The Reluctant Nude - Meg Maguire [67]
She crept back up the stairs and found Max exactly as she’d left him. His eyes followed her as she lay back down.
After a few moments he pulled her close. He pushed his face against her collarbone, and she knew he was asking to be forgiven. She patted his hair in a lazy, permissive way, telling him she wasn’t angry. He kissed her throat, light then seductive. His tongue lapped her dried tears as his hand cradled her head. He kissed her ear, her jaw, her mouth. He crawled on top of her and kissed her until the intensity was almost too much to bear. When she started to cry again he pulled away, but she tugged his face back to hers.
Max was hesitant but he gave in to her insistence. She cried softly as they made love, her climax punctuated by a body-racking sob. Her tears tapered off then, giving Max whatever permission he needed to take pleasure in this. He took her deep and slow and in near-silence and as he came he breathed her name against her temple, so quiet it felt like telepathy.
When he lay down she turned him to face away from her, sliding her body along his, a hand on his ribs and her face by his ear. She felt his breathing deepen beneath her palm, listened to the sounds as he swallowed and exhaled. Such a perfect machine, the human body. The one fact their two disparate fields might agree on.
She felt him drift off to sleep.
“Max?” she asked softly.
He didn’t stir.
“I’ll miss you too.”
Chapter Eleven
Things got worse over the next two weeks.
Max was unraveling so tangibly that Fallon felt as if she were watching time-lapse photography documenting his decline. He looked pale and exhausted by the end of each session, physically unwell. At first she thought he must have the flu. Then he’d come back to life by the time dinner was ready, that same strong, self-possessed man returning until the following morning when the next set of coffee mugs were set in the sink and the work began again. He seemed so defeated sometimes that Fallon didn’t have it in her to point out that it was mid-November, that the statue still looked ages from complete.
Two more days, she kept thinking. Two more days and she’d start making demands. Then two days later she’d look at his eyes, as dark and worn and haunted as those of a man approaching death.
Presently she adjusted herself. The final pose that Max had chosen was seductive but tasteful. It called for Fallon to recline on one hip, propping her trunk up on an elbow, the other hand draped on her waist. She liked this pose, though the elbow in question wasn’t quite so fond of it. She was lying across the worktable, her body on par with the marble that separated her and Max.
“Hang on.” She refolded the towel she’d been leaning on.
“Let’s break.”
“I’m okay.”
They had this exchange about five times a day. Max pushed her to take breaks, she pushed him to keep working. He had the momentum of a man trapped hip-deep in quicksand. Every effort he made seemed both desperate and futile.
“You look so frigging tired, Max.”
He met her stare and held the particle mask up for a moment to show her a weak grin.
She pushed herself to sitting and slid off the table. “I’ll make some coffee.”
He nodded.
“Are you sure you don’t have mono or something?” She was teasing him, but he could no doubt hear the fear just beneath the surface, as surely as she could feel it in her chest. She crossed her arms and aimed a tense, frustrated smile at him. “You worry me sometimes.”
Max set down his chisel and hammer and pushed the mask to the top of his head. His eyes were trained on hers as he freed his tool belt, a wickedness turning his expression dark in the most inviting way, bringing him instantly back to life.
“What?” she asked, still standing between the marble and the table.
Max wheeled the statue to one side. “Come here.” A growl.
She stepped slowly to meet him and let him draw her into a deep kiss, his mask falling to the ground. His clothed body against