Curve Effect (A BBW Box Set of Contemporary, Science Fiction and Paranormal Romances) (31 page)

As her grip on the robe’s edges loosened, Diaz slipped two fingers into one of her palms and gently tugged. Slowly she let him guide her hand down to the mattress.

He dropped to his knees and wrapped one hand around the wrist that still clutched the robe closed at her waist while his other hand pushed back the fabric to expose her left breast.

He pulled his bottom lip into his mouth, the way he had on the patio, and Bryce felt fresh cream slickening the inside folds of her labia. He certainly didn’t look painterly right now. Not with the way he stared at her erect nipple, his grip on her wrist tightening while he sucked and chewed at his bottom lip.

“You’re trembling.”

“Just nervous.” And wet and wondering if there are any perks to the job Percy neglected to mention. But, then, Percy had pretty much neglected to mention anything and everything.

He stopped working his bottom lip and the grin returned in a flash. This time, the way he smiled at her was downright wicked. “We could both be naked if it would help?”

She shook her head “no”, vigorously. Her pussy already contracted wildly this close to him, if she saw him naked and erect, she would either come or faint on the spot. Her free hand moved to cover her exposed breast and Diaz stepped back, hands raised in surrender. He walked to the dresser, took a bronzed silk shawl folded over the edge of the mirror and brought it back to the bed. He draped the shawl across her lap and then turned his back to her.

“We’ll go in steps then,” he suggested. “Why don’t you take the robe off, lie down and cover what you want with the silk?”

Holding the shawl against her torso, she loosely folded the robe up and put it at the end of the bed. She caught his gaze in the mirror, dark and smoky as he cheated and watched her.

“Close your eyes,” she said and waited until he complied before stretching out in the nest of blankets and drawing the shawl across her mound and breasts. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be so difficult.”

“It’s okay. I knew you’d be a challenge.”

“I see.” She tried to squash a lifetime of self-deprecation, but painfully comic thoughts chattered inside her head.

So, Sir Diaz, why did you climb Mount Bryce?

Because she was big and she was there!

Diaz turned and looked at her, his sensuous mouth turned down at the corners. “What do you mean, ‘I see’?”

Bryce shrugged, careful not to unsettle the slip of silk protecting her from another round of complete exposure. The bed was long and wide and her backside curved against the small wall of bedcovers. That left a gap at the edge of the bed and Diaz sat down, slowly reaching for one corner of the shawl.

“You said I could cover what I want.”

His frown righted itself, his olive green gaze sparkling with quiet intent. “Yes-s-s-s,” he said, and grinned wider with each second he elongated the word. “That was step one. Step two, I get to uncover some of what I want.”

Diaz moved slowly, giving Bryce time to object or accustom herself to the increased nudity. His eyes followed his hand, first his fingertips grazing her breast and nipple, then his gaze stopping to stroke the surface of her bared skin.

“Your coloring is lovely, Bryce.” He reached up to curve a lock of her hair along the side of her cheek. “All honeyed-blonde up top.” He trailed his fingertip down the sensitive skin of her throat, back to the tip of her peaked nipple. She gasped but he didn’t pull away. “And cream and cherries everywhere else.”

If he only knew how cherry,
she thought, straining against the impulse to arch her back and press her breast against his open palm. Her body was warm and melting despite the coolness of the apartment now that the air conditioner had kicked back on.

Could he smell how wet she was?

He drew the shawl down over the swell of her stomach. Bryce tensed. Afraid that whatever illusion gripped him would shatter on so close an inspection, her hand crept under the pillow to find the toga and bracelet.

“Yes, I like that.” He caught her hand. “But above the pillow and a little over your head.”

Leaning forward, he steadied himself with one hand against her hip. His fingers lightly pressed into her skin in a possessive curl while he positioned her arm to curve around her face until he had her hand tangled in the soft waves of her hair. The movement brought his chest into contact with hers and she closed her eyes.

