She rather relished the idea of a discomfited Lord St. Alban. She might be able to preserve, or, more accurately, regain her state of balance if she further upset his. She hadn’t spent the last six months scandalizing thetonfor naught. Perhaps it was time she profited from heroutréreputation.
“What would I hang in my bedroom?” She racked her brain for a shocking sequence of words. “A rather . . .salacious. . . option would be”—Ah, she had just the thing—“one of Goya’s Majas.”
She braced herself for his reaction. Would he blush? Shuffle his feet?
His features remained unmoving. Not even the palest spark of recognition.
“Are you not familiar with the Majas?”
Lord St. Alban’s hands—his gorgeous, capable hands—splayed wide in a gesture of surrender, and he held his tongue.
“There are two,” she began, trying to keep the exasperation out of her voice. “First cameThe Nude Majaat the turn of the century. It depicts a woman reclining unclothed on a chaise longue. Some have called it obscene as Maja’smons pubisis entirely exposed to her audience.”
Again, she paused for a reaction. Again, in vain. He simply stared through the bow window toward the back garden.
Olivia crossed her arms in front of her chest. “The scandal overThe Nude Majawas, in fact, so great that Goya was compelled to produceThe Clothed Majathree years later.”
“And which would you have in here?” he asked so softly that his words just reached her.
Her heart had no choice but to accelerate. “The Nude Majawould be the obvious pick, but . . .” she trailed off, hesitant and uncertain. How was it that she was revealing herself? Wasn’t he the one whose equilibrium should feeloff? Yet she couldn’tnotanswer him. “I would haveThe Clothed Maja.”
In the window’s reflection, his eyebrows lifted in silent query. An inexplicable urge to explain herself propelled her on. “It’s the subtly differing expressions on the Majas’ faces. Even as Goya yielded to public pressure, he did so with a bit of rebellion. The clothed Maja is the saucier of the two Majas, the one more knowledgeable about her seductive prowess than her nude self.”
He met her gaze in the reflection and held it. “As is often the case with a woman confident in her own sensuality,” he spoke on a low vibration.
The air quaked between them. Her heart thundering in her chest, she remained as still as a startled deer, unable to blink, unable to draw breath. Under no circumstances should she take this house. She’d allowed him to put his stamp on every room.
Ha. She’d not only allowed it, but had assisted it.
“No nudes?” His eyes refused to release her.
She opened her mouth to tell a lie, but it refused to form beneath the acuity of his focus. As if pulled by a strong magnet, her feet carried her forward, inch by inch, until she was close enough to touch her fingers to his back, broad and strong, and trace tense muscles corded beneath his impeccably tailored overcoat.
“Here,” she said, pointing an instructive finger over his shoulder, “two or three small nude sketches. Titians. Or Botticellis. Stacked one on top of the other.”
“There?” He touched a forefinger to the right of the windowpane. “On that intimate sliver of wall?”
An involuntary shiver pulsed from the juncture of her legs. Throat dry, she rasped a husky, “Yes,” her eyes fixed on his flawless profile.
She could stare at him all day, except she suspected looking wouldn’t be enough. Part of her begged to touch him, to stroke her fingers across his bare skin and know his every texture. Looking would never be enough.
He pivoted to face her, and she became acutely aware of how close she’d ventured. Only a scant bit of air separated her chest from his. Her head tilted back, and his gaze reclaimed hers. She detected latent ferocity within those depths. The sort that wouldn’t let her go if he ever got her between his teeth.
She wasn’t sure she would want him to.
Free will abandoned her, and she became a being motivated by pure instinct. Words likefierceanddesireswirled around her head. No part of their bodies touched, yet every fiber of her being vibrated with the possibility of where those words could lead them.
To be sure, there was no bed in this room, or in this empty house, but that hardly seemed relevant. Trivialities, like beds, didn’t matter with this man, whose gaze alone incited such a wave of lust within her that all she could do was squeeze her thighs together. What further havoc could he wreak upon her?
Her eyelids lowered, and her heels lifted, the distance between their mouths closing with each additional pound of pressure she applied to the tips of her toes. Separated by the slimmest millimeter, his lips parted, his breath a silky feather across her lips.
“A Titian? Or a Botticelli?”
Her eyes startled open. “Yes?”
“Pardon me for saying,” he spoke, the words gravel against his throat, “but it seems that you would bring the past back to life wholesale.”
She blinked, and the spell evaporated. Reality, sharp and precise, stabbed through her. She took one, then another step backward, obeying her instinct to escape the sting of his words.
