The Sculptor's Seduction (The Gentlemen's Guild Book 2) Read online

  “He sounds like an interesting person,” Cyn continued as the door sequestered them inside the car.

  “Nope – just an asshole.”

  Interesting. Even though she could sense Sloane’s annoyance with his friend, there was thread of tenderness in the way that he spoke about him.

  Sloane adjusted his seat – probably due to the heavy erection that was now squeezed between his legs – the movement causing his thigh to brush hers; again, it felt like someone had put a brand up against her skin, the way the heat seared straight through to her core. She hissed and squeezed her legs together in an effort to ease the ache that had intensified between them.

  Control. “So, what do you need a model for?” Her question was an attempt to regain command over the situation – and her body. Truthfully, she really was curious about what she’d just agreed to. She hadn’t really put too much stock in what Pierce had said earlier, figuring it was just a lie or a ploy or a code – like he needed a model for a porn movie or something.

  Now, that was something that she would definitely be walking away from.

  “I can’t tell you right now; I’ll need you to sign an NDA first,” he replied matter-of-factly.

  Her eyes widened as his reply shocked her. Maybe she should have asked before they left the bar, but the way he’d given her the chance to back out earlier told her that she didn’t have anything to worry about. Maybe she did?

  “Look, maybe I should have asked before we left, but I’m not willing to be in any type of pornography and I’m definitely not into any BSDM or ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ shit. So, if that is where this might be heading, you can just have the driver pull over now because I’m not interested.”

  “Interesting,” Sloane replied. His eyes had widened for a moment at her sudden, assertive outburst before an actual smile began to creep over his face.

  A smile.

  She hadn’t thought it was possible – and she wasn’t sure what was more breathtaking – his eyes or a sincere smile on his face. Her eyes narrowed cautiously, turning her body into the seat so that she could look more directly at him.

  “What do you mean interesting?”

  He shrugged his shoulders. “An escort with boundaries.”

  She wanted to take offense, but the way he had said it hadn’t been derisive. In fact, it sounded like he was pleased… that in spite of her chosen profession, she at least had some standards that she was willing to stand up for no matter the cost.

  “Well?”

  “No.” The word was a seal over the momentary break in his cool exterior. “I told you, I don’t want that… any of it. I need a model for a classical piece of art. That’s all.” His tone, more so than his words, terminated their conversation for the rest of the car ride.

  Cyn rolled her eyes, crossing her arms over her chest and relaxing back into the seat. Fine, then. He could be rude all he wanted; she was making out in the deal if all he wanted was for her to just stand there and look pretty.

  She looked over at him through the corner of her eye. He, too, was looking out the window on the other side of the car. She could see his jaw muscle flexing with the tension that she’d felt radiating off of his body long before. He was annoyed and aroused… and he was fighting like hell to beat both emotions into submission.

  She didn’t understand it.

  Maybe he was turned off by the fact that she was an escort – and that she sometimes slept with those men for money. But then why continue this charade? Why ask her if she was sure that she wanted to do this when it seemed like he was the one who was far more stressed by this arrangement? And why was he so frustrated by his attraction to her? Why was he trying to hide it?

  She was willing and she wanted him.

  More than that, she wanted answers to these questions.

  The biggest and most frustrating question though was why he didn’t want to want her.

  She’d never encountered this before – a living, breathing male not wanting to sleep with her. She enjoyed feeling wanted. She enjoyed making men work for her attentions. She enjoyed knowing that she retained that power over them – and consequently, whether or not they had the ability to break her heart. Sloane was the first one who had her questioning herself, especially because she could see that his body was definitely on board. Yet, he still continued to shut her down.

  So, why hadn’t she run when he’d given her the chance? Why did she act on her attraction to him when it was clear that she couldn’t control him – or herself – the way that she needed to? In her mind, that discrepancy had thrown down a gauntlet that he was in command of their interaction and that, she couldn’t handle. She desired him and she wanted to prove that she had the power to have him. She needed to feel like she had more control over his arousal than he did.

  Control was everything.

  Shit, this was really not a good idea.

  Sloane chewed on the inside of his cheek in annoyance as he stared out at the familiar blocks that led up to his midtown studio space.

  Alcohol. Pierce. Cyn. How had he made so many poor choices in just one evening? His hand flexed at his side, careful not to touch the tempting vixen who was only a few willing inches away…

  No. He would never pay someone for sex – even if he was someone who had sex. His father had done that – far too many times to count.

  Cynthia was different though; she wasn’t what he envisioned a typical escort to be. She was strong and assertive, looking to take control, but also willing to walk away if something made her uncomfortable. He had to wonder why she was an escort in the first place… He’d ask her eventually.

