“How come?” He leans his hand on the doorframe above my head and puts his head closer to mine.
I step back so that I’m almost completely in the room now.
“It could get complicated,” I say in a husky voice. “Besides, you’re not my type.”
“But you’re not mine, either,” he says. “I thought we’d already been over all of that. I still want to kiss you.”
I take a deep breath and look down. “I don’t think so.”
Maybe if I don’t look at his lips again, I’ll be able to restrain myself from jumping him.
“Okay,” he says. “That’s cool.”
I look up and smile at him. “You’re practically irresistible. You know that right?”
He shrugs. “I don’t seem to be scoring too highly with you. Am I right?”
“No. You’re scoring. At least in my head.”
He laughs. “Likewise.”
I reach out and give him a little shove. “Go to bed, Mr. Wild. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
He leans down and gives me the briefest of pecks on the lips. Light. Feathery. Erotic. It’s all I can do not to swoon right there in front of him and beg him to take me against the wall.
“I’ll see you,” he says.
And he’s gone. I tiptoe out from my door a few steps to watch him walk toward the elevators. He doesn’t look back once.
I exhale loudly and step back inside my room. Jesus, he’s good.
* * *
I check my bank account, and sure enough, twelve thousand five hundred dollars is sitting there.
I’m halfway to saving my mother’s home. And maybe to healing my own heart at the same time.
But I can’t possibly sleep now. After that lip brushing with Dylan, my thighs are clenching with need. And I know getting myself off isn’t going to be enough.
Dylan Wild has me craving him. Turning him away tonight took a herculean effort on my part.
I toss and turn in bed, and finally I throw back the sheets in frustration. I need to do something to calm down.
So I pull out my clay, and I sit down on the floor and sculpt. I work for hours, making one figure and then smashing it to make another. I stop only because I’m so exhausted I can hardly keep my eyes open.
I’m smiling as I finally crawl into bed and turn out the light. Because I had fun. My first art teacher, way back in junior high school, the only teacher I ever really liked, used to say the joy of sculpting is supposed to be in the creating, not in the finished product.
I used to believe her. But I’d lost that perspective recently. Sculpting stopped being a haven for me and became more of a burden. Being rejected by art galleries and not knowing what to do about that sucked. And with each passing rejection, I began to feel that there was no more passion running through my veins. It scared me, and I worried that, like most people, I had lost that light in my soul everyone is born with.
Tonight, my light burned bright again. And I’m grateful.
Chapter Ten
I jump out of bed late the next morning with Dylan on the brain. I have no work until tonight’s event, and there are a lot of hours between now and then.
I pick up my phone and pull up his number. Without giving myself time to overthink, I call him. I just want to thank him for holding up his end of the bargain and let him know the money successfully transferred. Right. Sure. That’s all I want.
He doesn’t pick up. And I don’t leave a message. Just as well—I don’t know what the heck to say to someone I barely know but can’t get out of my head.
