Page 43 of Finding New Dreams

His chuckle rumbled through the room behind me as I blindly snatched some clothes from my dresser and sprinted for the bathroom.

Safely inside the bathroom with the door closed, I glanced at my reflection. My cheeks were flushed, my hair mostly dry—something I hadn’t even thanked him for. But the bottom half of me was soaked.

Heart hammering, I stripped down, toweled off, and put on the mismatched clothes I’d grabbed: an overly large sweater from the Met gift shop and a pair of pink-striped pajama pants. Not my sexiest outfit. But nothing sexy was going on here. Right?

Right, I nodded at my reflection.

I gathered up my wet clothes and opened the door. And nearly dropped my clothes again.

Flynn stood in the corner of my apartment where I’d stashed some of my artwork, holding up my painting of a woman floating like a water nymph in the river. He was shirtless. Barefoot. With a tattoo of a twisted tree spiraling down his back and branching out over his shoulders.

Air deserted me.

Until he turned and smiled at me. “Your work is incredible. I can see why you hid it from me—you didn’t want me to be too self-conscious.”

I let out a pinched laugh. “I think you have that backward.” Grabbing the wet t-shirt and socks he’d laid over the back of the couch, I tossed everything in my dryer and started it.

“I’m being serious,” he continued, facing the painting again and giving me another few seconds to ogle the intricate ink on his back. “Your technique is near perfect, but there’s something else in these. That unnamable feeling you get when you look at a work of art. Like getting a peek into someone’s soul.” He turned to look at me again, and I quickly met his gaze. “It’s beautiful,” he added softly.

Heat flooded my stomach, and I smiled, stepping closer. “Thank you. That’s one of the reasons I love art, you know. Where else can you get a piece of someone’s soul?” I came close enough to stroke the canvas with one finger, remembering the days I’d spent painting it. “It soothes me. Connects me. Makes me feel less alone.”

“Do you feel that way a lot? Alone?”

Refusing to look up into the eyes I could feel bearing down on me, I nodded.

“Me too.”

For one terrible, painful moment, the few inches of air between us and around us charged with such tension I felt I might snap from it. Like if only I would look up, give in to the tug of his words, it might ease this agonizing anticipation.

He would kiss me. Or maybe he wouldn’t. Maybe I would be the one to lose control first.

My extremities hummed with tension.

“What are you working on over there?” His question cut through my indecision.

My head snapped up as he pointed at my current work in progress, hidden under a cloth on an easel. I’d taken to painting up here in case he needed the studio, or even happened to walk by. Because he absolutely could not see it.

“Nothing,” I blurted out, swinging my body around so I stood between him and the easel.

He grinned and set down my painting. “That good, huh? Let me have a peek.”

“No way.” I backed up as he stepped forward. It wasn’t fair. He carried about a thousand distractions, from his flexing throat to his statuesque pecs and abs to the dark jeans riding low on his hips and the odd intimacy of his tanned, bare feet.

“From the way you keep ogling me and the way you’re guarding that easel like it’s your stockpile of dirty books, I’d say that painting has something to do with me.”

I quickly called up my best poker face and smiled. “My dirty book collection is actually over there by the couch.”

He hummed, not taking his eyes off me, and eased closer. “So it is about me. Let me see.”

“No.”

“Just a glimpse. A quick flash.”

“You’re very persistent.”

“When it’s something I really want, yeah.”

And what about me? Do you want me?

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