21
VIGINTI ET VNUM
I somehow pull myself together by morning, after losing hours of sleep, tossing and turning and panicking. By morning, I’m calm.
I have to be.
I can’t fall to pieces because I have to put Finn back together.
At breakfast though, he seems utterly normal and grins at me over his cereal.
“I’m sorry I fell apart last night,” he tells me casually, putting his spoon down and taking a bite of his bagel. He has an appetite. This is good.
I smile hesitantly. “It’s ok. I’ll keep an eye out for your journal, Finn. It’ll turn up, I promise.”
He smiles angelically. “I know.”
His calm demeanor almost alarms me, as though he knows I have his journal. But that can’t be true. If he knew, he’d freak out, and tear my room apart hunting for it.
“Do you want to do something today?” I ask him as I pour my orange juice.
“Can’t,” he mumbles around his bagel. “I’m going to sort through my stuff, and lean it down.”
“Do you want help?” I feel my eyebrows knit together. He’s acting so aloof.
He shakes his head. “Nah. I’m still not feeling that great. You should go do something with Dare.”
This snaps my head up. He wants me to do something with Dare? What the hell?
He shrugs, then chuckles because my astonishment is apparent. “What? You’re leaving at the end of the summer. You should have a summer fling. It’s on every girl’s bucket list, right?”
I roll my eyes at that, although my insides are leaping. He isn’t going to make me feel guilty for spending time with Dare? It’s like the Heavens are opening up and God is smiling upon me.
“I don’t know,” I answer. “I’m too young to worry about a bucket list.”
“Just go,” he tells me, pushing away from the table. “Dare was asking Dad how to get to Warrenton last night. You should take him yourself.”
The fact that I’ve been there a million times before doesn’t matter, because I’ve never been there with Dare.
“I’ll be back in time to eat dinner with you!” I call to him. He waves over his shoulder without looking.
I’ve been dismissed.
Suddenly I feel like I’ve broken out of jail, like I’m free and I have to hurry and make my getaway. I all but run for the Carriage House, and I’m still breathless as I knock on the door.
I’m even more breathless when Dare answers it.
Because he’s shirtless.
In fact, he looks like he just stepped from the shower because his hair is wet. And his chest is bare. I can’t help but stare at the bare skin, the muscled abdomen, the lithe torso, and the perfect, chiseled V that disappears into the top of his jeans. A silver belt buckle shaped like a skull is positioned perfectly-centered a few inches beneath his belly button.
I swallow hard, then swallow again.
The corner of Dare’s mouth twitches.
“Yes?” he asks, his lip curling at the corner. He has to know the effect he has on me. He probably has it on everyone.
I swear to God my intention is to ask him to go to Warrenton Beach. But my tongue has a mind of its own.
“Draw me,” I breathe, surprising me and surprising him. His eyes widen, and he stares at me.
“Draw you,” he repeats slowly, hesitantly, his eyes never leaving mine.
I nod. “You’ve drawn me from your imagination, but wouldn’t a real model be better?”
Without waiting for a reply and before I can think the better of it, I nudge past him and enter his little house. He stares at me, his eyes like black molten lava, and I can tell he’s trying to figure out how to handle me. So before he can say anything, I turn, forcing a confident grin.
“Where do you want me?”
Don’t reject me. That’s all I can think as I stare at his gorgeous face, and I must be crazy because there’s no way he’s going to do this.
“Calla,” he says huskily, his tongue darting out to lick his full bottom lip.
“Don’t,” I interrupt him before he can turn me away. “Draw me, Dare. I want you to.”
He stands as still as a statue, studying me, his body so long and lean.
“Please,” I add finally, my whisper husky. “Where do you want me?”
I count the beats as he stares at me, as he ponders me.
One.
Two.
Three.
Four.
Fi--
“Just a minute,” he finally answers, interrupting my internal counting, his eyes black as night.
He crosses the room and pulls a chaise lounge to the middle of the living room.
“You can sit there.”
He sounds so professional. I do as he asks, and I perch on the edge of the seat, my nerves dancing along my skin, disbelief pulsing through me.
He’s going to do it. He’s going to do it.
“Close the blinds,” I tell him softly, as I unbutton my shirt.
I can’t believe I’m doing this.
I can’t believe he’s letting me.
I watch him swallow hard, his Adam’s apple moving in his throat, while he does as I instruct. When the room has been darkened, he pulls a seat up in front of me, his sketchbook in his hand.
“Are you ready?” he asks, his voice level. He keeps his eyes on my face.
I shake my head.
“Not yet.”
And then I take off my bra.
Dare clears his throat and opens his sketchbook, the picture of a professional, and I swear I feel ten thousand flames lapping at my body as every inch of me flushes.
I stand up and shove my shorts to the floor.
Dare doesn’t move. It doesn’t even look like he’s breathing.
His eyes are frozen on me, appreciation flaring to life in them, and then he stares into my eyes, his gaze deep and dark.
“Calla,” he begins again, and he starts to move, to get up.
“Don’t,” I tell him sharply. “Please. I need this. I want to be…distracted.”
His eyes seem guarded now as he studies me, but he still stands up. He walks to his closet and comes back with one of his dress shirts. A white button-up. He hands it to me.
