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“I just prefer intimacy, you know, in moderation,” she went on, a bit desperately. “For a short time. Then I’d rather do something else.”
Like what? Knit?
“That’s very sensible of you.”
He was openly grinning now, the bastard. The discovery that he was as big a prat as the rest of his gender broke the embarrassed constraint. She threw a crumpled ball of paper in his direction, falling short by about six feet.
“I start going stir-crazy if I don’t get enough time by myself,” she explained, smiling reluctantly. “I just – I like my space, my own time. I like not having to answer to somebody every day. I start to feel claustrophobic in a relationship. Men expect you to go out, text them, talk, have sex, and it’s all the time. Don’t you find it exhausting?”
“Well, it depends on the type of sex,” Mick said, straight-faced. “And here I thought you were such a nice girl.”
This time, she weighted the ball of paper with an eraser and it found its target.
“I’m ending this horrendous conversation right now,” she announced, laughing. “You don’t see me asking why you aren’t seeing anyone.”
Her light-hearted observation effectively ended his amusement as well as the topic. Smile dropping away, he made a strange movement, a sort of half-shrug, half-flinch, and turned from her.
Sophy’s own laughter vanished. She stared at his averted profile, the rigid set of his wide shoulders, with concern. She found the whole thing a bit puzzling. Mick clearly had doubts, in her opinion totally unfounded doubts, about his attractiveness. But such self-abasement seemed out of character. Unlike men who relied on a thin façade of cocky swagger to cover a lack of integrity, there didn’t seem to be anything superficial about Mick. Nor would she have put him down as the type of man to place overwhelming importance on appearances.
Somebody had done a hell of a number on him.
She doubted he would really understand her need for solitude, either. Mick was as efficient with speech as he seemed to be with most other things; he didn’t waste words on idle chatter. But he wasn’t an introvert. On the contrary, she thought he might be a bit…lonely. In the short time she’d known him, he had revealed glimpses of a natural inclination toward physical affection. Several times, he had reached out to touch her shoulder or squeeze her hand, but with a hesitancy that suggested he was used to being shrugged off or pushed away.
She didn’t know him well enough to address the issue. It was the sort of thing that she would hesitate to raise with her most beloved family and friends, for fear of provoking a confrontation, let alone an acquaintance of a few days. Besides, she’d humiliated herself enough with the accidental compliments of his person.
Sophy cleared her throat.
“I think I’ve almost finished this particular sketch,” she said, a little too loudly. “If you wouldn’t mind sticking around for just another half hour or so?”
Mick glanced at his watch.
“No worries,” he said, a thread of relief touching his voice – because of the subject change? Because he could make an escape in thirty minutes? “My shift doesn’t start until three.”
Sophy went to the window and adjusted the drapes to let in more light.
“I think a standing pose if that’s okay,” she called over her shoulder. “Hands on hips?” Turning around, she tried to be impersonal in her observation. “And if you could bring your right leg forward. Yes. No – actually, do you mind if I just…?”
At his acquiescent nod and suddenly imperturbable expression, she approached and slowly placed one hand on his arm, tugging it into position. She usually felt a bit uncomfortable doing this, even with the paid professional models who likely couldn’t care less. She realised that a lot of people thought nothing of casual touches, but putting your hands on another person’s body or allowing them to touch you always had an element of intimacy. She thought that was one reason why most people wouldn’t want to so much as brush hands with someone they disliked.
That wasn’t the problem with touching Mick.
Her palm flattened against the swell of his chest muscle to push his shoulder back and she felt the faint shudder that moved through his torso. Looking up instinctively, she met his intense gaze. His grey eyes dilated to near black as they fixed on her mouth. If she hadn’t been deprived in the height department, their faces would have been close enough to feel the fan of breath against cheek. As it was, she could still see the flickering of lines at the corners of his eyes and lips and the texture of his skin beneath the dark blur of stubble.
Unconsciously, her fingers closed into a fist, her nails scraping his skin as they curled. He made a hoarse sound in the back of his throat and his jaw angled toward her. Her heart was racing. His hands came up and clasped the curve of her hips, his palms cool and coarse through the thin viscose of her dress. Sophy was swaying forward into the sheltering curve of his body when he straightened with an abruptness that almost cricked her neck.
Away from the warmth he generated, Sophy stood blinking, running her hand up her arm, chasing the line of goosebumps which raced up the back of her wrist like mercury rising in a thermometer.
From a safe distance, Mick stood watching her, troubled, one hand clasped to the back of his solid neck.
She could think of nothing to say. She couldn’t really think, period.
Stupefying lust. Not just a myth, then.
Dreading his next words, Sophy’s flight instinct was in full force when he eventually suggested, with deliberate calm, “Maybe we ought to come back to the sketch another day.”
Good idea.
***