  Sloane knew he was playing a dangerous game proceeding with Pierce’s proposition; even Pierce didn’t realize how detrimental this could be to him. He’d been attracted to women before; he’d touched… pleasured… women before; although, it had been a while. However, none of them aroused him like she did, which meant that there could be absolutely none of that between them. He wasn’t even going to bother to try and fool himself into thinking that it was the alcohol that was accentuating his desire for her. He knew his body and he knew that right now, the alcohol had absolutely nothing to do with how much he wanted to pull her on top of him, hike up that short dress of hers, and plunge himself so deep inside of her that he obliterated every memory – every reason – for his celibacy.

  No, the key to complete restraint is knowing just at what point you will lose it; Cyn was his point.

  He wasn’t normally a cold, curt asshole – that usually fell on Pierce. But with Cynthia… with Cyn…

  God, even her fucking name was enticing him to break every vow of restraint that he’d made to himself.

  He’d tried to tell himself that his body was on fire with rage at the situation he’d been put in – using an escort who thought he wanted to sleep with her – as a model; the reality was that his body was on fire for her.

  When she’d touched him, desire had rolled through him so potently that controlling it had made him nauseous. She’d thought he’d gripped her hand to stop its progress up his leg… sure, that had been the goal. But as soon as he’d touched her, it had taken every ounce of willpower to not shove it against his aching groin.

  It had never been this bad before.

  He shifted slightly in his seat again; his fucking cock painfully confined by pants that were not meant to constrain something of that size. Forget ‘an erection lasting longer than four hours’ – this one was going to take him days to get rid of. And that would only be if he was completely isolated from her presence. Which wasn’t going to happen because the most idiotic thing he’d done all night was continue to walk willingly into this torturous trap that required him to use her as a model.

  What was going to happen when he needed her to strip naked for him to sculpt her? What about when he needed to touch her to make sure every curve and bend was correct? He bit his cheek until it bled, preferring the pain rather than admitting his groan of need.

  There
was just something about her; or maybe it was everything about her – her confidence with Pierce and the way that it disappeared when she looked at him, the way fire melted the rich mahogany of her eyes when he’d told her that she ‘didn’t have to do this,’ insulted that he would question what most would assume was not a profession of choice; and mostly, the way that she tried to seduce him, looking insulted when he’d shut her down, yet still persisting in her advances. Although the giant billboard on the front of his pants that had ‘I want to fuck you’ written all over his blatant erection probably encouraged her.

  It was also the way she carried herself like an angel when all she wanted to do was sin.

  Just like the huge slab of stone sitting up in his studio right now waiting for him to uncover the secrets that lay trapped beneath, there was so much more to Cyn than the sinfully seductive escort sitting next to him; there were secrets beneath the surface that he’d glimpsed through the cracks in her facade and that is why he was letting himself continue to be tortured. Because sculpting her would let him set those secrets free.

  “Are we almost there?” Her soft voice broke through his train of thought just as the car pulled up to the curb and came to a stop. “Guess that answers that,” she mumbled.

  Opening the door, he stepped out and held out his hand to her. Big mistake. It was out of gentlemanly habit to help a woman from the car, but as her silken strong fingers clasped his, he couldn’t stop the groan that escaped through his clenched teeth; his whole body wishing she would move her firm grip to an appendage farther south.

  “Your studio is a flower shop?” she asked in confusion. The building in front of them had huge windows filled with vibrant floral displays and a green awning above that mirrored the words on the window – The Stems Shoppe.

  “It’s upstairs.” Sloane pulled his keys from his pocket and opened up the door into the flower shop, the scent of fresh blooms wafting over them.

  “And the florists don’t mind that you have to get to your studio through their business?” She looked around as they walked through the aisle of flowers towards a dimly lit staircase in the back.

  “It’s my building, so if they want to stay here they don’t really have a choice.”

  “You own the whole building?” she asked, incredulously.

  “Yes.” Her quiet ‘wow’ in response dissipated into the fragrant dimness of the space. He flicked the light switch at the bottom of the stairs which caused no perceptible change in illumination in the stairwell. At the top of the first landing there were two doors – one straight ahead and one to the right, both closed and locked.

  Sloane unlocked the door on his right and opened it into the warm light that illuminated the entire space beyond. He heard Cyn’s gasp behind him as they walked into the room. The front of the room that faced out towards the street was lined with windows that he’d textured to obscure the view from anyone trying to look inside. About fifteen feet into the room there was a partial wall that divided the space into left and right areas; each side of the wall was covered with mirrors. On the left side of the partition were various sketches and half-completed sculptures organized neatly into groups. The right side of the room was his main workspace. It had a large couch, two chaises, and a mini-fridge that looked to be stocked only with water. The furniture all sat on a pristine, plush white carpet which extended all the way to the front of the building, but stopped short in the other direction. In front of the seating area stood a giant, rectangular piece of white and gray marble. There was a small stool beside it and a short ladder next to it.

  “You’re a sculptor…” she asserted breathlessly. Sloane refused to look – or acknowledge her; seeing the face that accompanied her tone would only make his painfully tight pants even more excruciating. “Sloane, the sculptor.”

  Even the way she said his name made him feel like she was physically caressing him; the way the syllables slipped over her tongue, just like that tongue would slip all over his body – if he would let it.

