Page 66 of The Model Debutante
Tallie swallowed, struggled to calm her breathing, still the turmoil which wracked her. Then the world seemed to stop as she met Nick’s eyes. She had thought she had seen love in them before. She had glimpsed admiration, desire, love. But what she saw now took her breath away. There were all those things in the deep grey gaze, but mixed with them was awe, tenderness, strength and an aching vulnerability.
‘I love you,’ he whispered.
‘I love you too,’ she answered and saw the vulnerability vanish, showing her the banked fires of controlled desire behind the gentleness. And suddenly she did not want him to treat herlike a fragile butterfly cupped in his hands and the desire was welling up in her too, threatening to overwhelm her. ‘Love me, Nick. I will not break.’
Even then he was careful, controlled. She learned to surrender to him, to his clever hands, to his mouth, to the heat and strength of his body until her own was arching in supplication beneath his. When he entered her Tallie was already so wracked with the passion he had been building for her that the momentary pain passed in a flash to be replaced with an explosion of sensation.
Tallie cried out, her hands locked about Nick’s neck, her head thrown back on the tumbled pillows, her entire body and mind swept by a crashing wave of sensation.
Slowly, slowly she came to herself, marvelling at the weight of him capturing her so powerfully, so tenderly. The she realised that he still possessed her, filled her, completed her and her newly awakened body quivered around him.
‘Oh, my love.’ Nick’s eyes were on hers as she smiled tremulously up at him. ‘My beautiful, beautiful Talitha.’ And he began to move again, thrusting, possessing, until she found that she was no longer just marvelling at the feel of him within her but that her body was responding, answering his. That extraordinary sensation was building again inexorably, even more overwhelmingly. She drowned in his eyes, convinced she was going to shatter now, break into pieces.
Then as her body convulsed around him again she heard his cry and saw, as her vision blurred, the expression of triumph and love and utter completion that transformed his face.
Tallie woke slowly. She stretched, reached out a hand as one or other of them had done at intervals throughout that incredible night – and found the bed empty. Her fingers found only the warm, rumpled hollow where Nick had lain. Tallieopened her eyes, blinking in full daylight and lay looking up at the underside of the bed canopy while she thought about just how new and strange her body felt.
It was as though every muscle was sleek and polished, as though her skin had been oiled and as if she should stretch and purr like a cat instead of simply sitting up in bed. She compromised, wriggling up against the pillows, arching her back and raising her arms in a long, luxurious stretch.
Her husband was standing across the room from the bed, reaching up to turn a small key in a hole in the panelling. As he heard her move he turned and smiled at her. Tallie felt her heart give a sharp beat. Loved and loving, that was how she felt, how she knew she would always feel with Nick.
‘Good morning, my lady wife.’
‘Good morning, my lord.’ He had not troubled to pull on his robe and Tallie regarded him, unashamed and admiring. ‘What are you doing? That panelling is new isn’t it?’
Nick turned back and opened what she could now see was a pair of doors above the dado level, then stepped aside to repeat the action on the next length of wall.
Tallie gasped. Revealed by the opening doors was a large oil painting, a scene of a Classical temple with a nymph placing an offering before the altar.
‘But that is one of Mr Harland’s canvasses.’ She swung her feet out of bed and ran to Nick’s side as he opened one panel after another. ‘And that, and that one and that is the Diana picture! Nick, have you bought all the painting he did with me as the model?’
In answer Nick swept a hand around the room. The locked panels were open to reveal six scenes of the ancient world, each with the slender blonde-haired figure of the new Lady Arndale. ‘It seemed the safest way of keeping them from prying eyes, and, when I saw them, how could I resist?’
Nick watched, hardly conscious of the smile on his face as he regarded his wife walking slowly around the room gazing up at the luminous pictures, her hands pressed to her flushed cheeks. Each image was lovely, but none matched the real woman he knew. For a moment he shivered at the thought of how he would be feeling now if she had refused him. To possess those still images and know that he had lost the one being who completed him as a person. Unbearable.
Tallie turned slowly to face him and he felt his spirits soar again, the unthinkable vanishing in the warmth of her smile. ‘There is still one space.’ She gestured at the central panel between the windows.
The half-formed idea he had entertained but never thought through came to his lips before he could check it. ‘Perhaps you could…No.’ No, the idea of his Tallie exposed to the eyes of any other man again, even the apparently sexless Harland, was unbearable. Then he saw her face and could not have felt worse if had struck her.
‘Tallie, darling, I am sorry, I would not have you go through that again for anything. I am a thoughtless beast.’ He caught her in his arms, burying his face in her hair.Damn it.This business of being in love was far harder than he had ever imagined. You opened up your every thought and feeling to another and they to you – and that made it so easy to hurt them. He was aware of her slender body shaking against him. He had made her cry.
‘Tallie, sweetheart…You arelaughing?’ She struggled to get her expression under control. ‘You were teasing me?’
Instantly she looked all contrition. It was incredible the way she could hide every feeling or let down every barrier and expose her soul to him. ‘I am sorry. It was just your face when you were contemplating it, and then instantly you came all over possessive. I think perhaps people would expect a nice conventional portrait of both of us for the main reception rooms,but I have a much better idea for this wall.’
‘Yes?’ Nick said cautiously, telling himself that he had better learn fast how to deal with this infuriating minx of a new wife before she ran rings around him.
‘It was Mr Harland’s suggestion, and I have to admit that I have thought of it often since he made it.’ Nick waited, hands on hips. ‘He said, the first time he saw you – when I, of course, didnotsee you – that he would like to paint you as Alexander the Great. I found it a powerful image,’ Tallie added reflectively.
‘Alexander? I suppose I must be flattered, but you do not want a picture of a man in armour in the bedchamber, surely?’
‘Oh no, not in armour.’ For some reason Tallie was edging away from him round the edge of the bed. ‘In the Antique style carrying a shield and sword and wearing sandals.’
‘And what else?’
‘Why, nothing at all.’
‘You…You expect me to pose naked for some da…blasted artist?’
