A Little Night Music (31 page)

Michael wanted to pour champagne down her cleavage and then rescue every drop with his tongue. In the fantasy, he could hear her gasp with pleasure, could taste the mixture of champagne and flesh, could envision her tossing her head back in abandoned ecstasy.

At this rate, Michael thought, easing behind a sculpture of twisted metal, he was going to have to pour the champagne down his own crotch to relieve his sudden, aching erection before he got thrown out of the art gallery for indecency.

Unfortunately, that thought led to the fantasy of the woman drinking the champagne off his cock, and
that
was no help at all in relieving the erotic pressure in his pants.

“Are you okay, man?” Brad asked.

Michael started to answer, but his response came out as a strangled gasp. He cleared his throat and tried again.

“Just admiring that woman over there.”

Brad followed his gaze. “Oh yeah, her. Isn’t she a cutie? I think she’s in a band. God, I love that schoolgirl-punk look.”

“Not her, her friend.”

“Oh. She’s hot, yeah, but she’s…I dunno, tall. And I’ve heard she’s kind of…”

“What?” Michael’s stomach dropped. She was a lesbian. Brad was going to say that she was a lesbian. Damn.

“Uh, creative. Inventive,” Brad said.

Michael’s hopes soared again. “Meaning?”

“She’s not averse to…variations. Kinks, maybe.”

His brain flashed more images: The woman in leather. The woman with her hands bound, writhing beneath him and begging for release. The woman in front of a large window at night, daring somebody anonymous to watch. The woman…

It wasn’t really anything he’d spent a lot of time thinking about until now. He’d had partners with whom he’d played the naughty-librarian game, the I’ve-been-a-bad-girl game. The games had been fun, but they’d been games.

Now he was thinking about it. Just standing over there, she made him think about it.

He hailed a waiter and exchanged his empty glass for a full one.

“How in the world do you know that?” he asked Brad.

His friend grinned. “She’s an artist, and it’s my job to know about artists. In fact, she’s doing the next show here. Her friend, the blonde, is on our mailing list. You going to go talk to her?”

“The blonde?”

“No, bonehead, the tall one. The one that has your knickers in a twist.”

The woman in question turned suddenly, causing her sassy purple skirt—a well-placed contrast to the corset—to flare out. Michael caught a glimpse of lace at her thigh.

His mouth went dry.

“In a minute. I need an opening line.”

“‘I’m a world-famous male model’ isn’t good enough for you? How about, ‘I’ve got an amazingly big d—’”

“Why don’t you use that one on the blonde?” Michael suggested.

He stared across the room. Around him, conversation ebbed and flowed. It was a coup for the artist that someone of his stature attended the gallery opening, but really, he couldn’t find it in himself to care about the art, or even the artist, right now.

He wanted her.

As he watched, she plucked a cream puff from a tray and popped it into her mouth, slowly sliding her fingers back out between pursed lips to catch any crumb. Her eyes closed in an expression of sheer carnal delight.

Would she look like that when her lips were wrapped around his cock? Would her eyes close helplessly when he entered her, or would she stare at him, pupils dark and dilated with passion?

Her tongue flicked out to secure any remaining cream.

She turned, and saw him.

Her tongue remained poised on her lower lip, inviting, glistening.

A long moment. Michael forgot what breathing was like. His vision narrowed. Sound faded.

And then she smiled.

*

Sarabeth was reasonably sure that someone had slipped a hallucinogen into the utterly divine cream puff she’d just eaten.

That couldn’t be him over there, not really.

He was staring at her with so much…hunger. Her nipples hardened, pressing almost painfully against the satin of her corset. Just from the look he was giving her. Never in her wildest fantasies had she imagined him fixing such a predatory look on her.

Her wildest fantasies promptly got more detailed and wild.

If this was a hallucination, then she might as well run with it.

Just to make sure, she smiled at him.

She saw his nostrils flare as he sucked in air. Oh, he’d seen her, all right. No hallucination.

“Holy crap on a stick,” Anya said.

