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

  Sloane went back to his sketch, realizing his hand had started to capture the lips he was just fantasizing about. He’d gotten questions about the NDA before, mostly because the women he usually chose were completely innocent and had no thoughts of anything sexual happening between them.

  “No. It’s because my artwork is kept completely separate from my business and I need a legal contract to make sure that you don’t inadvertently mix the two.”

  One of her perfectly-shaped eyebrows raised in interest. “What else do you do?”

  “I’m in real estate.” Unless they already knew of him, he never revealed that he owned the largest real estate investment company in the country.

  “Mm… Well, now that makes sense, knowing that you own this building. You know, I actually show apartments for several realtors at Keller-Williams.”

  That got his attention. He paused from his rough motions over the paper. “Really?” he asked in disbelief; it was a stupid question because why would she lie about that? Cyn nodded and he was momentarily distracted by the light catching the soft, porcelain skin of her neck as it flexed with the minor movement. His mouth watered, wanting to kiss it to see if it tasted as pure as it looked. “So, you show houses… and you’re an escort…”

  Her eyes flared, daring him to continue down that path. “And I—””

  “Yes – and you are dancer who wants to open up her own studio.” She bit that lip again, but just nodded. “Seems like a lot of very… different… areas of interest.”

  “Hello, Pot? This is kettle…” she countered sarcastically, crossing her arms over her chest, accentuating the rise and fall of the enticing swells of her breasts. He furrowed his brow at her in confusion, causing her to elaborate on the strange response. “Says the man who is a realtor and a sculptor.”

  Oh.

  “I have my reasons,” he said gruffly, choosing not to clarify her ‘realtor’ comment.

  “Well, so do I,” she returned. His eyes caught the sudden downturn of her head, as though those reasons were painful to her – and he wanted to know why.

  “So,” he paused to clear his throat. “Am I correct to assume that dancing is your pass— I mean, your preferred trade?”

  “Honestly… I’m not sure,” she replied, fumbling with the zipper on the end of her jacket. “At one point, it was… maybe it will be again.”

  “How long have you been a dancer?” His hand moved furiously over the paper, capturing the sadness and nostalgia that played over her exquisite features.

  “Since I was six.” A smile bloomed on her face at the memory. “My parents took me to see the Nutcracker here in the city and…” He watched her catch herself, realizing that she was saying – revealing – too much. “Can I see?” she asked coyly, the seductive shield returning over her face.

  Without waiting for a response, she swayed over to him and looked down at the sketchpad and the five rough portraits that he’d just done of her. “Wow.” They weren’t detailed, but they were emotive. “That’s incredible.” Her gaze moved to his face, waiting until his eyes met hers before continuing. “Which one will you sculpt?”

  “I’m not sure. I’m not sure I’ve found it yet.” He stared back at the couch, implying that she needed to go sit back down – away from him, outside of the radius where he could easily come into contact with her.

  She stayed for a moment, letting the heady tension in the air build between them before turning back to her seat.

  “Wait,” he said. His words halting her in her tracks as he was overcome with a singular desire. “Dance for me.”

  He didn’t know where the thought – the request – had come from. Maybe he’d wanted to give her something to do to keep her focus off of trying to seduce him. Maybe it was because ever since he’d learned she was a dancer, he wanted to see the way her graceful body moved doing the thing that it loved. Or maybe it was because he’d seen the luminescent look on her face when she spoke about dancing… and the way it faded to dust at the memory of whatever had made her stop.

  His words froze her. For a good four seconds she just stood there facing away from him. Finally, her body turned ever so slightly so that she could meet his eyes. Sloane saw that all the color had drained from her face; she was naturally pale, but right now, she looked ashen.

  Shit. He felt like he’d just been punched in the gut, seeing her reaction – the pain he’d caused her with that simple request. Cyn looked like he’d ripped her heart out and had asked her to dance on the pieces.

  All the tension fled from his body; everything that he’d built up during the day to keep him under control around her was gone with just that one look. He’d wanted to keep her at a distance and with that familiar, heartbreaking expression, it was all he could do to pull her into his arms and apologize – to tell her she didn’t have to dance and that everything would be ok. He stared at her, the mask of control gone, revealing as clear as the blue of his eyes just how much he wanted her.

  His mouth parted, the apology that brimmed inside of him about to overflow when the unthinkable happened. Her hands moved slowly to pull her jacket from her shoulders; she let it drop onto the couch. She turned away from him again, slipping off her sneakers and placing her sock-clad feet gently onto the carpet. Again, she stopped, continuing to face away from him, and looked out the frosted windows. Sloane saw a shudder wrack her body and he thought for sure she was going to turn around, tell him to ‘fuck off’, and walk out of his life forever.

  No, forget that.

  The sudden fear of losing her motivated him to stand, again just on the brink of rescinding his request when she began to move.

  The silence heightened every other sense of their surroundings. The lavender permeating the space, the soft lights of the studio flickering over her luminous pale skin. Somewhere outside, a street performer had struck up a classical tune on a violin – it was faint and it was slightly out of tune.

  But none of that mattered as her body began to flow.

