Without warning, he swept her up in his arms and carried her to the bedroom.
Lisa didn’t protest this time. She had no fight left for a protest. Her body was limp and wrung out, yet at the same time she craved his cock inside her.
He laid her on the bed, stripped off his T-shirt and jeans and knelt between her legs.
“Now, please, now!” she begged.
He nudged his cock inside her wet sex before thrusting hard to the very core of her. She wrapped her legs around his buttocks, trying to drag him in deeper than any man had ever been before. Olivier slammed into her as she dug her nails into his back and behind, rubbing her swollen clit against him, groaning as she crashed into her orgasm.
Lisa came to first, propping herself up on one elbow to look at Olivier, who was sprawled on his back beside her. She wondered if he’d fallen asleep. His eyes were closed, and his chest rose and fell rhythmically. His dark lashes rested against his olive skin. His full, sensual lips were slightly parted.
She had never seen him so relaxed and at peace. She wanted to know more about him, even if that meant getting a little too close to him for comfort.
He turned his face to her and opened his eyes. “That was sensational.”
“I know.”
He lifted a strand of hair from her eyes. “How are your nipples? Were the clamps too much?”
“Yes. And no… The whole experience was amazing. I don’t know why, because they really hurt, but at the same time, the sensation is incredible.”
He propped himself up on his elbow. “And was the feeling only physical?”
She was taken aback. “No. It was…this may sound crazy, but it was incredibly emotional, and being restrained made the whole thing more intense.”
“So you’d do it again?”
“I don’t know. The clamps hurt like hell, but I wanted to keep them on, for you and for me. I wanted to see the whole thing through.”
“If you enjoyed them that much, it sounds like I can always make them a daily treat.”
“Hell, no!”
“What did you say?”
“Oui, maître. Whatever you say, maître.”
He laughed. “Much better, and as you’ve been such a good sub today, I’ve got something else that I want to show you.”
Chapter Ten
“Olivier Lemaitre. This is not a house.”
Lisa got out of the Alfa and stood with hands on her hips. The journey from Paris to the Loire had taken a couple of hours, but she’d had no idea that this awaited her.
He slipped his arms around her. “What is it, then?”
“A bloody enormous chateau.”
He laughed. “Correction. It’s a bloody small chateau.”
“However, it does have turrets and battlements. What’s that block over there at the side? Stables?”
“It was. I’ve had it converted to more guest accommodations.”
“More?”
He smiled. “Come on, let’s go inside. I’ll get the bags after we’ve settled in.”
Lisa wasn’t sure she would ever settle in to a chateau, but she was going to have a damn good try. Olivier’s proposition to her had been to spend the weekend at his house in the country. She’d been vaguely aware he had another property beside the Paris apartment; Mimi had told her that much, but she’d assumed that the “artists’ retreat” would be some rambling farmhouse in dire need of repair, not this elegant mini-castle. And yes, chateaux were hardly rare in France, but it was still magnificent.
“You let students use this?”
“Of course. Why not?”
“I remember being a student, that’s why, and I wouldn’t have let me or my friends loose in a place like this. I feel like Cinderella.”
He took her hand. “Would you permit me to show you around, Princess?”
They stopped at the top of the steps in front of a set of huge double doors.
“Is there a butler?” she joked.
“Sorry to disappoint you, but I’ve got a key. I have a small team of staff who keep the place in good repair and clean and provide meals when the students are here, but it’s empty at the moment.”
He unlocked the door and stepped into a huge vestibule, its staircase spiralling round to the first floor.
“Wow.”
“You like?”
“I love. How old is it?”
“It was built in the nineteenth century and owned by one family until a few years ago. I bought it from a developer who’d acquired it to turn into a hotel but lost the finance. I thought it was the ideal place to run artists’ retreats and courses and workshops. It’s peaceful, not too far from Paris, and the light in the rooms is perfect.”
He opened a pair of doors. “This is the grand salon.”
Light flooded through a bank of French windows along one wall. Some of the furnishings were covered with dust sheets, but most were on view. It was elegant yet quirky, a mix of antique and contemporary. The contrast should not have worked, but it did.
“It’s fabulous.”
Lisa crossed the polished wooden floor to the window, which overlooked formal lawns and parkland.
“Those trees look old.”
“They were planted when the house was built. They’re Lebanese cedar trees. I’m glad you like it.”
He sounded genuine. Did it matter that much that she liked his home? She cautioned herself against reading too much into his words. It was natural for an artist to hope his creation—in this case, his home—was appreciated by others. Lisa closed her eyes as his breath feathered her neck. He lifted her hair and kissed the nape of her neck with warm lips. She sensed that soon he would want to shift into a scene, but right now, the normality of their relationship was equally seductive—and dangerous.
She shivered.
“What’s wrong?” he murmured.
“Nothing. It’s chilly in here.”
“Chilly? Really? It’s twenty-five degrees centigrade out there, and as for chilly, you have far too many clothes on at the moment.”
“Have I?”
“Yes.” He took her hand.
