Hold Back the Night (16 page)

'No, stay just as you are,' he said at once, grimacing as he put down the lump of soft clay and rubbed his hands together to remove the last of it as best he could. 'I'm ready now. I'm afraid, Miss Greey, that you're bound to get some clay on you. You'll understand that I can't possibly wash my hands every time I come into contact with your skin.'

'I... yes,' Domini agreed as she warily watched him turn to the platform. He moved so close that she could smell the tang of him beneath the aroma of undried clay, an earthy male scent that further stimulated her wildly misbehaving imagination. His first tentative touch established contact with a knee. Her nerves leaped.

'Draw your feet up on the platform, please. I can hardly sculpt your legs hanging over the edge. Now adjust them so there's a bend to your knee. That's right...'

With his bearings established, he started exploring the shape of her feet, running his long, responsive fingers quickly over each particular toe and tendon as if to establish its shape and size. Then the ankles, the calves, the knees; and there he paused for some torturous moments, testing the soft sensitive hollow in the underpart of the bend. 'Odd how one finds tiny pulses in such out-of-the-way places,' he murmured thoughtfully.

Domini clenched one fist against her mouth as the fingers stayed in place for a full minute, counting a pulse rate that cause a fleeting smile to cross his features. But he made no particular comment, only moving the hand a few inches until it rested on the thigh directly above her knee.

'Very fine legs up to this point,' he observed detachedly, as if commenting on the weather. 'Good bones, good flesh, good surfaces and angles. If the upper thigh is as shapely, I think you may make an excellent model.' He planted his second hand on her other thigh just beyond the knee bend, palms over the front surface, fingers lightly touching the inner flesh where her legs met.

'Now calm down; you're trembling like a leaf.'

'I'm c-cold,' said Domini, although by now there was a burning heat radiating all through her flesh, its source the very place where Sander's fingers were so intimately lodged. To the further disorder of her senses, she realized that the bend of his half-naked body as he leaned over her had brought his unclothed torso against her lower legs. At a slight withdrawal of her knees he only leaned further forward, re-establishing contact as his roughened chest brushed her smooth calves. Domini stiffened perceptibly.

'Would you like to stop?' came the dry offer. 'I'm prepared to call it quits any time. If you want to back out of the arrangement

'No,' Domini managed, trying to relax her legs. 'I'll be all right.'

Sander frowned as if he didn't like that news at all. For a few vital seconds his hands remained motionless just above her knees. Then, with alarming suddenness, they started a long swift slide to a new, more vulnerable goal. Involuntarily Domini clamped her knees together like closed scissors, heart palpitating at an insane tempo as she considered the exactitude of his aim.

Her reaction stopped him with an inch or so to go, but by no means did he withdraw his hands. His faint smile might have been pure reassurance, and his voice softened as though he were gentling an unbroken colt. 'Now calm down. It's unsettling to have someone seize up like that. Are you all right? We can still stop, you know.'

'I'm... fine,' choked Domini.

'Oh?' he murmured pleasantly, without changing the dangerously suggestive placement of his fingers on her inner thighs. 'I thought perhaps you didn't trust me. You must try to remember that my actions are totally impersonal. As I can't use my eyes, I'm only doing what I must. Otherwise there's no point continuing, is there? Well, what shall it be? Do you want to call it quits before I go further?'

Domini called upon every ounce of inner strength she possessed. So this was how Sander planned to chase her away. Of course; she might have known he would have some such wretched plan. And if she went the clay was sure to end up in the trashcan. Damn him! Well, she didn't like his intentions, which weren't impersonal no matter what he said, but by this time she was determined not to be browbeaten into leaving. It had become a battle of wills.

'Just watch where you're going,' she said with a degree of annoyance that put a convincing tautness in her tone.

'If I could,' he drawled, 'I assure you I would.'

After that one sardonic remark, Sander's expression became forbiddingly enigmatic. To Domini's intense relief his hands now quickly changed directions, sliding around to explore the curve of her hip, the precise flow of her bones, the slender hollows of her waist. But soon the relief changed to something else as the progress of his fingers began once more to waken sleeping fires, igniting each inch of skin subjected to his scrutiny.

