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"Private." Charlie spoke softly now, but her voice curled around his insides, her hurt tangible. "How would you feel if I never allowed anyone to see my work? If I refused to show it for public consumption?"
Sebastian clenched his fists on the dresser into which he'd thrown all his secret thoughts and feelings. He couldn't believe what he'd just said to her. Especially whe
n he knew firsthand how rough, angry words could hurt more than anything else.
"I'm sorry, Charlie." He straightened, turned, feeling like his bones were cracking. "So damned sorry. I didn't mean it. Not any of it." He'd screwed up again, despite the vow he'd made to himself only hours ago to do anything for her.
"I should have asked instead of prying." Her hand on his arm was so soft, so warm, so strong, the faint scent of his loving still clinging to her. "Your sketches are beautiful, Sebastian. I wish you'd shown them to me. You should be proud. They're not just drawings you do in your spare time. They're works of art."
"You're the work of art," he said to the carpet beneath his feet. He couldn't even gaze at the perfection in her face that he hadn't been able to capture.
She pressed her fingers into his arm, urging him to look at her. "Don't shrug me off." She held his gaze for a long moment, her eyes darkly serious. "You're a very talented artist. Very."
He respected her artistic vision more than that of anyone he'd ever met, yet somehow she had a blind spot for him, even after she'd seen all his imperfections. Not only in his drawing skills, but also in the way he'd failed her mother. He'd promised he would fix things and he hadn't. He wanted to shove the thoughts and feelings away, back inside the dark, secret place where he'd kept them for so long. But with Charlie...
Sebastian had never been able to hold back with her.
"I'm not an artist." The truth felt like razor blades on his tongue, but he made himself go on. "There are so many mistakes. I can't capture exactly what I see. I can't figure out how to make the drawings perfect no matter how hard I try."
"You made me beautiful even though I'm not perfect." She reached up to touch the tiny frown line between her eyes. "I suppose I could have a doctor stick a needle into me to get rid of this, but if you ask me, perfection doesn't have nearly as much character as real."
"God, no, don't ever let a doctor with a needle near your face." He gently slid a finger over the same mark. "I love that line. It shows your concentration, your dedication."
"And your drawings show so much about you, Sebastian. How you see people."
"They show the imperfection in my own abilities."
Closer now, her heat shot toward him like the pilot arc of one of her machines. He wanted to bury himself in her warmth.
"Sebastian." She ran her thumb over his lip as she said his name, her voice warm and husky. "Your drawings made me feel beautiful and cared for. And understood."
"Putting my pencil on the paper usually helps me figure people out. I'm simply analyzing people. I'm not an artist. Not like you."
"You are." She paused for a moment before adding, "The drawings of your parents are beautiful too. I feel as though I've met them now. Does drawing them help you remember them?"
He shook his head, fast, almost violently. "No, I'd remember everything, even without the sketches." Especially all his failures with them. "I guess I've never given up trying to figure out what I could have done for them."
An even deeper understanding lit her eyes. Then she pressed against him, rising on her toes to whisper, "Have all your drawings helped you figure me out?" She curled her arms around his neck.
"Not yet." His answer was muffled in her hair. "But I'm working on it."
"Maybe you just need to put a few more hours in, only this time instead of using pencil and paper, you could draw on my skin with your fingers."
His hands were already on her, burrowing beneath the shirt she'd borrowed, shoving it off her shoulders. "I can draw with my tongue as well."
"Draw with everything, Sebastian. Absolutely everything."
He picked her up, her body as light as a down pillow in his arms. He needed her love to banish the darkness of his thoughts and the things he'd so stupidly said to her. After laying her carefully on his bed, he stripped off the sweats he'd pulled on.
"Now, let's see," he murmured like a painter studying his canvas. "A line here." His tongue marked a streak from one beautiful, rose-tipped nipple to the other. "Geometric designs, I think."
She laughed, then shivered as he drew tongue circles around her nipple.
"We need more than one paintbrush." And his fingers joined the play. He traced her supple skin, her flesh quivering beneath his strokes.
"You make beautiful art--" She gasped as his touch painted a line straight down between her legs. "--but your work is also highly stimulating."
"It will take hours to cover every inch." Hours of bliss, hours of begging her forgiveness for his lapse into the anger and fear of the past, hours of loving her.
