Josh chuckled. “While we’ve discussed women getting naked in front of me, I’m afraid we haven’t really covered vice versa. However, I’ll show her the sketch when I’m done and see if she thinks it was worth it.” His gaze gleamed. “If it wasn’t, then it means I didn’t do a good enough job of capturing the subject matter and I deserve whatever punishment she deems fitting.”

The Mistress who’d snapped up the heart of this beautiful and interesting man had to be quite something. Marguerite thought he’d better make it a very good sketch.

She dropped the tie of the robe, let the garment fall into a pool of satin around her ankles.

Josh was certain she wasn’t aware of the correlation between her and the statue behind her, the proud stance, the graceful lines of the body, the smooth, pale skin against the bronze.

“Whatever you were about to do before you knew I was here…” He spoke quietly, too moved by the sheer beauty of the picture to raise his voice above a murmur. “…go ahead and do.”

She hesitated, then turned on the ball of one foot, bent her knees. With elegant sensuality, she lay down on her side, her back facing him, her arm curled as a pillow under her head, the other arm lying loosely before her. Her knees drew up, a loose fetal position, the silk of her clipped-back hair spilling perfectly onto the robe’s folds. The orchids near the fountain wall flickered shadows over her skin.

The hesitation had startled him, for she’d not struck him as modest in her manner, but when he saw her back, he understood. As she settled, getting comfortable, the air grew still, telling him she was aware he was studying her.

“Will they be there? In your picture?”

Her voice was quiet, smooth, no inflection to betray her thoughts.

“I’m a sculptor, Mistress. The sketch is to help me remember. But…” He paused, starting to move his pencil rapidly over his page, inspiration overtaking him, making it hard to focus on a response. “No,” he said at last. “They won’t be. They helped make you who you are but they didn’t make it all the way to your soul and that’s what I try to sculpt.”

Her hand curled into the well-tended grass. “Josh, that may be the most lovely lie anyone has ever told me. Thank you. What will you do with it, if it becomes a sculpture?”

“Not if. When.” His fingers were already itching to begin, could feel the way she would evolve under his hands. He could visualize how he would handle the different shapes of the orchids in bronze, the contrasting smooth expanses of her skin.

“I’ll show it to my art dealer, Marcus. He’ll set an exorbitant price on it which Tyler will pay three times over to make sure it becomes part of his private collection and never sees the inside of a gallery. If I wanted to be really terrible, I’d let Marcus know that. Tyler would have to mortgage this palace to acquire it.” Josh assumed a grass blade must have tickled her calf when she lifted a leg to rub at the offending itch. A few moments later her silence and the easing of her shoulders, the rhythmic rise and fall of her upper torso, told him she’d drifted off.

Over the next half hour, he sketched. Rising once or twice to circle her, squat by the base of the Aphrodite and study all the angles. He saw the evidence of her night with Tyler. Faint bruises from passion unleashed in two strong people, the flesh abraded along her fair-skinned breast from a man’s rough jaw, even the light impression of teeth on her neck. His nostrils told him she’d not yet showered. He could smell the mesh of their two scents as he chose an angle near her feet to better fill in the slope of her thighs.

For Josh, immersion in the sensual elements of his subject matter was all-consuming, so his pencil picked up pace, his eyes flickering quickly, the ideas, the concept forming.

As he moved around her, he kept his bare feet quiet on the grass, but she was sleeping the sleep of the well content, her body relaxed. Not until the sun rose over the statue did she move, shifting so she could lie on her back and turn her face away. When Josh moved so he blocked the light from disturbing her slumber, her brow eased and she returned to her side again.

The loneliness in the pit of his belly, the ache for Lauren that could become unbearable if she was away for too long, became somewhat more manageable as he performed this small act of service for this lovely Mistress. His art reached out to comfort him, a manifestation of the peace he found in Lauren’s arms, something so much like it that he knew both were miracles. As he studied the scars, he wondered if Marguerite often slept this deeply, or if she too had finally found her port in a storm.

Based on his high regard for Tyler and what he’d seen of her, he hoped so.

He turned to retrieve his sharpener and found Tyler sitting and watching them, his arms stretched out over the back of the bench. His eyes were nearly gold in the full light of the sun. Josh extended the pad and Tyler took it, looked down at it. His finger followed the sketched line of her shoulder down to her waist, over her hip, the shadowing.

