ColorMeBad (4 page)

He pulled slightly away and pressed his hands on top of
hers, flattening her palms against his chest just over his heart. Her
fingertips were beneath the soft linen of his shirt, burning into his
awareness, while her eyes sparkled up at him in the flickering light.

“This is a very dangerous thing for us to be doing,” he
said, his breathing harsh.

She smiled teasingly at him. “Especially now that I know
you’re just as fearful of this as I am.”

“I’m not frightened of you,” he said. It was quite possibly
the biggest lie he’d ever uttered.

She didn’t answer that and instead leaned forward, brushing
her lips against the backs of his hands. John gasped, then groaned when he felt
her tongue lick briefly at the tender skin between his first two fingers. “You
have such beautiful hands,” she said.

“Jesus Christ,” he breathed.

She leaned forward again and took the very tip of his middle
finger into her mouth.

John froze, all his muscles tense, his cock swollen and
hard, all his awareness focused on the finger between her lips. If he let
himself move, all would be lost—he would take her down to the carpet and fuck
her senseless, self-control and preventative measures be damned. He shouldn’t
have poured her that whisky—he shouldn’t have poured
himself
that
whisky…

When she nipped gently at his finger, everything came loose
at once.

He surged forward, lifting her from the ground and only
stopping when her back met the empty wall where her portrait had once been
displayed. He trapped her there with the full weight of his body, glorying in
the way she arched against him and in the press of her breasts with only his
shirt and her chemise between then. Her arms wrapped around his shoulders and
pulled him closer while he ravaged her mouth, teasing and taking and doing his
best to torture her as much as she did him. It was rough, desperate, a tempest
he couldn’t hold back, so he gave in and let his right hand slide from the
curve of her waist upward, to capture one breast.

The weight of her against his palm shook him to the core,
but before he could do more than savor the feeling she pulled her mouth from his
and gasped, “Wait.”

And just like that the storm was his to control, though its
strength had not lessened. He removed his hand from her breast and put it flat
against the wall, where it had a chance of behaving itself. They were both
panting and John pulled away slightly to give her some room to draw breath. Her
hands slid from his shoulders and came to rest on his chest again, as though
she didn’t know whether to pull him close or push him away. She looked more
than a bit ravished, hair tousled and lips reddened, and John felt like the
worst of cads. Even now he wanted nothing more than another of those
mind-destroying, soul-obliterating kisses—but not if it came at the expense of
her safety, her comfort or her inclination. “I’m sorry,” he said, his gut
twisting.

“I’m not,” she replied, and just like that John could
breathe easier. “I started it, if you recall.”

As though he could forget that moment if he lived to be a
thousand years old. “You might have started it but you also called a halt,” he
said. His brain was still fizzing with desire, so he let go of her waist and
put both hands firmly behind his back, clenching them together in case they got
him in trouble again.

She shook her head and her fingers curled into the softness
of his shirt. “This…this was too much, all at once,” she said. “I couldn’t keep
up.”

His hands unclenched at the sadness he heard in her voice.
Gently he put his arms around her shoulders, waiting to see if she wanted to
pull away. Instead she sighed and leaned into him, so he allowed himself to
relax into the embrace and rest his cheek on the top of her head. “You don’t
have to keep up,” he said. “Wherever this takes us, we go together.”

They stayed that way, simply holding each other, while their
breathing settled into a regular pattern and even their pulses kept matching
time. It was the single most intimate moment John could remember having with
another human being. He tried to imagine painting it, trying to fix on canvas
the sense of warmth, of something newborn and fragile just coming into the
world—but no palette, no subject seemed enough to contain it. For the first
time his imagination failed him and all he could do was feel.

Eventually, however, time intruded as a clock chimed the
hour—one o’ clock. “It’s late,” he said.

“I should be getting back,” Hecuba agreed at once. “Do you
mind watching over
Henry VIII
a little longer? I shouldn’t risk it in
the rain.”

“Of course.” John hesitated. “Do you need me to arrange a
way for you to get home?” he asked. “I could…”

She waved away his concern. “It’s merely a few minutes’
walk, through the richest neighborhood in London. And I know the shadows—I can
manage easily, even in this weather.”

On how many nights had she stolen alone through the darkened
city? A mixture of distress and admiration poured uneasily through him, the two
emotions mixed and inseparable. John stood apart, considering this, and watched
as she donned her now-dry clothing and became a thief once again. Standing
there in those black trousers, as mischief lit her eyes…

She caught him looking and quirked an eyebrow at him. “You
aren’t seriously thinking of painting me dressed like this, are you?” she
demanded.

