Picture me Sexy

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She’d use this inconvenient attraction for him to her advantage. Shocking him made her feel sexy and looking at him turned her on. The man was art in motion. He moved with a predator’s grace, with an economy of motion. Those heavy-lidded deep brown eyes had a way of making a woman wonder about hidden talents, about tangled sheets and satisfying orgasms. Delaney bit her bottom lip as a chord of longing vibrated deep in her belly. She’d just bet he’d be chocolate-covered sex, the kind she’d regrettably never had.

Oh, hell. Now was not the time to be lamenting her lackluster sex life. With a mental shake, Delaney smoothed her hands over the silky gown and walked back down the hall to the studio.

“Where do you want me now?” she asked and noted that Sam’s impossibly broad shoulders tensed at the question. He looked up, casually glanced at what she wore, and swallowed.

“In bed.”

Delaney frowned. What did— Did he just— She blinked. “I’m sor—”

“On the bed,” he hastily corrected. He squeezed his eyes shut and muttered a low curse. “Why don’t you lean against the footboard post,” he suggested.

“Sure.” Bewildered, Delaney walked over, curled her arm around the post and assumed what she hoped was the desired position. He clicked a few shots, so she must have done it correctly.

“Okay. Now on the bed.”

Was it just her, or did he seem to be in a hurry? “Uh…okay. Just anywhere?” she asked.

He didn’t bother to look up. “Against the pillows.”

Delaney propped a few pillows behind her, rested her head in her palm and bent her legs toward her bottom. The bed was heavenly. He certainly hadn’t spared any expense when it came to comfort. She blinked sleepily and smiled. Sam moved forward and clicked off another few rounds of film.

“That’s gorgeous,” he said softly. “Simply gorgeous. Hold that pose….”

A thrill raced through her. He’d slipped up again and paid her another compliment. Remarkably, she didn’t feel self-conscious—she felt…sexy. Delaney turned over onto her back and slowly rolled her head to the side and looked at him through lowered lashes.

Mercy, did he ever look good. Her gaze slowly traced the curve of his strong jaw, the slight cleft in his chin. Those big capable hands manipulated the camera with precision and it wasn’t hard to imagine them sliding over her body, doing precisely wonderful things. She bit her bottom lip, her eyes fluttered shut and another warm quiver snaked through her muddled tummy.

“Fantastic… Just a few more.” He fired through several more shots, then the telltale whir of the auto-rewind sounded, bringing an end to her session.

Delaney reluctantly sat up and smothered a sigh of regret. She’d just begun to get into it.

“Okay,” he said as he did some final tweaking to his camera. “I’ll have these ready for you to view in a couple of days, you can tell me which ones you like and we’ll go from there.” He finally looked up at her and smiled. “How does that sound?”

Like more torture, Delaney decided. She’d done what she’d set out to do. She’d gotten through this shoot without too much anxiety. It was a good step, and for now, it would be enough. Besides, she really didn’t want to look at the photos with him. The idea seemed too weird, too personal. “Can’t you just mail them to me?”

He blinked, oddly taken aback. “I, uh…sure. If that’s what you’d like.”

Delaney nodded. “Thanks, I would. You’ve been great.” She gestured toward the dressing room. “I’ll just run and change, then I’ll give you the address and sitting fee when I come out.”

He nodded again, seemingly disturbed about something. “Sure.”

Delaney swung her feet off the side of the bed and the whole place went black. “Uh-oh,” she chuckled. “Who turned off the lights?”

She heard Sam mutter a curse. “Stay there. The building is under renovation. Somebody must have accidentally cut the power. Let me go check things out. I’ll see if I can shed a little light on things.”

She heard Sam’s bare feet pad from the room, and might have remained there calmly if she hadn’t noticed something out of the corner of her eye. A finger of unease tripped down her spine.

Not a single city light shone from the bank of windows that lined Sam’s loft. Somewhere between her first and last change of clothes, dusk had fallen and brought night. From this vantage point, she should have been able to see half of the Memphis night skyline. Not a single pinprick of light disturbed the inky blackness.

“Sam?” she called tentatively.

“Be there in a sec. I’m getting a flashlight.”

Moments later she watched the beam of the flashlight bob into the studio. “Bad news.” He winced apologetically. “Looks like the generator’s on the fritz. We’ll have to wait it out.”

“Wait it out?”

“Yeah,” he sighed. “The elevator won’t run without power, and the stairs and fire escape are under repair. It shouldn’t be more than a few minutes before they get things up and running again.”

He sounded completely confident that momentarily all would be well, so confident in fact that Delaney didn’t think he’d noticed that the entire city of Memphis seemed to be dark.

“Don’t worry,” he said, evidently interpreting her silence for concern. “It’s happened a couple of times since they started the renovation. The guys working here are top-notch. They’ll have things fixed in no time.”

No stairs and no fire escape? She was trapped here with him for the duration? Oh, hell. She’d never been good at resisting temptation. That’s why she stayed on a perpetual diet. And Sam Martelli definitely qualified as temptation. “Well, they’d have to be good if they are going to get the whole city up and running again.”

“What?”

“Look out the windows,” Delaney told him, panic making her voice shrill. She gestured wildly. “The whole city is black.”

She heard him turn, heard him murmur, “Well, I’ll be damned.” Then in a more dire, almost desperate tone, “Oh, hell.”

“My sentiments exactly,” Delaney concurred, slightly annoyed.

“You’re trapped here,” he said flatly. “In my apartment.”

“Yes, I’d figured that out.”

