Page 52 of Ruthless Enforcer

"It's your hand, not your face. And you're terrible at sitting still anyway."

I pull the phone out and glance at the screen.

Hendricks

Turner's alias just used a credit card in Bozeman. Tracking now.

I type back one-handed.

Bozeman's a feint.

He's not stupid enough to use plastic unless he wants us looking there.

Hendricks

Agreed, but I thought you should know.

Keep you apprised.

I slide the phone back into my pocket and find Clara watching me with those sharp green eyes that see too much. "Turner?" she asks.

I shrug. "It’s a false trail."

"How do you know?"

"Because Cole Turner is a lot of things, but careless isn't one of them. If he used a credit card, it's because he’s setting a trap."

She nods once, processing, then returns to the canvas. After a while, she says, "You're staring."

"You're painting me. I'm allowed to stare back."

She makes a confident, sweeping stroke. "That's not how this works."

"Then explain how it works, because I've never sat for a portrait before and the rules seem arbitrary."

"The rules are simple.” She gives me an arch look over her shoulder. “You sit still, you don't complain, and you let me see what I need to see."

I love it when she gets imperious on me. My cock does too. "And what do you need to see?"

She pauses, her brush hovering above the palette, and meets my eyes. "You."

The word lands between us like a grenade with the pin already pulled.

I should tell a joke or remind her that she saw the real me at the museum the night we met. Instead, I stay silent. The truth is, I don't know what she sees when she looks at me—and I'm not sure I want to.

Clara sets her brush down and steps closer, close enough that I can smell the faint trace of linseed oil and astringent paint mixing with midnight garden scent. Her knees brush the edge of the chair as she kneels in front of me.

I shift my hips up and forward automatically.

I’m an idiot—she’s not going to go down on me. My cock throbs anyway, wanting it bad.

So do I. I stare at her mouth, wanting to take it out and rub it there. I’ve barely even kissed her once and I want to paint her lips with my seed. I want her to use her paint-smeared hands to take my dick out and put all that intense fucking concentration to a different use.

Instead, she just reaches for my hand—the other one.

Her fingers are warm as she turns my hand over slowly, tracing the lines of my palm with her thumb like she's reading a map. Paint smears on my skin and I have the sudden, feral urge to leave my mark on her too—something unmistakable, something that says mine even after this ends.

"This scar," she murmurs, brushing the white line that runs from my wrist to the base of my thumb. "How?"