“What about our luggage?” she asked, half-teasing.
“I’ll get it later after I’ve shown you the rest of the house.”
Upstairs, he led her past a string of bedrooms, pointing out the largest at the end that was to be theirs for their stay. Lisa noticed another, less grand stairway leading off the end of the corridor.
“What’s up there?”
He glanced upwards and shrugged. “Studios, mainly.”
“Oh, I’d love to see them.”
“They’re working studios. Not interesting.”
“To you, maybe not, but I’d be interested to take a look at where you work.”
“Ah, but I don’t work in them anymore, which is one reason I open this place to better artists. Working artists, that is, but I’d be happy to show you.”
He walked ahead and opened a door. “This is the main studio.”
One huge room had been converted, possibly from several others. Light flooded in through the windows and through an atrium in the ceiling, dust motes hanging in the shafts. There were large wooden tables covered with pots full of brushes, palettes, jars and tubes of what she supposed were thinners and fixers. At one end of the room, canvases and easels and more artists’ materials were stacked on a low dais. Lisa sniffed, and the smell of oil paint and other chemicals filled her nose.
Olivier stood at the window, his arms folded.
“How often is the place used?” she asked.
“Most weeks, but it’s vacation at the art college right now, and we have no retreats booked.”
“Do you paint in here?”
“No.”
Was he going to elaborate?
“Never?”
“I have my own studio at the top of the house.”
“I’d like to see it.”
He gave a sigh. “If you really want to.”
He led the way up
the grand staircase to the second floor and along a landing, off of which, he said, were a series of bedrooms used by students and guests.
“Up here,” he said, turning a key in another door off the corridor. Immediately the grandeur ended, and Lisa found herself climbing a dark and narrow staircase. “This led to the attics where the servants lived,” he explained.
At the top was a narrow landing with more doors. Olivier opened one at the end of the landing. “This is it.”
The contrast of the sunlit room with the gloom of the corridor hurt her eyes. The ceiling was one big atrium that supplemented the light from the high windows. As in the teaching studio, there were canvases everywhere, but instead of being on display, they were stacked with their fronts turned away. Others were displayed on easels, but draped with cloths. Olivier had his back turned too. He stood at the window as if he couldn’t bear to look at his own work.
Lisa couldn’t help herself. “What happened, Olivier?”
He didn’t turn round. “I just stopped.”
“Why?”
“I got sick, and I ended a relationship.” He turned to her, his face devoid of any feeling. “But that much Mimi must have already told you.”
Lying was pointless. “She’s said nothing.”
“Then there’s no point in me raking it over.”
The warning in his voice was clear enough, and also tinged with an edge of frustration and distress that stopped Lisa from pushing any further. Yet as she stepped deeper into the room, her mind worked overtime on what could have happened to cut short such a passionate devotion to his work. Around her, the shrouded canvasses were like corpses hidden away from the world. Lisa stared in astonishment and finally couldn’t help herself.
“There’s so much work here. Why don’t you want anyone to see it?”
Arms folded in a gesture of defence, Olivier shook his head. “I’d hoped you had too much insight into human nature to think you could be a therapist or cure me. Our arrangement only works if it’s kept on the terms we agreed. I said there would be no negotiation.”
“But that’s a game. This is real life.” She held out her hand to the covered canvasses.
“The whole of life’s a game,” he said, not bothering to disguise the bitterness in his voice.
“In what way?”
He shook his head and wagged his finger. “Non, you won’t lure me into the confessional like that. You’ve seen the studio, and now you’ll leave.”
Frustration bubbled inside her. She sensed that a deeper connection with him was within touching distance, despite his defensiveness and anger—or even because of it. Should she push him?
“Lisa.”
He stood by the door, his hand raised to indicate she must leave the room.
She hadn’t got where she was in her job without taking a few risks. It was surely worth the danger of angering him… “I don’t want to leave. I want to see your work.” She stepped forward.
“No!”
At his cry, she reached towards the corner of a black cloth, but in a flash, his hand clamped down on her wrist.
“Ow!”
“Putain! I’m sorry.”
She was in his arms, with his face buried in her hair. “I am so fucking sorry. I hurt you.”
“I’m fine,” she said as she rubbed at her wrist, trembling a little.
“No, you’re hurt. I shouldn’t have done that.”
“No. I shouldn’t have invaded your privacy. I can see that now.”
He looked deadly serious. “It was wrong of me. I lost my temper, and I never lose my temper.”
Lisa covered her shock and his awkwardness with humour. “Do you realise you’re grovelling?”
“I’m not grovelling,” he said, the corners of his mouth finally twitching in a smile that was most definitely one of relief.
“You could have fooled me.”
“That was merely an apology. Believe me, you’ll know when I’m grovelling, Lisa.”
“Will I?” Her question came out on a breath and was answered by a kiss.
“Yes, you will. Come downstairs.”
As she left the studio and Olivier locked the door, Lisa guessed she wasn’t the only one of them to know that Olivier was shutting the door on demons that still tormented him. Lisa determined to ask Mimi what had happened to him, but she hadn’t given up hope of finding out herself.
