Page 81 of Hard to Love
“But lots of other artists…hell, not just artists, but scholars of all types dabbled in everything from playing an instrument to writing poetry. They were revered for it.”
She glanced up at him. “This may have escaped your attention, but we live in the twenty-first century, not the fifteenth.”
“Just because other people don’t always appreciate thatyou’re a Renaissance woman doesn’t mean you shouldn’t.” He stroked a hand down her hair, enjoying the way it curled around and clung to his fingers. He wanted to touch her hair, her skin, her heart every day for the rest of his life. And knowing that he couldn’t settled in his chest like a piece of cast iron. “Who says you can’t pursue both business and art? Few people have the courage to try new things. You don’t just try them. You kick ass at them. Why is doing more than one thing so wrong?”
“Because…because…I don’t know.”
“What if there was only one way to make love?” He scooted down on the bed to lie beside her. “Just the plain old vanilla missionary position. And you could never do anything else, try anything else. Wouldn’t that get boring?”
Finally, she smiled. A cheeky little grin that lightened the dark places inside him. “I wouldn’t know anything about your plain old vanilla missionary work, Villanueva, so that’s a little hard to judge.”
He aligned his body with hers, the rub of fabric on fabric strangely erotic. “Well, I’ll see what I can do to make it boring as hell.”
“Good luck with that.” Her laugh was low and seductive as he moved in to touch his lips to hers.
He smoothed his mouth across hers, an innocent slide of lips only. God, she tasted of Kahlua and…flan. He pulled away. “You did not pay three hundred dollars for that damn flan.”
She fluttered her lashes in a dramatic sweep. “No, I just told a few people the platter was an antique, worth a hundred by itself.”
“You, Greer Maddox, are something else,” he said, and took her mouth again.
“So I’ve been told,” she murmured against his lips.
Alex couldn’t remember the last time he’d spent this much time just concentrating on a woman’s mouth. Greer’s lips were so soft. So sweet. So warm. They were the fucking center of his universe tonight.
She rubbed her palm on his chest, teasing across his nipple ring, which immediately hardened the skin it pierced. With slow, tortuously slow movements, she began unbuttoning his shirt. Suddenly, Alex wanted to rush. Wanted to strip all these clothes off them both and get inside her.
But even he recognized that as the self-protective mechanism it was. Fast meant less time to think. Less time to feel.
And this woman made him do both.
And she deserved better from him.
When she popped the last button on his shirt, Alex pushed himself up on one hand to shrug out of it. Then he pulled his white T-shirt over his head and tossed it aside too. Greer’s attention was fixed on his nipple ring, and her tongue touched her bottom lip.
She glanced up at him. “Can I…?”
“You can do whatever you want.”
She framed his nipple with her thumb and forefinger and blew a stream of air across his already vibrating skin. The quilt below them became a bunched wad of cotton in Alex’s fist.
Then she licked him, curling her tongue under the silver hoop and ball, tugging gently, and the sound of seams ripping barely registered in Alex’s brain.
Greer pulled back and frowned. “Did you just rip that quilt? It’s handmade.”
“I’ll buy you a thousand of them if you’ll just do that again.”
“Here,” she said, pushing him onto his back and untangling his fingers from the bedcovers. “Put this hand to better use.” She placed it on her ass. “Squeeze that if you feel the need.”
“Better,” he panted.
She went back to work torturing the small ring—and Alex’s sanity—with her tongue. To distract himself from the almost overwhelming pleasure, he unbuttoned, unzipped, and unsnapped everything he could get his hands on.
When Greer gave him a little nip, the tiny pain zigzagged through his body, leaving every nerve raw-edged and needy. Unfastening clothes wasn’t enough anymore. “Nakedness is next to godliness,” he said.
She laughed and looked up from his chest with hazy eyes, as if she’d just taken a hit off a primo joint. “That is so wrong.”
He wrestled Greer out of her clothes while she did the same with his pants. It was forever before they were both naked and panting from a combination of lust and laughter. “Note for next time,” she said. “There’s a reason we were taught to take turns in kindergarten.”
