Billionaire Bad Boys of Romance Boxed Set (10 Book Bundle) (32 page)

“Oh no. That would ruin it.”

I scowled. “What, is it like a quantum masterpiece, where it's genius if you don't look at it and it sucks if you do?”

He laughed. “No, but that's a pretty brilliant idea for a piece of art. I don't think I could pull that off, but I bet you could.”

I blinked. “What? I haven't painted in months...”

“You don't have to paint, just make art.” Delicately he placed the eraser of his pencil between his teeth. “Or perhaps you have already made such a piece? The theoretical piece of art that you
could
produce, and yet persist in not producing because you have a job and are now respectable?”

Ouch. “I'm not
that
respectable,” I said.

“Fair enough,” he replied. “But still. You should make art, Sadie.”

He said it as though it were easy. And maybe it was. “I'll have to think about it.”

“Do. I think you get sidetracked into other people too much and don't take care of yourself.”

“I've been letting you take care of me, haven't I?”

The hangdog look he gave me was almost comical. “Yes, after you took a bullet for me.”

“Well, yeah.” I shrugged, as if that was no big deal. Brush with death? Please. The blowjob on the police moped was way more dangerous. It could have fallen over and we could have been seriously hurt. “Whatever. Are you sure I can't see it?”

He nodded.

“You won't even show it to the woman who took a bullet for you?”

He snorted and shook his head. “Especially not you, my muse. You'll just have to wait and be patient.”

I don't usually pout, but I was sorely tempted to do so. If there's one way to get me all worked up about something, it's forbidding me from it. I huffed and sighed very passive-aggressively for a minute or two, then gave up and grabbed my e-reader and snuggled back into bed.

I woke up later, after the sun had gone down and the ghostly lights of the city filtered in through the windows, leaving the room eerie and beautiful. Malcolm slept like the dead on the floor next to the bed. I sat up and rubbed the sleep from my eyes, feeling hungry. Slipping off the mattress, careful not to wake him up, I padded across the floor towards the stairs. A dark square on one of the overstuffed chairs caught my attention.

The book he'd been using as a lap desk.

I stole a quick glance at him to make sure he was still asleep and tiptoed over to it. When I touched it I found the book to be large and leather bound, like a year book or a photo album, and sandwiched between its heavy pages I saw the razor thin edge of a piece of printer paper poking out.

I hooked a finger under the book's cover meaning to lift it away. Then I bit my lip and hesitated.

Would it really ruin it?

I realized I wanted to trust him. I didn't want to take that chance. I left the book where it was and crept downstairs in search of food.

*
* * *

He left that book lying around where I could easily open it and peek inside, and he gave me no end of opportunities to do so. I should have gotten a medal for self-restraint. One afternoon he came up the stairs with a set of oil paints for me, a canvas and a drop cloth and told me to start expressing my 'inner pain' while he prepared for his masterpiece upstairs.

“Ain't no one want to see that shit,” I told him. “Inner pain? Ugh.”

“Oh, come on,” he wheedled. He carried a small tackle box at his side and I was dying to know what materials were in it. You could hide a lot in a tackle box. “I bet it's a goldmine of stuff.”

“Yeah, but the kind of mine that caves in and everybody dies.”

He sighed and rolled his eyes at me, which was such a
me
thing to do that I almost did a double take. “Just try to enjoy yourself with the paint, okay? I must needs prepare my studio.”

So dramatic.

The book containing his sketch lay on his desk and I felt its presence hovering there the entire time I listened to him banging around upstairs. Thumps and footsteps distracted me, until I finally slapped a large frowny face on the canvas and propped it up, facing the corner, to dry. I spent the rest of the afternoon pacing the floor, convincing myself that any second Malcolm would start back down the stairs and I just had to hold on a little longer. I didn't want to ruin the
surprise,
did I?

I hate surprises. But I persevered.

When Malcolm finally came back downstairs, he started straight for my own canvas, curiosity on his face.

“Don't touch it,” I said. “It's a quantum masterpiece.”