He blinked at being caught out then grinned. “I’m thinking
of doing many things to you dressed like that,” he said.

She blushed but couldn’t stop the corners of her lips from
turning up. “Tomorrow night?” she said.

John would have agreed, but when he opened his mouth to do
so it turned into a yawn. “Best make it two nights from now,” he said ruefully.
“I can’t paint properly if I haven’t slept well.”

She tilted her head in agreement. “Two nights,” she said,
“for you to recover.” In the space of a heartbeat and with another sly smile,
she was gone.

John took the rolled-up portrait upstairs with him, thinking
that Henry VIII himself had not been nearly as dangerous as Hecuba Jones.

Two nights later, Hecuba crept through the study window
again.

The weather was dry, thankfully, but nevertheless Mr.
Rushmore offered her a glass of whisky. “My brother’s asleep,” he said, “but
we’ll still have to be careful.” When she nodded, he held out his hand.

She took it and hoped hers wasn’t trembling too noticeably.

Their glasses caught what little light there was as he led
her down the hallway. A very subtly masked door led to a narrow stairway—a
servant’s stair obviously. Rushmore moved with a silence that surprised Hecuba
until she looked down and saw he was in his stocking feet.

She smothered a laugh as they ascended the stairs.

The north attic was three stories up, a cool, high-ceilinged
space that overlooked the street on one side and on the other the small garden
behind the house. Mr. Rushmore began lighting candles and placing them at
strategic points around an open space at one end of the attic.

The sharp scent of turpentine laced the air.

She hadn’t realized before that a scent could wrap itself so
fully around her memory. Years fell away and she was five years old again in a
scratchy brocade dress, or demolishing brightly colored stones in a mortar and
pestle the day before her tenth birthday—or the summer she’d turned thirteen
and her mother had set her to preparing new canvases while a fading Cynthia
Jones put the final touches on her last landscape.

Hecuba swallowed the old grief and looked around,
reorienting herself as the light increased. This was not the neat, ordered
studio her mother had filled with light and laughter. There was an obsessive,
distracted air about the space. Presumably there was furniture in here
somewhere, but it lay beneath a sea of paper, paints, gessoed canvases and a
tidal froth of pale studies and sketches. Hecuba lifted one loose sheet from a
nearby stack and saw a figure captured in hasty charcoal lines, viewed from
behind in the process of pulling off a billowy shirt. There was a subtle
feminine curve to the hips and in the line of the small of the back, which was
the sketch’s focal point. That blank space was traced by a spine outlined in a
single charcoal stroke, whose boldness and beauty took her breath away. The
image was furtive and erotic, unabashedly voyeuristic.

She narrowed her eyes at Mr. Rushmore. “From the other
night?” she asked.

He grinned and rolled up the sleeves of his shirt, an old
one much muddied by gray and brown smudges—pencil and charcoal and chalk. “I’ve
been like a man possessed,” he said, “sketching at all hours, going through
reams of paper, always sending out for more supplies. I spent hours this
afternoon grinding powders and mixing hues.” Candlelight gleamed on his dark
hair and the planes of his cheek as he picked up a canvas with a prepared
background and placed it on an easel. He gestured to a screen in the attic’s
far corner. “There’s a selection of costumes and draperies and other props
behind there. Choose whichever you like.”

Hecuba set her whisky to one side and went to investigate.

A riot of color and texture greeted her—most of them false
velvets and paste jewels and theater castoffs. But there were masquerade
costumes as well and things that were old enough and fine enough that she could
identify them as family artifacts. Hecuba trailed her hand over one deep black
velvet gown but hesitated to try on something that had clearly come down
through the distinguished Rushmore lineage. What would the ghost of his noble
ancestress think to find her sumptuous silks and velvets put to such a use?

Instead she chose an amber gown in an ancient style. Her
clothing fell silently to the floor and she was glad not to have to navigate
the confinement of stays. Even without them it took her a few awkward moments
to pull the garment over her head and she felt a few locks of hair pull away
from the knot at the back of her neck. The dress was slightly too large, so she
found a long rope with flaking gilt paint and wrapped it around her waist.

She allowed herself a few deep breaths to try to calm her
nerves. It was no use telling herself there was no reason to be nervous, that
she’d sat for portraits before. This was different—she felt exposed and raw, as
though by letting this man paint her image she was handing over some vital part
of herself.