“Put this on,” he tells me. “Leave it unbuttoned.”
My heart pounds as I do what he asks.
He waits, then adjusts the opening of the shirt to fall just right against my skin, so that only the top curves of my breasts show. He buttons one button there, and then pulls the shirt open so that my belly button and hip are exposed.
He settles back into his chair.
“So I’m a distraction, then?” he asks simply, bringing his pencil to the page and drawing a flowing line. The beginning of my hip.
I flush. “You’re far more than a distraction. But today… I need distracted.” I swallow and his eyes meet mine, then he looks away.
“Lay back,” he tells me brusquely. He gets up and comes to me, bending and moving my hair over my shoulder. His hand brushes my skin and a fire erupts, a heat, a raging lava-like liquid, churning in my belly, and I ache for him to lay down with me, to feel him next to me.
But he doesn’t. He stares down at me, studying me.
“Arch your back a bit,” he tells me. So I do. He slides a small pillow behind it.
“Bite your lip,” he tells me. “Not hard. Just enough to look like you’re thinking about something. Fantasizing, maybe.”
Oh God. I can totally do that.
He smiles, just a little, and returns to his seat.
His hands move across the page, quickly, then slowly. He looks up at me, his eyes so so dark, then he returns his attention to the page.
The electricity in this room is charged. It’s real. It’s smothering. It’s exhilarating. I can’t breathe.
Dare meets my gaze.
“Are you okay?”
I nod. “I am now.”
Now that I’m here. Now that you aren’t rejecting me. Now that you see me.
The edge of his lip curves up, and he swoops his hand, then bends his head in concentration.
“So what brought on this scene from Titanic?” Dare asks me tritely, eyeing me above the top of his paper. I feel a blush spread from my forehead to my chest and I look away.
“I’m not…it’s not,” I practically stammer. The cool air drifts over my body, forming goose-bumps everywhere.
Dare pauses. “No?”
I shake my head. “No. I just wanted… to feel something else.”
“Something other than?” Dare waits.
“What I’ve been feeling,” I clarify. “Craziness. Sadness. I just want to be someone else just for a minute.”
Dare examines his picture, then sits back in his seat a minute.
“Why would you want to be anyone else?” he asks softly. “Calla Price is amazing.”
He stands up and comes to me, staring down. His expression is guarded and intense and he lingers above me. His dark eyes trace the outline of my naked hip, the curve of my thigh, and then suddenly, he follows his gaze with his finger. He runs it lightly from my knee to my hip, his fingertip scaldingly hot.
“You want me, don’t you?” I whisper, the words hesitant and afraid, hopeful and anxious.
His eyes are ablaze as he answers. “I’ve always wanted you.”
Any answer I can possibly give him his frozen in my throat, jammed against my tongue and so all I can do is move. I turn to give him better access, so that he can touch me, so that he can move his fingers and grip me tight and shove his tongue down my throat and…then he takes his finger away and offers me his hand.
I stare at his extended hand in confusion, but then let him pull me to my feet.
I stand toe to toe with him, my bare breasts almost pressed against his body. If I just rocked forward a little bit, his hips would be pressed to mine and….
He raises an eyebrow. “Do you want to see it?”
It. The picture. I forgot.
I nod, swallowing hard.
He hands me the picture and it’s beautiful.
I look like a model, draped casually over a settee. Dare made the curtains flutter in the wind behind me, and he created an ocean view through the windows. The light shines in on me and I seem like an ethereal creature, something otherworldly.
“It’s beautiful,” I breathe.
“You are,” he agrees. He hands me my shirt and I hesitate.
I don’t want to put it on. I want.. I want… I want… Dare.
But his expression is no-nonsense and professional and he’s not touching me anymore.
Now isn’t the time.
I put my clothes on and hug the picture to my chest.
“Can I keep it?”
“Of course.”
He turns to move the chaise back to where it belongs and I pause.
“I was just thinking…” I begin. “That I’d like to go to Warrenton Beach today. Would you like to go, too?”
Dare narrows his eyes, but there’s laughter in them. “Is this you, trying to get a bike ride in addition to a portrait?”
I narrow my own. “Is this you, offering to give me one?”
Dare hesitates, and something in his eyes is troubling, something unsure, but finally he shrugs. “I don’t see why not. It doesn’t look like rain.”
He heads toward his bedroom.
“I’ll grab a shirt.”
If you must.
He calls out at me.
“If you look in that chest by the door, you’ll find an extra helmet.”
I do as he says, and sure enough, there’s one there.
“Why do you have an extra?” I ask, pulling it out and closing the lid.
“Because you mentioned that you might want a ride,” he answers, re-emerging from his room, a shirt in his hand. “Safety first, and all that.”
He pulls the shirt over his head, and I’m not sure what I’m more enthralled with. His rippling abs, or the fact that he bought me a helmet.
Specifically for me.
It’s enough to make my stomach flip.
“Thanks,” I murmur.
He throws a look in my direction that can only be classified as sizzling. His near-black eyes spark with heat, and it’s enough to set my nerve-endings on fire.
I gulp.
“Are you ready right now?” Dare asks me. “You can leave your picture here.”
I shrug, trying to be casual. “It’s as good a time as any.”
He grins. “That it is, Calla-Lily.”