He smiled. “I could see it in a gallery, definitely. It's brilliant. Don't forget to sign it.”

I grabbed a brush, wiped the turpentine from it, and drew
SM
across the back of the canvas in red. Malcolm nodded his approval.

“I love... it,” he said.

I smiled at him, and when I woke up later that night, I saw him standing and staring at my signature on the back of it, shaking his head, as though he couldn't understand me for the life of him.

Chapter Eighteen

The next day, it was time for him to complete his masterpiece.

We spent a leisurely morning reading in bed, though I have to admit I didn't absorb a word I read. I was too anxious and excited. Malcolm helped me get dressed and took me out to lunch. There were photographs and staring eyes, but all in all it wasn't as bad as I thought it might be. I enjoyed sitting with Malcolm and holding his hand right where everyone could see it.

Check me out, bitches,
I wanted to say, but I didn't because that kind of thing just got you in the papers. We ate sushi and talked about nothing for hours, and when we finally reached home I was feeling sleepy and sated.

Malcolm closed the front door behind us and locked it—the first time I could remember him doing so. Immediately I was awake again, and when Malcolm took my hand in his and led me up the stairs to the top floor of his mansion I could hardly breathe.

It was warm at the top again. The photography studio he had installed had been expanded, with more lights. The black backdrop was still there, though now it curved around itself, leaving a small cave to catch the light.

A few feet away from it lay a clean drop cloth and two pots of paint, white on the outside so I couldn't tell what color they were. Next to the drop cloth stood a full length mirror.

Malcolm led me to the drop cloth. “Allow me,” he whispered, and began to take off my clothes. I swallowed and let him.

He kissed every inch of skin he revealed as he pulled my blouse from my arms, slid the bra from my chest, eased my skirt down over my thighs, helped me kick my heels off. When at last I was completely nude, he helped me sit down, and then drew a dark silk cloth from his pocket.

“Allow me,” he said. It was neither a command nor a request. Just a simple statement of fact. Yes, of course I would allow him. I smiled slightly and inclined my head toward him, and he tied the blindfold around my eyes. The light of the room was eclipsed, and I lapsed into darkness.

Warm dry hands helped me lie down on the cloth, and I lay there, trembling in anticipation as to what he might do. But all that happened was the gentle
pop
of a can of body paint and a brush laid against my skin.

“Ready?” he asked.

I nodded.

He painted me.

It seemed to take forever. The brush wandered this way and that way, and I shivered beneath it, but that was all that happened. He painted my body in no particular order, sending the brush over the curves and valleys wherever the fancy seemed to take him. The warmth of the room and the soothing strokes of the brush put me in almost a trance, and when he turned me over to do my back, I nearly fell asleep on my stomach.

After a long time, his hand on my hair jolted me back to reality.

“Careful,” he said as I made to sit up. “Don't disturb it too much.”

I nodded and slowly drew myself to my feet, my skin caked in paint. His hands alighted on my shoulders and gently turned me. “I'm pointing you at the mirror,” he told me. “Are you ready?”

I was ready. I nodded.

With a flourish, he untied the blindfold. “Now... open your eyes.”

I did. My eyes caught my image in the mirror, and I inhaled sharply.

He'd painted me in a pale color that wasn't quite white, but almost. My dark hair fell over my shoulders, a stunning and glossy contrast. And all my tattoos were gone.

...Okay, not
gone,
they were just hidden beneath layers of matte paint. I had guessed that he would be doing that much at least, but what truly startled me was what he'd done to the scars underneath.

He'd painted them gold.

I couldn't stop staring. My chest hurt. I let my eyes flow over the vision of me, over the image of myself in the mirror. My body was suddenly, shockingly unfamiliar, transfigured and transformed beneath his brush. I felt as though he hadn't layered paint on, but rather swept it away, revealing the truth that lay beneath. The skin under the skin. Slowly I lifted my arms and turned, seeing every scar, the new and the old, emblazoned in gold, beautiful and bold. My fingers fluttered over them, wondering how such ugly things could be made to be so lovely. I had no idea what to say.