  Sloane stared in awe as Cyn began to dance in front of him. It was as though her body had taken over and taken her past the edge of where her mind refused to go. Her arms and legs moved with an unearthly fluidity as they carried her over the carpeted space in front of him. Bending, leaping, spinning… she floated before him to the faint song that played in the distance, the melody only accentuated by the heavy beating of his heart.

  She didn’t look at him; Sloane wasn’t sure she looked at anything. It was like she was in an entirely different world. As she danced, the color returned to her face in full force, giving her a heightened sense of vibrancy that exuded from her every pore.

  As her performance came to a close, her chest heaved with what had seemed like effortless exertion. Sloane stared at her, letting out the breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. He was afraid to move, afraid to break the spell that had let him see something he knew she hadn’t let out in a long time.

  But as her gaze finally raised to his, what he saw shattered the enchantment. Tears streaked down her stricken face. She stared at him as though she didn’t know what had just happened, but she knew that she’d opened a door to something that should have stayed locked inside.

  Suddenly, he was in front of her, his hands clasping the soft skin of her face as his thumbs brushing away her tears. They breathed into the tension between them. Her eyes stared into his, begging him to take her pain away – the pain that he’d asked her to revisit. He swallowed over the lump in his throat, not knowing what to say or do.

  The pad of his thumb trailed farther onto her face, grazing over the plump flesh of the lip she’d been biting earlier. His eyes stormed with desire as the pink skin moved underneath his finger. Spurred on by her performance, his closeness to her, and now the heat of the contact between them, his body now began to provide him with a variety of ideas of how to handle the situation. Their bodies weren’t touching, but he was as hard as a rock; the emotion in her dance breaking through his restraint. He’
d worn stiff jeans tonight, but knew that at this point they were no match for the erection he had – especially when the way that she was looking at him only said one thing –

  “Kiss me, Sloane.” Her voice was unsteady in her request and that damn lower lip trembling underneath his finger. This wasn’t the seductive Cyn who was trying to tempt him into sex. This was the scared Cyn, the one that she kept hidden, pleading with him to make her hurt disappear. “Please, kiss me so I don’t —”

  Her request was cut off as his lips crushed hers. It probably should have been sweet and soothing, but instead it was angry and demanding – angry because he’d hurt her and angry because he’d lost the battle with his restraint. He was going to kiss her whether she had asked him or not.

  Her sweet mouth opened beneath his. Sloane groaned as he finally got what he’d been eyeing all night – that succulent lower lip. He sucked the delectable piece of her into his mouth. The moan that spilled from her set his entire body on fire with need. His tongue delved into her mouth, beginning a dance with hers that could only have far more pleasurable – and painful – consequences; and she didn’t miss a beat. With a practiced ease that he didn’t even want to ponder, her mouth molded underneath his, each fighting to take more from the other.

  Sloane grabbed her lip again between his teeth, pulling back slightly on it before releasing it. He stared into the flaming desire in her eyes; gone was the sadness and tears from before, their passion had incinerated every drop.

  “That was the first time I’ve danced like that in three years.” Her confession was heavy and her body sagged as the weight of it was removed from her chest.

  “When you dance, you look like an angel,” Sloane said hoarsely. He didn’t know why he brought it up, but something deep inside of him needed her to know just how beautifully mesmerizing she was. Somehow, though, it had been the wrong thing to say. Her eyes flared with anger and the genuine passion that had overflowed from their depths was now glazed over with a layer of decided determination.

  “Well, I’m not,” she replied. “And I’d be more than happy to show you just how sinful I can be.”

  Sloane was stunned by her words; stunned to the point where he didn’t react quite fast enough. Her hand clasped around his neck as she pressed her lips back onto his. The shock and the hot honey of her mouth caused the split-second delay in his retreat – which was just long enough for her tortuously tempting body to come up flush against his. Her soft warmth against his hot hardness.

  Sloane saw white behind his eyes as he felt her hips press against the straining hardness of his erection. He pulled himself violently away from her; the pleasure so exquisite it was painful.

  He dragged slow, jagged breaths of oxygen into his lungs, trying to calm the desire that raged inside of him. His jaw flexed and his hands gripped his hips as he tried to regain control over his senses.

  Meanwhile, the vixen just stood there with that seductive smile playing over her face. Although, this time he could see how it didn’t quite reach her eyes. No, her eyes told a different story – one that regretted her defensive response to words that were only meant to encourage and soothe her.

  “I think it’s time to call it a night,” he bit out, keeping his eyes on the sketchpad that lay on the floor in front of him.

  “If that’s what you want…”

  Sloane bit the inside of his cheek. Why did everything always have to have an innuendo with her? He didn’t want her forced passion. He shouldn’t want her real passion either – but it was the real Cyn he couldn’t deny.

  She slipped her sneakers back on and swayed slowly past him. She stopped and put her hand on his shoulder, his body rippling at the assault.

  “Goodnight, Sloane.” Shit, he could come just from hearing her say his name like that, all heady and hoarse.

  He didn’t respond – couldn’t while she was still touching him. Finally, her hand dropped and she made her way to the door.