If that was the case, it would be necessary to make certain
she gained something from him in return.

She flexed her fingers, took another breath and stepped out
into the light.

Mr. Rushmore looked up with a smile on his lips—but almost
at once the smile vanished, replaced by a look of such intensity that Hecuba
almost retreated back behind the safety of the screen. But he didn’t speak,
merely stared. Eventually she frowned at him, grabbed the glass of whisky and
downed it all in one long gulp.

“Wait,” he said, a single syllable humming with urgency. He
dragged a chair and small table to the edge of the pool of candlelight, right
on the boundary between brightness and shadow. Hecuba sat in the chair as
indicated and Mr. Rushmore placed his own glass in front of her. The liquid
glowed in the light that spilled over Hecuba’s shoulder.

She went still when she felt his hands on her hair.

His fingers were easy and gentle, loosening the knot at her
neck and pulling out a few strands to match those she’d dislodged when putting
on the gown. Each light touch was a separate star in the darkness, but she
simply tightened her hands on the tumbler instead of reaching for him.

He moved back behind his easel and looked at her,
considering. Hecuba knew she was slouching slightly and partly shadowed and
that her hair must look positively wild. She sent Mr. Rushmore her most
dignified glare.

At once he grinned. “Circe,” he said and his hands reached
for a brush.

Circe—the ancient sorceress famous for turning men into
pigs. A woman who knew the secret road to the underworld and whose singing
ensnared the unwary. Yes, that was much better than a nymph or maiden whose
only distinction was beauty and whose only role was to be some god’s hapless
victim. Circe had victims of her own. The thought made Hecuba smile.

The painter’s brush paused at the end of a stroke, the
artist’s eyes narrowing, alight. “Oh, yes—that’s…” He trailed off and began to
work more feverishly still.

For hours Mr. Rushmore painted, glancing between his model
and the canvas while his right arm rose and fell in a broken rhythm. Hecuba
tried not to fidget though nothing in the world made her want to move like
being required to keep still.

At least her thoughts could move freely. She watched Mr.
Rushmore and allowed herself to imagine what she would do to each individual
part of him as soon as the work was finished. She would taste the corner of his
mouth and the spot on his lip he bit when he was thinking particularly hard.
She would smooth the furrows in his brow then trace her fingers over the yellow
smudge on his temple, where he’d absently rubbed a paint-stained hand. She
wanted to put her mouth right on his collarbone, which the open neck of his
shirt left bare. Then she would pull his hands to her breasts and make him
touch her the way he had the other night.

And this time she wouldn’t stop.

By the time Mr. Rushmore stepped away from the painting,
Hecuba no longer knew whether the stiffness in her limbs and the ache in her
joints were from holding still or holding back. She rolled her shoulders as Mr.
Rushmore set paints and brushes aside. “It’s done,” he said. “Or as nearly done
as it can be tonight. I’ll add the finishing details once this layer has
dried.” There was a note of sudden shyness to his voice when he asked, “Would
you like to see it?”

“Very much.” Hecuba rose and walked around the easel, taking
the whisky with her. She handed the glass to Mr. Rushmore and he must have
taken it—but by then Hecuba had stopped paying attention to anything other than
the painting.

She was hunched—and wild, as she’d feared. She was also
twined in shadow, limned in light, a hybrid thing of darkness and flame. The
whisky had become a brazen goblet, shining in her hands like a miniature sun.
She recognized the glare on her face, directed across the room at a bronze
mirror—and in that mirror was her face again, smiling in a way that allured
nearly as much as it threatened, gazing not at Circe-Hecuba but at Hecuba
herself.

It was an old painter’s trick, she knew, to put in a
reflection that looked back at the viewer. But it made her shiver nonetheless.
She leaned in and looked more closely at the brushwork. The layers of paint in
the light areas had the effortless precision of long practice, but the brushwork
in the shadows…

Hecuba sucked in a breath. All the dark areas of the canvas
were populated. A curve here outlined a hunched shoulder, a series of short
lines became a reaching, desperate hand. Ghostly limbs and hints of bodies
lurked everywhere, visible only in the way certain lines of paint dashed across
the canvas. From far away the shadow figures would be unnoticeable—from nearby,
they were perfectly eerie. “How on earth did you think to paint the darkness
like that?” she breathed.