Malcolm had that effect on me.

He shifted behind me, and I blinked, realizing that I'd completely forgotten he was there. I glanced back at him and I saw that, in his hands, he held the vase I had broken at the auction and then found repaired in the closet. It seemed so long ago now that I almost didn't recognize it.

It was gorgeous, and now that I finally had a good look at the vase, I realized what Malcolm had done to me: the cracks made by its shattering were now filled with gold.

Malcolm cleared his throat. “The art is called
kintsugi,”
he said. His voice was hesitant, sweet, as though he didn't quite know how to go about explaining his vision to me and had to choose his words with extra care. “
Kintsugi
means 'golden joinery.' It's a method of repairing ceramics invented by the Japanese, and it embraces the concept of
wabi sabi.
Have you ever heard of it?”

Mutely I shook my head. I couldn't stop staring at the repaired vase.

“It means the beauty found in that which is impermanent and imperfect. The only sort of beauty that can ever really be, I've come to think, because nothing lasts forever.” He smiled. “And nobody's flawless, so who could ever make a flawless piece of art?”

I blinked. My eyes were curiously moist. I gestured to my body. “So this is your masterpiece?”

“As close as I'll ever get. And really, it's not
my
masterpiece. It's yours. I just helped you see it.

Weakness threatened to send me to my knees. “My masterpiece?” This foreign vessel, broken and repaired and suddenly overflowing with my soul?

He nodded. “The life of the vase is here.” He brushed his hand over the porcelain, the barely visible seams of gold catching the pads of his fingers. “Your life is here.” He reached out and placed those same fingers on one of the golden scars on my skin and I shuddered at the contact.

“Nothing remains untouched by time,” Malcolm said. “Maybe we all start out pure, but the passage of our lives leaves us with our own unique wear and tear. Every scar and flaw is beautiful, because there will never be another one like it. You are unique. The sum of your life has led you to this moment.”

There was a lump in my throat so large I could hardly breathe. I licked my lips and groped for words. “And what am I in this moment?” I whispered.

He smiled, sad and hopeful at once. “Perfect,” he whispered.

Like little silver drops of my soul, now too large to be contained, tears rose and spilled from my eyes as he led me over to the dark backdrop and handed me the vase. Without needing direction from him, I held the vase against me, kissing it, caressing it, cradling it in the curve of my body. I let my inner eye be my guide, and before me and above me, in and out and all around, Malcolm snapped a hundred pictures, a thousand pictures. No,
thousands
.

I posed for what seemed like hours, thinking of a hundred new poses as I transitioned between each one—the vase in my lap, covering my pussy, my face against it, my eyes closed, the vase in my hair, my gold streaked arms reaching for it as I tossed it in the air, my whole body straining upwards—until at last Malcolm said, “Enough,” and enfolded me in his arms.

Exhausted, my eyes swollen from crying, I leaned into him, and he kissed me, so sweet and soft I thought I would shatter all over again. He carried me down the stairs, just as he did when I couldn't walk on my own, and when he washed me in the bath, this time he let his hands and fingers linger on me, in places I once thought he might never touch again.

First, he ran warm water from the faucet and filled it part way before turning it off and setting me on my feet in the tub. “Kneel,” he commanded.

I complied, turning my back to the faucet, my legs trembling. I bent my head in submission, giving him complete access to me, and I was rewarded with a warm gush of water over my back from a soft sponge. Gently Malcolm ran it in circles and spirals over my back, around my ribs, down over the flare of my hips. Then he abandoned the sponge entirely and used his hands.

There was an urgency to his touch this time, a swift, anxious nervousness, as though he were trembling on the precipice of remembering something very important, as though words that could change his life stood at the tip of his tongue, waiting to be said.

His hands swirled down and around the round cheeks of my ass, slipping into the valley between them, gently massaging away the paint. Again he picked up the sponge and gushed warm water over me, this time over my shoulders, so that rivulets ran down my collarbone, trickled over my breasts and fell from my nipples like raindrops from branches. The whispery caress of water flowed through me and in me, and I shuddered with desire.