He spared no part of her but lingered nowhere. His hands on her throat, her shoulders, her arms, her breasts, could not have been more objective in their swift, impartial search. This time there was no derisive smile, such as he had smiled on feeling her pulse, when he discovered the telling firmness of her nipples. If anything, he looked displeased and moved quickly onward to an area less sensitive to arousal. Domini, for her part, bit her lip to prevent gasping as his fingers roamed over her flesh, leaving a trail of exquisite but unwanted sensations in their wake.

At length he finished, with a swift repetition of the tactile reading of her face that had been done so thoroughly on the previous day. He did not release her hair, as he had done before. At once he said crisply, 'Fine. Now turn in the other direction, will you, and take a similar pose? Face the far wall. Under the circumstances, as I'm trying out a new medium, I'm not too anxious to have a stranger watch the experiment. And as for you, you may have an easier time holding your pose if you're not distracted by what I'm doing. If you wish, wrap your robe around your lower half to keep you warm. I'll be working on the upper only for today.'

He spent some minutes adjusting her pose ... the angle of her chin, the bend of her elbows, the eloquent twist of her fingers. With her head upstretched to extend the long, smooth curve of her throat, and her arms uplifted in the air, it was not an easy pose for Domini to hold. She suspected him of making it deliberately difficult, but at this point she knew better than to complain. Sander's attempts to thwart her had simply succeeded in stiffening her every stubborn resolve.

'Now whatever you do, don't move a single muscle,' he instructed curtly before turning back to his sculpture table.

'This is going to be hard enough for me without also having to remember the exact tilt of your head, should you alter it by a single degree.'

Domini tried to obey, for she wanted him to find no excuse for calling an end to the sitting. The difficulty of holding her position was not diminished by the way his hands frequently came wandering around from behind to explore her shoulders or her breasts, damp clay still clinging to the fingers roughened by manual work. As the afternoon progressed some of the clay clung to Domini, too, each mote of it a reminder of where his hands had travelled and where they would travel again. Her neck began to hurt from stretching, and her arms began to tremble from being held in the air. If there was consolation at all to be found in the discomfort of her difficult pose, it was that it totally suppressed any other physical reactions she might have felt at such intimate recurring explorations of her flesh.

'What colour are your eyes?' he asked at one point.

'Blue.' It was a pallid description of their colour, a rare bluish violet with the depth of wet wildflowers, but it would not have occurred to Domini to wax poetic about her own eyes. Her passport described them as blue.

'Hair?'

'Blonde.' Domini paused and then thought it might be best to mislead him a little, in case at some point his fingertips produced the tactile memory of the young girl he had once known. 'Actually, my real hair colour is sort of light brown. I helped nature along a bit.'

'Ah,' he said, reaching around to make a thorough examination of the hollow between her breasts. He asked no more questions. Domini could hear the sounds of his work progressing ... the faint noises as he pushed and stroked life into the clay, the picking up of small tools, the occasional dip of fingers into water, the muffled movements of his feet. At least he was working, and that gave her a satisfaction that helped ease some of the tensions that troubled her.

'Fine,' he said at last, when about two hours had passed. 'I think that's enough for today.'

With an open sigh of relief Domini lowered her arms, abandoned the difficult elongation of her throat, and reached for her robe. Before turning, she pulled it quickly on without taking time to brush the clay from her breasts. Still trying to rub the crick out of the back of her neck, she slipped her ankles over the edge of the platform and rose to her feet. Anxious to see what Sander had accomplished, she hurriedly moved closer to the table where he had been working. He was still standing beside it stripped to the waist, his thumbs insolently hooked into the waistband of his jeans, facing Domini. The placement of his thighs interfered briefly with Domini's view of the maquette he had been working on.

'I'm so ...'

But whatever Domini had been about to say, it remained unsaid and forgotten forever, for Sander moved aside a few inches and she saw.

She stared at the sculpture he had produced, anger washing through her in great waves that almost robbed her of reason when she considered the indignities she had been subjected to, and to no purpose at all. It was a sculpture of one hand. And not even Domini's hand at that.

'Well?' he asked mockingly. 'Has it all been worth your while? Have I managed to capture the clench of my fist, do you think? The tight curl of my thumb? And how do you like the gesture? An angry one, I'm afraid, but that's the kind of mood I was in.'