  He tried not to look at her, his gaze shifting to various points in the room until she walked right around him into the space – and into his view – taking in everything that she saw. The warm light of the room flickered off of her long, dark hair causing it to shimmer like rich, melted chocolate as she first moved towards the piles of sketches and smaller statues. He stood paralyzed, watching the unconsciously sensual sway of her body as she glided over to them, watching the curves of her body as she bent down to closer examine his talent, the gentleness of her touch as she traced over the facial features of the busts. Sloane shifted uncomfortably as his traitorous mind imagined that touch along the achingly hard length of his cock.

  He cleared his throat, interrupting her perusal. “I have the NDA over here if you want to read over it. Maybe take it home with you…” He needed to bring this eventful night to a close before he continued down his path of exponentially poor decisions. He turned to walk towards the other side of the room, not wanting to stand too long facing her lest she taunt him again for his unattended arousal.

  “You are incredibly talented. Did you always want to be a sculptor?” she asked, following him over to the other side of the room, her gaze still drawn back over to his work as he pulled the paperwork from the small filing cabinet in the corner.

  “No and yes. Did you always want to be an escort?” Sloane countered, walking back over to her with the papers in his outstretched hand – a physical barrier between them.

  He watched her mahogany eyes ripple in defiance, but if her previous responses were any indication, she wasn’t about to let him think she was ashamed of what she did.

  “No, I didn’t,” Cyn answered honestly. “I wanted to be a dancer… I wanted to own my own dance school.” She took the papers from him. “What do you mean ‘yes and no’?” She pressed again, taking a seat on one of the chaises as she began to peruse the document.

  “Yes, because I always wanted to do something with art and no, because it took me many years to figure out what that something was.” He cautiously followed her over to sit in the opposing chaise just as he followed with her line of questioning. “So, why aren’t you? Why didn’t you?”

  Cyn glanced up from the NDA, eyes flaring as their tit-for-tat game of questions kept going deeper towards a place that she didn’t want to revisit.

  “Who says I’m not a dancer?” The rhetorical question was the beginning of her cryptic response. “And I don’t own a studio because it’s expensive to start one in the city and I’m still saving – so, thank you for your very generous contribution.”

  “So, you do this in order to be able to open your school?” His assertion stung – he saw the ever-so-slight flinch at his words. He hadn’t meant them as an insult, but he was just genuinely curious.

  “So, you do this,” she paused, motioning towards the marble and the other sculptures, “only in order to sell your work and make money?” Her counter question caught him off-guard. Of course, his sculptures weren’t done for money – all profits from his work were donated to art charities. But, her answer meant that she wasn’t an escort entirely for the financial benefit either.

  “Fair enough.” He relaxed back in the chair, trying to at least fake the calm that was impossible for his body right now. “So then why else do you do this?”

  He wanted to know what was beneath those cracks.

  He saw the split-second of vulnerability that crossed over her face; the flash of truth begging to escape. But she quickly regained control, looking down at the NDA and scribbling her name onto the paper even though there was no way she’d read everything over already. Then she stood, her lids heavy, her lower-lip between her teeth as she swayed slowly across the space that separated them.

  Shit. He was trapped.

  Sloane felt his heart begin to pound, sweat beading all over his body. She stopped in front of the chair – between his legs. Bending down, she rested one hand on either armrest, giving him a generous view down her dress.


  Fuck. He was about to orgasm just from seeing the exposed swells of her breasts in his periphery; the center of his gaze remained locked with hers.

  He couldn’t move; he couldn’t breathe. All he could do was watch as her face leaned in closer to his and hope that his stone-cold stare and his earlier insistence stopped her from touching him; his restraint almost completely gone.

  Her face moved to the side. Her cheek coming to rest against his as she whispered in his ear, “Because I like pleasure and I like control.” As she drew back, the fire in her eyes threatened to melt the ice in his.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her hand that was holding the NDA move off of the armrest. Determined not to break her stare, he realized too late its destination.

  “It’s signed,” Cyn said as she set the paper down in his lap, pressing it down directly onto his erection. “What should I do now?”

  White-hot desire flashed behind his eyes. Sloane couldn’t even register the suggestiveness in her question; her touch – through his clothes and the papers – had brought him to the brink of release. He wanted to vomit from the force with which his abdomen was clenching, trying to stop any further evidence of his physical predicament. The only thing he couldn’t stop was the air that hissed from his mouth as every cell in his body begged him to just fuck her.

  “Come back tomorrow night,” he bit out. His voice managing to retain an eerie calmness.

  “I work until midnight.” He wanted to ask what kind of escort had such specific working hours, but now was not the time.

  “Come afterward.”

  “I’ll see you then,” Cyn replied with a smile, enjoying the state that she’d put him in. She stood and walked over to the door, his stare following her since his body couldn’t. Her gaze met his one last time. “Goodnight, Sloane…” The seductress had the nerve to wink at him just as she shut the door behind her, the noise masking the groan he could no longer control.