Unbroken (4 page)

She couldn’t walk away, just couldn’t do it. She wanted more of this. And she wanted other things, too. To wake up and find she wasn’t alone.

His smile when she accepted him warmed her right through to her chilled soul.

“We’ll have a great time,” he murmured against her lips before he took her flying again.

When he came, he roared wordlessly, and the heat in his body rose, peaked and she felt his release, even though he wore protection, as if his sperm wanted to escape its confinement and join with her. It tempted her beyond bearing, as did his boneless collapse afterwards. He was as affected as she by this, though she didn’t know if the experience had shocked him so much. Perhaps this amount of intimacy with sex was normal for him. It wasn’t for her.

Zoltan
watched
Vashti
sleep, lying on her back, her breasts only partly covered by the sheet, her chest rising and falling rhythmically.

She had an exquisite figure, satin skin that owed little to expensive lotions, and a face so exotic it had to be unique. The golden honey of her skin only threw those dark, intense eyes into relief and the slight
uptilt
at the corners added piquancy to her high-
cheekboned
face. Add to
that lush lips
that invited kisses, and she was the most photogenic woman he’d ever seen.

But that hadn’t been what had attracted him to her. The expression in her eyes in that old photograph had seared right through him until every part of him wanted her. Wanted to capture her, make her part of him. Until that point, he’d been happy pursuing his abstract fantasies, dreaming up new and otherworldly constructs. One look at that haunted face and he’d known where he wanted to take his art.

People said artists were selfish, and he’d be the last person to deny that, but he hoped he’d brought her some peace. When she’d looked at him with that vulnerable expression, and he’d seen the power of it face to face, he’d wanted it. But when he’d touched her, awareness had zinged from her to him and he’d desired her.
To get deep inside, where the real woman lived.
When he’d asked, she’d given.

Shit, but this sculpture would be his best yet. Not that his public would appreciate it. They’d given him his place in the world and he was supposed to keep to it, if he wanted the wild success that he’d enjoyed so far. But he wanted to move on.
If they didn’t like it, tough shit.
He wouldn’t create for anyone but himself.
Unless it was for the exquisite creature sleeping in his bed.

It’s more than that
. He’d never allowed anyone to get in deep and reach the man inside, but
Vashti
had come closer than anyone else ever had. But he’d fight it, knowing this affair wouldn’t last. They never did.

He pushed the thought aside, tried to ignore the way he felt about her, concentrating on a more impersonal appreciation of her beauty.
Her flawed beauty.
He lifted a long, straight lock of silky black hair and drew it clear of her face, gently tucking it behind her ear. Her hair was as straight as rain. He’d like to bet that was from her Indian ancestry and not artificially produced.

He recalled how her body had appeared to him, and what he’d do with it. The scars added to her appeal because they told their own story.
Still relatively fresh, slightly pink, newly healed.
The ones on her left leg looked as if the wound that had caused it had been deep, and he’d noticed the way she favoured her right side when she walked. It gave her a sexy sway, his appreciation only marred by the knowledge that using it gave her discomfort, maybe pain.
Zoltan
recognised an urge to ensure she had it looked at and put right. He acknowledged his concern and put it away. This wasn’t the time. His artistic side was rioting, coming up with a plethora of possibilities and his rational side was taking note of them all.

 
He didn’t usually concern himself with other people’s troubles, giving them enough respect to believe they knew what was best for them. With difficulty, he cast aside the ridiculous idea that one fuck made a relationship.

But right now, he’d prefer to watch her than sleep. Give
himself
time to think, assess, put this affair in its proper place. Having her here meant he could sketch and photograph her any way he wanted, awake or asleep. It didn’t restrict him to certain times and places.

He slid off the bed and fetched his sketchpad and a few pencils. Sketchpads littered his house, with at least one in every room. He didn’t feel secure without them. Even in the bathroom he had a water-damaged pad, though he’d never used it. The pages crackled when he turned them and he thought of using it in one of his pieces. The splotches on the pages told their own story, of hurried showers, forgetting to pull the shower curtain inside the cubicle, so many times that eventually he’d had a walk-in shower installed in the other room. Now his bathroom held a pair of sinks, a toilet and a large claw-footed bath facing the window, and the walk-in shower formed almost another room. He spent hours in there, thinking. Maybe he’d persuade
Vashti
to join him.

Now this bedroom held the centre of his current fascination. He sat cross-legged on the floor and propped the pad on his upraised knees. Pencil in hand,
Zoltan
studied his new subject.

He began to draw.

* * * *

A week later,
Zoltan
put down his pencil. He’d sketched and photographed
Vashti
in all the poses he’d wanted, and all the styles, from a draughtsman-like outline, with all her salient points—scars, eyes, mouth, chin—sketched in, to detailed drawings he could show in a gallery in their own right. He’d use one or two in the finished work. His plans had morphed from a sculpture to a complete installation. It sat in his mind, perfect, waiting for its embodiment.

Vashti
was happy to lie on the couch in his studio, or on his bed, or anywhere else he wanted, depending on the light he needed and how he wanted her to pose. They spent a lot of time in the bedroom, much more than he’d imagined he’d need.
Zoltan
had normal sex urges, but with
Vashti
, that had changed into several times a day. He couldn’t get enough of her. She obsessed him. He wondered if that always happened with live models, but she was his first, so he didn’t know for sure.

