The Reluctant Nude - Meg Maguire [18]
“Save it.”
“Well, not me.” He released her eyes. Against his fingers, he could begin to feel her—that essential race in his pulse that signaled he’d found a tiny foothold, a connection, an entrance into the core of this woman. Hers was one of vulnerability, not openness, but it would do. For now.
“What are your tattoos?” Fallon asked a short while later. This was a different voice than Max had grown accustomed to in the past twenty-four hours—more demanding and less inhibited. This woman ought to get her clothes off and boss people around more often.
He abandoned the clay to peel his shirt off. He turned dutifully, letting Fallon see the black lines that graced the right-hand side of his torso. Skeletal anatomy, the outlines of bones tracing his humerus, shoulder joint, collarbone, the backs of his ribs and his vertebrae from the middle of his back to his neck. Tiny script lettering labeled each with its Latin name.
“Wow.” He couldn’t interpret Fallon’s tone. “Is that from Gray’s?”
He turned. “Biologist,” he teased. “I prefer Vesalius. But it is from nothing in particular.”
She nodded, looking thoughtful and, for once, not intimidated. “That’s cool.”
“Thank you.” He dropped her gaze to return to his work. Midday was approaching and he didn’t bother replacing his shirt. It seemed to make her edgy anyhow, which was fine by Max.
“Why bones?” she asked.
He decided he rather enjoyed the sound of her voice. Lush and full and almost aggressively feminine, like her lips. Like the bottom half of her fascinating figure. He’d almost forgotten what an undamaged woman looked like, it had been so long since he’d sculpted one. He hoped Fallon might prove more interesting than her unmarred body suggested.
“Why bones? My trade is in surfaces,” he explained, fingers working. “My fascination is with the hidden. The internal.”
He stopped his study to approach, watching the look of predictable uneasiness tensing her face. But she didn’t step back even as he drew close.
He rapped a knuckle softly on her temple. “And not just bone and muscle.”
Her cheeks and neck flushed bright pink, round eyes darting between each of his.
He narrowed his gaze and gave her a conspiratorial smirk. “I’m going to chip away and uncover your secrets,” he whispered.
Fallon swallowed and looked away, and he knew he’d pushed her as far as he could without scaring her outright. He returned to his work feeling extremely satisfied.
Fallon spent the remainder of the session trying to recover the relative comfort and friendliness she’d found earlier, albeit briefly. It was no use.
She was happy for Max to assume it was his comment about uncovering her supposed secrets that had thrown her, but in truth it had been his closeness. His body, tight and lean and no doubt powerful, was a distraction from several paces away. Up close—close enough almost to feel his breath in her hair—it had been a shock. She wished he’d order her to turn around again, or at least put his damn shirt back on. It nearly made her adopt his obsession with the internal, watching the sinuous muscles of his stomach and chest and arms flexing with each skillful movement of his fingers against the clay. She didn’t like it one bit.
Max had tanned skin, darkest on his arms and neck and face but none of it, save a tiny strip just above his jeans, so pale that Fallon imagined his working shirtless was a new phenomenon. She wondered if—or perhaps more realistically how often—his professional relationships overlapped with carnal ones. It was a difficult question not to ponder. He oozed sex the way other men oozed privilege or rage. It clung to him like moss. Like sweat.
“I think it is lunchtime,” he announced finally, unbuckling his tool belt and stretching his arms. He slipped his undershirt back on and sauntered to the kitchen area.
Fallon’s own clothes felt strange against her skin after three hours’ nakedness.
“How are you liking it here? In Nova Scotia?