The Reluctant Nude - Meg Maguire [51]
She opened her eyes and stared up at him. He’d brought a fat beeswax candle and set it on the nightstand.
“Yeah?”
“Would you be doing this if you hadn’t had two glasses of very strong wine?”
“No,” she said, thinking about it. “But I’d wish I was.”
“I see.”
“Would you?”
“I would be doing this even if the studio was burning down around us,” he said.
“And what exactly is ‘this’?”
“It’s your birthday. I would like very much to please you.”
“Would you, then?” She sat up and leaned against his shoulder.
Max took the hint and kissed her mouth. “I would.” He kissed her deeper, deeper, until she felt so dizzy she had to lie back against the pillows. His scent, even stronger.
He joined her, settling his body down beside hers and propping himself on an elbow. “Tell me what you like.”
She pursed her lips. “You’ve done such a good job on the rest of this…date, why don’t you keep the lead? We can see just how well you know my body now.”
“Is that a challenge?” he asked, amused. “Very well.”
A breath hitched in her chest as he moved, resting his knees between hers. He gathered the silk of the dress and eased it up, pooling it around her hips, and he lowered, keeping their centers apart by the barest of spaces. Resting on his forearms, he slid a hand beneath her back to cup her shoulder blade. They kissed for seconds or minutes or hours, until his tongue slid to her neck, her ear, the hollow at the base of her throat. Deep in his chest Fallon heard breathing so guttural it raised the hairs all along her arms.
“Sit up for me a moment,” Max whispered, leaning back.
She let him slip the straps of the dress off her shoulders, his eyes darting across her skin. Fallon shivered and lay back. Button by button, she watched him shed his wet dress shirt, the lines of that tight body triggering a quickening in her pulse. He removed his necklaces and set them on the nightstand, peeled his undershirt off and tossed it on the floor. She studied the evidence of his excitement—the swell and contraction of his abdomen from his rapid breathing, the tendons twitching in his neck as he swallowed.
“You like looking at me?” he asked, grazing his palms over her thighs.
She realized at that moment that his touch and his voice matched: both rough and dark and thrilling. She nodded, eyes taking him in.
“I love looking at you,” he said emphatically. “And touching you. I’ve thought about this, about being with you here.”
“Have you?” Fallon knew full well what he’d thought about. She conjured the sketches in her mind’s eye.
“Yes. It is all I can think about, sometimes.” He blinked, looking meditative, then lowered himself back down. Fallon almost gasped aloud at the feeling his hard chest with its sprinkling of dark hair pressing into her soft, smooth one. His fingers stroked her temples, faces close.
“I’ve come to know you quite well in the past few weeks,” he said. “But not completely.”
She finally touched him, wrapping her fingers around the crests of his shoulders. Her eyes darted between his. “What else do you want to know?”
A strong hand slid beneath her head to cradle it. He caught her lips for a brief moment before putting his mouth close to her ear, his breath warming her skin, the heat spreading down her body to settle between her thighs.
“You know me too,” he whispered. “You know what fascinates me.”
“The internal?”
The tiniest moan. “I want to be inside you.” His hips finally met hers, his arousal unmistakable, pressing gently against her pubic bone.
“I want that too.”
“I’m glad. But right now I most want to please you.” He reached a hand between them and Fallon heard the clicking of metal. He drew out his belt and tossed it to the floor with a clatter. There was the sound of a zipper and Max adjusted himself in some way. When he brought his hips back down, she felt him through his open fly and the cotton of his underwear, hard against the soft skin of her innermost thigh.
She murmured his name and he began to move. As his excitement stroked hers, Max’s hand and lips moved to her breast. Calloused palm, soft,