Olivier acted as if nothing was wrong while they drove to the local market for supplies. She helped him prepare some dinner in the kitchen, and they ate on the terrace rather than sit at the table in the formal dining room. The conversation was light, amusing as ever, but the question of the hidden paintings lingered on the fringes of her mind like a phantom.
The next morning, after breakfast, Olivier took Lisa into the library. It was smaller than the grand chateau reception rooms, yet still of impressive dimensions, with a highly decorated ceiling. Two sides of the room were lined with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, but there were also desks with a couple of Apple laptops, an electronic whiteboard and a series of filing cabinets.
“I didn’t expect this.”
He grinned. “We artists do need to be part of the real world at times.” His mobile rang, and after a glance at the screen, he grimaced. “Fuck. Do you mind if I take this call? I won’t be long.”
“It’s fine. I’m happy to explore.”
Olivier went outside, and Lisa could hear his voice, speaking French, as she wandered round the room, idly checking out the spines of the books. They were mostly in French too, and even a cursory leaf through them let her know it was a waste of time trying to fathom out the subject matter.
What intrigued her more were the cardboard boxes covering the tops of the desks. A couple were sealed with sticky tape, but several were open, and when she lifted the lid from one, she found it full of antique postcards and photos.
She picked out a few and laid them on the table. There were sepia scenes of Paris and the south of France, mostly from the turn of the century, Paris’s Belle Époque before the First World War. They were beautiful, and after flicking through them for a few minutes, she opened the next box, wondering what gems lay inside.
Her breath hitched as she drew the first card out and held it between her fingertips. Like the previous cards, it was in sepia and fading a little, but it wasn’t of a French landmark. The card, like the others in the box, showed young women in the nude and seminude, posing in various costumes and scenarios. By contemporary standards, the shots were no more revealing than your average ad in an upmarket women’s magazine, but Lisa guessed that in their day, they would have been considered extremely risqué. Many were also quite humorous, showing a saucy French maid, a beauty “caught” in the act of undressing, and a young woman dressed as a slave girl with a large but docile-looking snake.
“You like them?”
Lisa started guiltily and turned, the card still in her hand.
“I’ve seen this type of thing before at the bouquinistes down by the Seine. Did you buy them from one of the dealers there?”
“No, they were part of the private collection of the house when I bought it. I don’t know if the last owners collected them or if they’ve been here since they were first taken. What do you think of them?”
“I think they’re beautiful, with a charming kind of innocence. Nothing you wouldn’t see on a billboard or a magazine now, and the girls don’t look unhappy, even though they must have been desperate…”
“Possibly, but Paris during the Belle Époque was a little more enlightened than London. In fact, Paris was the centre of the erotic photography industry, fuelled, of course, by the art scene.”
“Now why doesn’t that surprise me,” she said, treating him to an arch glance.
“If you like those, come and see this.” Olivier pulled out a large book from the shelf behind Lisa and spread it open on the table. “The first nude photographs were created almost as soon as Daguerre invented photography in the 1830s.”
“That early? I can’t believe it.”
“They were meant to be reference material for painters and sculptors. That’s why they looked like this…” he said, pointing to a blurry, grainy picture. “They posed the pictures like classic oil paintings.”
Lisa shook her head. “So that made it acceptable?”
“On the surface.” He grinned and pulled a large leather-bound volume from the shelf. “See this? It’s an early copy of La Beaute magazine.”
He turned the pages gently. It was full of nude photographs in similar style to the postcards.
“Those girls look…incredibly real. I mean, I know they’re real, but they seem like people you could meet in the street.”
“That may be because they have proper curves and aren’t airbrushed fantasies. They’re the kind of woman I like.”
Lisa blushed, feeling as if she’d inherited the coyness and innocence of the models.
“Why all the elaborate poses and the theatrical settings?”
“Back then it was only considered acceptable to photograph the naked body for artists’ studies, but naturally, some erotic images fell into the hands of discerning gentlemen. I guess the more the photo resembled a painting, the less likely the photographer could be accused of creating something obscene.”
Lisa took the book and turned over the pages, staring at the young women, imagining herself draped in an exotic shawl, artfully arranged to expose her breast or buttock or give a tantalising glimpse of her unshaven sex. Looking at the photos with Olivier was intensely erotic, and she could hardly keep still. “I feel a little guilty about looking at them if they had no choice but to do this,” she said.
“It’s sad, and I suppose perhaps we shouldn’t look at them now, but I’m no saint, Lisa and I don’t think you are. So maybe the best thing we can do is appreciate their efforts now.”
Lisa lingered over a picture of a seminude woman with a snake, wondering if the girl had enjoyed posing or had been forced to it out of desperation. Was she an artists’ model or a prostitute—or both? “I’m guessing ‘respectable’ women rarely posed in the nude?” she asked, fantasising about being made to strip for a photographer, who would, of course, look and sound like Olivier.
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