviolate. Neither her parents nor Anson nor anyone else had ever touched that secret part of her that was her soul. She had kept that in reserve. Now she opened it up and offered it freely to Ian, making it his for the taking.
When his initial appetite had been appeased, he sipped at her mouth tenderly and let his tongue glide leisurely over lips that were swollen from the passion of their kisses.
"You taste the way you look," he whispered hoarsely. "Warm and sweet and golden."
His hands caressed her. Their strength gave her a sheltered, protected feeling that she basked in. She'd been alone for too long. She reveled in being treated like a prized treasure belonging to someone special.
"I can't get enough," he said in anguish as he took her mouth again.
He was a man of God; she had no doubt of that. But from the way their bodies were moving against each other as his legs straddled hers, she knew, too, that he was of the generations of Adam. He was a man. And everything in her that was woman cried out for him.
Tentatively his hand crept up her ribs. She held her breath, then expelled it on a long, shuddering sigh when the tips of his fingers stroked the under-curve of her breast, back and forth, twice, three times, while her mind went spinning out in space and her heart leapt within that which he touched so softly.
He lifted his hand until it hovered over her nipple, which was hard with yearning. For endless seconds he kept his hand suspended over her, and she heard his breathing entering and leaving his lungs, felt it warm on her neck.
"Shay," he said in a strangled voice. He dropped one hand to his side, but pulled her tighter with his other across the middle of her back. He nestled his face in the warm hollow between her neck and shoulder.
She suppressed an impulse to scream in frustration. Instead, as the attendant drove her car around a corner, pulled to a stop, and got out, she disengaged herself from Ian's arms, opened the car door, and slid inside.
"Shay—"
She slammed the door shut but rolled down the window to say, "I told you this wasn't going to work. It's impossible."
Leaning down with his arms braced against the car, he squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head. "No," he rasped. "No, it's not."
Quickly he brushed a kiss across her forehead. Straightening, he said, "Drive carefully."
Chapter Seven
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It was over. She knew it. From the moment she drove out of the parking garage and left him standing alone in the shadows, staring grimly after her, she knew that her love of Ian Douglas was a lost cause. It always had been. She'd only been fooling herself to think otherwise. Her passionate nature had been buoyed by his caresses. He couldn't have been unaware of it. Nor could his moral code fail to feel threatened by it.
Why hadn't she resisted? Or why hadn't she feigned indignation and slapped his face? Or why hadn't she taken his hand away and kissed it sympathetically, softly suggesting that they shouldn't play with fire? Why hadn't she done something, anything except return his kisses and caresses with such wanton eagerness?
No doubt he now saw her as an instrument of the Devil sent to tempt him into jeopardizing his career and all he stood for.
When she didn't hear from him by the end of the second week, she knew that he was trying to expunge her from his soul. He couldn't have misinterpreted the language her body had spoken to his. She had wanted his touch. She had wanted it all over her. Arms and shoulders, back and hips and breasts and thighs, and the most secret parts of her body had cried out for him in a silent demand that he must have heard. Nor had she camouflaged her frustration when he had removed his hand from her nipple that yearned for his touch. Her kiss, too, had been unrestrained and thoroughly revealing.
By the end of the third week she was asking why she should care what the provincial, stodgy minister of Brookside, Connecticut, thought of her. After all, her dalliance with him had only been an experiment, hadn't it? From the very beginning, hadn't she used him for her own amusement? The time she'd spent with him had provided her with a few hours of diversion. Now it was over. So, fine.Fine. She didn't care.
Besides, in addition to keeping busy with her job at the gallery, she was going into the city every third day to pose for Robert Glad. She appreciated his professionalism. His talent was remarkable and unsurpassed, although his dour personality left a lot to be desired.
Whenever she arrived at his studio, a bearded, rumpled Robert Glad ushered her in with hardly a word and indicated the back room where she should change. Emerging draped in a long sheet, she would allow him to position her and settle her into the pose she might have to hold for hours. He fussily adjusted the sarong-type garment around her waist, then he would begin, scowling as he applied his tools to the block of mahogany that was slowly taking form. When he was finished for the session, he slung the metal tools on his worktable and said a terse, "Thank you," then she changed hastily back into street clothes and left.
She didn't mind his disinclination to speak. While she stood posed before him, she felt removed from the world, temporarily relieved of responsibility, and free to let her thoughts wander.
Her mind seemed determined to dwell on Ian and their brief, tumultuous relationship, if that term was appropriate. Round and round, again and again, in ceaseless circles, she reviewed their problem. The solution always came out the same: the situation was hopeless. It always had been. It always would be. She must resign herself to that fact.
Then why was the prospect of never seeing Ian again so devastating? Why did his rejection hurt so much? From the beginning she had known their flirtation would be temporary. But it came as a surprise to her to find that life was so very bleak without him. Not nearly as great, however, as her surprise in finding him waiting for her outside Robert Glad's studio one afternoon.