Kincaid's legs brushed against her skirts as he stepped behind her. "Do you like it?" he breathed, one hand resting lightly against her waist.
She felt the shock of his touch as if she were naked. "Like it? He looks like he's hurting her."
"Does he?"
Ava's eyes found the painting again. The woman's pale skin proved a stark counterpoint to the man's olive body. Her lips were parted, her eyes closed. An expression, not of horror, but... something else.
Ecstasy?
Warmth slithered through Ava's veins. She didn't quite understand the painting. But it made her feel something she'd never felt before in her life.
And Kincaid's hand was rubbing, just gently, against her hip.
Suddenly her focus wasn't on the image, but on the press of his body against hers. A wash of heat swept through her.
Suddenly she was inside the painting, on her hand and knees, and it was Kincaid behind her, buried to the hilt inside her. Every nerve in her body was suddenly alert.
"He's not hurting her," Kincaid whispered, his breath warm on the back of her neck. "Some women like to be controlled like that." His mech hand brushed from her nape the loose curls that had tumbled from her chignon, and swept them over her shoulder.
Ava shivered, and her nipples hardened. She clenched her fingers into a fist, almost desperate to touch herself there. Or no, to ask him to do it. But even as she thought it, she knew she couldn't say the words. Not quite that confident, not yet.
Kincaid's mouth brushed against her nape, and it was everything. Ava curled a hand over his, forcing his touch to harden against her waist. She couldn't stop herself from melting against him, until her back was pressed against every inch of his chest and abdomen, and her head tilted forward in subjugation, surrendering her nape to him.
"I think you're that type of woman," he whispered. "Do you want to be controlled, Ava?"
Hell if she knew. She nodded, her lips parting slightly. Right then she'd say yes to anything he asked.
"Do you feel wet?" he murmured, brushing his mouth against her ear. "Between your thighs?"
A pulse of illicit pleasure echoed through her abdomen. How could she answer a question like that? "I-I don't know what it feels like."
"You ache," he said gently, splaying a hand across her lower abdomen, "here. Don't you?"
Ava's knees trembled. It was as though he set off a chain reaction within her. "Please," she whispered, not quite certain what it was she asked for.
"Not yet. You've barely seen anything yet. I want you to know what you're committing yourself to, Ava. What I'll expect from you. Come." Taking her hand, he moved toward the next painting, and relieved it of its velvet cover.
Ava followed him in a hush of skirts. The oils in the painting were dark, yet lush. She'd never seen art like this before. There was something incredibly warm and inviting about it, something intimate.
And then she realized what she was looking at.
A woman lay sprawled across dark red velvet, staring out at the viewer with a knowing Mona Lisa smile, even as she slid a hand through the dark hair of the man bending over her. Ava froze. The man's face was buried between the woman's thighs, and she had no idea what he was doing to the woman, but... but she felt it, somewhere deep inside her.
Do you feel wet? Kincaid had asked her, and Ava knew now what he meant, for there was a delicious slickness between her thighs. "What is he doing to her?"
"He's pleasuring her, kitten." Kincaid stepped between her and the painting, and her gaze locked on the way the top button on his shirt was undone. Her vision dipped, turning the world to shadows around her, and then he was pushing her back, one hand clutching her fingers and the other on her midriff. "Fucking her with his tongue." He leaned toward her, brushing his lips against her ear and the sensitive skin in front of it. "Perhaps he's even nibbling on that sweet little button between her thighs. Have you ever touched yourself there, Ava? Do you know what I'm speaking of?"
"I know what the clitoris is," she whispered, arching in his arms as his teeth sank into her earlobe, shooting lightning through all her veins. "Oh."
A rush of molten heat went through her, centering right between her thighs.
"You didn't answer the question." Kincaid's whisper held all manner of wickedness. "Tell me. Do you ever touch yourself, Ava? Do you fuck yourself with your fingers? Do you know what I'm talking about?"
She pushed away with a gasp, pressing her hands to her cheeks. "Yes."