His hand on her hip, his arm enclosing hers, body to body, it felt like a lovers’ embrace. She breathed in the scent of him, becoming increasingly detached from everything else in the room. In the air surrounding him, she could smell a trace of the paints he worked with on the patio. But closer to his skin, she detected the warm perfume of toasted almonds, and his hair held the rose-watermelon smell of guava.

Taking her other arm, he positioned it along the curve of her waist and hip, her hand resting over the warm section of flesh he had just held. She pressed the loose smile forming at the corners of her mouth into an ambivalent line before he could see the effect he had on her.

She noticed the stiff way he rose from the mattress and walked to the corner chair and believed for the moment that his wasn’t the only magic being worked in the room. Gripping the chair, he started dragging it closer to the bed. The muscles of his back bulged, narrowing his waist until her gaze was forced down to where the cotton shorts clung to his butt and upper thighs.

The cushioned chair’s width was somewhere in between a regular chair and a loveseat, and he used his whole body to move it. Dressed, she would have offered to help him. Naked on his bed and with his back turned to her, she relished every flex and muscle bulge the effort produced.

When the chair was angled about a foot from the bed’s end, he went back to the corner and retrieved a standing lamp. Repositioning the light closer to Bryce, he tilted the shade until her body was lit in a soft glow. She expected him, at this point, to leave the room for supplies, but he reached under the bed and pulled out a sketch pad and box of charcoals, instead.

“Don’t you need your easel?” she asked. “And paints?”

Diaz sank into the plush padding of the chair. He pushed a chin-length lock of hair, black as a raven’s wing, behind his ear and rested one foot against the bed’s bottom frame.

Radiating a proprietary ease over the entire room, he flipped open the sketch book and thumbed past already filled pages. “Some preliminary drawings,” he answered, finding a clean sheet. “Easier to undo my mistakes when they’re in charcoal and not oil.”

Concerned that she’d started a process that would last beyond the weekend, Bryce started to turn onto her side, but his upward glance froze her in place. “Well, how long does all this take?” she asked as she settled back into the pose.

She couldn’t describe the expression Diaz wore while she waited for him to answer. He looked like he was holding a fresh chilled strawberry in his mouth, the juices spreading across his tongue while the pressure of his sensuously curving smile slowly crushed the fruit between tongue and upper palate.

Sated, happy and more than just a little horny—that’s how he looked.

“Oh, a finished painting takes months,” he answered at last.

Months! She certainly didn’t have that long. Percy’s impromptu vacation didn’t give her more than a few days. “I’m not sure I have more than the weekend.”

“If the weekend is all you’re willing to allow me, I’ll take it.” He dropped his gaze to the sketch pad and began making the first strokes. “For now.”

Chapter Three

Trying to sketch and hide his growing erection with the art pad at the same time, Walt shifted in his seat. Every stroke of the charcoal across the page equaled pressure instantly transferred to the bottom edge of the pad where it rubbed against his cock. He’d painted plenty of nudes, even women he had been intimate with. He had always been able to view them with a sense of artistic abstraction during the sessions. But he had never painted a woman he had been lusting after for months.

To go from a complete standstill to this…

And Bryce wasn’t making it any easier on him. She was thinking things, he could tell. The color on her breasts and face would rise from its usual warm cream to a rosy pink. Naughty things? Shy things? That he didn’t know, but his cock grew incrementally harder with each blush. Lines blurred on the page and a slight tremor ran through his hand. He wasn’t sure whether he could actually sketch her when she was within touching distance.

Maybe if he hadn’t already touched her, he could have remained detached. But it was too late for “maybes”, and he would be lying to himself if he didn’t admit to wanting her first as a lover. He could still smell the gentle fragrances of her body from when he had briefly pressed against her. Far from the juicy cherry coloring of her lips and nipples, she carried the scent of wild jasmine resting on top of cut green apples. The difference created a startling impression of innocence that was completely at odds with the suggestively lush flesh and the things he imagined doing with her.

