Red-Hot Nights: Daring in the Dark

“You want to photograph me changing clothes?”

“Not while you’re actually changing but while you’re getting ready. Plus it gets you used to being in front of the camera. Just forget I’m here.”

She looked across the room, her eyes holding his. It was a look, one breath away from smoldering, that acknowledged him as a man she’d kissed earlier. “I can’t do that.”

“Can you forget the camera’s here?” He was proud of his steady tone. He didn’t feel steady.

“I think so.”

He fired off a couple of shots, just to get her used to it. She smiled, self-conscious and awkward. “Just relax,” he reminded her. If he could keep her talking, a stream of distracting chatter, she’d also relax. “Do you have your hair up because it’s cooler that way?”

“Yes. But it’s so hot now, I don’t think it’s going to matter. And I should do something with it anyway.” She turned her back to him and pulled the barrette out and let her hair tumble past her shoulders. His shutter whirred. She shook her head and pushed her fingers through it. He shot again. She looked at him in the mirror, a beguiling mixture of longing and uncertainty, and his heart pounded. Was there anything more enchanting, more intimate, than a woman taking her hair down?

“Better?” she asked.

Click. “Perfect. Keep doing what you’re doing.”

She raised her arms and reached beneath the fall of her hair. “Beautiful. Beautiful delineation of your neck, shoulders and arms. A study in perfection. A work of art.”

“You don’t have to say those things, you know.”

“I know. But it’s true.” And it would be so much better without the interfering lines of her halter top. “Keep your back to me and take your top off,” he said, automatically instructing her in what would give the best shot of her back.

“Is that how you get women to undress for you? A few complimentary phrases?” She glanced over her shoulder, laughing, teasing but with a sexy glint in her eyes.

“You’re on to me.” His responding laugh was rusty. As a rule, he didn’t laugh a lot. “No naughty pictures. I just want to capture the line of your back without the top. Move away from the mirror, keep your back to me, take it off and lift your hair that same way. Wait a second. Here. Stand here.” He moved her away from the mirror and positioned the tall triple-wick candle—the one she’d earlier said could go all night—until the light illuminated her back. “Just a bit more to the right.”

From habit, he lightly touched her, to direct her where he wanted her to go. He’d touched beautiful women wearing far less than Tawny hundreds of times, but it was as if he’d never touched anyone before. And he hadn’t. Not like this. Longing swept him, threatened his composure. He felt her indrawn breath, the sudden rigid line of her once-supple back.

He dropped his hand and backed away from her, gripping his camera like a lifeline. “You don’t have to take off your top if you don’t want to.” That steady tone he’d prided himself on earlier was long gone.

“I want to take it off.”

She reached beneath her hair and unhooked the top, and he watched the sides fall away and to the front. She lowered her arms and reached to the front. It was a wrap halter and tied in the front—beneath her left breast, he’d noticed. The material bisecting the elegant lines and curves of her back fell away.

“Brilliant. Truly stunning.” He fired away. These would be incredible. “Lots of women with beautiful faces aren’t lovely from this angle. Lift your hair once again. The way you did before.”

She followed his instructions. He’d never gotten emotionally caught up in what he was photographing. It was art and it was his art and in many ways it was an extension of himself, but there was also still an engagement that wasn’t personal, that didn’t tie his emotions into it. But this was vastly different.

She turned slightly to her right, just enough to reveal the hint of roundness of her breast, the slight sag that meant they were real and not bought in a surgeon’s office.

She dropped her arms and turned to face him, her silken curls curtaining the slope of her breasts and nipples, but the soft roundness of the bottom half revealed. Despite the fact she’d turned to face him, there was something more. A subtle shift in her body language, as if she’d discovered something, resolved something.

“Simon, do you have any idea why I’ve had doubts about me and Elliott?”

It had been one of those remarks he should’ve taken more note of but had been lost in the higher drama of the moment. He thought it through now. Elliott’s turnabout in his sexual orientation had obviously surprised her, so that wasn’t it. She didn’t appear to have any ambiguity concerning her own. Which meant she’d been seeing someone else or had at the least met someone else. Rancor filled him. He didn’t want to hear her confess to yet another attraction. Or perhaps that was exactly what he needed to hear to excise her from his heart, his psyche, his emotions. “My first guess is that you’ve found someone else, as well.”

