River Of Fire (34 page)

"To say the least. It's about eleven o'clock." She set down her tray. "I gather the picture is going well."

"You were right. I needed a new way of working with oils, and a subject that interested me." He laid down his palette and brush and began to pace, the room too small to contain his brimming energy. "It was slow at first, but once I got going, it was exactly as you said—getting swept up in a river of fire. I've never experienced anything quite like it, even during my best moments of drawing. I love the richness of oils, the effects that are possible. I love the spring of the canvas under the brush, the slap of the paint."

She added a shovelful of coal to the fading fire. "I've been painting so long that I take things like that for granted. Hearing you reminds me how sensual painting is."

He laughed buoyantly. "It's everything I dreamed. For the life of me, I can't remember why yesterday it seemed impossible."

He was like a victorious soldier after a hard-fought battle, and his enthusiasm made her laugh with him. Curious to see his work, she crossed to the easel.

When he saw what she was doing, he spun about. "Christ, Rebecca! You can't look at that."

"Teacher's privilege," she said breezily. Then she came face-to-face with his painting and stopped dead in her tracks.

It was a nude picture of her.

She stared paralyzed at the canvas. He had used the diluted oil technique to loosely create a magical woodland glade in shades of green. In the foreground was the full-length figure of a woman. One of her hands rested on the trunk of a tree while the other held out an apple invitingly.

The woman's slim, naked body had been rendered with loving detail. Her peachy warm skin cried out to be touched and shining auburn tresses cascaded to the ground like dark flame. A few wisps made a teasing concession toward modesty in a way that reminded Rebecca of Botticelli's Venus when the innocent newborn goddess emerged from the sea.

But there was nothing innocent about Kenneth's vision. His naked lady radiated carnality. Her lips were full and wanton, her gold-flecked hazel eyes promised mysterious, dangerous delights to any man who dared accept the forbidden fruit from her hand. And she had been unmistakably modeled after herself.

Rebecca managed to wrench her gaze away and look at Kenneth. His face was starkly vulnerable, as if he expected her to shriek or faint or attack. Beyond that fear, he was also a newly fledged painter who desperately needed validation.

She had to swallow before she could speak. "It's… it's extremely good. You've done an excellent job of combining the different weights of paint. I supposed this is Eve?"

"Lilith," he said, his voice almost a croak. "The first woman God made, before Eve."

"Ah. Of course. You did say Lilith was a redhead. I think of her not as a demoness but the first independent woman, created as man's equal rather than his servant. Of course Adam hated that." She looked at the canvas again, trying to sound detached. "It works well as an idealized, mythic figure, though it wouldn't do as a portrait. Your Lilith is far more beautiful than I."

"No," he said intensely. "That is exactly what you look like. Beautiful. Sensual. Formidable."

In his eyes was the same blazing passion that had created the picture. She knew with absolute certainty that he wanted her, not casually but with fierce need.

His desire kindled the powerful yearning she had been trying to suppress. To hell with propriety. In his eyes she was beautiful, and the time had come to loose the river of carnal fire that could sweep them both into madness and searing joy.

Rebecca tossed her shawl over the single wooden chair. Her gown was secured by a row of spherical ivory buttons that ran down the center of the bodice. Amazed at her own temerity, she unfastened the first one, popping the small globe through its loop. "You must want to see how accurate your imagination is."

He stiffened as she undid the next button. "My imagination is fine, Rebecca," he said tightly. "I don't need you to model."

"No?" She smiled and released another ivory sphere. "I think that you have some of the proportions wrong." She undid another. His gaze was riveted to her fingers.

When the last button slid from its loop, she opened the gown and pushed it down her arms with provocative slowness before letting it slide to the floor in a whisper of wool. She had always disliked complicated clothing, so underneath she wore only stockings and a shift made of fine, translucent lawn that gave teasing hints of what lay beneath.

After stepping out of the crumpled gown, she kicked off her slippers and pulled out the pins that secured her hair. "A good artist works from nature whenever possible, Kenneth."

His scar a bone-white slash across his cheek, he said, "If you don't put your clothing back on, the horsewhip and the trip to the altar are going to become unavoidable."

She laughed and ran her fingers through her hair so that the curls rioted around her head and spilled wantonly to her waist. "Who said anything about horsewhips and marriage? For Lilith and the Corsair, surely desire is all that matters."

"Those are only fantasies," he said harshly, sweat filming his face. "It's wrong, Rebecca, in ways you don't understand."

"You're right, I don't understand." She perched on the chair and untied her garters, a process that meant raising her shift above her knees. She'd always thought her legs were nicely shaped. From the way Kenneth was staring, he must agree.

"You don't have to protect me, my darling corsair. I know what I'm doing." She rolled off her stockings and crushed them into a ball, then lightly tossed them at Kenneth, aiming for the masculine bulge revealed by his breeches. "That being the case, give me one good reason why we should refrain from doing what we both clearly want to do."

Reflexively he caught the stockings, his hand clenching the gauzy fabric with a force that made the tendons stand out. In his eyes she saw the struggle between the gentleman and the pirate. Yes, he wanted her, but his damned sense of honor was winning.

Unable to bear the thought, she stood and moved toward him, her hands raised in supplication. "Please, Kenneth," she said starkly. "I want you so much."

She caressed his face, and his composure cracked like hammered marble. He put his hands over hers, trapping them against his cheeks. She was vividly aware of the strength in his fingers and the seductive masculine rasp of whiskers under her palms. "God help me, Lilith," he said thickly. "You win."

He drew her hands together and held them against his chest. She felt the pounding of his heart as his mouth came down over hers. With a rush of relief, she knew that there would be no turning back. They were caught in the river's inexorable current and would be carried by its fury until they shattered.