Looking at her on the bed, he saw that she was lost in thought again and he waited for her to come out of it, waited to catch the slow spread of color against the creamy skin and see the barely perceptible swell of the breasts that bordered on petite in their asymmetry to the rest of her body. He groaned in anticipation, the sound seeming to jerk her back to reality. There. The flush. His cock twitched and he groaned again before dragging his attention back down to the sketch pad.

“Is something wrong?”

Concern darkened her hazel irises and he gave his head a slow shake to let her know everything was okay.
It was damn near perfect.

“You’re sure?”

Well, he wanted her to lose the damn shawl. But then he might come completely undone—scaring her and embarrassing himself in the process. And she would bolt if he came on too strong. He didn’t doubt that for a second. She would be up and out, and he’d be right back at square one, facing untold months of offering to drive her someplace or help her carry something in or out of her apartment. The guarded smiles she had always returned would change, too, growing more distant or, perhaps, downright hostile.

“Yeah, I’m sure.” His chest tightened at the need to tell her otherwise. He tried to keep his mouth shut, but his tongue escaped for an instant to wet the center of his pressed lips. The act seemed to trigger a full body blush in her, the rush of color followed a second later by the smell of her arousal.

He’d have to be stupid not to know she was aroused, and that she would never admit to it on her own. Yet, no matter how much she sat there in innocent denial, her body scented the air with the smell of her readiness. He wanted to test the air, see if it was ripe with more than just the smell of her pussy. He imagined sticking his tongue out and being able to taste her cream.

His balls contracted at the thought and he dropped the piece of charcoal he was holding into its box. Flipping the sketch pad’s cover back, he pressed it against his groin and hoped she hadn’t noticed his hard need. He glanced at the clock. This had to be, he mused, the longest straight period of time he’d had an erection since junior high. That had been the day he’d discovered that girls didn’t really have cooties.

“How about a break?” he suggested. “We’ve been going at it for almost two hours.”

Bryce nodded. “I am getting a little stiff.”

Stiff, hah!

Her choice of words only increased his awareness of how hard he’d become looking at her. He could teach her a thing or two about stiff right now, he thought before realizing she was watching him. He dipped his head to avoid meeting her gaze; it wouldn’t do to have both of them blushing like teenagers.

“Hungry or thirsty?” he asked and smoothed the cover to the sketch pad. “I’m a pretty good cook.”

“I ate just before invading your patio.”

It took her a little too long to answer and he wondered if she was telling the truth. “I can’t tempt you with one of my specialties?”

“Uhm…no. I think I’d like to grab a set of clothes and check my email.”

She pulled the shawl up. The firm breasts and peaked nipples disappeared beneath the fabric. Another quaint blush colored her cheeks and her hand discreetly skipped down to make sure she hadn’t pulled the shawl up too high.

“I teach G.E.D. prep classes,” she explained. “And my students start peppering me with questions Friday night.” Sitting up, she grabbed the kimono and held it to her, her expectant gaze asking him to leave the room.

“You could check it from my computer,” Walt offered. “And I can go back through the patio to get your clothes—don’t want you getting scratched up any more than you already are.”

“No. That won’t—that’s okay,” she answered. “I think my front door is unlocked anyway.”

She had winced in answering him, and Walt’s mind immediately conjured up images of nylons and lingerie drying on makeshift lines inside the apartment. Or maybe, he thought, she didn’t want him opening her dresser. Maybe she kept toys inside her dresser. After all, he’d never seen a man entering or leaving her apartment, and a woman her age certainly had to have needs.

He cleared his throat, tried to mentally dislodge the picture of her pleasuring herself. He needed to stay focused on keeping her in his apartment. She wasn’t being the wary, sensible Bryce who had treated him to little more than short, shy smiles and the occasional lingering gaze for the last seven months. He didn’t want her coming back to her senses any time soon, and that was almost certain to happen once she was back in her apartment.