Chapter 4 THE ARTIST'S SECRET

Asher went utterly still.

Then his hands cupped my face, and he kissed me back like a man drowning.

Where Dominic had been commanding, Asher was desperate. His lips moved against mine with a hunger that felt like starvation.

My fingers tangled in his hair. It was longer than his brothers', curling at his collar, soft and paint-smudged.

Asher's hands slid from my face to my shoulders, my waist, pulling me closer.

"Maya." My name was a prayer. "We shouldn't-"

"I know."

"I'm supposed to be your-"

"I know."

I kissed him again, harder.

Asher's control snapped.

He walked me backwards. My feet stumbled over drop cloths and paint cans. My back hit the wall-a different wall, a different brother, but the same electric wrongness.

His hands found the zipper of my dress.

"Tell me to stop," he breathed against my throat.

I arched into him. "Don't stop."

The zipper lowered. Asher's lips followed its path, kissing each inch of exposed skin. When the dress pooled at my feet, I stood before him in nothing but borrowed lingerie.

Asher pulled back, his artist's eyes drinking me in.

"You're so beautiful it hurts to look at you."

No one had ever said anything like that to me.

I reached for his shirt, fingers clumsy on the buttons. Asher helped, shrugging out of the paint-stained fabric. More paint smudged his ribs, his collarbones.

I traced a line of blue across his chest. "You wear your work."

"Always have." His hands spanned my waist. "Maya, if we do this-"

"I know what this means."

"Do you? Because I don't do casual. If I touch you like I want to touch you, I won't be able to let you go."

The words should have terrified me. Instead, they sent heat pooling low.

"Then touch me."

Asher lifted me like I weighed nothing. My legs wrapped around his waist. He carried me to a couch half-covered in drop cloths, laying me down with a gentleness that contrasted with the hunger in his eyes.

"I've imagined this," he confessed. "Every night since I first saw you."

His hands skimmed up my legs, my thighs. I trembled.

"What did you imagine?"

"Everything." His fingers hooked in my underwear, slowly sliding the fabric down. "Every way I could make you moan my name."

My breath hitched.

Asher smiled and lowered his head.

The first touch of his mouth made me cry out. My hands flew to his hair as he explored me with devastating precision.

He learned me like I was a canvas. Patient. Thorough. When my back arched off the couch, when I shattered with his name on my lips, Asher gentled his touch but didn't stop.

"You're perfect," he murmured, kissing his way back up. "Absolutely perfect."

I pulled him down, tasting myself on his lips, fumbling with his belt. Asher helped, shedding the rest of his clothes.

He paused at my entrance, searching my face. "Last chance, Maya."

"I don't want a last chance." I wrapped my legs around him. "I want you."

Asher entered me slowly, his groan matching my gasp.

Then he moved.

It wasn't gentle. I didn't want gentle. I wanted this consuming passion that made me forget everything.

Asher drove into me with increasing urgency, one hand braced beside my head, the other between our bodies.

"Look at me," he commanded.

I forced my eyes open. Met his gaze. And felt something shift inside my chest, something more dangerous than the physical pleasure building.

"I see you, Maya," he whispered. "All of you."

The words, the intensity in his eyes, his touch-it was too much.

I came apart for the second time, and Asher followed me over the edge, burying his face in my neck, my name a reverent curse.

We lay tangled together in the aftermath, paint-stained and sweat-slicked and utterly ruined.

"What have we done?" I whispered.

Asher's arms tightened around me. "Something we can't undo."

Footsteps echoed in the hallway outside.

We both froze.

"Asher?" Julian's voice called. "You up here?"

My eyes went wide. Asher pressed a finger to my lips.

"I'm working," he called back. "Go away."

"I need to talk to you. It's about-"

The door opened.

Julian stood in the doorway. His eyes found us on the couch-Asher shirtless, me wrapped in a drop cloth, our clothes scattered.

The color drained from Julian's face.

"You've got to be kidding me."