"I woke up with an idea," she explained. "I wanted to get it down before I forgot." It was long forgotten now, and she didn't even care, not when she'd discovered something more precious than diamonds. "I couldn't find any paper in the bedroom, so I came in here."
His features were hard, immobile, like a piece of metal she hadn't yet welded into submission. "How long have you been looking through my things?" His voice was as hard as his face. It could break rocks.
Worse, it could break her. Right in two. Straight through the center of her heart. The heart she'd just given to him.
All the hurt she'd worked to push away rushed back. "I was only planning to take a blank piece to write some notes on, but then..." She waved a hand at the sketch still face-up on the floor. "I saw a drawing of myself. And I was-"
Before she could let him know how moved she was by his talent and the incredible emotion he'd captured in every single sketch, he grabbed the pads off the floor and the side table, then snatched the one she held right out of her hand.
"They're not for public consumption." He tossed the sketchbooks in the drawer of a small bureau against the wall.
"Public consumption?" The words burned her throat as they came out in a horrible echo.
"They're private."
It was pure instinct for Charlie to push past him and leave, to run as far and as fast as she could. Far enough for her to figure out how to weld the break in the heart he'd just ripped apart. But how could she forget what he'd said to her as they made love? I love you, Charlie. I've never loved anyone the way I love you. Never knew I could love like this. He'd told her he loved her. With his words, his body. Despite the way he'd lashed out at her, she truly believed his drawings revealed how much he loved her, over and over again with every single stroke of his pencil. But now, he was trying to push her away, trying to make sure she never asked him about these drawings.
Well, it was going to take a hell of a lot more than that to make her leave. She wouldn't walk away from him.
But she would get him to tell her why he hid his beautiful art in a tiny room where no one would ever see it.
* * *
"Private." Charlie spoke softly now, but her voice curled around his insides, her hurt tangible. "How would you feel if I never allowed anyone to see my work? If I refused to show it for public consumption?"
Sebastian clenched his fists on the dresser into which he'd thrown all his secret thoughts and feelings. He couldn't believe what he'd just said to her. Especially when he knew firsthand how rough, angry words could hurt more than anything else.
"I'm sorry, Charlie." He straightened, turned, feeling like his bones were cracking. "So damned sorry. I didn't mean it. Not any of it." He'd screwed up again, despite the vow he'd made to himself only hours ago to do anything for her.
"I should have asked instead of prying." Her hand on his arm was so soft, so warm, so strong, the faint scent of his loving still clinging to her. "Your sketches are beautiful, Sebastian. I wish you'd shown them to me. You should be proud. They're not just drawings you do in your spare time. They're works of art."
"You're the work of art," he said to the carpet beneath his feet. He couldn't even gaze at the perfection in her face that he hadn't been able to capture.
She pressed her fingers into his arm, urging him to look at her. "Don't shrug me off." She held his gaze for a long moment, her eyes darkly serious. "You're a very talented artist. Very."
He respected her artistic vision more than that of anyone he'd ever met, yet somehow she had a blind spot for him, even after she'd seen all his imperfections. Not only in his drawing skills, but also in the way he'd failed her mother. He'd promised he would fix things and he hadn't. He wanted to shove the thoughts and feelings away, back inside the dark, secret place where he'd kept them for so long. But with Charlie...
Sebastian had never been able to hold back with her.
"I'm not an artist." The truth felt like razor blades on his tongue, but he made himself go on. "There are so many mistakes. I can't capture exactly what I see. I can't figure out how to make the drawings perfect no matter how hard I try."
"You made me beautiful even though I'm not perfect." She reached up to touch the tiny frown line between her eyes. "I suppose I could have a doctor stick a needle into me to get rid of this, but if you ask me, perfection doesn't have nearly as much character as real."
"God, no, don't ever let a doctor with a needle near your face." He gently slid a finger over the same mark. "I love that line. It shows your concentration, your dedication."
"And your drawings show so much about you, Sebastian. How you see people."
"They show the imperfection in my own abilities."
Closer now, her heat shot toward him like the pilot arc of one of her machines. He wanted to bury himself in her warmth.
"Sebastian." She ran her thumb over his lip as she said his name, her voice warm and husky. "Your drawings made me feel beautiful and cared for. And understood."
"Putting my pencil on the paper usually helps me figure people out. I'm simply analyzing people. I'm not an artist. Not like you."
"You are." She paused for a moment before adding, "The drawings of your parents are beautiful too. I feel as though I've met them now. Does drawing them help you remember them?"
He shook his head, fast, almost violently. "No, I'd remember everything, even without the sketches." Especially all his failures with them. "I guess I've never given up trying to figure out what I could have done for them."
An even deeper understanding lit her eyes. Then she pressed against him, rising on her toes to whisper, "Have all your drawings helped you figure me out?" She curled her arms around his neck.
"Not yet." His answer was muffled in her hair. "But I'm working on it."
"Maybe you just need to put a few more hours in, only this time instead of using pencil and paper, you could draw on my skin with your fingers."
His hands were already on her, burrowing beneath the shirt she'd borrowed, shoving it off her shoulders. "I can draw with my tongue as well."
"Draw with everything, Sebastian. Absolutely everything."
He picked her up, her body as light as a down pillow in his arms. He needed her love to banish the darkness of his thoughts and the things he'd so stupidly said to her. After laying her carefully on his bed, he stripped off the sweats he'd pulled on.
"Now, let's see," he murmured like a painter studying his canvas. "A line here." His tongue marked a streak from one beautiful, rose-tipped nipple to the other. "Geometric designs, I think."
She laughed, then shivered as he drew tongue circles around her nipple.
"We need more than one paintbrush." And his fingers joined the play. He traced her supple skin, her flesh quivering beneath his strokes.
"You make beautiful art-" She gasped as his touch painted a line straight down between her legs. "-but your work is also highly stimulating."
"It will take hours to cover every inch." Hours of bliss, hours of begging her forgiveness for his lapse into the anger and fear of the past, hours of loving her.
Her body was his sketchbook and he filled every inch until her body shuddered under his tongue, around his fingers. She tangled his hair, arched into him, and as she wrapped herself all around him, he prayed she felt his love for her in every kiss, every caress, every breath.
* * *
Charlie had long since fallen into an exhausted sleep in his arms and the sun was peeking over the horizon. Yet Sebastian still couldn't sleep.
She'd told him how beautiful his drawings were, how talented he was, that his sketches shouldn't be shoved in the back of a drawer like a dirty little secret. But if he truly had talent, then by now he should know how to help her fully realize her potential. He should have figured out how to convince her to step into the light and accept everything the world could give her.
He'd sensed her hesitation at the gala as people all but threw commissions at her, begging her to create sculptures for them. It was the same hesitation he'd felt with her more than a dozen times since then. It was almost as if she didn't want to be a huge success.
Sebastian frowned. Could he be reading her wrong? Was it possible she could be the one artist on earth who wasn't looking for acclaim or accolades? Or were all his screwups with her coloring everything else? First he'd blown it big time by offering to pay for her mother's care right after the first time they made love. Then tonight he'd lashed out at her for discovering a secret he shouldn't have kept from her in the first place. The fact that she hadn't walked out on him was a true miracle...and more than he deserved.