After a long moment, he looked back at her. “I held her in my arms last night,” he said quietly. “And when I felt her every response, I thought, ‘There’s nothing else I could ever want.’ Whether there’s a heaven or not, it doesn’t matter. This… Those moments when she gave me everything were more than I ever hoped Heaven could be.”

“It’s love.” Josh nodded. “Once you find her, she’s the only way to fill the emptiness. Welcome to the club.” He looked over at the sleeping woman. “Will she run?”

“She’s been through a lot. She doesn’t believe she’s capable of feeling the same way, of being brave enough to accept it.” Tyler’s voice conveyed his conflict over that. “She’s braver than any man I’ve ever met. I just hope I can convince her she can trust me.” Josh tucked the pad under his arm. “I need to call Lauren. Badly. Can you…” He looked over.

“I won’t leave her alone.”

As Josh stepped past her, Marguerite turned to her back, unselfconscious in her nudity. “Don’t you owe me a tattoo viewing?” she asked sleepily.

Josh stopped, glanced over at Tyler. Though his jaw flexed, Tyler imperceptibly nodded his head.

Marguerite lifted her hand to shield her eyes from the sun and saw him there.

Warmth flooded her, but then she shifted her attention back to Josh.

He set the sketchbook aside, slipped the shirt off his shoulders as she sat up. Celtic designs manacled his biceps as well as his wrists. There was a dragon pattern on his flat belly just above his navel. He turned so she could see the life-sized sword etched in graphic color down the center of his back, starting at the base of his neck. The hilt was simple, the blade polished silver gray, but from hilt to tip the weapon was wrapped in a barbed vine. Here and there a rose bloomed, perfect in detail, but mostly there were thorns and barbs, stenciled as if pricking his skin in many places, with tiny black drops of blood. In one place, the drop had fallen upon one of the roses, spreading and staining the pure crimson petals. His jeans tightened briefly over his backside as he worked them open. When he dropped them, shoving them down his hips and letting them fall to his ankles, she could see the sword point stopped at the top cleft of his buttocks. He wasn’t wearing any underwear, so the loose fit of the jeans had left no skin impressions to mar the artwork.

When he turned, she saw his right calf had a serpent dragon coiled from ankle to knee. From the tender joining crease of pelvis to mid-thigh, another tattoo of a sword had been stenciled. The jeweled hilt was drawn just below his hipbone. A latticework of ivy and pale gold flowers twined around this blade. At its point the greenery wove into a tight vee that curled up into a dime-sized upright pentacle. A symbol of the elements and protection, it anchored the work on the inside of the thigh just below his testicles.

She rose, moved behind him, passing her fingers over the blade where it narrowed to the small of his back, stopping at the tip end, her fingers resting on the upper curve of his buttocks.

“It’s beautiful.” She looked at his face as he turned his head to look at her, her fingers still on him. “And horrible. They’re the same as mine in a way, aren’t they?”

His gray eyes warmed, the shadows of past pain still there, still remembered, but without the same power over him anymore. “Yes,” he said. “There was never a better tattoo artist than she was.”

“And your flesh was a canvas that inspired her like no other,” she said softly.

“Every needle mark was precise, had to be just so…”

“And you had to be absolutely still, so nothing would ruin its placement.” Josh’s eyes darkened to storm clouds as he nodded at her shoulder, at what he knew lay behind it. “At least I had a choice.”

She stepped back, withdrawing. “We both know sometimes that’s not as apparent as it seems in hindsight. Thank you, Josh. For the honor of being your model.” He took her hand, kissed it. It did not have the comfortable flair that Tyler gave it, but it was emotional, sincere. She was glad she was an ethical Mistress, else she would have done her best to steal him.

“The two of you have made me miss Lauren more. And remember why she’s my salvation, though I’m not likely to ever forget it.” He straightened and held on to Marguerite’s hand a moment more, his gray eyes serious. “I wasn’t lying, Mistress. The scars aren’t soul deep. They only become soul deep if you turn your back on someone who loves you, who’s willing to guard your dreams, keep the nightmares at bay. Trust him. Trust yourself.”

She swallowed, her gaze shifting to Tyler. Josh also looked toward Tyler, releasing her. “I may drive into Fort Lauderdale and see if I can catch Lauren on a lunch break.

Tyler, do you mind if I borrow the Porsche?”

“With your driving skills? Take the BMW sedan in the garage. I’ll feel better knowing you have some protection when you wrap it around a tree.” Josh grinned, pulled on his pants. He headed toward the house with eager steps, carrying the sketch pad in his mouth as he shrugged into the shirt.