  “Should I come back?” she asked hesitantly from the doorway. Her voice was soft and uncertain – wondering if she’d pushed him too far. He could tell she wasn’t sure if his ‘call it a night’ meant for good.

  He tilted his head in her direction, his ice-cold eyes immobilizing her. He wanted to make her wait uncomfortably for his decision, but he managed to bear the silence a second or two before saying “Friday night.”

  “I work…”

  Sloane tilted his head slightly in her direction. “Afterward.” Not again.

  “Ok. Goodnight.”

  He didn’t move until after he heard the soft click of the door close behind her – and then, only to release his breath. His hand came up to pinch the bridge of his nose.

  What was he thinking? What had he done?

  His lips still tingled from hers, his mouth still tasting the sweetness of her tongue. That instant when Cyn had been pressed entirely up against him – it had branded him. The entire front of his body burned from where it had touched hers.

  He bent over, groaning into the silence as the movement made his jeans cut into his painfully hard arousal. Everything around him faded as he looked at the drawings he’d done of Cyn. Flipping to a new page, he dropped to his knees on the floor as his hand began to furiously capture snapshots of her as she danced – the moment that her movements brought her back to life, the ethereal peacefulness that had carried her away as her body spun away her sadness, and finally the moment she’d returned to Earth – the magnitude of what she’d just done washing over her.

  Why had she stopped?

  What had caused his angel to fall from grace?

  Chapter 5

  Cyn wiped the water off of her face. Drying herself with the towel, she took a good look at her reflection in the mirror. No bags underneath her eyes, no sign of stressed sleeplessness… because there hadn’t been any.

  When she’d crawled into bed last night after getting home from Sloane’s studio, she’d mentally prepared herself for a sleepless night.

  What had come over her?

  She’d thought her heart had stopped when he’d asked her to dance. She could have danced anything else – she could have danced one of her routines that she had for the Paradise; she also could have refused. Instead, it had felt like her body couldn’t deny him no matter how much her mind had wanted to.

  Most days, she reveled in her ‘unworthiness’ and its freedom, but tonight, for him – the one man who didn’t just jump at the chance to have her – she had been drawn to show him her worth; a worth that she’d kept locked inside because no one else bothered to look that deeply.

  She hadn’t danced ballet since that day – the day she’d found Marcus, the day she’d realized that ballet had made her weak. She’d tried, but every time her limbs began to move… even if her feet began to subconsciously drift into fourth position… her heart revolted. The shock of seeing him with another woman and the pain of knowing that this was what he did – that it hadn’t been just her and that she hadn’t been special.

  She’d only been especially gullible.

  Somehow, none of that had mattered last night. Sloane had asked her to dance for him and it was like her body finally had been given permission to breathe. Her heart had started again as her limbs began to move, each motion of her arms and legs was like oxygen back into her muscles that had been starved for so long. Yes, she danced regularly now, but it wasn’t with her heart – her heart had always been tied to ballet.

  It had been incredible and emotional. It had been the same beautiful high that she’d experienced three years ago, but this time she knew that that high came with consequences. She’d felt the tears begin to well even as her body continued to pursue its calling. Dancing for Sloane meant only one thing – that for him, she was able to risk it all. But, was she willing to?

  When her body finally came to a halt, the concern that covered his face shot straight to her heart. In that moment, she could see that he would have done anything that she asked to ease her pain yet she did
n’t want to try to take advantage of that; she simply needed him. She needed his kiss and his comfort; she’d let down the only barrier she’d ever built and she needed him to do the same for her.

  And he had.

  God, his kiss…

  She rubbed her legs together at the memory. Why he wouldn’t just take her and give into the sexual tension between them was beyond her… and beyond frustrating. If she hadn’t been so emotional, finally tasting him probably could have made her come. But it was her confirmation in that kiss that set her soul on fire; he took her mouth the way she knew he wanted to take her body.

  And then he had to go and ruin it by bringing up her dancing.

  Her walls refortified and she pushed him away with the one thing she knew he would resist – her overeager attempts to seduce him.

  The burn of desire hadn’t subsided when he’d sent her home. No, she’d come home, stripped down, and climbed into bed, her fingers finding their way to her core. She stroked herself, imaging it was Sloane – his fingers, his tongue. The tension finally released from her blood and she tumbled rapidly into sleep.

  With the emotional and passionate events of the night, she was sure that sleep would be elusive. Or that unwelcome memories from the past would pay her a long-overdue visit. And yet, none of them came. She’d slept heavily until her alarm went off, dragging her from the deepest levels of sleep. After how much she’d suffered because of Marcus and every piece of her heart that he’d broken, Cyn was sure that her dance for Sloane had opened the door for the trauma to haunt her.

  But Sloane hadn’t let it.

  The thought, taste, and feel of him overwhelmed her every sense to the point where there wasn’t room for anything or anyone else.

  And she wasn’t sure whether or not she should be grateful or terrified.

  Cyn tugged on sweats and a t-shirt; she needed to do something else besides replay the last two days over and over again in her head. Sunday was her day off – and she was going to make the most of it.