For a few dreadful seconds, she felt like she couldn’t expand her lungs. They finally released, however, and she reached for a pot of paint.
“Do you want to take a quick break?” she asked, striving to keep her voice even.
“No. Go ahead.” His voice sounded so strained, she glanced up at him in concern. She saw the rigidness of his angular jaw. His eyes blazed through the prosthetic mask.
“I’m not sure that’s such a good idea,” she said.
“I can take it if you can.”
She wasn’t quite sure she could take it. Things had gotten warm and wet between her thighs. She looked down at her lap and used her forearm to wipe at the thin layer of perspiration on her upper lip. Her heartbeat segued from a throb to a roar in her ears. She swirled her paint—twice right, once left, twice right, once left—the familiar task of moving the brush through the thick liquid striking her as rich for some reason . . . sensual.
She lifted the brush to his skin and began to paint. It was a little like working while a ravenous lion raced toward you in the periphery of your vision. She was acutely aware of the power in him, the incipient energy, like a giant spring that was being held down tight with effort. She worked steadily for the next half hour or so in the area of his lower abdomen, creating the impossible—a flare of fire in water.
The realization hit her as she moved to the lower left quadrant of her design that she should have told him he could release the garment until she began to work in that area again. He’d kept his hands on the sides of the brief the whole time, however, exposing that strip of sensitive skin. Something about his pose excited her for some reason. It was as if he were frozen in the moment of offering himself to her . . .
. . . giving her a taste.
Her cheeks burned at the uncontrollable thought. She leaned away from him, feeling the loss of his subtle, radiant body heat on her cheeks and lips. She exchanged her paints and went back to work.
What was wrong with her? She’d never had this reaction before while she’d been working. Her skin felt flushed and prickly with awareness. There seemed to be some strange, inexplicable connection between where her paintbrush stroked his taut skin and her clit.
Why did she want to hold on to that brilliant flare of lust that the stranger’s fierce eyes and hard cock promised? Maybe because you were told today that life and a future aren’t a certainty, that both of those things are as ephemeral and as difficult to hold on to as an unexpected lightning strike of desire?
Joy didn’t want to let go. She wanted . . . no, she needed to hang on.
The air around them seemed to have taken on weight. She forced her lungs to mo
ve as she exchanged brushes and reached for a paint she’d deposited at the far end of the table. When she touched him with the wet tip just below his hip bone, his taut abdominal muscle twitched. She glanced up and saw a small smile on his mouth.
“It’s colder than the other ones,” he said.
“I’m sorry. The paint was sitting right in front of the air conditioner.”
“It’s okay.”
His mouth moved again, but no sound came from his throat. Some instinct inside her told her this man didn’t typically become speechless.
She felt a surge of liquid heat at her sex.
She swallowed with difficulty and resumed painting, the feeling of moving in a dream only amplifying. How long would this surreal sensation last? When would the reality of her diagnosis of cancer really set in? Her grim future seemed impossible to grasp as she sat there, flushed with arousal, painting a brilliant tattoo on a beautiful, virile male she’d never seen before that moment, and would probably never see again.
“It’s finished,” she murmured minutes later as she placed the solvent that set the paint on the table. From the corner of her vision, she saw that he didn’t move his hands, keeping his briefs lowered. The fullness behind the seaweed design hadn’t dissipated during the past forty-five minutes.
“Joy.”
She glanced up slowly, both hesitant and anticipatory at the sound of his hoarse voice.
“I hope you don’t think I’m a complete jackass for saying this, but that had to be the most erotic thing I’ve experienced since Peggy Barton let me touch her breasts when I was fourteen years old.”
She just stared at him in amazement for a second before she laughed. The strangling sexual tension fractured slightly, letting her breathe. He smiled, full-out and brilliant.
Her laughter ceased.
Oh my God, she thought, stunned. Her sunburst tattoo would be considered dim next to that smile.
Suddenly, unaccountably, fear broke over her. She stared at the very image of vibrant life. What would it be like to be snuffed out of existence, no longer able to see, to hear . . . to feel?
Her gaze sank over him. She absorbed his image hungrily, drinking it like an elixir that vanquished terror. His cock jerked in the briefs when her glance landed on it.