Читать книгу Muse - Sommer Marsden - Страница 16

‘Tell me,’ Dani said. ‘What’s your story for being in art class?’

Kevin Buck leaned back in his high-backed bar stool and gave a lazy shrug. Tonight he looked the artist part. A white button-down shirt, collar open past his clavicle, sleeves rolled, artfully messed and shoved up to his elbows, faded jeans, motorcycle boots and, of course, the man bun.

‘I was bored.’

‘Bored?’ She sipped a Shiraz that had a bit of a back kick and a burn at the end. Her face and stomach glowed with warmth from the wine. They’d been picking at a plate of mixed appetisers. All homemade at the restaurant. Not a frozen chicken finger to be found.

‘I’m a trust-fund baby,’ he said.

Her wine meandered down the wrong pipe and Dani found herself choking on it. She covered her mouth, mortified as her body shook.

‘That surprising?’ he asked with a half-smile. He patted her on the back. ‘You OK?’

‘I am. And no, it wasn’t what you said. Just, swallowing wine is a bit too tricky for me, I guess. But, I’ll admit, I wasn’t expecting that.’

He gave a nod, picked up the small tasting glass and gave the dark-red liquid a quick try. ‘No one does. I guess I don’t look the part. No preppy clothes, dock shoes or sneering demands. No flashing cash and showing off. No drug problem and/or booze problem and/or gambling problem. Just a long, winding road of semi-boredom and malaise.’ He winked.

Up close he gave off a vibe. A sex vibe was the only way she could describe it. Only to herself; she’d never say it aloud. Magnetism swirled around him like an invisible force field. And the new information that he was a trust-fund baby surprised her. He didn’t fit the part. Didn’t give off that air of entitlement.

‘Well, it’s good that you avoided all the problems and went for something to fill your time. What else do you do?’

‘I want to be an artist, to be honest. But I’m twenty-eight. Who knows if that will happen?’

She laughed. ‘You say twenty-eight like it’s old. Anything could happen. Second acts are de rigueur these days.’

He leaned in, smiling at her. It was a wooing kind of smile, she thought. Hard to resist. It made her want to kiss him. Or, more importantly, be kissed by him.

‘Is that what you’re doing? Is this a second act of some kind? I admit,’ he said, giving another casual shrug and playing with a cocktail napkin, ‘I’m entirely curious how a beautiful woman who clearly has another job got into nude modelling for wannabe artists like me.’

‘How can you tell I have another job?’

‘You arrive in work clothes all the time. They look a bit more buttoned up than I imagine you are if you’re going out casually. But I could be wrong.’ His fingertip grazed the very edge of her hand and the nipples that had calmed down ages ago went into red alert.

Dani suppressed a shiver and tried to put the words together to answer him. ‘You’re not wrong. I’m an office manager at a doctor’s office. Chris and I, your teacher and I, go way back. We grew up together on the same street. Hung out together, wasted long summer days.’

‘Ah,’ he said.

‘Ah?’

‘Sorry,’ Buck said, shaking his head. ‘Go on.’

‘We ran into each other with our boisterous, larger-than-life mothers in tow. And he told me about it. I was ready for … something,’ she said waving her hand vaguely.

‘Something.’

‘Different. Something to shake up my life, I guess. I’m divorced. Officially, now. Things weren’t too great and now I find myself thirty-two—’ She levelled her gaze at him. ‘And see, I’m not saying that like it’s old. This time.’

He grinned at her.

‘And I’m alone and I’m in this life-living rut. I just have the same day over and over again. Until now.’

‘Now when you walk in a classroom full of artistically tortured souls, drop your robe and knock everyone’s socks off.’

She gave a snort of disbelief and quickly tried to cover with a cough. ‘Not quite.’

‘Oh, quite.’ His finger was tracing the edge of her hand again and Dani found herself shifting on her oversized bar stool. She didn’t know that someone touching her in such an innocuous place could make her feel like she was going to burst out of her skin. Or burst into flames.

‘Thank you,’ was all she could think to say.

He leaned toward her so smoothly she didn’t see it coming until it happened. He kissed her. His lips were soft and warm and when they touched hers her entire body seemed to melt into goo. Dani parted her lips and his tongue touched hers ever so gently. A featherlight stroke of tongue on tongue. His big hand, smudged in places with graphite, cupped the back of her head. Holding her tightly but not so tightly she felt the need to extricate herself.

The kiss deepened and, when her head was swimming and her body felt like one big heartbeat, Buck pulled back and said, ‘I know it’s incredibly forward, and feel free to smack me and storm out, but I’d love to take you home with me, Dani. I have to say, I don’t usually see a woman’s naked body before I decide to court her. I know we did this backwards, but I have to admit something—’ He regarded her with those deep dark eyes and her breath stuttered.

‘What? Admit what?’ She sounded a little more eager and desperate than she cared to, but it was out there. Nothing she could do about it.

‘I’ve been thinking of nothing but you since Monday. The way you stand up there. The way you look entirely stoic and entirely terrified at the same time. The curve of your hip …’ He reached beneath their small round table cluttered with cocktail debris, and swept his finger along the curve he was describing. ‘The length of your neck …’ The finger moved and caressed her from just below her ear to her collarbone. ‘Everything.’

‘Yes,’ she said, her voice a small, excited thing.

‘Yes?’

‘Take me home. Now,’ she said, saying it quickly before she could talk herself out of it. Even though she wanted it, wanted him, talking herself out of things that made her blood leap was her modus operandi. She didn’t want to give herself time to unravel her want.

His lips curved into a smile. ‘I was really expecting the slap and the storming off.’

‘Sorry to disappoint you,’ she said.

‘Oh, you’ve done anything but. Trust me.’ He waved his finger at the waiter for the check and paid him in cash.

‘Will you show me?’ she asked.

He cocked an eyebrow at her as he held the door and she went out into the cool night air. ‘Show you?’

‘Your sketch. Of me.’

‘Ah, now you want to see. I will, if you’re nice to me.’

Dani laughed. Her heartbeat was a palpable thing in her chest, her ears, between her legs. She planned to be very nice to him. She hoped he’d be very nice to her.