Sarabeth jumped. She’d practically forgotten Anya was standing next to her. Hell, she’d pretty much forgotten what her own name was.

“That’s him, isn’t it?” Anya hissed.

“I believe so, yes,” Sarabeth said, not taking her eyes off him.

“Jesus, he looks just as good with his shirt
on
,” Anya said appreciatively.

Sarabeth had to agree. He wore a royal blue button-down shirt that she suspected might be silk. Oh, she wanted to find out if it was silk. Wanted to run her fingers along the front of it. Wanted to peel it slowly off of him and suggest he run it along her naked body.

Then she could put her hands on his chest for real. Not cold clay, but hot, yielding flesh.

She stifled a moan.

“What are you going to do?” Anya asked.

Anya probably knew exactly what she was thinking, but if she spoke it out loud, her friend would never let her live it down.

“I’m going to…”

She had been about to say that she was going to go talk to him, but the decision has been taken away from her. He was heading straight for her.

He wore black pants that fit him oh, so very well. His thighs pressed against the material as he walked. She wanted to feel those hard muscles trapped between her legs as she rode him to completion…

Anya said something about not being a voyeur and darted away, leaving Sarabeth standing alone.

This is what a wounded gazelle must feel like when the lion’s stalking her. Trapped. Bracing herself to be devoured.

The thought of his teeth scraping against her skin made her legs tremble.

Then he was right in front of her, so close she could smell his strong, masculine scent.

“I’m not the artist,” she said. At his confused look, she continued, “I saw you looking at me, and thought you must have assumed I’m the artist.” She indicated the sculpture display. “I didn’t do these.”

“Do you know the artist?” he asked.

His voice was like melted chocolate dribbled down her spine in anticipation of his tongue licking it all back off.

She shook her head. “No, I’ve never met him.”

“So, what do you think of his artwork?”

She tore her gaze away from him and glanced around at the twisted lumps of metal.

“I think,” she said carefully, “that it’s not so much art as scraps leftover from high school shop class. Not so much art as…leftovers. If that’s what he was going for, then I’m afraid he lost me in the process.”

“Oh, thank goodness,” he said. “I was hoping it was just me.” He held out his hand. “Michael Barr.”

Too many sensations. The warmth of his flesh, the firmness of his grasp—oh, where she wanted him to grasp her, and caress her!—the tingling sensation on her palm as he drew away and his fingertips trailed across her nerve-heightened skin.

Your love slave
, she thought, but thankfully she managed to answer aloud correctly. “Sarabeth Delaney.”

“And you’re an artist, Sarabeth?”

His voice lingered over her name as if tasting it. Savoring it. She wanted to hear him say it, husky with passion, as she tasted him in turn, pressing her lips against salty….

“I’m a sculptor,” she said. “And you?”

“Photographer.”

Did she sense the slightest hint of hesitation before he answered? And, she mused, he’d introduced himself with a different last name.

He probably didn’t want to be recognized, she decided. That was common enough in Hollywood. Stars were people, first and foremost, and an evening was far more enjoyable if they could have normal conversations and not be fawned over.

Fair enough. If that’s the way he wanted it, that’s exactly how she’d handle it. He didn’t need to know she was already obsessed with him.

As long as she didn’t give herself away by tearing off his clothes and jumping him in the middle of the gallery. Because lord knew her hands were trembling to do exactly that.

“Have I seen any of your work?” he asked.

Oh honey, just wait ‘til I have you naked and I’ll show you my work
. “My first big show is the next one on the schedule here. In two weeks.”

His eyes, blue pools she wanted to luxuriate in, showed appreciation. “That’s wonderful. You must be very excited.”

He couldn’t know how excited. How her entire body craved another sample of his touch. How if he touched her between her legs, he’d find her hot and wet and on the edge of explosion.

What turned her on the most was that he obviously wanted her, too. She could see it in the darkness of his eyes, in the way his nostrils flared again when she took a sip of champagne, and in crotch.

She tried very, very hard not to stare at the obvious thickness pressing against his trousers.

