Free The Colors of Love by Vanessa Grant Page B

her own purposes, following her impulse without regard to the child's needs.
    Sara would come to depend on her. Then, one day, Jamila would be gone, moving on to the next passion, leaving Sara more alone than ever.
    She opened the door seconds after he knocked.
    Tonight's black stretch leotard covered her from neck to ankle.
    "You're not painting."
    "Just finished." With her hair pulled back from her face, she looked uncharacteristically sober. "Do you want to see it?"
    Better not, he thought as she led him along that corridor, in case her painting tightened the web around him. But he followed her, forcing himself to study the clasp at the back of her head, the riot of red curls tangled around it—forcing his eyes away from the graceful sway of her hips as she walked away from him.
    When he stopped at the entrance to her studio, she caught his hand and led him to the easel. Then she released him, stepping back, leaving his world empty except for the painting.
    Ocean, he thought, but he knew it wasn't ocean. Waves... blue... something heart-stopping in the way colors battled shape. He saw—thought he saw a face in the storm, a woman... gone... a hand reaching, but there was no hand. Then there was, two hands clasped together with desperate tension in the moment of fulfillment.
    He blinked and the lovers' hands disappeared, leaving waves, an ocean of storms that wasn't an ocean, and his own heart thudding in dull ragged beats.
    "What do you call it?" He told himself to look away, but his eyes clung to the sweep of a blue wave that wasn't a wave.
    "I'm not sure. I'll name it tomorrow."
    Only a painting, he told himself. Oils on canvas—he could smell the oil paint thick in the air. "This is what you paint? Abstracts?"
    "Usually I do people, and the world they live in."
    He didn't look at her, but knew her head would be tilted as she studied the canvas, her lips pulled together in a frown of concentration.
    "This is different," she said.
    He jerked his gaze away from the painting—a mistake, because she stood only a hand's reach away.
    "I'm hungry," she said. "I haven't eaten since—I'm not sure when."
    When she bent her head and reached up into her hair, he fought not to touch the graceful curve of her torso. She pulled a clasp away and the mass of her glorious hair came tumbling down. She dropped the clasp on the small table beside her easel.
    "What about you?" she asked, absently finger-combing her hair.
    He didn't know what she'd painted, but when he looked at it he saw only need, and beyond all reason he needed this woman in his bed.
    Her bed would be better, then he'd have some chance of walking away afterward.
    He jerked away from the easel, prowling to the middle of the room.
    "You pack a wallop, Jamila."
    "I do?"
    "Your painting, I don't know what it is, but it's powerful." He didn't know why it bothered him so much to discover that she was a hell of a good artist, but it did.
    "Thank you. Are you hungry? Have you eaten?"
    Hunger, he thought. "No, I haven't eaten."
    In an instant she shifted from repose to energy as she spun toward the kitchen. "I'll make us something."
    He followed. One step, two, grasped her arm.
    He wasn't ready when she turned, not ready for the closeness, the scent of soap and oil paints, the knowledge that he had only to tighten his grip, pull her closer to feel her curves hard against him.
    "Not here," he growled.
    Her eyes were wide, alarmed... no, not alarm. Something else. He remembered the feel of her fist clenched in his shirt, her breath against his mouth.
    "Where?" she asked, her pulse beating rapidly under his fingers.
    She'd painted it, a tangle of blue and black, desire warring against sanity. He didn't want her to feel this pounding unease, didn't want it to be real.
    "Somewhere else," he said thickly. "A restaurant." If he didn't get out of here soon, he'd yank her into his arms to taste the pale flush of her lips, to drink her kiss, to dive in and take what he'd learned so