Beneath me the water ran white and gold, brilliant and beautiful, milk streaked with honey. Malcolm lifted the drain and let the water run out as he turned the faucet on again, letting more warm water run out. This time he didn't turn it off, but swept it over my body, sweet and seeking. The sponge scraped against my skin, removing pigment, revealing the tattoos beneath. I felt as though he were hiding me again, and the real me, the one underneath the ink and the attitude, was a secret we shared.

I trembled as he moved his hands over my body, his fingertips scraping up my abdomen, his palms gently rubbing over my nipples, squeezing my small, perfect breasts, until the water ran clear and I panted from the heat spiraling through me. The pain in my side had subsided and now seemed far away. All that mattered was Malcolm. Long, strong fingers probed between the cheeks of my ass, and he let the tub fill with water again as he tipped me forward onto my knees and elbows. I bowed my head, letting my hair fall into the water, and as he massaged a sweet circle around my puckered entrance with one finger, I closed my eyes and gave myself over to him.

Sensation. The warmth of the water lapping at my forehead, the heat of the steam caught in the cave of my bowed body, the harshness of the iron tub biting into my knees and elbows—all of it whirled together in my head, creating a perfect moment as Malcolm gently probed me and my pussy answered his exploration with a gush of warmth and wetness. One finger pushed its way inside my ass while his other hand reached under me and cupped my breasts, rough and possessive. My mouth went dry and I had to force myself to stay still as he began to gently push and retreat into my ass while his fingers tweaked my nipples, pinching hard until I cried out. My core quivered, aching and needing, and when Malcolm transferred his mouth to my ass I groaned. He was so close, so close to where I wanted him to be...

Then the hand playing with my breasts moved down, down, down my stomach. One finger caught on my naval, dipping inside briefly before slipping out again, and he continued his trek downward. The tight ring of muscle gave way to the gentle entrance of his tongue, and he licked and thrust into me as he found my clit with thumb and forefinger and gripped it firmly. I shook and panted, my body barely able to hold on as he picked up a quick, demanding rhythm, pinching and flicking my clit while he lavished soft kisses on my asshole. The world reduced to his fingers, his mouth, his lips, my cunt, my ass, and I gritted my teeth as I felt an orgasm building in me. It had been weeks since we'd been together this way, and my body responded with hunger, with a wildness that I'd never suspected I held within me. I twisted and turned, thrashing as Malcolm played me, and when he began to scrape his fingernail over my clit the pain and pleasure became too much, sending me up and over the edge of ecstasy.

The universe contracted, and then expanded, exploding around his tongue and fingers. I shrieked, and it sounded like a wounded animal calling out. The sound echoed on the walls, in the confines of the tub, shaking the whole room with the strength of feeling Malcolm inspired in me. Over and over again waves crashed against me, threatening to take me over, but Malcolm held on to me, keeping me anchored with tongue and lips and teeth and fingers.

When at last I subsided, gasping and with tears in my eyes, he withdrew and laid a warm, fluffy towel over the top of the tub, trapping me in it. I couldn't even move, just lay there, broken and repaired, and let the steam curl around me, warming me. I heard him walk to the sink and wash up, and then he was back, pulling me out of the tub and rubbing me down. He took great care not to exacerbate my injury, but no such care with the rest of me. Swirling the cotton over my skin, he rubbed me raw until I staggered on my feet and he caught me. Lifting me up and enfolding me in the towel, he carried me back up the stairs.

He took me to his bed and set me down, towel-drying my hair and covering me with blankets before slowly disrobing himself.

I watched him. The light was low, the electrical lights of the city already flaring up against the encroaching darkness, and he seemed like a vision standing next to the bed, dreamy and unreal. First he unbuttoned his shirt—covered in streaks of gold and pale cream paint—slow and sure. One by one the buttons popped and revealed the skin beneath that I knew so well, but felt now that I was seeing for the first time. His muscled chest, the fine line that ran down his abdomen, the six-pack he sported, all were new to me as he unwrapped the prize of his body before my eyes.