until his lips hover just above my skin. “Very surprised,” he whispers, his breath hot.
Then he pauses.
Pulls away, his eyes at the door behind me.
He walks toward it, and I let out a harsh breath. I’m already feeling dizzy and this hasn’t even started. The heat of the room is mingling with the heat between us.
I turn to see him close it.
Then he locks it.
“Models must have privacy,” he says to me, walking over to the table. It’s now that I notice a bottle of white wine half-hidden behind the roses, perspiration running down the side. It looks so deliciously cold.
He grabs the bottle and a glass. “I apologize for the temperature in here,” he says. “It gets so hot during the day, even with the curtains drawn and the sliding doors open.”
He hands me the glass of wine, the stem cool between my fingers, then pulls the stool over to me.
“Here. Sit.”
I perch on the end of the stool, wine glass in hand.
He studies me from head to toe, brow furrowed, lips pursed.
“Are you planning on sculpting me with the wine?’
He meets my eyes and smiles. “It would be fitting, no? I could call it Portrait of an Author.”
“Very funny.”
“No,” he says, leaning back against the table, running his fingers over his jaw. “The wine is for your nerves. So you relax.” He tightens his shoulders, raising them up to his ears. “We don’t want you like this.” He lowers them. “We want you like this. Drink up.”
At least he’s honest about wanting to get me drunk.
After he’s finished studying every inch of my body, my skin burning where his eyes have been, he straightens up and goes around what I’m guessing are a bunch of statues covered in sheets.
When he comes back out, he’s pushing a slab on wheels. In the middle of it is a large mound of clay, about waist-high, propped up by a rod which attaches to a base on the slab. Two more rods come out of the sides of the clay.
“This will be you,” he says, placing it between us. He reaches over and takes one of the rods between his fingers, bending it. “These are wires, so that the clay has something to support it. I can move them to any pose. I will only work on your head and bust today. Eventually the whole thing will be encased in clay.”
“So what should I do?” I ask.
“How about you move to the edge of the stool a little more. Is that okay? Are you comfortable? Perhaps hook this foot behind the stool leg. Yes, that’s it. Now straighten up. Put your hands in your lap. No, you can hold on to the glass. Hold on.”
As I get in position, he turns around and scoops up the roses, taking great care to place them in my arms, even while I hold the glass. I’m overwhelmed by the smell of roses and almonds, and the salty scent of his sweat, mixed with sun-warmed skin.
My hormones immediately go into overdrive.
As if he notices this, he reaches out and tucks a piece of hair behind my ears, his eyes then resting on my lips. “Yes, this might be quite complicated.”
He’s answering a question he already had in his head, and I don’t have to wonder what it could be.
But if some tiny part of me thought he might kiss me again, I’m rebuffed when he pulls back and gets to work.
I wish I could see what he’s doing, since the back of the clay model is to me, but it’s just as good watching the expression on his face. This is where he’s coming alive, his brows knitting together, his jaw tense, the focus in his dark eyes stark and brooding. He is the epitome of concentration, mixed with periods of mania, where his eyes look at me and light up, and I feel like I might be the most precious thing in the world to him.
I hope he’ll still look at me like that when this is all said and done.
Eventually he pulls back, taking a break. He wipes the sweat off his brow and plucks the glass from my hand. He turns around to fill it up, his shirt damp and sticking to him.
“You can get up, if you wish,” he says to me, handing me the glass back. “I need to direct the fans over here. It is getting too hot.”
I stand up, shaking out my legs that were on the verge of