“No time. I have fun with my family. With my son.” She started a stroke and added another. It was careful and precise, nervous about straying out of line. “Did you hide your creations since you were a kid?”
“I didn’t know I could do it until I was a teenager. I didn’t fully get into it until I was out of school and needed a break from duties. Then the breaks became something else, and I couldn’t stop.”
“Why hide it?”
Another peek. This time, she couldn’t look away as his gaze snagged her, as piercing as always.
“Do you know the Hastings?”
She nodded. “By reputation, yes. I met two of them. Iz’s sister married our clan leader.”
“Hmm. Imagine that kind of world but more rigid and less accepting of dalliances with anyone considered lesser.”
“Millicent is a shifter and employed under your aunt and uncle,” she pointed out.
“My aunt and uncle are different breeds of vampires. They don’t care about reputation and would employ those nasty reptile shifters if they were so much as given googly eyes.”
“And you care about reputation,” she deduced.
“I grew up with the reminder that it matters. I try to behave for my parents. They lead our folks.”
“To the point where you are still friends with your ex-fiancé and her current fiancé?”
Too late, it dawned how personal that was, but Edmund didn’t seem to mind as he stretched his arms and returned to his position. Her gaze strayed to the shifting muscles, then snapped back to his at his response.
“We are not friends, per se. Acquaintances, sure. I don’t see the point in making a big deal when Iz and I never even had sex despite months of dating.”
“Oh.” A pause. “You didn’t love her?”
“Love is for the lucky ones,” he said promptly. “I don’t have time for such nonsense. Are they still in love?”
She wrinkled her nose. “Disgustingly so.”
A low chuckle came from his throat and feathered over her senses. “Then we made the right decision, minus one failed business deal with the Hastings and a not-so-stellar reputation.”
There was hesitance in his tone as if he wanted to say more, but he went silent after. She blended colors, peeked at him, and re-blended, finding the balance that worked and filling in the blank space. Her slowness gained momentum as her fingers remembered the movements until there was no more time to think and all the time to paint. She immersed herself and felt pleasure when curves rose, dipped, and formed the achingly beautiful man. Speaking of the man…
He had remained silent, reminding her of his vampiric nature and how they could stay so still for long hours without their muscles screaming for movement. Hooded eyes were stuck between sleepy and serene, adding an ethereal touch. It allowed her fingers to trace every inch of muscles on canvas, then color the shadows that matched his. Down his abs, her gaze paused longer, that unbuttoned bit egging her on like a tease…her fingers itching to pat it back in place or—
“You don’t have to finish it tonight, you know.”
Her hand accidentally put too much pressure on the brush, resulting in his navel becoming a brown smudge. She made a sound of dismay. A blur was upon her seconds later, head bumping hers as he peered close, his lashes right in her line of vision before he turned slightly. Now his mouth was close, pursed in a way that it brushed against her knuckle poised on the canvas, eliciting a tremble that coursed through her insides. Warm breath was let out when he spoke. Her thighs pressed together as the tremble traveled down her core.
“Or you can. Salvage the bottom part. Finish my legs.”
With him being this intimate and her body reacting like she was some heady, inexperienced teenager? Alexa dropped the brush, effectively disconnecting her knuckle from his mouth. The loss stirred her within, but she ignored it and rushed through her words.
“I have to go. I can finish it next time. Or start over.”
Edmund surveyed the painting once more, then spared her a shrug as if he didn’t mind either way. “Okay.”
She hopped off the chair and him, putting things back in place before she stepped away from his space altogether.
“Well, I will see you later. Will you let me know when your studio days are?”
“Sure. Alexa?”
“Hmm?”