Nick never replied, simply gave her a look drenched in regret.
When he finally pulled off the bay side road north of Tarpon Springs into the heavily shaded yard of a home much larger than her own, she said, "Where are we?"
"Dale Gold's place. He owns Gold Homes."
She sat thoroughly perplexed. "I've met Dale a couple of times, but .... "
"He's lending us his boat today."
She'd been trying to avoid eye contact as much as possible, but now she swung her gaze to him. "His boat? Where are we going, Nick?" In fact, why had she trusted him? Why had she let him bring her on this mystery trip? She knew the answer, but it disgusted her. She was weak with Nick, always had been. Nothing had changed on that front, whether she liked it or not.
"Just trust me. Please."
She sighed, their eyes still locked. Had she ever heard Nick Armstrong utter the word please? Even if she had, it had never held the heart, the soul, that this held. Damn her weakness. She turned her eyes back ahead. out the windshield. Nick parked, then led her on a path around the house and down to the dock behind, as if he knew the place intimately. He made his way to the smallest of three speed~ boats bobbing in a row, and she followed. He silently helped her step in.
She took the leather seat next to Nick's, and as they started across the smooth Gulf waters, her mind swam with wonder and even a hint of fear, but she didn't ask anymore questions. She didn't trust him ... but really, she knew she did, in a way. She trusted him to take care of her, or she wouldn't be here.
Within minutes. they approached one of the small uninhabited islands that occasionally poked up from the vast waters, and she realized he was slowing the boat. As they grew closer, she simply waited, watched. wondered why he had brought her here.
He anchored the boat in shallow water and they both waded to shore, Nick toting a picnic basket she hadn't noticed until now. The island was the sort of place Lauren had ... fantasized about. The broad beach stretched white and soft around them, but sea oats and a profusion of palm trees, along with a gnarled island forest beckoning in the distance, made it seem wild and untamed.
It was only as they moved higher onto the beach that she saw things placed there by human hands. A blanket lay stretched out, its corners secured with sand. Rousing her curiosity more, however, were the flat items covered with sheets, propped around the blanket like onlookers circling a stage, some supported by easels, others by nearby palm trees. Nick led her to the blanket, where she wordlessly sat down. Then he moved across the surrounding sand, beginning to remove the sheets one by one to reveal ... paintings. "I'm not good with words, Princess-there are things I can't say. But before we say good-bye forever, I wanted ... needed ... to show you how much I loved your fantasies, and that I've lived them all, through you, with you, like this."
She looked around them, speechless. The graceful, detailed paintings Nick unveiled each depicted one of her fantasies, being enacted by them both. In one, she hovered on water as he appeared before her, splashing up through the surface. In another, she lay in a bed of pale pink petals and he stood above, sprinkling still more onto her stomach from an eternally giving rose. In a third, purple silk bound her gently to bedposts as he molded his body to hers.
She studied each, entirely overwhelmed and awed.
"You ... painted these?"
Nick knelt before her in the sand, then met her eyes, looking unbearably sad. "Yeah."
Her gaze strayed back to the color and sex that emanated from every canvas. She wanted to hate them. She wanted to hate that he'd done this, that he'd turned her private words into something bigger and brighter and bolder than she'd ever intended the dark thoughts in her mind to become. She wanted to think them horrid, invasive, pornographic. But she'd never seen sex made so beautiful.
He bad turned her fantasies into far more than bodies, even far more than passion. He'd made them fluid and alive, at once fragile and unbreakable, light and dark, sometimes whispering with color. other times screaming with it. When she looked at his paintings of them together, something in her heart gathered warm and tight, pulsating out through her body until her fingers and toes actually tingled. Nick, she realized, had been keeping one more secret from her: He was truly an artist. "Do you hate them?" he finally asked.
She swallowed back the lump in her throat as she turned to him, trying to summon words. Finally. she choked out, "Hate them? They're ... beautiful. They make me feel beautiful"
A tentative smile unfurled across Nick's stubbled face. "Then maybe you see what I want you to. Maybe you see how beautiful you are to me, in every way."
Tears tore at the back of Lauren's eyes, but she didn't want to cry. Finally, she just nodded.
"Do you see anything else in them. Princess?"
She couldn't pull her eyes away to look at the paintings again. though; she couldn't not look into Nick's dark gaze, plumb its depths, try to read his soul, something that had just opened up to her a little-a lot more.
When she didn't answer, he moved nearer across the blanket, then reached one strong hand up to cup her cheek, their faces dangerously close. "Do you see how much I love you?"