Rushmore made a strangled sound of surprise when he noticed.
“I didn’t think,” he said, leaning closer to the canvas. “That was just the way
the brush wanted to move.”

Hecuba looked at him as he stared in astonishment at his own
painting, as if it were someone else’s hands that had brought color and line
into vivid life with talent and skill. “I suspect you may be a genius, Mr.
Rushmore,” she said.

He shrugged, his eyes still on her likeness. “I just wish
I’d found a brighter gold to work with.”

“That’s easy enough,” Hecuba said, pointing to one
particular orange hue. “If you add more ammonia to your Naples yellow, it will
temper the hue of the finished paint.”

He stared at her in silence.

She lifted her chin, girding herself to be challenged. “I
used to help my mother to mix her pigments.”

His mouth lifted in a delighted smile. “Even Hecuba green?”
he asked.

She shook her head. “The color is poisonous and the recipe
complex—she never let me near it.” Her fingers plucked absently at the rough
rope of her belt.

“A pity,” he replied. “That was a secret that the world will
regret losing.”

Hecuba considered telling him that it might not have been
lost, not quite, but thought better of it. Three days ago this man had
blackmailed her into a waltz and a nighttime rendezvous. They might have
achieved a measure of trust since then, but three days was a very short time.
There was no need to give away all her secrets just yet.

Especially since the connection she felt to Mr. Rushmore
could easily be chalked up to pure, unadulterated lust. Even now candlelight
gleamed on his dark hair and slid beguilingly over his skin. She wanted to put
her hands everywhere the light touched—then to send her fingers slipping into
the shadowed places on him as well. She distrusted this impulse for its power as
much as for its impropriety.

He turned and caught her gaze, a half smile hovering on his
lips. Suddenly Hecuba knew, with a profound and unsettling certainty, that this
man could change her life in ways she couldn’t possibly foretell. The course
she’d laid out for her own future would be altered and she would careen down
another, wilder path. Although for a moment this revelation froze the blood in
her veins and the breath in her lungs, in the next instant she rose onto the
tips of her toes and kissed him, winding her hands around his neck for balance
and trusting that she’d find her feet again when she needed to.

Hecuba Jones had never run away from a challenge. And
predictability was overrated.

He tasted dark, notes of whisky and smoke and the bitter
tang of paint. For a heartbeat he remained stiff with surprise—then his arms
curved around her, one hand resting on the small of her back and the other
tangling in the hair at the back of her neck while he returned her kiss.

It was all the encouragement she needed. Her heels hit the
floor as she loosened her arms from his neck and began to pull his shirt from
the waistband of his trousers.

He laughed in shock, but his hands went around hers and
stilled them. “What on earth are you doing, Miss Jones?” he asked.

“Disrobing you,” she said. “Ask me what I plan to do after
that.”

He groaned, a sound as resonant with need as Hecuba could
have hoped. But he still kept her hands pinioned. “I’m not convinced you have
thought this through,” he said.

“Because I am a virgin I do not know my own mind? Or rather
my own body?” Hecuba scoffed and gave up trying to pull at his shirt. Instead
she leaned closer and pressed their joined hands flush against that part of her
that ached and throbbed at the juncture of her thighs. “I assure you, Mr.
Rushmore, I know
precisely
how and where I need you.”

“Oh God.” He tipped his head back, eyes screwed shut. Hecuba
brushed her lips over his collarbone and felt him gasp beneath her mouth. Then,
lightly and deliberately, she flicked her tongue out against his skin.

Mr. Rushmore shook. His hands tightened almost painfully
around her wrists. “Wait,” he said, a choked sound.

Hecuba lifted her head. She’d asked him to wait two nights
earlier and he had. So Hecuba took a deep breath and stepped back, though she
kept hold of his hands. His fingers relaxed their grip, allowing her to twine
her fingers more closely with his.

At length, his eyes opened and his gaze met hers. “It’s not
about you,” he said. “It’s myself I don’t trust.” He looked away then back
while his fingers tightened and released. Hecuba wasn’t entirely sure he knew
he was doing it. “It’s all too much,” he blurted out. “The painting, your
innocence, your desire, mine…I can’t keep it all sorted out in my own mind and
I despise myself for the inconsistency.” He blew out a long breath. “I’ve
always been able to keep control before, in love affairs. But you…this…it’s
totally different. I’m worried I’ll go too fast or too slow. How can I tell how
to proceed when I can barely tell which way is up?”