French Blue (27 page)

Then he was inside her, slower than she’d expected. It had been a few weeks. Even though she was slick and thought she was ready, he was almost too big, but then the tightness eased and she cried out in pleasure.

She abandoned herself to the sensation as he increased the speed of his thrusts. Lisa dropped her forearms to the bed and backed up against him, impaling herself deeper, wanting to be part of Olivier; to
be
him. Ahead of her, despite the sun, as if through a rippling lake, she saw their reflections in the window, Olivier fucking her and her own wild face. Olivier groaned, pulsed inside her, and she came so hard she must have lost consciousness, because the next thing she knew, they were tangled together, facedown on the quilt.

He rested his hand on her shoulders, threading his fingers through her hair, the air-con already chilling the sweat on her skin. It was only then that that she finally faced the reality of what would happen next.

“Shower or reality?” he asked.

“Will the first make the second any easier to face?”

“Perhaps it would be better to face reality like we are now, naked and raw.”

“Are you afraid if either of us takes a shower, the other will walk out?” Her tone was sharper than she meant it to be, but they weren’t playing now, and she needed explanations.

“That could be easily solved by us showering together, but it still gives you too much time to think,
cherie
,” he said coolly.

“I spent five years doing my degree and masters learning to think. You don’t want a woman who doesn’t think.”

“I don’t want one who has to think twice when it comes to deciding if she wants to be with me.”

“And yet you were the one who left me with just a note…”

Doubt flickered in his eyes. “Touché. Please, cut me a little slack. This is my first time.”

She frowned in puzzlement, not really understanding him, then he kissed the tip of her nose. “The first time since I came alive again.”

Lisa pulled back from him. She wasn’t going to forgive him that easily, not when he held her heart in his hands. “Why are you back? You said we should end it. I ran after you, into the hotel foyer.”

“You ran after me?”

“Yes.”

The moments of silence that followed seemed like they might go on forever, and Lisa could hear her heart beat within her chest, before he finally murmured, “Would you run after me again?”

Now it was Lisa’s turn to hesitate. Eventually she said, “You need to know that I got an offer this morning. The company offered me a permanent job here in New York. As president.”

She saw him swallow hard. “I see… I could come here. I could open a gallery, teach, paint…” he said.

“But you don’t paint, Olivier.”

“Not as a rule.”

“What do you mean?” Her stomach did a backflip.

“Since I left you, I wanted to see if I’d imagined what I saw, knew and felt about us, and I wanted to make myself into someone you could trust. I went to the chateau, I walked a lot, I thought a lot, I sat in the studio in front of an easel, and I saw you, there on the plinth…” He stopped, looking at her with an intensity that made her lightheaded. “I saw you taking off the robe, but there was only me in the room, only me watching you and studying your body and your face. And I picked up a piece of charcoal, and I started to draw.”

“Where is this drawing?”

“Not only a drawing… It’s back at the chateau. You have to come and see them, let me know if I only imagined it was you, or if they were real. Do you have a free weekend? Can you come?”

She still reeled with his revelation that he’d begun painting again because of her. “I…I can come over on Friday, maybe take a day or two at the most.” What was she saying? What was she doing?

She could almost feel the relief radiating from him. “It’s enough. I’ll wait until then. I just want you to come and see, now that I’ve waited so long. I know my efforts won’t live up to reality, that the painting is a fantasy, but you inspired me to start working again, and I need you to see what you’ve done.”

How could she refuse?

“I’ll come.”

Chapter Twenty-One

Olivier paced the studio, his boots ringing out in the bare boards. He looked out the window and back to the easel covered in a black cloth.

Putain
. What the hell was he doing?

After picking up Lisa from Charles de Gaulle, he’d driven her straight to the chateau. She was in the bathroom, freshening up, she said, but he knew she was probably giving him time to compose himself before he finally unveiled his painting of her.

Correction,
if
he unveiled the painting, because his courage had suddenly caved in like a meringue. Why, oh, why had he asked her to come three thousand miles—over one weekend—to see his work? Why had he thought it was a great idea to paint her in the first place? As if he could ever have captured her beauty or that inner fire of vulnerability and sexiness that drove him insane—yet had brought him back to sanity.

“Okay?”

She stood, framed in the doorway to the studio, in her jeans and cami, her face free of makeup, looking totally luminous. Suddenly, he covered his face with his hands. “I can’t do this.”

“What?”

“I can’t let you see it. It’s no good. This was such a bad idea. Let’s leave.”

Lisa rushed forward. “After you’ve hauled me over the Atlantic? No way! I want to see this masterpiece.”

“Masterpiece? It’s a disaster. I wish I hadn’t… No, don’t! Stop!”

He dashed forward, but it was too late. Lisa had thrown back the black cloth and uncovered the painting and was standing stock-still in front of it, her hands up to her mouth. Olivier hugged his chest, frozen like the subject of his painting. Lisa stared at the picture, as still as a statue. Even the dust motes seemed to freeze in the shaft of light streaming through the windows, yet inside him, his heart pounded like a jackhammer. Never had he felt such fear of what another person might think of his work as now.

She stepped forward to the canvas and shook her head.

“You hate it. I knew you would.”

“Is this really me?” Her voice was small and directed at the painting.

“It’s you, but as much me as you, I think. After so long, I’ve grown selfish.”

Still she didn’t look at him. She can’t, he thought.
She can’t bear to let me see the disappointment in her eyes.
She reached out a hand and briefly brushed her fingers over the naked woman reclining on a picnic blanket in the middle of a wood like the ones around the chateau, food and wine abandoned at her side.

