Power and Possession(97)
Kicking off his sandals, Rafe dropped onto the sofa in a lazy sprawl and watched Nicole walk around the room surveying his paintings. “There’s a very small Lautrec over the desk,” he said.
After looking at it, she turned to him with a smile. “I see why you like it.” The nude young lady was lying on her back, her legs spread wide, raising a glass of absinthe at the viewer in added invitation.
“She’s a pretty young thing—not as beautiful as you, pussycat. Would you like your portrait done? I could have someone come over.”
“Like that?” She flicked a finger at the painting.
He shrugged. “Not necessarily.” After a decade of faceless women, he found himself wanting a memory of these days.
“Take a picture.”
“Not the same.”
“I’ll think about it.”
He looked at her. “No one else would say that.”
“I’m not here for what you can give me”—she grinned—“other than the obvious. And I’ll be greedy as hell about that.”
“Not a problem.” If nothing else, he’d take a picture; the mere thought made him flinch. So his voice was blunter than he’d intended when he said, “Speaking of greedy, what can you do for me?”
She shot him a sharp look. “Is that an invitation?”
“Yeah, greed to greed.” At her quick eyebrow lift, he got himself together, telling himself to keep it casual, he wasn’t going to feel this way forever. “Hey, sorry. Old habits. I don’t want to fight. Okay?”
She scanned his face and made her own decision. “Me either. So while you have me in this forgiving mood,” she said, suddenly grinning from ear to ear, “first as an apology and then as a thank-you for my fake engagement ring, would you like me to kneel at your feet and say—make myself useful?”
He grinned back. “Are you kidding? I’d pay to see that. Not you—just in general,” he quickly added to clear up any misunderstanding. “Hell, you don’t even have to do anything. Just kneel there.”
She laughed. “Like this?” As she dropped to her knees in a pouf of her tangerine Missoni sundress, she watched his dick rise under his khaki slacks.
“Oh, yeah.” Narrow-eyed, he sucked in a breath. “That’s way out of character, tiger. You take something I don’t know about?”
“Come on—am I really that difficult?”
He looked startled for a moment, then broke out laughing.
“It’s not that funny,” she grumbled, morphing into the pissy, difficult girl she was questioning.
Still chuckling, he said, “Okay, now there’s my real pussycat.”
“I can be docile if I want,” she said with a flash of annoyance.
His laughter died away. “Show me.” Sitting up, he swung his feet to the floor and looked at her steadily. “Find that crystal bikini from Rome, change into it here”—he pointed at the floor near his feet—“then you can make yourself useful.”
She hesitated.
“See,” he said, shaking his head. “You can’t do it.”
A small mocking smile. “And you can’t control your dick.”
He flicked his glance downward, then up. “Come here. Take him out. We’ll discuss it.” A small pause as he waited. “You say you want to be useful”—his eyes met hers—“but you can’t take orders. Only give them.”
“I can too take orders… well, maybe I can.” She sucked on her bottom lip, trying to come to terms with the complicated intangibles between desire and obedience, knowing full well that if he’d been anyone else, she’d have walked out.
“It was Empress Eugénie’s ring,” Rafe said, understanding her struggle because it was his—who gave what to whom, how much, how little, whether it mattered. Changing the subject to give her time. “The one you’re wearing,” he added, with a slight lift of his hand. “Did I mention that?”
She looked blank for a moment, until her brain caught up with her auditory senses. “No, who’s she?”
He smiled. “Don’t know your history?”
“Maybe your dick doesn’t care if I do or not,” she said with a glance at his blatant hard-on.
He laughed. “No shit. For future reference, tiger, Eugenie was Napoleon the Third’s wife.”
Nicole looked at her ring, then at him. “She had good taste. What was she like?”
She was a little bitch like you, but also beautiful like you. Instead of saying that, he said, “She was very pretty. I have a small portrait of her downstairs. Natalie supposedly found it at a flea market. I’m not so sure, but I like it, so I’ll check its provenance someday and give it back. It’s probably stolen. Natalie has interesting friends.”