“Not exactly.” Pathetic how glad he was to hear that. “Not the way you mean anyway. I’ve developed an interest in someone else, even though it hasn’t gone any further. Well, sort of.”

She had his attention now. Who was he kidding? She always had his attention. She’d owned it from the first time he’d spotted her across the room. “Why don’t you explain?”

“I promised you earlier I wouldn’t fling myself at you again. And I’m not. But it’s time to be honest and I think you should know. It was you, Simon.”

She could probably hear his heart pounding from across the room. Tawny had doubted her relationship with Elliott because of him? He didn’t trust her words. Couldn’t trust her words. What would possibly attract her to him over Elliott?

“Don’t, Tawny. Don’t go there. Elliott might’ve behaved badly, but I’m not a particularly nice guy and I don’t want to be thrust into the role of payback pawn because Elliott’s wounded your pride or broken your heart.”

She jerked her head back, anger and hurt flashing in her eyes, caught up in the exchange and seemingly unaware that one plump, ripe nipple now peered through her hair. But he was aware enough for both of them. Hell, he was aware enough for an army.

“You think I’m making this up to get back at Elliott?”

“You’re not trying to seduce me?”

“I’m trying to be honest, you thickheaded, arrogant, cold-blooded, sarcastic jackass, and you are really … pissing me off.”

“Well, I can see, given that glowing description, why I’d be the man to give you second thoughts about marrying Elliott. Perhaps you felt the need to break it off based on the poor company he keeps.”

She’d said she was pissed off earlier. She was bloody, wanking angry now.

“Here’s the truth, Simon Thackeray, if you can handle it. I’ll be damned if I know why, but I’ve started having dreams about you. About us. They began after we spent the day together for the photo shoot.”

“What kind of dreams?” God, he could barely breathe.

“Sexual dreams. Explicit.”

“They’re just dreams, Tawny.”

“I’m well aware of that, Simon. But those dreams, you, were beginning to take a toll on my relationship with Elliott.”

Instead of gaining clarity, things were growing murkier and more tangled. It had almost been easier when she and Elliott belonged to one another. She’d been off-limits to Simon and his role had been clearly defined. “Why would you let a few dreams interfere with a real relationship?”

“It wasn’t a choice and it wasn’t just a few dreams. It was almost every night. At first I didn’t want to go to sleep, because I didn’t want to dream about making love to you.” Heat surged through him. She looked down and studied her nails. “And now it’s gotten to the point that being asleep is the best part of my day.” She looked back up. “And I’ve felt guilty as hell with Elliott because it felt wrong to do the things with you that I was doing while I was engaged to him.” Her gaze captured his. “And doubly wrong because what we had in my dreams was so much better than what Elliott and I had in reality.”

Her words seduced him, fired along his nerve endings, tightened his body as surely as if she’d trailed her hands over him. “Maybe you won’t have any more of those dreams.”

She shook her head. “This afternoon I was napping when Elliott called. I was dreaming and just about to come. With you.” And he wasn’t so sure that if she went into enough detail he wouldn’t come. She had him hard and throbbing. “I’ve felt like the biggest whore east of the Mississippi. Do you know the first thing that came to mind when he said you both wanted to come over this evening?”

Obviously her mind was an utter mystery to him since he had no clue she’d been having what sounded like very intense sex with him. “No clue.”

“Ménage à trois. That’s how depraved you’ve made me. I am trying to seduce you. Not to get back at Elliott. I need the reality of your touch to exorcise those dreams. Because as it stands now, I’m afraid you’ve ruined me for any other man.”

WHEN SHE WAS SEVEN, frustrated by her lack of progress in her swimming classes, without really thinking it through, she’d sucked in a deep breath and jumped in over her head. And from that day forward her philosophy had taken shape: she’d swim or die trying. Obviously she’d swum.

And she’d just plunged in far out of her depth with Simon. But it was true. She feared he’d ruined her for any other man. And if she could offer him an outlet for his unrequited love, then why not?

Simon advanced toward her, beginning to click off picture after picture.

“Tawny, I’m sure that I haven’t ruined you for other men, as you’ll find when you get back into … circulation.”