“I am,” Conrad replied. He wanted to say,more okay than I’ve been in some time, but he didn’t.
He wouldn’t.
It was only when his heart started beating a little too hard that he realized that one of her hands was stretched out over his chest as if she was holding it in her hand.
“Come,” he said, feeling grumpy with all the things he felt, but shouldn’t. “Let’s get you in that hot tub.”
She frowned as he shifted her off him. But when he stood up and walked over to the large tub, she followed him. The tub was done in wood so that it seemed almost to blend into the garden all around. The water bubbled quietly, the soft light inside the tub illuminating the benches that lined its walls and sending a sweet little light dancing around the gazebo.
A man liked to see who he brought out here in the dark. Especially when she was as perfect as Rory.
He tested the water with his fingers, then nodded for her to climb in.
She continued to frown at him. “Are you...giving me a bath like a toddler? Sir?” Her frown deepened. “Do I still have to call youSir?” When he only eyed her, she let out a small sound of frustration. “Do you want me to call youSir?”
Rory continued to frown at him, so Conrad set about removing his own clothes. And watched, torn somewhere between amusement and sheer lust as she...gaped at him.
“I’m glad you appreciate me, little one,” he rumbled at her when he finally stripped off. Her eyes had dropped to his cock, which was already ready for another round. “But I do need you to get into that tub.”
She gulped and then obeyed him, climbing into the hot tub and making a sound of appreciation as she slid into the water.
Conrad followed, sinking into the heat and sitting on one of the built-in benches. Rory stood before him, her breasts above the waterline as she tied her hair into a knot on top of her head. And then she submerged herself to her chin, letting out a deep, long sigh that seemed to come from the very center of her.
“Tell me about that clit ring,” he said, idly, as he lounged on the bench across from her. “You don’t have any other piercings. Okay, your ears. But nothing else quite so interesting.”
She moved her arms in the water, as if feeling the weight of it against her fingers. “I guess I wanted it because it seemed cool. You know, a conversation piece, anyway. It’s always a surprise. And usually a good one.”
“That’s not the real reason.”
Her gaze flew to his, then back to the water. “No, that’s not the real reason, but I didn’t think it worked.”
“Because the real reason is...?”
“I wanted to feel,” she said, her voice cracking a little on that last word, her gaze trained on the surface of the water. “I wanted to be...more. I thought it would help.”
“But it didn’t.”
“It was a conversation starter.” Her smile was rueful. “It let me think that I was kinky and mysterious, I guess. But until tonight, it was really just jewelry.”
He didn’t think there was a single part of her that wasjustanything, but he didn’t say that. It would be too much, surely. Too dangerous tonight.
“I like it,” he told her instead.
She smiled, though the smile seemed fragile. “Whatever else it is or was supposed to do, I like it because it’s wearable art.” Her gaze moved over his face, searching for something. “Do you want to know why I really moved to Paris?”
It surprised him not only that he did, indeed, want to know—but that the wanting was an intense thing that seemed to grow inside him as she gazed at him. He restricted himself to a nod.
“I love art,” she said. Shyly, he thought, as her smile began to look self-deprecating. “When I went to the Musée Rodin, I cried. I always thought that I could stare at a Manet for a day or two, and at the Musée d’Orsay, I have. And then I go back to my flat and take pictures for social media and pretend they’re the same, when I know they’re not. I can’t draw or paint or even take a good photograph of anything, unless I’m in it. But I love art all the same.”
She kept her gaze on the bubbling, frothing water. “If you can’t make art, you can make your life art, I guess.”
“Rory.” Her name had sounded so silly to him when he’d met her. Such a strange diminutive of the far more beautiful—and apt—Aurora. But now it tasted sweet on his tongue and to his ears it might as well have been a song. “You are the art. You don’t have to make it. You are it.”
She lifted her head, her lovely eyes dark. A different sort of sheen in them.
And when she smiled, it was like dawn breaking, bright and hopeful.
“Do you think it’s possible that your whole world can change when you least expect it?” she asked.