Savage Nights (The Savage Trilogy #2) (15 page)

“Is that how you think of it?” I asked, surprised by his vehemence. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been; he seemed to approach much in his life the same way.

“I do,” he said. He paused, leaning back to consider his work. He whipped the sheet from the board and held it up for me to see. “Rubbish. Once again, I’ve failed.”

“Oh, no, not at all!” I exclaimed. I don’t know what I expected his work to be—I’d never known any gentlemen who were also artists—but his skill astonished me. Gentleman or not, he was talented, and to me his drawing looked equal to what I’d seen on display in museums and galleries. “It’s very good.”

He grunted in disagreement. “Chicken scratchings,” he said with disgust. “A dilettante’s scribbles.”

“You are too harsh,” I said, coming to the edge of the bed to be closer to both him and the drawing. “It’s remarkable.”

“For an amateur, you mean,” he said gloomily. “A peer of the realm can never be regarded as a professional artist. I’m aware of that.”

“It’s remarkable for anyone,” I said staunchly. “I saw at once that it was me, even though my face is turned away. I can tell that this is your bed, and—”

“Any apprentice draughtsman can do that,” he said scornfully. “A mere factual cataloguing. A true artist discovers the soul of his subject, and makes it his own on the paper or canvas.”

“Like lovers,” I said without thinking.

Immediately his eyes turned wary. “What are you saying?”

I took a deep breath. Now that I’d begun, even though by accident, I’d have to continue.

“I’m saying that you’ve done exactly that to me already,” I said carefully. I curled my legs beneath me, buying time to choose my words. “Last night, in this bed, and whenever else we come together. You find my soul, and join it with your own.”

He didn’t answer at first, his face impassive. He glanced at the drawing, then back to me. “You believe that?”

I nodded, self-consciously smoothing my tangled hair behind my ears.

“Do you believe it in reverse?” he asked. “Do you feel that when we fuck you lay some sort of claim to my soul as well?”

“I suppose I do,” I said slowly. “You know how often you tell me to open my eyes, so that we can’t hide from one another. Perhaps that’s why you’re not happy with your pictures of me. You’ve always drawn me asleep, or just now when my face was turned away. Perhaps if you were to draw me now, looking at you, you’d be better pleased.”

He didn’t answer, and my heart sank. I must have spoken too freely and presumed a closer intimacy than really exisited between us.

But then he nodded. Abruptly he dropped the last drawing and pinned a fresh sheet in place on the board.

“Turn a bit to your left, towards the window,” he ordered. “Put your weight on your left arm.”

I did as he bid, my heart racing. Did he agree after all? Did he feel the same as I did?

“Not like that.” He rose suddenly, setting aside the board to lean over me. He placed both hands around my arm and gently guided it into the place he wanted. Concentrating, he next placed his fingers on the small of my back, making me arch my spine more gracefully.

I glanced down at my wrist. The fingers on his hand were covered with the black chalk, and each time he touched my arm he left an oval black smudge on my pale skin, like a visible map of his touch on my skin that I found both oddly beautiful and arousing.

Finally he stepped back, considering.

“Don’t move,” he said. “There’s one more thing required.”

He bent his head over my breast and sucked the nipple into his mouth, drawing so hard that he hollowed his cheeks. I hadn’t expected him to do that, and I gasped, both with surprise and with pleasure. He massaged my other breast at the same time, his fingers squeezing and tugging at the nipple.

“I told you not to move,” he whispered sharply, against my skin.

I shuddered, struggling to do as he bid even as I felt the pull of what he was doing deep within me, a subtle torment that drew on my very womb.

He shifted back and forth between each breast, licking and suckling until my nipples were bright red and tight, the areolas pebbled, and glistening from his mouth. Around them my pale skin was smudged with his sooty fingerprints, more signs of his possession.

“Are … are y-y-y-ou satisfied?” I stammered breathlessly, being careful not to break my pose.

“I cannot tell yet,” he said, not committing one way or another. Yet he smiled wickedly to prove he knew exactly what he’d done and its undeniable effect on me. “You must look directly at me while I draw, and not look away even for a moment. I want to test this theory of yours.”

