Unbroken (5 page)

With a rueful laugh, he spread his hands to show her the clay on them. “You want this?”

She looked at the cool, wet pile of clay on the side of the table and nodded. “I saw the way you smoothed that clay. I want it.”

“Come here.”

She shook her head, teasing him.

He took a step and lifted his hands.
“Last chance.”

She stood firm and stared up into his eyes, knowing he’d find no doubt in her. Watching him manipulate the clay had made her hot, hotter than hot. She wanted him to handle her that way.

Owning her.

When his hands touched her waist, she shuddered. Hardened beads rolled off his hands.

She touched the pile of discarded clay on the table. “Treat me like you treat this.” That smile she loved quirked his mouth.

“With one or two differences.
But yes, you have skin I can mould to my bidding. I
create,
bring to life shapes and thoughts that never found expression before. I’ll make your likeness in clay, then in bronze. You’ll be hard and metallic, not like this.” He ran his hand up from her waist, cupped her breast and squeezed. Everywhere he touched, he left streaks of red, as if drawing on her skin. But he wasn’t. He was creating her, renewing her.

He rubbed her breast, left streaks of terracotta over her nipple. “You have to knead it first to get it elastic and ready to work. It reaches the ideal point and you just know it.”

He bent, heedless of the smears and sucked her nipple deep into his mouth, releasing it with an audible pop before moving to the other. One long lick, and a caress, followed by a nip that made her shiver and want him even more and he was gone, leaving her nipples taut and glistening. He massaged her breasts and she leant back against the table that held the tray, heedless of the hot coffee there.

But he wasn’t. One hand curved around her waist and he swung her around to lean against the table holding the clay, then he picked up the coffee and moved it further away. He’d locked the wheels on the worktable, so it didn’t move when she pressed her bottom against it. The cold, wet clay compressed against her flesh and the sensation, so different to his firm, warm hands, made her appreciate the texture.

He reached behind her and when she felt his hands on her bottom, she became his creation. Cool clamminess spread over her backside and her waist, as if she were made of clay, and he was creating her, smoothing the soft, malleable medium over her body.

“Remake me,
Zoltan
.”

He gazed at her through eyes heavy with arousal. “You don’t need remaking. You’re exquisite.”

“Used to be.”

Not like the clay that smoothed over her body, made her feel fresh and new, as if he could rebuild her as perfect as she used to be.

“Shut the fuck up. Your scars make you real.” He continued to run his hands over her body, stopping to caress and warm her suddenly chilled skin.

The memory of the cold, clinical surgeries, the masks and racks of glittering silver instruments gave her the reminder of what was to come, but she shoved it aside.

Not here, not now.
Vashti
concentrated on his hands moving over her, inciting her, encouraging her to give herself up to him, so he could make her into what she should be, what she needed to be to give her career a jump start.

He lifted one hand off her to pull his T-shirt over his head. The few seconds it took left her bereft. She went back into his arms as if she belonged there.

He shoved up her chin with a demanding hand and ravaged her mouth, plunging his tongue into her to caress and mould her inside and out. His arms went around her waist and his hands smoothed over her skin, leaving cold chills in their wake.

She unbuttoned his fly and slid the zipper down, reaching inside to grasp his cock.
Hard, hot and long, and so
alive
.
“Fuck me,
Zoltan
. Make me forget.”

“I’ll make you remember.”

No clinical death
lay
here, only vitality and heat.
Vashti
revelled in the feel of his cock in her hand, pulsing with want. She shoved his jeans down so they cleared his ass. His soft groan only incited her to grip him harder and drag him to her.

With a chuckle, and a growled, “demanding witch,”
Zoltan
tilted her back on the table so he could plunge into her. Every time he did that, she felt a release, along with her growing excitement that he was home, where he belonged. She loved it.

He dipped back to the table to collect fresh clay, rolling it into long cylinders over her skin. He brought his hands around to her belly and tilted her back further, thrusting inside to find her sweet spot.

“Ah, God,
Zoltan
, nobody does that
better
than you!”

“You feel so good, especially like this. Come for me, sweetheart, let me hear you scream.”

Every time he reached inside her, he touched the place he’d made his own. He worked her until she threw her head back and yelled his name, her pussy clenching his cock in a death grip.

He grasped her hair and punished her mouth, ravaging it with a kiss as deep as his invasion of her. She scrabbled wildly for something to hold onto,
then
she found him, and clutched at his back, her nails scoring furrows in his skin.

He didn’t stop, but carried on thrusting, through her orgasm, using the shattered remnants to start another. He relentlessly drove her to another climax, as explosive as the first. Like scaling a ladder, each rung a new marker in her sex life. He engraved his presence on her body, more than the car that had nearly taken her life a year before.

The car had taken her life—she would give it to him. He could have anything he wanted if only he carried on doing this to her.

* * * *

He’d not worked this hard since he’d prepared for his first show, but
Vashti
brought out
a creativity
in
Zoltan
that he thought he’d lost. Every time he looked at her, he felt a surge of inner fire.

Watching her now, lying naked on the chaise while he put the finishing touches to the last clay figure, a pang of regret shot through him. Their affair was always going to end when the work was finished. She had her life to sort out, and he’d be busy with the upcoming shows, too busy to give
Vashti
the time she deserved. And he knew how obsessed he became. It wouldn’t be fair to subject her to that. She needed attention, not neglect.

After their memorable afternoon with the clay, she’d tried to sculpt, but her figures owed more to enthusiasm than to skill, and she’d gone back to reading. Trying to find a new career, she said, although every day she told him something about modelling until he felt sure she was planning to return to it.

