Victor balked, making her laugh. “That’s blasphemy, woman.”
“Perhaps,” she said, turning until she was face-to-face with him, “but I’m rebellious like that. And you love it.”
“That I do,” he whispered, his eyelids lowering. He leaned forward, capturing her mouth with his.
She wrapped her arms around his neck and returned the kiss. As it continued, their heads tilting and their lips parting, she felt him press his leg in between hers.
Marge smirked, passion flaring within her belly. Pulling away, she breathed, “You don’t have to leave soon, right? You can stay here and keep me company for a while longer?”
“Of course,” he breathed back, winking at her before pecking her lips. “Anything for my woman.”
“Anything, hmm?” she said, nipping at his bottom lip. When she felt him shudder against her, she swayed, starting to feel drunk lust. “Take me to the bedroom and devour me.”
Victor immediately swooped her up in his arms—a feat only a strong man like him could accomplish in one easy motion. Startled, Marge laughed as he carried her back to the bedroom.
They weren’t married—never could get married if Merriweather never consented to a divorce—but Marge didn’t care. She was fully Victor’s, and he was fully hers. It didn’t matter that they didn’t live properly because they lived happily. And, as it turned out, that was all Marge had ever wanted in this life.
THE END
Dangerous Love
Dangerous Love
Chapter 1
Rachel Pierce didn’t know what to think. She turned her head in an attempt to give herself another perspective, but still, she was unsure.
She was staring at the painting she’d just completed. It was a self-portrait, one drawn more from memory than from the floor mirror leaning against the wall to her right. It had been good to sketch, good to mix the paints for and create, but now she wasn’t so sure that the finished painting itself was good.
Rachel sighed to herself and stood up from her stool, pushing with her hands to spring off of it and propel herself towards the kitchen. As she walked through her bland house, shuffling in the darkness with her shoulders slouched between the white walls, she thanked god she had decided on an apartment with only one floor—she really didn’t think she could deal with stairs.
Stepping around her small breakfast bar, she yanked open the fridge black door and reached her other hand in blindly. She found the bottle easily enough, curling her fingers around the neck of it to pull it out and let the fridge door fall closed on its own again. She glanced at the bottle of Muscadine red wine in her hand, a little surprised to see that she had less than half of it left. Grabbing a mason jar from the dishwasher, she trudged back to her studio room.
The clock on the wall was just turning midnight when she sat back down on her stool. Rachel upturned the bottle and let the alcohol fill her cup, watching the dark liquid swirl inside the glass. Taking a big sip, she eyed her painting again.
It was a nude self-portrait, one that depicted her hugging her knees to her chest while her face, turned under her arm, was left in shadow. She stared at her calves. When she’d painted them, she hadn’t thought about beauty or long lines—she’d just painted, brushing stretch mark after bunched fat, bringing all of her imperfections to light.
Rachel could remember taking Life Drawing 101 in college. She’d been thin, back then—a naïve girl just out of high school who hadn’t taken the Freshman Fifteen seriously. Within the first week her professor had introduced a model to the class, a regular who posed for extra cash.
Rachel had never seen another female naked before.
Not to mention, the woman was fat; borderline obese, actually. The professor didn’t say anything about it, and she didn’t want to be the one to ask, so when he called for sketching Rachel simply broke out her graphite pencils and got to it. It was only after a few more classes and the same size of model in every one of them that made her realize it had to be a trend, only for a professor to admit that fat women made for more interesting sketches than simple, stick-thin girls.
Rachel wondered what her professors would think of her now, painting her own bulbous body in the dark with the same detachment as she had when drawing a stranger. She looked at the painting indifferently and simply let the lines lead her, following the legs to see the fat arms wrapped around them, glancing up to the small shoulders and the arching neck dwarfed by her round chin that disappeared under the arm again. The middle of the painting—the focal point—was one eye, gleaming green in the otherwise dark painting. It was the only thing of her face that she’d allowed to show. It had been a risk, but looking at the finished product made her confident that no one would be able to recognize her.