Once she’d recovered from her fatigue, brought on, he guessed, by worrying rather than action, she’d gone home to fetch a surprisingly small case,
then
had raided his bookshelves. He suspected she was giving herself an education in art, and waited for her questions, but she articulated few. He made her rest between their marathon sex sessions.

Vashti
remained an enigma, holding a part of
herself
away from him and
Zoltan
was surprised to find he was furious about that. He needed to know every part of her before he could do justice to his work.
Even if he refused to give her all of himself.
It was getting more difficult every day, but he held off, barely.

He sighed and put down his pencil. “Today,” he said, breaking the companionable silence that had enveloped them this morning, “I start in clay.”

“Clay?” She looked up from her book, blinking, her eyes gaining focus on him.

He loved the way she could lose herself in a project. At the moment, she’d chosen art, but from the photos he had of her at work, he knew that intensity had once made her one of the world’s top models.

“Uh-huh.” He crossed the room to the large plastic bin where he kept his clay, and shoved aside the layers of polythene sheeting. He plunged his hands into the cool, clinging mass and it felt like coming home. Drawing, sketching and photography were tools, but when he worked in three dimensions, he knew this was his medium.

He dragged a handful of the red clay out of the bin, then some more, slapping it onto the trolley he used for sculpting. It was a specially built table, with lockable wheels and a platform with an adjustable height lever under it. It meant he could wheel it around to get the light he wanted.

He worked the handful,
then
added more until he had it the consistency he wanted, and began to work. When he looked up, after maybe an hour or so, she had her robe on.

She smiled brightly. “You didn’t seem to need me so I thought I might make us some sandwiches.”

“What’s the time?”

“Just after four.”

Whoops, longer than he’d thought. They’d missed lunch. He bit his lip. “I’m sorry. When I get my hands on this stuff, I tend to forget time. You must be starving.
So much for my good resolutions.”

She
turned,
her hand on the doorknob. “What would they be?”

“To make sure you eat properly.”

She laughed. “I thought I needed to do that for you.”

He looked up, startled. “Me?”

“You only eat when you remember to do it.”

He watched the door after she’d gone, eyes narrowed. This was getting too domesticated. He never
liked,
never trusted domestication. It stifled creativity, tamed the creature inside him that he needed to keep in touch with. For the first time, he wondered if he’d assumed too much, asking her to move in for the month. It had seemed a great solution at the time.
Great sex, with a model convenient to work all the time.
He could even keep her naked. She hadn’t dressed for days.

He gave a wolfish grin. She’d understand. Her life wasn’t exactly domesticated, either.

Zoltan
went back to work.

Chapter
Three

Vashti
was smiling when she took the tray upstairs to the room she’d come to know very well indeed over the last few weeks. True, the studio contained haphazardly arranged furniture, chosen for practicality rather than looks, but it held a warm, welcome for her now.

It was the home of the man she was fast falling in love with.

When she entered the room, her artist was elbow deep in clay. He’d already fashioned a rough armature from wire, and was rolling the clay on to the form. When she looked from him to the clay, she burst out laughing.

He gave her an affronted frown, which only made her laugh more.

“You have clay on your nose,” she told him.

“By the end of today it’ll be everywhere else.”

“How will you eat your sandwich?”

He shrugged. “I can eat it later.”

“No.” She put the tray down on a small table, and picked up a sandwich.

He watched her as she crossed the room to stand in front of him.

“Here.” She held it out.

Watching her all the time, he took a bite, clean white teeth slicing through the wholemeal bread and crisp salad. He chewed, swallowed. “More.”

All the time he worked the clay, massaged and smoothed it along the armature. He’d started on a reclining figure, but the rough form didn’t show any characteristics.

“Do you uncover it, like Michelangelo did with marble?”

He chuckled around another bite. Food improved his mood. On the third bite, with not much of the sandwich left, he curled his tongue around her thumb, delivering a sensuous lick before he took the remaining morsel. She shivered and he watched her.

“More. Give me the fantasy of having a naked woman feeding me.”

Now this she loved. She turned her back on him and undid the tie fastening her gown, before letting it slip off one shoulder. At his low growl, she let it slide a little further, then the other side. With her arms still in the sleeves of the robe, she bunched it so it dipped low, revealing the small of her back and the top of the cleft separating her buttocks.

No sound, but she didn’t need any to know he was watching her with an avidity he didn’t have to articulate. His gaze seared her. She turned her head and peered over her shoulder at him. He studied her with the concentration she loved so she gave him a long, slow wink.

He rewarded her with a sexy-as-hell chuckle. “Perfect. Now drop the robe.”

A wiggle, a shimmy and the fabric fell to the floor. She pushed her butt out and he groaned. “Come here.”

“Do you want your coffee now?” She lifted the cup and turned to face him.

His gaze slipped from her face, down to her breasts and her pussy, now fuzzed with new growth, but only the smallest amount. His tongue passed over his lower lip. “It’s not coffee I’m thinking about drinking right now. You taste so
good,
I could live on what I suck from you.”

At his words, a drop of pussy juice trickled down her inner thigh. She didn’t hide it, but spread her legs so he could see it. He could make her wet just by using that deep voice on her. His low chuckle enervated her. She wanted to please him, wanted to please herself.
Wanted everything, now.
Over the last week, he’d taught her to wait, taught her never to open a door expecting to know what was on the other side.

She down put the coffee. “Then do it. Show me.”