It was a pirate's kiss. Masterful. Devouring. She leaned into him, her arms sliding around his waist as his hands went to her buttocks. His clasp scorched through the thin fabric of her shift as he pulled her hard against him. Their loins pressed together with voluptuous promise. A hot, liquid yearning began to coil deep within her.

When he ended the kiss, she drew her breath in protest until the touch of his lips on her ear transformed her objection into a rapturous sigh. Her head fell back and she swayed within his grasp, on the verge of falling.

"Lilith," he murmured, "with hair and soul of fire." He laid a trail of kisses from her jaw to the tender flesh of her throat, his mouth firm against her beating pulse.

Blindly she slipped her hands inside his shirt, hungry for the feel of his bare body. His neck and shoulders were dense with muscle. She gave an impatient exclamation when the garment could be opened no further.

Sliding her hands down his ribs, she tugged the shirt from his breeches.

She had just touched the taut warmth of his torso when his mouth closed over her breast. Lapping through the light fabric of her shift, he teased her nipple, circling it with his tongue before tugging with his teeth. She stiffened, paralyzed with an excitement that blazed throughout her body.

Paralysis dissolved in a fever that demanded release. She grasped the front opening of his shirt in both hands and ripped. The linen sundered all the way to the hem with a sharp tearing sound. She yanked the ruined garment down his arms and over his wrists, saying with satisfaction, "I've wanted to do that since the first time I saw you, my corsair."

His bare chest was magnificent. He shivered as she kneaded the hard planes of muscle, feeling the bones beneath the flesh, the dark sleek hair, the way his body narrowed to taut waist and lean hips. He would have made a superb model for a Greek sculptor seeking to portray an Olympic athlete, or a god.

She pressed her lips to the hollow above his collarbone. Saltiness tingled on her tongue as she licked and nipped downward to the flat velvety disk of his nipple. She kissed it as he had kissed hers, flicking with her tongue and teasing with her teeth.

He buried his hands in the heavy spill of her hair, his fingers opening and closing helplessly. "My God, Rebecca," he breathed, "you make me mad."

She laughed with delight and straightened, nuzzling her face into the angle between his throat and shoulder. His scent was musky and wickedly male.

Then she sucked in her breath as he caught handfuls of her shift and pulled the garment over her head. Her arms were lifted straight up, the material dragging over her elbows and wrists. She emerged from the lace-trimmed flounces acutely aware of her nakedness. For an instant she wanted to cover herself, to conceal her human imperfections.

But his gray eyes were glowing like winter stars.

"You are even lovelier than in my imagination," he said huskily as he cupped her breasts, his large hands molding the supple flesh and his thumbs stroking her nipples into taut peaks. He slowly massaged downward, learning every curve and hollow in a deeply sensual caress. Hot pulses raced through every fiber of her being. She was melting, eager to flow into whatever form would please him the most.

He scooped her up in his arms, then hesitated when she caught her breath in surprise. "You're so light," he said uneasily. "Delicate."

"But not the least bit fragile." Before his conscience could get the better of him, she drew his head down for another kiss, running her hands feverishly over any part of him she could reach. She was sharply conscious of the contact between her unclothed body and his bare chest, the way his powerful arms tightened under her naked back and legs as their kiss deepened. The liquid yearning inside her coiled tighter, even tighter.

The half dozen steps to the narrow servant's bed in the corner were a zigzag path that ended when he laid her on the blanket that covered the sagging straw mattress. The scratchiness of the coarse wool on her back and thighs was one more sensation in a world that was all sensation. "I want to see the rest of you," she said tensely. "Please."

Fumbling a little in his haste, he unbuttoned his breeches and tugged them off. Then he peeled off his drawers, revealing himself fully to her gaze. She stared at his muscular thighs and rampant virility and thought of Greek gods again. Suppressing a nervous doubt about whether her body could accommodate him, she scanned slowly over his marvelous torso.

He sat on the edge of the bed and leaned over her. The craggy planes of his face were softened by candleglow, the scar almost invisible. She raised her hands and skimmed them over his shoulders and down his arms, enchanted by the way his broad frame filled her vision. She blinked against the sting of tears.

Seeing them, he asked softly, "Second thoughts?"

She shook her head, her hazel eyes luminous. "It's only that you are beautiful," she said softly. "So beautiful."

Kenneth had thought of himself in many ways, but never as beautiful. It seemed almost criminal to want to inflict his hulking male body on Rebecca's slim, delicate form. "I thought you had impeccable aesthetic judgment," he murmured. "It is you who are beautiful."

She gave him Lilith's smoldering smile. Though he was proud of his painting, he could never equal the enticing reality of her. "You are made for love," he whispered. "A feast for eyes and hands and mouth."

He lifted a handful of her hair and rubbed his cheek with the lustrous mass. "Extravagant hair spun of a thousand shades of red and bronze and gold."

He laid the shining strands across her shoulder, enjoying the contrast of hair and skin. "A pale, exquisite redhead's complexion that shows a faint tracery of veins." Then he smoothed his palms down her arms. "Flawless breasts. Not too large, not too small, crowned with dusky rosebuds." He bent his head and suckled her left nipple. It hardened instantly under his tongue. Her eyes closed and her breath roughened, causing her breasts to rise and fall.

When he had paid them due homage, he traced the circle of her navel with his tongue. His hand slipped between her knees so he could caress the satiny flesh of her inner thighs. She vibrated with response, her hips rocking against the blanket, her small hands fisted.

The feathery curls between her legs were a darker auburn than her glorious hair. He rested his palm on the gentle swell of her mound, marveling that the swift drumming of her blood was for him. Then he stretched out on his side next to her, holding her close with one arm while his other hand stroked through the moist, clinging strands to the luscious moisture of the folds hidden below.