Then she turned the page and began.

It was easier, this time, to quiet his mind. He lay there, splayed out on the sheets, bare but for the chain around his neck.

He should have taken it off, probably. He hadn’t thought to at the time, and with the way she was sketching away, at this point it seemed too late. Sometimes, he wondered why he wore it at all.

The scratching of her pencil on the paper settled over him, and he drifted along on it. He didn’t want to throw her off by staring into her eyes, so he varied his gaze between her hands and the window and the ceiling above his head. Maybe he should have asked if he could pose with a book, or if they could turn on the television, only . . .

It didn’t seem right, did it? He wanted to know how she saw him. She should see him with his attention undiverted.

And more, there was an energy to it. A humming static to the air surrounding them, moving from her to him and back again. This was intimate.

This was exposure.

Trying to hold still, he sucked the inside of his cheek between his teeth and bit down hard.

Maybe this was how she imagined it would be, letting him inside of her. He’d let it go; every time she’d squirmed or looked uncomfortable at the idea, he’d been quick to back off. But for the first time, now, he thought maybe he understood it. He felt vulnerable, lying there naked for her inspection. It wasn’t sexual at all, but that was why it was so difficult for him. Sex he was good at. This—being open like this. It was something different, something he didn’t quite know how to do.

He unclenched his jaw before he could draw blood. If he told her how uneasy he was, she’d probably say that they could stop again. But he felt like he was on the cusp of a revelation. If he could find a way to work through this, it would mean something. To him and to her.

The person he had been a handful of days ago told him it would get him in her pants at last. But a newer voice said that didn’t matter. Whether he got off or not didn’t matter.

If he made it through this, and if she saw in him something worth seeing . . . he’d earn her trust.

How much that mattered to him made him tremble.

For a long moment, he closed his eyes, focusing on the sounds of marks being made on paper. Then he shifted his attention. He relaxed his toes and his calves and his glutes. Breathed air into his fingers and his arms. Quieted the beating of his heart.

He looked again to find her staring at him in a way that made him feel not exactly vivisected, but . . .

Seen.

She smiled at him uncertainly, and he answered with the slightest of shakes of his head.

He let his gaze go soft and aimed it at the gauzy curtains framing the doors out onto their balcony. He gave himself over to it.

And as she kept on drawing, he felt like, somehow, deep in the empty parts of him, he was getting everything he wanted in exchange.

Kate looked down at what she’d drawn and blinked. She tilted her head from side to side and shifted her legs. Rylan had taken two more breaks in the time she’d been working, but she had scarcely moved except to reach for different materials.

Now, it was like coming out of a fog, the haze of creation receding as she examined what she’d wrought.

And it was . . . good.

Really good, and she didn’t say that lightly. She knew better than to let herself get carried away. Ego was an ugly thing on an artist. But this was more than good. It was right. Exactly what she’d been going for when she’d set out to capture this man.

Holding the pad at arm’s length, she regarded it more critically. She’d gotten the shape of his nose, had left some of the details of his features vague while still suggesting the parts that needed to be seen. She’d captured the pride and the self-assuredness, but between those lines, the rest of him bled through.

Vulnerability. Anger. Hurt.

There was something coiled to the man she had drawn, and the lines she’d penciled in to anchor his form to the sheets only accentuated it. He looked like he was waiting. She didn’t know what for—or if he knew, even. But there was anticipation in the cant of his hips and the rigid set to his limbs. His pose spoke of relaxed ease, but it belied a readiness to walk right off the page and out of frame.

She tightened her jaw. She’d gotten that much right at least.

Shifting her gaze back to Rylan, she let the low ache that had been building in her chest all week come to the forefront. She had two full days left in Paris after today. She was the one who was going to leave. And he was going to let her.

“You okay?” His voice surprised her, interrupting the quiet that had descended on them.

“Yeah.” She nodded, pulling her thoughts back to the here and now. “I’m fine.”

“You sure?”

“Definitely.” She tapped the corner of the page with her nail. “You good for a few more minutes?”

“Sure.”

Putting the low curl of dread aside, she examined her work one more time. Made a couple of careful marks, darkening shadows and sharpening the appearance of a particular jut of muscle. She swept her gaze over it again, comparing it with the reality of the man in front of her. The drawing was as finished as it was going to be.

But she wasn’t done yet.

Hoping he wouldn’t mind, she turned the page, taking care not to smudge the work she’d just completed. She shifted in her chair to get a slightly different angle as she studied his face.

It wasn’t only dread filling her belly now. It wasn’t quite affection, either, though there was some of that there, too. It was deeper and warmer, and it hurt inside her chest.

Looking at him hurt.

So she channeled it.

With quick strokes, she tried to get down on paper how he made her feel, all twisted up and uncertain—like she was the one on display, exposed, even though he was the one stripped bare for her to see. Roughly intimating the shapes of his features, she focused on his eyes and his mouth, taking them apart into lines and shapes, distilling them into something she could understand.

But the end result didn’t help. It was a portrait of the same mystifying, beautiful, inscrutable man, and she wanted to crush the paper in her hands.

A fresh page and another try, and another and another, but none of them put her any closer. Frustration made her blood hot. It wasn’t the same angry, self-despairing aggravation that had nearly overtaken her up on Montmartre. It was knowing the solution to a puzzle lay just out of reach, and watching an hourglass about to run out of sand. She only had so much time.

To find herself, sure. But also to get some kind of grasp on what was happening to her, here, with him.

She turned the page once more. On the bed, he was getting restless, either because he’d gone too long without a break, or maybe because he could sense her distress. She had to calm the heck down. Now. Before it was too late and she’d lost her chance.

She took a deep breath and set down her charcoal, trading it out for a hard-leaded pencil. This time, she approached the page with all the quiet she could summon to her mind and her nerves and her hands.

Soft brushes of the graphite across the tooth of the paper. A hint of an outline. And then more line work. More and more, tracing around and across the planes of his face. The eyes she adored and the mouth she had kissed, and the man she . . .

A deep pang made her breath catch.

She didn’t know Rylan. She didn’t know him at all. But she knew his wit and his secrets and the careful way he’d touched her body. Brought her pleasure. Showed her around museums for God’s sake. Opened himself up to her like this . . .

She sketched in the curve of his lips, and the last piece of the puzzle slipped into place.

She loved him.