He’d call that a shame. His lover had a lively mind and a quick intelligence. The books she studied while he sculpted her were rapidly scanned and dispensed with.

Truth be told, he could have managed without her a week ago. Originally he’d planned to get rid of her after the first week, after the initial sketches, but now he didn’t want to let her go. He knew he should. He yearned to spend more time with her, but she fitted into his home too well, as if she’d always been there. And she turned to fire in his arms every night.

All reasons to break it off before she became indispensable to him.

He put down his smoothing tool and took one last look. There she
lay,
skin gleaming like honey in the bright lights, a light fuzz of growth shielding her pussy. He’d asked her to let it grow, he wanted to see the colour and add a little texture to his work. Most of all, he wanted to know what it looked like, the shape, the way the curls flattened crisply under his hands, and at other times coyly shielded her innermost secrets. The artist in him balked at the way her clit peeked through her bare labia, blatant, leaving him little to uncover with his other senses.

Her amazing eyes owned him every time she glanced up from her book to smile. She was easy now, without the shadows he’d seen that first day, and done his best to dispel.

Time to go.
He had to work on the rest of the installation and fairly soon, he’d go to the Hayward and take a trip across to the Guggenheim to plan the layout. If she went with him, they’d be a couple, he knew it. No going back then until they’d committed or decided to formally part.

He shied away from thinking about it any more.
“Ready for lunch?”

She swung her feet down from the couch and reached for her robe but he forestalled her.

“No, stay there.
My turn to make the sandwiches, anyway.”

“As long as you wash your hands first.”
She glanced at his stained hands and his mind went back to the time he’d first brought out the clay and got her as smeared as the table he worked on.

A stirring in his jeans told him he’d better get his mind off that, or he’d weaken. He wanted her gone by the end of the week, so he could concentrate on the exhibitions, one a retrospective but the other now the launch of this new work. It would take time to have the figures cast in bronze the way he wanted, and he’d have to spend many days at the foundry, then more in the studio refining them. Eagerly, he looked forward to the work. Yes, she had to be gone by then.

But one more time.
Just one.
Vashti
had an allure nothing could deny, and a sexuality that burned up their nights, but this had to be sex, sex only. She had a life to live, and he couldn’t keep her from that. As long as he remembered that, he’d be safe.

So instead of walking past her, he touched her shoulder and when she turned in to him, he bent to catch her mouth in a light kiss, teasing her with the tip of his tongue before he withdrew. Before she could respond, he was a step away.
No further.

She laughed. It had become a challenge to make her laugh. When she laughed, when she relaxed, he found her irresistible. Her public persona was all brooding intensity, but her public missed more than they guessed, because a wickedly mischievous
Vashti
was deadly. He felt a pang when he realised she might soon be sharing that with someone else. He had no claim on her, nor, he told himself, no desire for one. But if he had no claim, he had to let her go, like a full-grown lion, no longer a cub.
Or a leopard, breathtaking in its grace and beauty.

He studied her, his thoughts moving wildly off course, images of a mythical creature, half
Vashti
, half leopard, filling his mind but she had risen to her feet in a graceful movement, only slightly impeded by her leg, and come to him. She pressed her body against his clay-stained jeans and T-shirt, and claimed her kiss.

He returned it, but didn’t hold her. “Haven’t we been here before?”

“You need a shower.”

Oh no, he wouldn’t get much work done for a while. So he touched her, spread his palm over her back and turned her, enjoying the possessive stamp of his hand on that seductive curve. “So do you, now.”

 
He slapped her butt, letting his hand remain there, cupping her, but careful not to get too close to her pussy. He wasn’t sure what clay would do to that most delicious part of her and he didn’t want to risk it. He’d keep it together enough to wash, because he dearly wanted to touch here there. She pushed back, fitting herself into his hand, and laughing at his responsive groan.

So this time he slapped her a little harder, enough for her to give a mock scream and move away, walking at a faster pace out of the room.

Zoltan
kept a utilitarian shower close to his studio, so that he didn’t leave paint and clay stains on his house, but
Vashti
gave this the go-by and headed for the stairs. He let her precede him, enjoying the sight of his handprints on her lovely butt. He even enjoyed the wiggle her injury had added to her walk, although he’d rather she had the wiggle without the injury. He kept a couple of paces behind her, enough to keep her in his sights, not enough for her to get away if she decided to run. That beautiful curve…although art was woven into the fabric of his life, he wasn’t thinking about creating anything now, except maybe a couple of orgasms, or maybe three.
As many as he could wring out of her.

She knew her way around his house by now, and went into the big bathroom. Not to the claw-footed tub, but to the luxurious walk-in shower at the end.

No. This was all sex, all it could ever be. Never stop to explain, keep moving. That had served him well so far, and he had no reason to believe it wouldn’t keep working.

Sex, yeah. It wasn’t hard to keep thinking about that.

As if she could read his mind, she gave an extra wiggle before she opened the door and stepped in to the room. The door slid closed behind her, as it was designed to do, but
Zoltan
shucked his pants and followed her in, almost before it had stopped moving.

She was in the process of reaching for the cupboard, presumably for supplies and maybe more bath gel, since the one hanging by the taps seemed empty, when something else fell out. Recognising it just in time, he fielded it before it hit the tiles and smashed into a thousand pieces. He gripped it, remembering now where he’d left it. He’d meant to bring it to bed one night, but somehow in his eagerness to get inside her sweet pussy, he’d forgotten it.