Domini didn't bother answering in words. With a tempestuousness she had not displayed in years, she raised one flattened hand and cracked him across the face ... hard. Rage had doubled her strength, and his head jerked sideways from the impact. But other than that he didn't budge his position, and even the hook of his thumbs remained unchanged. Perhaps he had expressed all his fury in the form of his art, for the fleeting dangerous sheen that appeared in his dark eyes was the only sign that her anger was returned in any real way.

'Had enough?' he drawled. 'As I told you before, I'm prepared to let you back out of our agreement altogether … any time you're ready.'

Without answering, Domini raced across the room to where she had left her clothes. With a red rage affecting her reason, she was hardly conscious of getting dressed, beyond knowing that her shaking hands made it very difficult for her to do. When she finished she grabbed her purse and flung herself angrily towards the door.

'Goodbye ... forever, I trust,' came the mocking murmur, just in time to bring Domini to a dead halt at the door.

She turned to face him for one last moment, her face flushed and her eyes still blazing with bright blue sparks.

'Certainly not,' she said, fury giving a vibrant edge to her voice. 'Do you think I'd give you the satisfaction of backing out after that? I'll be back at two o'clock, first working day in the New Year. And next time I'm watching what you do!'

Two weeks later Domini had grown almost accustomed to the task that filled the afternoons of each working day. Weariness from working late nights in order to free some hours during the day, and the continuing detachment Sander displayed in his tactile explorations, helped make the posing an impersonal rather than an erotic experience. Moreover, he insisted on poses that were every bit as awkward as that of the first day, a deliberate punishment for her stubbornness. There were moments of trepidation, to be sure, whenever she mounted the platform, removed her robe, and resumed the role of model. But the feeling soon passed as she became intent upon the difficulty of holding whatever position Sander chose to inflict upon her at that particular time.

He continued to work on maquettes, small pieces that did not require the substructure of an armature. He worked quickly, some days producing two or three, until one of the remote shelves formerly occupied by toys had to be emptied in order to receive the product of his new occupation. As the maquettes were covered by damp sheets and plastic in order to prevent premature drying, they were well hidden from view. To Domini, who understood such things, the moist coverings were an encouraging sign. Although Sander remained disparaging, she knew that only sculptures to be cast would be given such protection.

Sander's attitude towards Domini was marked by a grim silence that he seldom broke, except to instruct her curtly when he had had enough of some particular pose. In the working days of the New Year, their conversation had been minimal and anything but friendly. Perhaps in further retribution for her insistence upon their bargain, he never sculpted her face, leaving it blank and formless ... an undignified lump of clay that left each work partially unfinished.

But at least he was working, and Domini's exultation grew as she watched. Four years ago he had been very good ... but now he was even better. His work was simpler, more powerful, less clever, and even the unfinished face did not detract as much as he might have hoped. It was as though his lack of outer vision had given him an inner vision, a depth of feeling achieved in part because of the suffering he had undergone during these past years. Domini herself might not be a great artist, but she had been exposed to enough important art that she could recognize the quality of greatness when she saw it. And Sander's work had the quality of greatness.

'Do you mind if I leave half an hour early today?' she asked on the day of her date with Grant Manners, shortly after her arrival in the workshop. Only that morning she had dressed the window of the Fifth Avenue boutique, which had turned out to be quite as exciting as she had visualized. Domini could hardly wait to hear Grant's reaction. He was to return from his skiing holiday during the afternoon, and Domini was certain that when she got home, her telephone answering service would have some congratulatory message for her. The anticipation of good news had made her decide to beg off early. Besides, as she would be out for dinner, she needed extra time in order to prepare a meal for Tasey and the babysitter, a motherly woman whom Domini used with enough frequency to be sure of her reliability.

'Leave at once if you wish,' Sander replied curtly before Domini had even mounted her platform. Already standing beside his sculpture table, he was wearing a thin cotton shirt today, having abandoned some days before the pretext of needing to work stripped to the waist.

'I wouldn't dream of leaving without my sitting,' Domini said haughtily, removing her robe and throwing it with carefree abandon on the floor before determinedly climbing into place. 'Why, I'm actually beginning to enjoy this sort of thing.'

