Northern Rebel Daring in the Dark - By Jennifer Labrecque Page 0,98
back to him and pulled the barrette out and let her hair tumble past her shoulders. His shutter whirred. She shook her head and pushed her fingers through it. He shot again. She looked at him in the mirror, a beguiling mixture of longing and uncertainty, and his heart pounded. Was there anything more enchanting, more intimate, than a woman taking her hair down?
“Better?” she asked.
Click. “Perfect. Keep doing what you’re doing.”
She raised her arms and reached beneath the fall of her hair. “Beautiful. Beautiful delineation of your neck, shoulders and arms. A study in perfection. A work of art.”
“You don’t have to say those things, you know.”
“I know. But it’s true.” And it would be so much better without the interfering lines of her halter top. “Keep your back to me and take your top off,” he said, automatically instructing her in what would give the best shot of her back.
“Is that how you get women to undress for you? A few complimentary phrases?” She glanced over her shoulder, laughing, teasing but with a sexy glint in her eyes.
“You’re onto me.” His responding laugh was rusty. As a rule, he didn’t laugh a lot. “No naughty pictures. I just want to capture the line of your back without the top. Move away from the mirror, keep your back to me, take it off and lift your hair that same way. Wait a second. Here. Stand here.” He moved her away from the mirror and positioned the tall triple-wick candle—the one she’d earlier said could go all night—until the light illuminated her back. “Just a bit more to the right.”
From habit, he lightly touched her, to direct her where he wanted her to go. He’d touched beautiful women wearing far less than Tawny hundreds of times, but it was as if he’d never touched anyone before. And he hadn’t. Not like this. Longing swept him, threatened his composure. He felt her indrawn breath, the sudden rigid line of her once-supple back.
He dropped his hand and backed away from her, gripping his camera like a lifeline. “You don’t have to take off your top if you don’t want to.” That steady tone he’d prided himself on earlier was long gone.
“I want to take it off.”
She reached beneath her hair and unhooked the top, and he watched the sides fall away and to the front. She lowered her arms and reached to the front. It was a wrap halter and tied in the front—beneath her left breast, he’d noticed. The material bisecting the elegant lines and curves of her back fell away.
“Brilliant. Truly stunning.” He fired away. These would be incredible. “Lots of women with beautiful faces aren’t lovely from this angle. Lift your hair once again. The way you did before.”
She followed his instructions. He’d never gotten emotionally caught up in what he was photographing. It was art and it was his art and in many ways it was an extension of himself, but there was also still an engagement that wasn’t personal, that didn’t tie his emotions into it. But this was vastly different.
She turned slightly to her right, just enough to reveal the hint of roundness of her breast, the slight sag that meant they were real and not bought in a surgeon’s office.
She dropped her arms and turned to face him, her silken curls curtaining the slope of her breasts and nipples, but the soft roundness of the bottom half revealed. Despite the fact she’d turned to face him, there was something more. A subtle shift in her body language, as if she’d discovered something, resolved something.
“Simon, do you have any idea why I’ve had doubts about me and Elliott?”
It had been one of those remarks he should’ve taken more note of but had been lost in the higher drama of the moment. He thought it through now. Elliott’s turnabout in his sexual orientation had obviously surprised her, so that wasn’t it. She didn’t appear to have any ambiguity concerning her own. Which meant she’d been seeing someone else or had at the least met someone else. Rancor filled him. He didn’t want to hear her confess to yet another attraction. Or perhaps that was exactly what he needed to hear to excise her from his heart, his psyche, his emotions. “My first guess is that you’ve found someone else, as well.”
“Not exactly.” Pathetic how glad he was to hear that. “Not the way you mean, anyway. I’ve developed an interest in someone else, even though it hasn’t