And I stopped wanting to be seen as a potential sexual partner.
“I don’t understand how you could ever be invisible.”
Anna paused and studied the contours of his face before locking onto his gaze. Did he really mean that? “Do you remember the first time we met?”
“At the workshop? Yes, absolutely.”
She shook her head. “We met before that, last Monday. We were both at the market, and you asked me about the coffee grinder.”
“I remember asking.” His gaze wavered. “But I don’t remember it being you.”
“That’s kind of what I’m talking about, and it happens more than I’d like to admit.” She pressed her lips together and held tighter to the quilt.
“I’m sorry, Anna. I really am.”
She he had to take ownership of Monday’s missteps, from her hastily wrangled hair to her choice of wardrobe, and her assumption about her clients. “It’s okay; it really is. I’m partially to blame. I kind of made myself unnoticeable, embraced the whole disappearing thing without being aware of what I was doing.” She brought her lips to the side of Leo’s mouth and kissed him. “And now, I like not being invisible. So, thank you for seeing me.”
Leo responded to her kiss, rubbed at her temple with his thumb, and broke away. “Stay right there.”
He rolled off the mattress, strode barefoot to the small table near the kitchen, and picked up the sketchbook lying open next to a jar filled with pencils. Anna soaked in the view, going and coming.
“I drew these after the first workshop,” he said, rejoining her on the bed.
She took the offered book in both hands. Leo had drawn a woman, naked, all robust curves. The woman appeared to be his lover. She turned the page and was greeted by more sketches of the same woman, in different poses. “Is this your ex?”
“Saffron, it’s you.” He pointed at the page for emphasis. “I had dinner by myself after the first workshop, and I was planning to write up my notes, but instead, I felt compelled to draw you. From memory.”
“These are beautiful,” she said, in awe of his talent and unable to process his confession.
“You are beautiful.”
Anna looked up from where her fingers traced the curves Leo had drawn with such attention to detail. The artist had a palpable appreciation for the female form. For her female form. “That’s the nicest thing anyone has said to me in a very long time.”
“Am I forgiven for overlooking you the first time we met?”
She nodded, on the verge of tears, then closed the sketchbook and passed it over. “Yes,” she whispered, “you’re forgiven.”
Leo dropped it on the floor and brought his body closer to hers. “Could we get back to our studies?”
The second round of kissing began with a newfound tenderness. Anna’s lips softened, grew plump with stirrings of desire flitting up and down and across her body. She wanted to know more about him, and she wanted to linger more on his perfect mouth. His jaw was close to perfect too, but his unshaven chin chafed her skin.
She wasn’t going to complain. Reddened cheeks were a kind of badge, a sign, that she, Anna Granger, had been making out with a man and liking it very, very much.
It crossed her mind at one point that she hadn’t thought about Daniel since his early morning text from Berlin. Leo’s mouth escorted that fleeting thought off the bed and out the door.
He pulled her on top of him and brought the quilt over her back. His hands cupped her buttocks, squeezing and releasing while they kissed, molding Anna’s curves to his thighbones, belly, and chest. And if she wasn’t mistaken, something between her legs responded to their kissing. Make that two things—one hers, one his.
“Would you mind taking your shirt off?” she asked, slightly giddy and completely emboldened by their foreplay and one of the suggestions in Gaia’s chapter about how to ask for what you want.
“Would you mind helping?”
She pulled away from his mouth until she was crouched above him on her hands and knees and grinned in anticipation. Pulling off Leo’s shirt was anything but routine, and as he curled his torso away from the bed and extricated his arms from the short sleeves, Anna had an exquisite view of his abs. The man was all muscle, defined and refined, with curls of hair sprinkled across his sternum and below his navel.
He noticed the direction of her gaze.
“Chemo,” he apologized. “I lost a lot of body mass.”
“I’m not complaining.” Anna tossed his shirt off the bed and ran her fingertips up his chest, over smooth skin, curled hairs, raised nipples smaller, harder and darker than her own. He slid his fingers underneath the hem of her sweater and gave it a tug.
“What about you? Need any help getting this off?”
She sat back on her heels. Leo’s hands trailed down her thighs and waited. The muted voices from the background of Anna’s awareness roared to the front.
Take off her clothes? In front of a stranger?
“I’ve had babies, Leo, and I’m fifty. And gravity is not my friend. And it’s completely light out,” she argued, gesturing to the obvious. Sunlight burst from behind a cloud and in through the windows, as if she’d choreographed its dramatic entrance.
“The better to see all of you,” he said, his voice gentle, his eyes and hands coaxing. He continued to wait while Anna debated how much of herself she was willing to reveal.
That morning, she had dressed in one of the gorgeous lace bra and panty sets she bought for the upcoming trip with Daniel and added a cotton knit camisole for a layer of warmth. She made her decision, raised her arms and invited Leo to peel off her sweater.
This disrobing was a test drive.
He took his