He sat back down with the board across his legs. Instead of the earlier decisiveness that he’d shown while drawing, he now seemed in a kind of fury, his entire body behind the chalk in his hand and the marks he was making across the page. It was as if before he’d drawn with his intellect and now he drew with passion. When our eyes met I felt the heat of it, enough to feel I’d been scorched by his intensity.

I didn’t move, but my anticipation built. I couldn’t wait to see the drawing and if there was any difference. From what I saw in him, there should have been. Now he was making art with the same passion that he showed when he made love to me.

And it
was
making love and not just fucking. It was exactly as I’d said, a physical union of our souls as well as our bodies. Mine became a visceral response, and I felt each stroke of the chalk across the page as clearly as if it had been drawn across my skin.

I understood, and as I sat as still on the bed as I could my pulse quickened and my blood grew feverishly warm. It was as if he’d cast one more spell over me. My breasts grew heavy, and without looking down I could tell that my nipples were tightening into stiff little buds of desire. Although I’d promised not to move, my lips parted on their own, my breathing as rapid as my pulse.

All because he was watching me, studying me, seducing me, as he captured my soul with a swash of black chalk.

He worked fast, or perhaps it was the shifting morning sun that spurred him on. Finally he nodded with satisfaction and dropped the chalk on the table beside him before he turned the board for me to see his work.

“Oh, Savage,” I murmured, stunned by the difference. Free at last to break the pose, I sat upright, rubbing my arms where they’d stiffened from my sitting so still.

“You see it, then?” he said, unable to keep the little note of triumph from his voice. “It’s not perfect, not by a long ways, and yet it’s closer than I’ve ever come.”

I nodded, captivated by the new picture. The first one he’d shown me had been a pretty representation of the bed and the room with me in it, but this was only me, my eyes fathomless and hungry with longing. He’d made me look not like a lady but a vibrant, sensual woman.

Only Savage could make me feel that way, and only he could have drawn me like this.

“Do I really look like that?” I asked, almost in awe.

“In my eyes you do,” he said.

Such simple words, yet made so rich by the way they reverberated with emotion. I didn’t know how to answer, not with ordinary words, and instead I held my arms out to him, wanting him to join me.

He leaned the board with the drawing against the side of the chair, his gaze never leaving mine, exactly as he’d done as he’d drawn me. Quickly he pulled the jersey over his head but kept the loose trousers hanging precariously on his hip bones and against the jut of his aroused cock.

He came to join me on the bed, sinking into my embrace. He pressed his face between the globes of my breasts and I folded my arms around his bare shoulders, tangling my fingers into the black silk of his hair. I rocked backwards onto the tangled sheets, drawing him with me.

His hands settled on either side of my waist, and holding me that way, he lavished a trail of wet, hot kisses from my breasts down my belly. It was as if he was determined to remember and mark every inch of my body as he’d just drawn it, except now in this sensual, tactile way.

I arched my back against his mouth, reveling in the feel of his lips and tongue and the scrape of his unshaven jaw over my skin as he slowly worked his way back up my body. There were more black chalk smudges like leopard’s spots on me now, and I did not care.

Liquid heat coursed through my body beneath him. His turgid cock pressed against my thigh through the thin trousers, hard and rigid with his need. There was no mistaking where this would lead, nor would I have wanted anything else.

He slid his hands along the outside of my rib cage and gently pushed my arms straight over my head. He rubbed his thumbs into the taut muscles of my armpits, holding my arms over my head as he straddled my legs.

His face was close over mine, his eyes quicksilver bright.

“Perfection,” he whispered hoarsely. “My Innocent, my inspiration, my muse. My Eve.”

“Yours,” I breathed in return as he bent to kiss me. “All yours.”

8.

“So this is where you’ve hidden yourself,” Savage said as he entered the bedroom. We’d only been apart an hour at most, yet still I felt the familiar rush of pleasure and anticipation when I saw him again.

He was wearing the same loose trousers and jersey that he’d had on earlier when he’d drawn me and clearly, wonderfully, nothing beneath either. Without the burden of tailoring every muscle showed beneath the soft fabrics, and the dark curls on his chest peeked through the deep V-neck of his jersey. No man I’d ever seen could wear such casual dress with such seductive aplomb.

