I’m instantly wet. Gravitating closer. How easily I could get lost here. In him. “I don’t need to be reminded how good we are together.”
It surprises him how open and honest I am. That much is clear. His blue eyes zip sharply to mine, warming with appreciation. “Posy. You are mine.”
My nod is all instinct and truth. “Yes. But—”
“No buts,” he snaps.
“No buts. I just don’t think you’re taking some important details into account. I’m on birth control, but I don’t have my pills with me. If I stay down here long, Smith, I would get pregnant. Have you thought of that?”
I’m quickly drawn closer, his hand lifting to my stomach. Long, blunt fingers splaying over the flat of my belly, his breath quickening. “You. Pregnant with my child.”
Dizziness grips me. The happy kind. The hot kind, too, because Smith obviously relishes the idea of impregnating me. I can’t help but be turned on by that, too. How possessive and rough he would be during the act. How I would need to teach him to be gentle with a baby. But whoa. Like whoa. I am jumping the gun so hard. “This is no place to raise a baby, Smith.”
Several seconds of silence pass. “Ask me to leave with you.”
I almost do. I want to. But logic prevails. “I can’t do that. It has to be your choice.”
His jaw is bunched so tight, I’m worried it will shatter like the glass he spends his days and nights gluing to the canvas. Just when I think he has no intention of moving ever again, he draws my T-shirt off, rendering me nude in the near darkness. His breaths come fast, chest dipping and rising quickly, his fingertips tracing downward from my throat, over my perked up nipples, the lines of my hips. “I’ve never put a person on canvas before. Only landscapes.” He leans in, down, swirling his tongue in my belly button and covering me in goosebumps. “You will be my first, last and only. Pose for me?”
“Of course.” I’m used to being posed. For dance. But I’ve never wanted the opportunity more than now. Anything to keep his eyes on me, my eyes on him. “Where should I stand?”
“As close to me as possible,” he rasps, his fingertips dropping away to unzip his jeans. He groans at the additional room, his erection blooming larger through the opening, trapped behind black briefs. “Fair warning. We’re not going to get very far tonight. I had to come out here and work to keep from raw dogging you awake.”
I don’t have to ask what raw dogging means. The context makes it pretty clear.
“Oh,” is all I can manage to push through my dry throat. “Thank you for letting me rest. I haven’t had a deep sleep like that in a long time. I’m usually so restless.”
His gaze drops and locks on my womanhood. “Daddy fixed it.”
A hot shudder courses through me. “Yes.” To hide my embarrassing rush of moisture, I cross my right leg over my left and extend my arms up in the air, spine straight, toe pointed. “This position is called croisé devant.”
“It’s perfect,” he breathes. “Don’t move.”
Smith lunges from his seat on the stool, disappearing into the darkness momentarily before returning with a blank canvas, turning his workstation to face me. He studies me with a slow, relishing shake of his head, then he pulls a pencil from behind his ear and begins to sketch, his hand moving in broad strokes, the sound of scratching and our labored breathing rasping in the silent warehouse, accompanied only by a distant trickle of water.
“I’m having a hard time concentrating,” he eventually says, tone thick with lust. “You’re so fucking beautiful, Posy. I don’t understand how you exist.”
Until that moment, I don’t realize how long it has been since I truly felt beautiful. I’ve been an object, a dancer, a cog in the machine. I want to share this revelation with Smith, but I also know this is my opening to reach deeper into his hang-ups. “So many women are beautiful on the inside, as well as the outside, Smith.”
“I have seen women before. There are none like you.”
My skin warms. “Perhaps you find me the most appealing—”
He snorts. “Don’t apply logic to how you make me feel. I’ve never experienced an ounce of feeling for another female, while I am a goddamn beast for you. To say I merely find you most appealing is a ridiculous understatement.”
When is he going to make love to me?
I’m almost ready to knock over the canvas myself at this point. To reach him. Touch him. “I’m just trying to make the point that women are not evil creatures. There is beauty in all of us.” For the first time, it occurs to me that perhaps Baker has been fabricating the mean things the other dancers say about me. He’s created a rift in order to keep me isolated, dependent on him and him only. Classic abusive behavior that I’m only seeing now because I suspect he did something similar to Smith. “Sometimes the beauty in women is pushed way, way down out of fear, intimidation or pain, but it is there.”
He rolls a brawny shoulder. “Why do you care about my outlook on other women?”
“I am a woman.”
“You are different,” he growls.
“No. I’m not. I’m unique. I’m important to you. But I’m not better or different than other women. Not even the girls who accused you of hurting them.”
Slowly, his eyes darken and lift to mine. “How can you say that?”