He walked over to the windows. “God only knows how long it’ll take them to get it up and running again. A major transformer or substation must have gone out. You could be here all night.” From the flat, emotionless tone of his voice, a root canal held greater appeal.

“You seemed to have developed a real penchant for stating the obvious,” Delaney said, unreasonably perturbed. Honestly, he didn’t have to sound so put out. It wasn’t her fault that the damned power had gone out. Wasn’t her fault that she’d been imprisoned up here with him.

Her sarcasm appeared to chastise him because he muttered another soft oath and abruptly turned and made his way back to the bed. “Sorry,” he muttered apologetically and had the grace to sound chagrined. “I’m just thinking out loud. Why don’t we go back to the other end of the loft? I’ll light some candles and we’ll, uh, wait it out.”

Well, it’s not like she had a choice, Delaney thought. She slid off the bed and immediately came up against something hard, warm and decidedly male. He shivered—actually shivered—and she could have sworn she heard him grind his teeth. A tense beat passed before he stepped back.

Suddenly another reason dawned for his almost frantic behavior and a slow feminine grin worked its way across her lips.

On second thought, was there any better way to spend a few hours in the dark? Was there a better-looking man to spend them with? Chocolate-covered sex, indeed, Delaney thought as the night ahead and all its possibilities loomed tantalizingly before her. Dare she indulge?

4

A DISCONCERTING MIX OF furious despair and carnal hunger dogged Sam’s every step as he led Delaney back down the hall toward his living room. She’d slipped a distracting finger through the belt loop at the back of his jeans and followed him wordlessly down the hall. He’d either hurt her feelings by his tactless response to their current predicament, or she’d figured out why he’d acted like such a thoughtless ass at the prospect of her being trapped here for God knows how long with him.

Though he knew she’d gotten more than her fair share of heartache recently—and he particularly hated himself for adding to it—he nonetheless hoped that she’d just lumped him into her men-sucked category and hadn’t discerned the true reason behind his blind panic moments ago.

But the thought of being here with her all night, in the dark, with her in that outfit… Sam pulled in a shallow breath.

Damn.

For reasons he didn’t care to explore, the idea was almost more than he could bear. More than he could conceivably handle.

Something about the disconcerting feelings this woman evoked scared the living hell out of him, had curiously led him into emotional territory best left uncharted. He didn’t like either sensation at all and, though a niggle of doubt had surfaced in his befuddled brain, he absolutely refused to consider the “quickening” as a possible cause.

He’d simply been blindsided by desire in its purest, most veritable form—lust.

He’d taken one look at her and centuries of in-grained civilized male behavior had been stripped away and replaced with nothing but the blind, single-minded drive to procreate. To mate.

With her.

He’d been reduced to little more than a caveman and grimly suspected that if she didn’t get out of his loft soon, he’d undoubtedly grunt a couple of uga-uga’s, club her over the head and drag her back to his bedroom.

Which would be tantamount to professional ruin.

Which meant she was off-limits.

Sam smothered a frustrated growl. Of all the women in this city, why on earth did his hyper-libido have to zero in on her like a damned homing device? What exactly was it about this woman that had turned him into such a damned lust-ridden, dick-driven wreck?

When she’d gone to make that last costume change, Sam had breathed a tentative sigh of relief. Just the one outfit to go, he’d told himself, then she’d change clothes and leave and he would return to normal. The damned gooseflesh would subside, his scalp would subsist with that infernal perpetual quivering, and the raging erection—which, to his horror, had grown clear out of the waistband of his jeans at one point—would quietly wilt with shame and give him a little peace.

But the sigh of relief had been premature.

When she’d walked back into the studio, Sam’s lungs had momentarily forgotten how to properly function. He hadn’t been able to draw a breath, much less expel it.

For one insane instant, he’d thought she was naked.

The pale-pink teddy had so closely resembled the color of her skin that from a distance she’d almost appeared nude. And upon closer inspection, she might as well have been.

Though there was absolutely nothing precisely sexy about the plain unadorned teddy, it looked sexy on her because it revealed more skin than anything else she’d worn throughout this shoot. She’d obviously had to work up to that outfit, had saved it for last. The fabric draped the mounds of her puckered breasts, whispered over her curvy hips and brushed the tops of her thighs, revealing legs that were flawlessly toned and surprisingly long for someone so petite.

Sam knew that he’d been abrupt with her, had watched that sweet brow furrow in confusion. But due to the fact that he was rapidly losing both reason and resolve, Sam had known he had to speed things up and get her out of his studio before he did something unquestionably stupid.

Like seduce her.

Now all that frantic work had been for naught and Sam faced the unhappy conclusion that his torment wasn’t over, because she’d undoubtedly end up spending the night with him. One could hope that power would be restored to his little section of town first, but he sincerely doubted it. He stifled a dark chuckle. Oh, no. He wouldn’t be that lucky.

Instead of wasting his time hoping for a miracle, Sam decided to redirect his thinking and effort where it was needed the most—focusing on restraint. He’d need every ounce of willpower he possessed and then some to keep his hands off her.

Grimly determined to do just that, Sam led her back into the living room where cozy gas logs burned in the fireplace and emitted a little light as well as some much needed heat. He made a mental note to thank his father the next time he saw him for suggesting the gas heat, gas stove and gas hot water heater.

While the electric blower wouldn’t kick on, the logs would still generate enough heat to keep them moderately warm. Given the fact his blood had been boiling with need since the moment he first saw her, Sam knew he wasn’t in any immediate danger of freezing to death. Still, he’d have hot water for a shower, and the stove would still work, so he’d be able to pull together a quick dinner for his unexpected guest. That was something, anyway.