She had to clench her hand into a fist just to keep herself from reaching out and touching…

He dipped his head close to hers, and when he spoke, she could feel his breath tickling her ear, an erotic, warm breeze. She stifled a moan.

“So, Sarabeth Delaney the Sculptor,” he murmured, “why don’t you show me the rest of the gallery and tell me what you think of the art?”

To give herself time to get her legs to find the strength to move, she toyed with the choker at her neck. She was gratified to see his eyes drop to her cleavage, and linger there.

He, too, seemed to be struggling for control.

What an aphrodisiac
that
was.

She’d never been one for one-night stands, for anonymous sex. Despite her long-standing lust for this man whom she’d never met prior to the last ten minutes, she didn’t know anything about him. He could be…dangerous.

Oh, she already knew that he was dangerous. She’d had no idea that she’d react to him so completely, so totally, upon being in his presence.

That she would be willing to throw all caution to the wind just for the chance to be closer to him. To press against him. To feel him.

Rational thought fled. All she knew was that she wanted him, and he wanted her.

She could cope with dangerous, she decided. It would be worth it in the end.

For now, though, it did make sense to get to talk with him more in a public place. Get to know him as a person. See how riled up she could get him, with the flirting and the teasing. How much she could get him to want her. To need her.

But, God, the things she wanted to do to him.

She wondered how long she could hold out. How long before she broke down and excused herself to the ladies room where she could relieve the aching need that threatened to consume her?

“I’d love to,” she said.

*

Michael dragged his gaze from her cleavage and his mind away from the fantasies regarding her cleavage, and struggled to remember what he’d just asked her that she was so willingly agreeing to.
Please, let it be something good
.

Then she was hooking a hand through his arm and leading him into the next room, out of the rotating gallery collection and into one of the permanent displays. The motion restarted the blood flow to his brain enough so that he recalled they were going to look at more art.

He didn’t want to look at art; he wanted to look at
her
.

But he was willing, for a while at least, to settle for being with her.

Her light touch on his arm sent his senses tingling. Her fingers rubbed the silk of his shirt against his flesh, a maddening sensation. She was close enough that he could see the light glinting off her blue-black hair. The perfume she wore—something flowery, but not cloying—brought his cock to attention again. How could something so simple affect him so strongly?

All he knew about her was her name, and that she was a sculptor.

He didn’t need another relationship right now.

Or did he? Granted, she hadn’t batted an eyelash at his introduction, so maybe, just maybe, she didn’t recognize him. Maybe he had a chance at developing a rapport with somebody who didn’t want him for anything bigger—

Although his cock was getting bigger by the moment, and that just had to be tamped down before he hurt himself or those around him.

“Now, this piece, I like,” Sarabeth said.

Michael forced himself to concentrate on her words. Not the husky timbre of her voice. Not how that voice would sound when she cried out his name in the heat of passion, as he brought her to—

Damn. Must…pay…attention.

She indicated a metal sculpture, this one in bronze. It was a stylized horse, rearing up, head thrown back in abandon.

“There’s movement, even in something as solid as metal,” she said. “You can feel the wildness, the pass—” she coughed, recovered “—the passion.”

“As if the horse is going to leap off the pedestal,” Michael said.

She turned appreciative eyes on him. “Exactly.”

“This one’s sad, but beautifully done.” Now she stood before a painting.

Michael considered it. It showed an empty, rumpled bed. What he took to be the morning sun shot through a window at the head of the bed, a sunbeam bisecting the bed in a streak of red-gold. To either side of the bed, however, the room got darker as it extended away in either direction. Michael looked at the plaque beside the painting. It read, simply, “Separation”.

“I know the artist on this one,” Sarabeth said. “She did it just after she and her husband split up. The pain’s there, in every stroke.”

Michael looked more closely. On either side of the painting was a doorway, each shrouded in shadow. Faintly, he could see the form of a person in each doorway: on the left a man, on the right, a woman. They each were looking back over their shoulders, but it was obvious that the darkness and the gap were too overwhelming. They were already too far apart to have a hope of reconnecting.