She chuckled. “That career doesn’t appeal to you?”
“Hardly I’d prefer to run my company. Or do just about anything else, for that matter.”
“Camera shy?”
“Let’s just say that modeling doesn’t interest me.”
She rested her chin on her crossed hands and studied him thoughtfully. “You have that haughty male model look,” she murmured. “You look so solemn most of the time. Don’t you ever break out in a big ol’ ear-to-ear grin?”
He gave it some thought. “I’m not sure.”
She laughed at how seriously he’d taken her whimsical question.
Andrew looked pained. “I have a sneaking suspicion that you find me secretly amusing.”
“There’s no secret about it. I do find you amusing,” she teased.
He eyed her smile. “Is that good or bad?”
“I’m here, aren’t I?”
He seemed partially satisfied by that response. He nodded and tightened his hold on her. “Yes. You’re here.”
There were so many things she wanted to know about him. His favorite foods, his favorite color, his favorite book. The first girl he’d kissed. The last one he’d loved.
She didn’t ask any of the questions buzzing in her head. Perhaps it was because she had a niggling fear that the more she knew about him, the harder she would fall for him. And the more if would hurt when it ended.
Nicky had always been one to make the most of the present, rather than to worry unduly about the future. And the present was very nice, indeed, she decided, admiring the wickedly attractive, deliciously naked man beneath her.
She squirmed a bit higher on his chest and swooped down to kiss him. There were other ways to learn about him than simply to ask questions.
She traced his mouth with the tip of her tongue, tickling the corners, nipping at his lower lip. She nibbled his firm, squared jaw, and nuzzled the faint cleft in his chin. She soothed the deep vertical lines between his straight brows with a soft kiss, then moved to his earlobe, which she took between her teeth in a teasing love bite.
He lay very still beneath her ministrations, his eyes closed, his hands at her hips, his breathing growing labored again. “Nicole—”
She was already wriggling lower, burying her face in his throat to taste the heavily pulsing hollow there. His head pressed back against the pillow, giving her better access. She took full advantage, moving slowly, savoringly downward.
By the time she’d explored his chest and his nipples and worked her way down to nip at his navel, a fine sheen of perspiration glistened on his body. His breathing was harsh, and his hands trembled as they clenched in her hair. She smiled against his skin and moved lower still.
Andrew arched upward. “Nicole!”
He wasn’t distant and reserved now, she thought in deep satisfaction. And she reveled in the knowledge that she was the one who’d shattered his formidable control.
Whatever happened later, she wanted him to remember this day for a very long time.
ANDREW WAS WATCHING Nicole sleep again. Dressed in a black turtleneck and black denims, his glasses neatly in place, his hair tumbling onto his forehead, he sat in a chair near the bed, studying her as she lay in the soft pool of light cast by the dimmed bedside lamp.
She was so beautiful that it made his chest hurt just to look at her. He’d only had a reaction like this once before that he could remember—years ago. Fresh out of college and on a business trip in Chicago, he’d wandered through the Great Impressionists exhibit at the Institute of Art and had stepped into a roomful of Monet’s water lily studies. The delicate glory of them had made his throat tighten, his fists clench in wonder.
They were clenched now as he gazed at Nicole, asleep in his bed.
When he’d seen the paintings, he’d had an immediate, fleeting urge to possess them. To hide them away where no one else could see them, to be admired only by his own eyes.
He had that same irrational impulse now, with Nicole.
It was as though a wondrous, mysterious, joyously exotic creature had wandered accidentally into his quiet, somber, ordinary home. He suspected that, like other free-spirited, untamed creatures, Nicole would not be able to thrive in captivity. Like the paintings, her beauty was too precious to be selfishly hidden away.
She’d been his for a day. He would remind himself of that when she flitted inevitably out of his life.