Still no comment. Tyce felt ants crawling up his skin as she flipped through the portraits, many of which were of her. After examining the last one, she rested her forearms on her knees.
He saw the anger in her eyes when all that blue slammed into his. "Why the hell have you never exhibited these? They are so good, Tyce, possibly even better than your sculptures and your oils. They are emotional and, sometimes, hard to look at but so damn real!"
Tyce ran a finger along the edge of his ragged sweatshirt, trying to keep up. "I can't do it," he admitted.
"Why on earth not?" Sage cried. "They are fantastic. The emotion jumps off the canvas."
His feelings about her, about them, were a tangled mess but she was still the mother of his child and she deserved to know the truth. The entire truth. Tyce paced the area in front of the oil painting, his fingers holding the glass tumbler in a tight grip. "I discovered that I could sell my portraits when I was thirteen or so. I'd take my sketch pad to Central Park and sketch people who passed by. I'd shove the drawing under their nose and they'd pay me... I still don't know if they paid because they thought the work was good or because they felt sorry for the too-thin kid in old clothes."
Sage quietly sipped of her coffee, her silence encouraging him to continue.
"I did that for a few years. I finished high school and was offered a scholarship to art school but I had to work and the only job I could find was in construction. To make some extra cash, I agreed to pose naked for an art class comprised mostly of women wanting to dabble in art."
Sage just lifted one arched eyebrow higher, looking unaffected. Her shoulders lifted in a tiny So?
"I used to draw portraits of the women, which they'd buy. Then they'd take me home and they'd pose naked, telling me that the portrait was for their husband or their lover."
"And you'd end up sleeping with them," Sage said, her tone utterly prosaic.
Tyce rubbed the back of his neck. "I sold many portraits and I slept with quite a few women."
Sage tipped her head to the side and just looked at him. "So?" When he sent her a puzzled look, she continued. "I'm sorry but I'm trying to find the link between you sleeping with someone and why you won't sell your portraits."
Tyce couldn't understand why she was being obtuse. "I slept with them, Sage!"
"You were nineteen and you would've slept with a gorilla if it wore lipstick," Sage replied, impatient. Then the confusion cleared from her eyes. "Oh...wait, I get it. You don't know whether they used the sketches as an excuse to pay you for sex."
Nailed it, Tyce thought morosely, turning away from her.
Tyce heard Sage stand up, heard the sound of her mug hitting the surface of his desk and then felt her hand on his back. He waited for her words, his heart bouncing off his rib cage. "You don't actually know how good you are, do you? That's why you don't attend your own exhibitions, why you don't do interviews... You don't think that you are worth the accolades, the money."
Tyce whirled around and pointed at the oil. "I did that oil in half a day, Sage! I slapped some paint on a canvas, I didn't even think about it and idiots will pay me a quarter mil for it, maybe a whole lot more. The sculptures take more work but nothing that's worth the price tags the galleries put on my pieces. My portraits, they mean something, but yeah, every time I think of selling one, exhibiting one, I feel that I am that confused kid again, trying to keep his head above water, not sure whether he was being pitied or paid for being a stud."
He sucked in a breath and continued. "Art...art was where I retreated to when my mom wouldn't talk, wouldn't move for days on end. It was the place I could hide out in, pretend everything was okay. I used to lose time sketching and drawing. It was the place where I fell into that creative zone where nothing could touch me."
"Are you not going there anymore?" Sage gestured to the oil. "Because this tells me that you are..."
"It's just so damn easy, Sage."
Sage placed her hands on his chest and tipped her lovely face back to look at him, her eyes full of warmth... Love? Affection? "Tyce, you've had a hard life. You've looked after your mother, your sister and you sacrificed so damn much for them, your scholarship, your wealth to buy the Ballantyne shares, your youth. Aren't you allowed to have one thing in your life that's easy? Could this not be life giving you a break?"
Tyce dropped his forehead so that it met hers, hauling in big breaths of much-needed air. Could she be right? Could he finally accept that not everything had to be a fight, a battle to be won?
"You're so talented, Tyce, the most amazing artist I know."
"You're biased." Tyce rumbled the words, so badly wanting to believe her.
Sage stepped back and looked at him. "Do you remember when you painted the Tired Ballerina?"
The painting in her loft. God, he didn't but it was early on in his career.
"It was nine years ago and I've always been obsessed about ballet and wished I had the talent to be a professional dancer. I saw that painting and I fell in love with it. I was nineteen, twenty? I begged Connor to buy it for me but he wouldn't. When I turned twenty-one Connor released some money into my trust fund and I tracked down the owner and I paid him three times what he originally paid. I hadn't met you yet but I wanted that painting more than I wanted to breathe."
Touched, Tyce opened his mouth to speak but she held up her hand to stop him from saying anything. "I persuaded my siblings to buy Jaeger one of your sculptures for a birthday present, and Connor, at my insistence, bought another three of your paintings for his private collection. One is on the main wall of the reception area of Ballantyne International. Connor said that, while he'd never liked the Tired Ballerina, he loved your new work. He said that you were going to be one of the best and one of the most influential artists of the twenty-first century and... Guess what? You are. You are worth every cent you are paid. If you don't believe one word I've ever said, please, please, believe that."
Tyce closed his eyes, not wanting her to see the emotion there and he dug his fingers into her skin, hoping that she wouldn't feel the trembling in his hands. He felt both tired and rejuvenated, wiped out and energized.
And God, free. Sage's words made him feel empowered, unrestricted. She made him feel like he could take on the world single-handed and win. He wanted to tell her how much what she'd said meant to him, how life-changing it was, but the words stuck in his throat. He ducked his head and hoped that he could convey what he was trying to say with his mouth, his hands, by worshipping her body.
But Sage was way ahead of him. She stood on her toes and placed her lips on his, her tongue tracing the seam of his lips, demanding that he open up. He whispered a Hell, yeah and she slid her tongue into his and she dialed up the temperature, demanding his response. Tyce yanked her to him, his hands looking for bare skin. He was still pulling her shirt out of her jeans when Sage's hand slid under his sweatshirt and her fingers tap-danced their way across his abs, her thumb swiping the space between his belly button and the low band of his jeans. His stomach muscles contracted and she groaned her approval and her kisses turned wild.
Then Sage's hands attacked the button on his jeans. Who was this woman taking control, whose hand was sliding underneath his underwear to encircle him? She'd been timid, sometimes shy about telling him what turned her on but today she knew exactly what she wanted. Tyce felt blood pump into his erection and he turned rock hard in her hand.
Sage gave another throaty murmur of approval and she wrenched her mouth from his and stepped back to pull his shirt up and over his head. As soon as his chest was bare she slapped her open mouth against his sternum, her tongue tracing a fiery path down his body.
Holy crap, she couldn't possibly be thinking of...
He'd pleasured her like this before but he knew that she wasn't comfortable, yet, to reciprocate. He'd spent many, many nights imagining Sage doing exactly this but his imagination, which was powerful, had nothing on this. Her tongue flicked over his abs and he groaned and reached back to grab the edge of a shelf, convinced that his knees were about to buckle.
Sage pushed his jeans down his legs and worked her fingers under the band of his underwear. Cool air touched his straining erection and her fiery mouth on his skin was a complete contrast. He didn't know if he could handle this: his fantasies had fallen well short of how she made him feel. In his dreams, his heart never felt like it was about to beat through his chest, like he didn't have a single spark of brainpower left, that the whole world was reduced to her mouth on him.
He couldn't do it... It was too much. Then Sage took him inside her mouth, and his brain, that teeny tiny organ, shut down completely.