He paid her off by forcing her into a pose of enormous difficulty, not unlike that of a runner crouched into sprint position at the beginning of a race, but with both hands upstretched in the air and head dramatically angled to one side. It might have been taken from the floor routine of an Olympic gymnast. Every muscle in Domini's body screamed in complaint. To add to that, fifteen minutes later her inner anguish became almost unbearable when a knock sounded at the workshop door and Sander called without missing a beat, 'Come in!'

Alarmed, Domini dropped her hands in an instant scramble to cover herself. As if he had seen, Sander snapped, 'Don't move! It's only one of Miranda's artists.'

Indeed it was, a young man who had come to discuss some framing to be done. Although most artists were perfectly accustomed to seeing women in the nude, that didn't help Domini's painful frame of mind. She crouched with arms huddled over her breasts, agonizing at the distance between herself and the robe she had so lightly flung away. She was thoroughly mortified, her cheeks flaming and her skin hot, and the young artist's frank stare didn't help.

Sander spent some minutes discussing the pros and cons of various kinds of picture frames, drawing out the discussion as long as possible. Domini knew perfectly well that it was only another form of punishment on his part. Damn him, damn him, damn him!

'You moved,' Sander accused after the young artist had finally drawn his reluctant eyes away from Domini and departed.

'You bastard,' Domini sputtered.

'I imagine he's seen life models before,' Sander mocked as he helped Domini to recapture her lost pose. The cruel amusement in his mouth was all at her expense. 'I'll forgive you this time because he took you by surprise, but next time I won't. If you can't hold a pose through an interruption, you're not much use to me as a model. So next time someone arrives at the door, if I detect one altered muscle our agreement comes to an end.'

'That's just what you want, isn't it?' she declared angrily.

'How did you guess?' he murmured as he went back to work. Domini fumed. With contorted muscles contributing to her agony, she was not in a good frame of mind when the day's work came to an end.

'That's enough for today,' Sander directed at last, when only one hour had passed. The tiny maquette was finished, all but the formless face ... a study in motion that captured in full the tension inherent in the pose. Sander's face was scornful as he added, 'If you can cut our afternoon short by one half-hour, I can cut it short by another.'

Domini collapsed like a rag doll, throbbing in every limb, too enervated to object in any way. It took a few moments of deep breathing before she had the strength to reach for her terry robe, and even then her muscles were still trembling. She slid off the platform feeling somewhat like a marathon runner after a hard race, only to find that today her legs were just as wobbly as the rest of her.

From the expression on Sander's face she could tell that he was taking spiteful satisfaction in the small sounds that told him her job had been anything but enjoyable, despite her protestations. Out of sheer mulishness as much as anything, she forced herself to turn her shaky footsteps towards the shelf where he kept his maquettes, instead of immediately returning to her clothes as she usually did.

In several quick strides Sander had reached her side, and his arms barred her way. 'You saw them when they were done,' he reminded her roughly.

His apparent annoyance and the forcefulness with which he prevented her from moving farther only aroused Domini's curiosity, as well as her fighting instincts. It made her more determined than ever to look over the collection of maquettes whether he liked it or not.

'I want to see them again,' Domini objected, trying to circumvent the immovable object he presented, is there something over there you don't want me to see? Perhaps a caricature of me ... something you've done when I'm not around?'

For one instant she succeeded in circling his outstretched arm. As she pushed past him his reaction was swift and furious. He seized both her shoulders with lightning fury, causing her to whirl around so that she was no longer aiming in the direction of the shelf. His fingers clamping on her soft flesh were like brands, even through the terry robe.

'What I do when you're not here is none of your damn business,' he hissed through his teeth. 'Even Miranda doesn't pry where she's not wanted. How dare you take such liberties in my home?'

'How dare you touch me like this? You're hurting!' she gasped in return, trying to struggle free. A part of her was beginning to react wildly as memories of the past infused her with an overpowering need to escape. She pushed at the wall of his chest, and when that had no effect she started to score his flesh through the shirt, using her fingernails as a weapon. When he remained immutable her feet, too, joined the fight.