She let out a small strangled cry, then dragged her eyes back to the paintings. In one he held her on horseback, the tall grass waving around their ankles; in yet another, she lay in a bathtub as he crouched behind her, washing her hair, cool ferns surrounding them. From the ocean to the prairie to the forest, to empty rooms to ornate ones, Nick made love to her all around them and oh God-yes, she did see, couldn't help but see, that he loved her. That's why the paintings were so beautiful, it's why they pulled so violently at her heart. They were sex and they were beauty, but they were also love. She wanted to say a million things, but her emotions were all spilling out in tears and sniffles now, so finally, she gave Nick the best she had at the moment-another nod.
"I was never able to say it," be whispered. "I knew it was there, but the word just ... wasn't really in my vocabulary, you know? I spent my life blocking so much out, just being bitter, not really ... living. But you made me start living, Princess. And I do love you. And I'm so damn sorry for every mistake I made."
Lauren simply gazed into his eyes. She didn't want to be a fool again. Yet ... oh God, she loved him. And his paintings were so stunningly lovely. And when she thought of the hours he must have spent, of the heart and emotion he must have put into them ... she wanted him. Even if it was a fool's move.
She gently lifted both hands to Nick's face and kissed him. She meant to make it a soft. light kiss, something cautious. But instead she kissed him hard and firm and needful, until his arms closed possessively around her, until they were lying back on the blanket, his gorgeous face hovering above her.
"I love you," he said.
Sheer happiness punctuated the desire that pulsated inside her. She'd sworn to herself it didn't matter, his not saying those words. but it did.
"I love you so much." "Show me," she whispered.
She'd thought he'd make love to her then, but instead Nick knelt beside her and scooped her up into his arms. "Hold on to me," he said, and she looped her arms around his neck.
"Where are we going?"
''To the water's edge. I could have shown you the paintings anywhere, but I brought you here because I wanted to help you live out one more fantasy, if only you'd give me the chance."
Nick laid her on the sand above the tide line and she pulled him down, positively ravenous for him. Her body had missed him as much as her heart.
As they kissed, he caressed her through her bikini top before reaching behind her back to undo the ties and toss it up onto the sand above her head. Flashing a familiar and fiery look into her eyes, he dropped to rake his tongue firmly over one swollen nipple, their gazes never parting.
"I want you," she breathed.
Heat laced his smile as he rubbed his arousal between her thighs.
"Don't tease," she pleaded. "I want you inside me." "I want that, too, honey," he breathed in her ear, raining light kisses just below. "I want that, too."
His kisses descended from the arch of her neck to her breasts as he removed her bikini bottom. She reached for his zipper, pushing it down, spreading his pants open, as he drew his T-shirt over his head. Her heart beat with a desperation she'd never known-now that he was hers again, now that he loved her and she knew it, she wanted him more wildly than ever before. "Please hurry."
He parted her thighs, looked into her eyes, then pushed inside her. Her legs curled around him, welcoming the pleasant intrusion, the sensation always more overpowering than she remembered.
"Oh, it's so good to have you in me."
Nick sighed above her. "So good for me, too, baby."
Then he stilled, slanting her a look of worry. "But after not having you for a week ... I'm afraid this might not last as long as I want it to."
Lauren just wanted to bask in the moment, the connection of their bodies; short or long, it didn't matter. "Just do it. Just let me feel you inside me as much as you possibly can."
The fresh heat passing through his expression fueled her, as well. After that. there was no more talking, only Nick, pounding into her, her cries of pleasure, his guttural groans. She flinched the first time the tide splashed up over them, adding to the intensity of their sex. The second time. she didn't react, but again let the water rushing under and around her thighs, bottom, back, add to the sensations.
When Nick came. moaning his last, she lay very still. wanting, as always, to feel him emptying inside her. The tide rolled in more gently then, the flow of water reaching only her hips before receding without a sound.
"I love you, Princess." .
She smiled up at him, entranced with his new propensity for such words and the transformed man before her, the man she instinctively knew could give her everything she needed from him now. "I love you, too, Nick. With all my heart." After he rolled off her, they rested side by side for a moment, basking in the sun, until she sat up and noticed the surf ascending to a point at least a few feet below her toes now, as it had when he'd first laid her down, not higher like when they'd been making love. She knew that happened sometimes, a few waves would crash in harder, come farther up the beach than the ones before or after; the tide didn't always rise and fall evenly. And yet ... she couldn't help wondering if maybe she'd been right from the beginning. Maybe in spite of everything, there was something cosmic at work here. Just as the idea began to settle warmly in her heart, Nick pulled her down on top of him, their faces mere inches apart. "Marry me," he said.
Lauren's heart fluttered with surprise. She'd heard the words, yet she couldn't quite believe it. Cosmic indeed. "That wasn't part of my fantasy, Nick," she whispered with a smile.
He brushed a feathery kiss across her waiting lips and gazed deep into her eyes. "No, but it's part of mine."
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