No, on second thought, maybe he didn’t want to know her plans.

Chapter

8

Vivi felt so relaxed, sprawled on Jack. Her body just couldn’t get enough contact with him.

“So?” she prompted him. “Shouldn’t we talk?”

“Probably,” he said cautiously. “I’m not feeling very articulate.”

“Hmm.” She shifted, breasts brushing his chest, her crotch rubbing against his thigh. He hardened beneath her. Ready for more. The man was tireless.

“You just wait a minute,” she said. “We should talk before we make love again. This is too easy!”

“What’s wrong with easy?” He groped for a condom and ripped the package open. “We can talk if I’m inside you, can’t we? Nothing’s stopping us.”

“Like I’m supposed to chitchat while a two-hundred-and-thirty-pound sex god is nailing me to his bed with his enormous thing, giving me multiple orgasms? Puh-leeze.”

“Consider it a challenge,” he suggested, rolling the condom over his cock. “I won’t move. I just want to be inside you. Please?”

He nudged himself inside and stared into her eyes for the whole, long, tight slide to his balls. She fit over his pulsing shaft like a skintight glove. She blushed, from her chest on up. She was the one who started to move. She couldn’t help herself. Manipulative bastard. He knew she couldn’t get enough of him.

She’d have felt embarrassed, if she weren’t so busy working herself up to another climax. She flung the covers back and rode him, chest heaving, back arched. He touched her breasts, held her, played with her clit until she collapsed over him in spasms of pleasure.

After, she lifted herself up onto her elbows, hazy with residual pleasure, and realized that he was still hot and huge and hard inside her, staring into her eyes. “Ah, Jack?” she ventured. “What about you?”

“What about me?” he said. “I’m fine. Didn’t you want to talk?”

“But, ah…don’t you need to come?”

He gave her a swift grin. “It’ll wait. No hurry. I want to hang out, miles inside you. My dick is in heaven. It wants to take up residence.”

She buried her laughter against his silky mat of dark chest hair. “If you say so.” She pulsed her stretched, quivering vaginal muscles around him and tried to compose herself. Here went nothing.

“I was wondering…if you’d go with me into Pebble River, like Margaret suggested,” she said. “To look at rentals. For my shop.”

His face stiffened. “You know what I think of that idea.”

“It’s what I plan to do,” she told him. “I know you think I’m married to the road, but I took that path by necessity. Not by choice.”

“Please. Don’t make promises you can’t keep.”

She sighed, in frustration. “They’re not promises. I’m just telling you my plans. Why won’t you listen to me, Jack?”

He shook his head. “Duncan will kill me if I let you do this.”

She jerked up onto her elbows. “Duncan does not make my decisions for me! I am almost broke, Jack! And I cannot hide forever!”

He let out a heavy sigh. “I see that.”

She took another chance. “And you can’t say there’s nothing between us,” she said, resolutely. “Not anymore.”

“I’m not saying that. But let’s just stay in the moment. Let’s not look at it too closely. If we do…” His voice trailed off.

“It’ll disappear?” she finished.

His silence was her answer. She drooped down onto his chest, feeling him shifting and pulsing. Reminding her of his presence inside her.

“So we can’t talk about the future,” she said. “What can we talk about?”

“The past,” he said. “Tell me about your past.”

She blew a wisp of hair out of her eyes. “Big topic. Want to break it down a little for me?”

“Tell me how you became an artist,” he suggested.

“Ah. Well, it was a challenge. Lucia sweated for years, trying to turn me into a civilized human. I was a wild animal, even though I loved her to pieces from the start. Hyperactive, hot tempered, foulmouthed. I got bad grades. I had impulse control issues. I got into fights.”

“I’m not surprised.”

She ignored that. “Lucia was determined to make me respectable. She wanted me to study something that would make me good money, turn me into a pillar of the community. She loved art, but she liked classics. She didn’t understand wild experimental art. We had a hell of a time, fighting it out.”

“And you won?” He twirled her hair around his finger.

“Not at first. I compromised. I agreed to study graphic design. I tried, I really did, but I was miserable, and my grades sucked, and I ended up losing my scholarship. Lucia was furious with me.”

“And? What did you do then?”

She shrugged. “I waitressed, I tended bar. Was a bike messenger for a while. Saved enough to reenroll in art school, one semester at a time. And I survived on art show openings for a couple of years.”

He looked puzzled. “How’s that?”

“You know those wine-and-cheese receptions at art galleries when a new exhibit opens? You can find one every night in New York, if you inform yourself. Cheese, crackers, grapes, strawberries, mini-quiches, puff pastries. If you’re too broke to buy groceries, they’re great.”

He stirred uncomfortably. “You were that desperate?”

“Oh, it wasn’t so bad. I saw a lot of art. It did me good. And then I met this gallery owner, Brian. I signed a contract with him. And he started to sell some of my stuff. My brief artistic golden age.”

He lifted his head. “Brian? He’s the filthy fuckhead ex, isn’t he?”

Vivi went very still on top of him. “Ah…what if he is?”

“Brian Wilder, right?” he said slowly. “Wilder Galleries. In Soho.”

She was shocked. “How in the holy hell do you know that?”

“It’s the age of information,” he said, innocently. “Shouldn’t be hard to find out where the prick lives.”

“You wouldn’t!” She felt panicked, as if that poisonous toxic waste from her past could contaminate this delicate, shining thing she had with Jack. “Don’t you dare! Leave him alone! Promise me!”

He stroked her back. “Shhh. Don’t worry about it.”

She hissed at him, anything but reassured. “If you mess with Brian, I’ll take you apart! I will deconstruct you and sell you for scrap!”

He pressed her ass, pulsing his cock inside her. Reminding her he was the man, no doubt. Hah. “I hear you,” he soothed. “So the fuckhead started selling your work, and then? What kind of work was it?”

“I met him during my barbed-wire and broken-beer-bottle period.”

His eyes widened. “Your what?”

“I was rebellious, at the time,” she explained. “I felt put upon because of my tragic childhood, I was mad at my birth mother for going to jail and killing herself, mad at Lucia for trying to control me, et cetera, et cetera. And I was drinking way too much espresso. I put it all into my work.”

“I see.” His voice was guarded.

“Anyway, Brian discovered me, you might say,” she went on. “Decided to clean me up, make me marketable.”

“And you got involved?” He cupped her breast in his hands.

“Yes,” she said, her voice catching breathlessly. “It was a disaster. On every level, not just a personal one.”

“What happened?” He began to rock his pelvis up against her, pressing his pubic bone against her clit in a slow, circular movement.

She pushed against his chest until she was upright, glaring down at him. “Don’t distract me,” she lectured. “You’re cheating!”

His pelvis surged, making her undulate on top of him. “Sorry. You’re so sexy. I forgot myself,” he murmured. “And then?”

“What happened was that he turned out to be an art vampire, in addition to being an evil fuckhead. All he wanted was to make me into his money-grubbing zombie slave.”