Sander sucked in his breath and his brow creased with fury. And then, more swiftly than Domini could turn her head away, his face descended, the lightning glint of grey telling her too late that she had pushed him beyond the limits of his endurance. He pried her lips apart in a kiss that was pure punishment, repaying her intrusion with an invasion of his own, a brutal subjugation of her mouth to the male power of his.

That was how it started, and perhaps that was where it would have ended, had Domini's responses not obeyed some deeper instinct than that of flight or fight. All at once it happened, that crazy vertigo of the senses she had not felt for so long, and she was swept back in time to that moment of wild abandon when she had first felt Sander's lips on hers. Without volition, her fingers, which had been curled to scratch, were suddenly pressed against the light fabric of his shirt, roaming the surfaces to test the warmth and maleness of him. Her senses reeled with the intoxication of the kiss ... the tastes, the smells, the marvellous potency of his closeness. They were man and woman, and the pain of the past had no part in the primal urge that swept through Domini now.

Another time she might have reasoned that she did not want his deep domination, but for Domini there was no reason in the moment at all. The woman in her gloried in his hot passion, his hard demanding lips; she exulted in his superior size and strength. He overpowered her easily, and yet oddly it was she who felt heady with a sense of her power over him. Brazenly she pressed close against the length of his body, knowing full well what ready response she would surely soon invoke. And with her lips and tongue she returned his probing ferocity with a like ardour that must have robbed Sander of self-control too.

Breaking contact except in the kiss, he pulled apart enough to give his hands the full freedom of her body. Roughly he pushed aside the lightly fastened robe to pass commanding hands over the softness that lay beneath, so familiar to the artist in him and yet so little known to the man. Perhaps control had kept his touch impersonal for too long; perhaps during these past days he had been coveting her flesh far more than he had wanted to admit. No longer the clinical observer he had been during the long daily sessions, he devoured her body impatiently in all its intimate detail, searching the valley of her breasts, the rise of each curve, the textured tautness of nipples corrugated with desire, the warmth of her thighs. Where he touched, she turned to flame.

'Oh, God,' he muttered thickly when he lifted his mouth briefly from hers. There was an anguish in his voice that he did not try to hide. 'You're so soft, so supple. Don't you know this is what you've been doing to me all along? Do you do it on purpose? I swear you've been trying to drive me mad, filling my dreams each night, torturing me each day with your softness, your fullness, the feel of your skin...'

But then with brutal suddenness, Sander thrust her away. With a muffled expletive he swivelled on his heel, turning his broad shoulders to her, firmly shutting her out. Burning with need for him, Domini had to fight the impulse to offer herself in the face of his stunning repulse. Shivering, she clutched her robe close and stared at him with a mixture of anger and hurt. Perhaps the past should have inured her to rejection by Sander, but it had not.

'Why did you stop?'

'I do have some scruples,' he said in a rigid voice. 'I imagine you forgot who you were kissing. Besides, I don't take advantage of nudes during or after life sessions.'

'Don't tell me you've never had an affair with one of your models!'Domini burst out, thinking of Nicole.

'Yes, I have. By prior arrangement! If a woman wants to go to bed with a man, she ought to make a decision under circumstances a little more rational than this. Once you get your head together, you may reconsider.'

After the way he had handled her body and the blazing kiss they had shared, his sangfroid enraged her. 'How can you be so damn cold-blooded about it?' she cried. 'Don't you feel a thing?'

He hunched his shoulders as if considering something and then slowly turned, his stance aggressive. 'What do you think?' he said, his voice very controlled.

It was the only controlled thing about him. All the obvious signs of passion were there, emphasized by the close cut of his jeans and undiminished by the moments apart. Moisture bathed his brow and a dull red colour suffused his cheekbones. Still angered, Domini said, 'Good! It's about time! I've been wondering how long it would take you to react.'

It wasn't intended as gloating, but it might have sounded that way. He sucked in his breath, clearly misinterpreting, and then his control burst, unleashing a torrent of retaliation. 'Well, then, are you satisfied?' he lashed out in a voice clogged with anger and frustrated desire. 'Now you know I've been wanting you, desiring you, aching for you every time I touch your hair or your throat or your breast. Don't you think it's time we called an end to this insanity? Now get dressed and get out of here, and don't come back if your only purpose is to arouse me. I'm damn tired of being pushed to the brink of hell every day!'