Thomas turned fully to look at her then, and she made the mistake of meeting his eyes – dark green and intent, and far too close to be considered good for her health.
“I could not stop myself,” he admitted, just as softly.
Jane's grip tightened around her notebook. “I beg your pardon?”
“The drawing.” He did not look away from her as his spoke and she found herself utterly at his mercy, pinned beneath his gaze. “I could not stop myself from making it. I tried, truly. I tried rather more than once.”
She swallowed shifting uneasily. “You should not have –”
“No,” he agreed easily. “I should not have.”
“Then why –”
“Because I have not been able to stop thinking about you,” he said swiftly, “Not since the night you allowed me to paint you. Since I kissed you.”
The words landed heavily upon her ears and in her mind, leaving her no other option than to just... stare at him. Her mind was making quite the effort to produce a response – something measured, something that demonstrated she was a sensible person in full command of her faculties – and it was failing completely.
“Every time I closed my eyes,” Thomas went on, and his voice had dropped lower now, though it remained steady, “I was back in the painting room. With you, plagued by all kinds of thoughts of the things I could have done. Things I wanted to do.”
Her curiosity, foolish as it was, seemed intent on being her undoing, which was why her lips parted and she forced out the question,
“What... what sort of things?”
His expression remained guarded, but his posture relaxed, his shoulders dropping as he spoke.
“I have though quite a lot about pulling you close. Close enough that we would share the same air. That we would share the warmth that surrounded you. I wanted to run my hands over you, to learning the shape of your body – to memorize every dip, every curve of your warm flesh and trace my name into your skin. I have thought about what it would sound like to hear you say my name. What it would sound like, breathless and heavy with pleasure as you writhed beneath me, unable to think of anything beyond the heat claiming your body. I wanted to taste you, every inch of you, over and over again.”
Jane felt the heat that had long since settled across the apples of her cheeks climb up to the crown of her head.
“That is –” she began, finally summoning the courage to lower her gaze.
“Inappropriate,” he said. “Yes. I am aware.”
“I was going to say needlessly blunt and forthcoming.”
The corners of his lips tugged upwards slightly, flashing that his signature not-quite smile again. “Would you have preferred I keep it to myself?”
“I –” She stopped as soon as she started, because the truthful answer was no, and that terrified her more than almost anything else she could think of. “I do not know what I would have preferred.”
She had not meant for that to come out as honestly as it had. Something shifted in his expression – the careful steadiness of it giving way to something warmer, and more dangerous.
“You are curious,” he stated, but his voice lacked the depth to make it an accusation. “You wonder why I said that, and what I meant.”
“I am –” She lifted her chin stubbornly. “I am standing in a room with a man who has just admitted to me that he has been thinking about me in... very unexpected manners – in referenceto a drawing that practically confirms his word. It would seem that curiosity was the only natural response I have left.”
“Is that all it is?”
She should have said yes again. should have put an end to this line of questioning and carried on with her day. All she had to do was say the right thing, put some distance between them and all would be right in the world once more, in a few short minutes.
But there was an itch she had been ignoring for a few days now, an itch that had reignited again, when her eyes fell on the rather impressive depiction of herself. The itch was starting to give her ideas, and she was starting to listen.
“Show me,” she heard herself murmur instead.
The words surprised even her. She watched them land on him, watched something in his face go very still.
“You do not know what you are asking for. Do not presume to understand any of what I had just told you.” He instructed dismissively.
Thomas had given her another way out to take and be done with this madness, once and for all. But... because she had come this far and there was no way to take it back, she added,