“I wouldn’t call being in your bedroom hiding,” I said, smiling at his return. He’d found me reading in the armchair beside the window, my feet curled beneath me. “It’s where I’ve been almost the entire time. I wanted to be here when you returned.”

He chuckled, clearly pleased with my answer and with me. His face was relaxed, almost happy, and I hoped I could take some of the credit for that.

He crossed the room and placed one hand on the back of the armchair to brace himself as he leaned down to kiss me. Eagerly I opened my mouth for him as he deepened the kiss, sweeping his tongue against mine in a way that always made my core tighten with longing, and I wondered if it was possible for him to make me come by kissing me alone.

It was the middle of the afternoon, and he had gone downstairs to tend to a few pressing matters of business. Remembering how strongly he’d reacted yesterday, I hadn’t pressed him for details. I’d reminded myself that he’d been right: whether his “business” had to do with the man I’d seen hurrying from the house yesterday or something as harmless as bills that needed paying, it wasn’t any of my affair. Besides, this was already the second day of our week together, and I’d no desire to squander any more of it with his displeasure.

While he’d been downstairs I’d taken the time alone to bathe in the room across the hall. I didn’t call for a servant but managed for myself, twisting my hair into a loose knot on my head. Without a fresh change of my own clothes I could have worn the scarlet robe that had been left for me. Instead I’d appropriated one of Savage’s robes from his closets, a dramatic blue silk patterned with gold phoenixes.

The silk was redolent with his scent, a mixture of the spicy bay rum of his shaving soap and his own distinctive maleness. Wearing the robe was like wrapping myself in a memory of him: unique, enjoyable, but not the same as having the man himself. The silk slipped and slid across my naked body and I’d had to tie the sash twice around my waist to keep it from slithering off my body, but I liked knowing it belonged to him.

He liked it, too. As he continued to kiss me he slid the fingertips of one hand beneath the silk, pushing it so slowly over the curve of my shoulder and down my arm that it became another kind of caress. The silk whispered lower and lower until finally he’d bared my right breast completely. He scooped the rounded flesh into his palm, idly tweaking my nipple until it stood stiff. Impatiently I shrugged my other shoulder, trying to free my other breast from the robe for him, but he only broke the kiss and chuckled.

“Don’t be greedy, Eve,” he chastised softly. “Sometimes it’s better to wait.”

I sighed with longing. “So you say, Master.”

“Yes, I do,” he said, his smile wickedly indulgent. “I should draw you like this, with one perfect breast displayed against the silk. Ivory flesh crowned by a ruby jewel.”

“Then why don’t you, Master?” I asked. I’d enjoyed posing for him, one more layer to our games.

“Another time,” he said, glancing down at the open book in my lap. “But I see how you’ve been amusing yourself while I was away.”

I followed his glance down to the small book and blushed furiously. It had been the book’s elegant brocade binding that had attracted me, sitting on the table beside the bed, and I’d chosen it hoping for something to read to pass the time. I soon realized, however, that I’d be looking at the book’s pictures instead of reading it, for what few words there were on the pages were formed by Japanese characters, not Western letters, and I couldn’t begin to make them out. But words were unnecessary, because the pictures—dramatic woodblock images of Japanese couples engaged in amorous play that filled every page—were vividly explicit.

So explicit, in fact, that when Savage glanced down to the pages I’d left open across my lap I tried to close the book.

He put his hand on the edge of the page to keep it open and twisted his head to see the illustration.

“The
shunga
are amusing, aren’t they?” he said. “That’s what these prints are called, you know. Erotic art to be enjoyed by every rank of society, and by both men and women. The Japanese are much more frank in these matters than the English.”

I nodded, for that same frankness had also left me at a loss for words. Savage collected erotic paintings and sculpture, and it had been openly displayed about his rooms at Wrenton as well as here in his house. While at first it had embarrassed me, now I’d come to appreciate the pieces not only as art but also as arousing erotica. And wasn’t that really what he and I had been creating together when he’d drawn me earlier this morning?