He took courage from the way she couldn’t take her eyes off the portrait and hoped she loved the way he had depicted her generous breasts, and creamy skin, and her hair loose about her shoulders.

“I had no idea it would be like this, that I would be nude,” she murmured.

“And?” His pulse raced.

She turned, and Olivier saw that her eyes were lit up with a fire that made his belly tighten with desire. It was the same fire—the luminosity—he’d tried to capture in his portrait.

“I love it,” she said through a throat clogged with delight and amazement. “It’s
Le dejeuner sur l’herbe
—except there are no other men in this version.”

“How could I share you with anyone else, even if it’s your fantasy to be seen naked in public? It is just a fantasy, isn’t it?”

“Do you even have to ask?”

She spun round again to look at the picture, and Olivier joined her.

“Are you disappointed in my vision of you?” he asked.

She laughed. “Hugely flattered, actually. Do I really look like that?”

“Like what?”

“So wanton? So ready? And yet…a little scared. I can’t decide. One moment I look at the picture, and I see a confident temptress, the next a naive ingénue. Which am I?”

“Neither and both.” Finally, he found himself smiling, grinning even, with relief. His work would never be perfect, never even come close, but at least Lisa had recognised what he was trying to do. “Which is exactly how I like it.”

“It’s wonderful, Olivier. I’ll admit I was scared to be your muse, but I’m so happy you’ve started working again.”

He held her shoulders and touched his forehead to hers. “Not as scared as I’ve been in painting it or showing it to you. I sat in front of that canvas for two hours before I could even touch it with a brush, and I agonised for weeks before I decided to tell you about it.”

“You won’t put it on display, will you?”

“Do you want me to? Would that fulfil your fantasy?”

“No, I’m not ready for that yet, but I’d love it if you could hang it somewhere only we could look at it.”

“I can put it in the bedroom here or at the apartment in Paris.”

“Oh…I see…”

Slowly, she’d realised the full meaning of his words.

“No one else will ever see it, because I have no intention of inviting anyone into my bedroom again, if you will stay. But I can’t ask you to stay, because I’d be asking you to sacrifice too much.” His eyes seemed to burn with passion—for her.

Lisa was trembling. “Are you saying that we can’t be together because I have to leave for the US, that my career comes first—or are you saying that you can’t love me? Or that you don’t trust me not to quit when things get tough? Because they might get tough, Olivier, while we’re trying to make a life together. You know that. Are you saying you don’t want the responsibility of making me give up this job in case things don’t work out? In case you fail?”

“I know things won’t be easy and that me starting to paint again and asking you the impossible is only the start of a process. I’m not set in stone. I’m not the same man I was before Caro left, and I’m not the same man I was before I met you. I haven’t changed, I’ve just grown…despite all the shit. I don’t know what I’ll become, but for now, I can’t imagine not loving you.”

He captured her mouth in a kiss so deep, she never wanted it to end. Her body was on fire for him. Finally, their lips parted.

“I can’t imagine not loving you either.”

His eyes lit up with sheer joy.

“So that only leaves a few thousand miles of ocean between us,” she murmured.

The happiness fled from his face. “And your raison d’être. Your career.”

“My career is not my reason for being. It may have been once, and I still want to make my mark in the world, but it’s not the
only
thing in my life. I want more, much more, and he’s standing here now, in front of me.”

“But you’re going back to New York?”

“Yes, I’m going back.”

He struggled. She saw the agony in his eyes and wasn’t sure why she needed to see it, but she did. The pain he suffered for those few seconds told her far more than any of his words could. He was in control; she was in control. It was a perfect balance, and one she would never let pass her by.

“I’m going back to complete my contract, but then I’ll be free. I turned down the job they offered me, and yes, many people will think I’m mad, but that job is what I
ought
to do. It’s not what I want or need to do.”

His look of amazement made her heart race. “You can’t do this for me. You can’t make this sacrifice. What will you do?”

“For once in my life, I don’t know. I’ll go home to Britain, spend some time with my family, look for another contract. The economy’s on its way up, people are hiring in London, something will turn up.” She laughed. “Listen to me. Lisa Archer saying ‘something will turn up’! I’ve never thought or said that in my life.”

He groaned. “Until I turned up and fucked up your life.”

“Fucked up my life? No, the opposite! You just made my life a whole lot simpler. I don’t even know if I want to go back to corporate communications. I’ve made some money, I could work for a charity, or even an art foundation—who knows? For once in my life, I won’t have things planned out. I’ll just wing it.”

“So,” said Olivier, holding her lightly in his arms, “you have no plans at all?”

Lisa was shaking. “Are any on offer?”

“Only one. Stay here when you get back from the States.”

She could hardly get the words out, her throat was so full of emotion, her heart in her mouth. “Is that an order?”

He raised a sexy eyebrow.

“Is that an order,
maître
.”

He pulled her to him and gently but firmly tugged her hair until she was forced to look right into his eyes. Eyes that were full of passion and love and left her in no doubt whatsoever that he meant every word he said.

“Is it an order,
cherie
? Oh, yes…”

About the Author

Natasha Bond is a best-selling and multi-award winning author of hot and erotic romance. A member of the Romantic Novelists Association, her debut novel was made into a US TV movie. She lives in an English village with Mr. Bond.

Blog:
natashabondauthor.wordpress.com

Twitter:
www.twitter.com/NatashaAuthor

Facebook:
www.facebook.com/NatashaBondAuthor