The Reluctant Nude - Meg Maguire [17]
“What’s wrong with your body?” he demanded.
She faltered, intimidated by his proximity and tone. “It’s all… It doesn’t match.” She clasped her hands tighter and avoided his stare, mortified.
“Match?”
“My butt and my legs belong to some other body.”
“They clearly belong right where they are.” Max took a step back to fold his arms and scrutinize her further. He didn’t look pervy as she’d feared, or even critical. He looked impressed.
“Your body is quite extraordinary,” he repeated, as if closing a debate he’d grown tired of. “I will be very happy to render it. Even without any scars,” he added, his smirk designed to show he’d understood Fallon’s earlier contempt perfectly.
“Well. Good.” She prayed he’d stop staring at her.
Max’s eyes caught hers then, making her feel more exposed than they had perusing her naked body. He smiled and they crinkled faintly at the edges, half-kind, half-mischievous. From this close, Fallon thought she could smell his scent even after the bath, and the image of his raw, tight body flashed across her mind. He left her to return to his study.
Max wedged the stoneware for far longer than was necessary. Before him, bathed in the steadily strengthening daylight, he could sense Fallon tensing and relaxing in uneven intervals. Her backlit outline glowed like citrine.
Before she’d said that—that slight against her own body—he’d been grudging about this arrangement. Before that statement he’d been willing to take this commission if only for the challenge of working with this uncooperative woman. The money was amazing. The fun of unnerving someone as cold as the aptly named Miss Frost was a bonus. But now… He narrowed his eyes at her, still turning the clay.
“Did you know,” he said to her back, breaking a long silence. “I have studied dozens, perhaps hundreds of people, all examples of the utterly imperfect. The damaged.”
“Oh?” She didn’t turn and her voice sounded tight.
“Yes. Erin, and many others. Amputees, burn victims. People bearing every physical anomaly I have been able to track down. Bodies that have suffered tremendous amounts of loss. And pain, and humiliation, and self-hatred. Some wear it proudly, others, not as much.”
“I see.”
“But the ones who are still ashamed, still stinging from the wounds of their imperfection,” he said, choosing his words carefully. “It is in these people’s honor that I long quite potently to grab you by the shoulders and shake you.”
She turned her head halfway. “Pardon me?”
“I think you have a hell of a nerve, Fallon Frost.”
“I wasn’t suggesting—”
“No matter.” He cut her off, making his voice intentionally sanctimonious. “I am making a choice to forgive your callousness. We will not speak of it anymore. However, if you utter another criticism about your wholly satisfactory body in my presence again you may consider yourself dismissed.”
His hands began recording her contours. That long torso, the exaggerated flare of her body at the hip. Gorgeous. Infuriating, but gorgeous.
Fallon remained silent and Max didn’t suspect for a second that she was pleased.
“Hold your hair up for me,” he said, and Fallon obediently piled her curls on top of her head and secured them with an elastic. That rusty shade of brown—iron oxide. He studied her long neck, sloped but strong shoulders. He beckoned her to turn. Small, perfect breasts, miniscule waist, soft belly. Botticelli would have killed for such a model.
“I thought you were only doing a bust.” Fallon pointed at the clay between Max’s hands.
His eyes were fixed on her, fingers recording her contours from the mid-thigh up.
“Your body is too much fun to waste focusing on just the head and shoulders.” His thumbs raised the ridges of her hips from the mound.
“Fun?”
“Oh, yes.” He met her eyes and smiled. He liked the way her pale irises seemed to grow even wider when he stared. She was easy to unnerve, this