Games People Play by Shelby Reed Page A

stepped out from her workstation and approached him. “Brace your palms behind you and lean back on your arms.”
    A look she couldn’t identify crossed his features but he obliged her, asking no questions. And with only her own pounding heart granting her courage, Sydney reached down and unfastened his fly, pushing the buttons through their corresponding holes with shaking fingers. His skin was hot against her knuckles. He smelled like shampoo and lime soap. He didn’t ask why she was doing what she was doing.
    She didn’t offer an explanation.
    On the last two buttons, he sat up and caught her hands. “Don’t.”
    She felt herself flush. “You want to do it yourself?”
    “No. It’s just that I hurried to get here and I sort of . . . went commando.”
    “Commando?”
    “No underwear.”
    The flutter in Sydney’s stomach intensified. Her fingers flexed as she studied him and tried to think. What would the old Sydney do? Back away. She didn’t want to back away. She wanted to jump off the precipice, drown in these feelings and ascend as someone new. She wanted to paint this night a different color.
    “Commando doesn’t bother me.” She nudged aside the protective hand he’d rested on his fly and undid the last buttons. The hair of his groin was silky, darker than the hair on his head. She let her knuckles brush it in passing; she let his fly fall open naturally without pulling it wide to expose him. Appraising his entire position, she crooked one of his knees on the stage, angled the other to dangle off the side, and stepped back, squinting with an artist’s eye. “Good.”
    When she returned to her easel and glanced at him, he was staring at her, his green eyes intense. Her gaze strayed to his fly. He was hard, darker, ruddier flesh obvious through the opening in his jeans, though not jutting out.
    Sydney bit her lip and went to work. Sexual arousal wasn’t uncommon with erotic art models. That was all he was. A model for her purpose.
    The lighting wasn’t right. She stopped and adjusted her lamp. “Turn your face to the left,” she instructed. He did, but it wasn’t right. She maneuvered the lamp again, then gave up and crossed to the platform to pose him again herself.
    Gently grasping his chin, she turned his face aside. Her thumb accidently grazed his full bottom lip, and heat crept up her neck. After practically ripping open his jeans without his permission, it seemed silly to be embarrassed, but somehow touching his mouth felt more intimate.
    “Sydney.”
    “What.”
    He caught her hand and to her astonishment lifted it back to his lips, laid a kiss on her paint-stained thumb, then her forefinger. And what was so very awful was that she let him; she simply stood there and watched him kiss her fingers one at a time, her body going fluid and hot and weak.
    “Look at these colorful hands,” he murmured, biting the knuckle on her ring finger. “A little rough, a lot talented.”
    She couldn’t speak. For all its lack of invasiveness, his slow, thorough caress was the sexiest thing any man had ever done to her. When he reached her pinkie, he licked the tip, paint-stained and all. Her throat had gone dry; she didn’t pull away. The proverbial question between man and woman hung there, a potent third party, until he voiced it. “What do you want?”
    Sydney cleared her throat. “I’m not entirely sure.”
    “Then let’s start right here, this moment, just you and me.”
    Her gaze shot to the door; she thought about locking it.
    “Do you want this?” he asked, and without waiting, lifted her wrist to his mouth. Oh, God, his tongue found her pulse and traced its tender spot. Flicked. Soothed. She leaned into him; her hand found his thigh for balance and she felt his hardness. With a jolt, she withdrew from his grasp and stepped away.
    “I want to finish this portrait, and the next one with you and the other models. I want to finish them both before you leave in ten days, and I want them