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“I assume he’s also very well compensated to ignore people screaming in the cellar?”
“You really can’t hear anything up here. It’s completely soundproofed. But yes, he is well paid for his discretion.” Xander gave me an unapologetic smile. “I wouldn’t look for anyone to help you on the staff. They’re very loyal.”
“I only count on myself,” I promised him.
His hand drifted to the small of my back as we climbed the stairs. My legs felt exhausted, as if my body were rung out from all the trauma of last night. “Dominic and I are loyal to Aiden, but… we’re not staff.”
I wanted to untangle the implications of that statement, but he was stopping in front of a door and pushing it open. An expectant look crossed his face, as if he was excited to see my reaction.
The door yawned open partially. I pushed it the rest of the way open and stepped in.
It was hard to decide where to look in the crowded studio. Enormous windows on the far side let in golden light, and dust seemed to hang in the air, turned sparkling by the sun. There were statues everywhere: busts of men and women—some of them tangled up together amorously—in various states of development. Their lines were precise. I wandered between them, realizing that some of them were carved of marble or formed by clay over wire. Paintings on canvases were scattered on easels, and those reflected the same deft hand.
Xander was both skilled and obsessed with sex.
In the corner of the studio stood a large wooden desk, strewn with sketchbooks and pencils, and beside it were stacks of canvases. Near a potter’s wheel, tucked into one corner of the room, was a large bed with the sheets in disarray, as if Xander’s sleeping area was an afterthought to his art.
The walls of the studio were lined with sketches and large black-and-white photos of works in progress and finished masterpieces. The newer work was stapled haphazardly over the old ones.
The studio was madness, and it was beautiful.
Xander still stood at the door. He was watching me, as if he wanted to know how I felt about his art.
I was supposed to lie easily—I always did—and yet there was something about how he had just laid his passions bare by letting me wander the studio that made me reluctant to use this opportunity to manipulate our connection. “What are your plans for us today? Besides teaching me everything I need to know about Aiden Crude?”
“I thought we could start with a simple art class,” he said. “You should make a little project of your own.”
“I’m not particularly artistic.”
He raised his hand with the keyring in it. “Let’s sculpt a homage to your freedom.”
He brought me back to the corner of the room with the potter’s wheel.
He told me to sit down, and then started the wheel. He drew up a seat close behind, so we were intimately close. He pressed the key into the bottom of the lump of clay, then put it down on the wheel with a splat.
“I thought we could make a flower vase,” he said. “Something to decorate your room for as long as you’re here.”
When I smiled, his answering smile lit his face. We would be partners in crime, making sure I couldn’t be locked away again. And most of all, he was on my side—at least in this one small thing. I could work with that.
He placed his hands over mine, his warm hard body enveloping mine as he leaned over and rested his chin on my shoulder. He seemed so comfortable with me that it both shocked me and lulled me into my own sense of comfort.
I found myself feeling an easy comradery with him too as the two of us worked in the quiet of the room, the only sound the whir of the potter’s wheel besides his occasional murmured directions. I relaxed into the feelings of the wet clay slipping under my palms as it took shape, and his body against mine.
I lost myself to the satisfying feeling of the clay shaping under my palms until a vase had taken shape between our hands. Then he turned off the wheel, and I became slowly cognizant of how close we were, of how his hard, lean muscles enveloped me. His breath stirred my hair as he exhaled in satisfaction.
“It’s beautiful,” he said.
“It’s a little bit lopsided.”
He laughed, and the rise and fall of his chest shook my body. A warm glow fluttered in my own chest.
“Are you always so pessimistic?” he asked as he stood.
Cool air brushed against my back where his warmth had been, and I shivered at the withdrawal. “This is pretty much the sunniest my personality gets.”
He offered me his clay-slick fingers, and I took his hand since I was just as big a mess. Together, the two of us padded across the room toward his big en-suite bathroom. It was all black and stone, with a lot of lush green plants. I’d never seen such a lavish bathroom before.
He stepped on a button in the warm tile floor, and water began to pour out in the sink. He was already heading into the enormous shower, and I turned my face away as he began to discard clothing. I caught a glimpse of his tattooed shoulders and the lean taper of his back before he disappeared into the water. An unfamiliar need pulsed between my thighs.