Rachel glanced at the clock again, her eyes catching on the one piece of furniture she’d actually taken the time to bang a nail into the drywall for and hang up: her diploma. The sharp black font read, “Bachelor of Liberal Arts: Museum Studies.” She sipped her wine, reading the word ‘museum’ over and over again.
Rachel had grown up going to museums, thanks to her parents. Her mother was still a leading historian in Paleolithic archaeology to this day, and her father had been a classical history professor for as long as she could remember. She’d dreamed of growing up and running her own museum, one like her mom worked for, but when she had finally landed that paid internship at the Smithsonian and started working in her field, she had only felt disappointment.
Maybe it was the art college she’d gone to, or the expectation vs. reality—or, hell, maybe it was just part of growing up. Whatever the reason, she’d hated working at a museum. She didn’t like the idea of reorganizing a timeline just to make it flow better as a walkthrough for tourists, or having to scrap an exhibit because “the numbers weren’t there” to keep it open.
She’d quit within the year, and landed flat on her ass, back in the peach state’s most haunted city with her best friend for a roommate.
“I’m so glad you’re moving in!” Cynthia had excitedly welcomed her into the apartment, attacking her with questions the moment she’d stepped through the doorway. It had been great to see her again after almost a year since they’d last hugged at graduation, and seeing her happy face after being made to answer to a family of disappointed ones had been a relief.
Rachel blinked at her degree, thinking.
If it hadn’t been for Cynthia, she wouldn’t have met Kyle—a sequential art major who’d been through one too many storyboarding critiques to think that his comics were still any good. A shame, as he had some of the best work she’d ever seen come out of their college, but at least he hadn’t let the low self-esteem win and merely transformed his passion to host local art shows for young classmates.
Rachel had gotten involved, helping transform Kyle’s simple shows into grand galleries and gain attention not just from the college, but also from the city itself.
Now here she was, four years later at twenty-seven years of age, drinking alone in her apartment with a morbid self-portrait staring at her in the dark and a new exhibit deadline for tomorrow night looming over her head. She sipped her wine, and closed her eyes.
Should she enter her painting in the show?
It certainly fit in with the dark theme, and she knew it’d blend right in with the brooding artwork already hanging up on the gallery’s walls—even Kyle had said so, when she shared the sketch work with him. She just wasn’t sure if she felt right about it. Too often she’d seen rich patrons take advantage of a museum’s need to force a gallery to be arranged a certain way or, in some cases, to never be set up at all. Rachel didn’t want to taint their exhibit, Dark and Dangerous, by throwing a painting in there done by the gallery’s curator herself.
Rachel sighed, and slid off her stool to go back into the kitchen, reaching to take the bottle of wine with her. She placed the glass in the sink, already annoyed with it, and lounged against her kitchen counter, holding the bottle to her lips as she took a
few big gulps.
She stopped when she leaned back and hit her elbow against something. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw a piece of paper—the artist statement form. It was something she’d brought up to Kyle ages ago, back before they’d become partners and she had simply annoyed him with suggestion after suggestion for his tiny gallery. Now he had three—none of which were small—and was a private owner of a fourth one that Rachel ran, with every one of them requiring an artist statement for every piece of art displayed.
Including Rachel’s. If she chose to enter it.
She’d already decided on a pseudonym. As most of her art was rough and harsh, no clean lines or smoothed out colors, she’d chosen Atalanta Arcadia after the masculine huntress from Greek mythology. It was obviously a fake name, but the point wasn’t to trick but rather to hide. So long as no one knew the alias was hers, she didn’t care if the public thought it was bogus.
Rachel looked at the “Atalanta Arcadia” she’d scribbled on the top of the page and picked up a pen, touching the inked tip to the empty lines provided in the middle.
She didn’t think, she just wrote.
Chapter 2
“Pierce! What’re we thinkin’ sweetheart?”
Rachel whirled around at the voice, a big smile on her lips as Kyle waltzed in the door toward her. He had always been a flamboyant man, and today was no disappointment. His yellow scarf was flipped over his shoulder, contrasting nicely with his blue tunic and silver belt. His bulky denim boots with the brass buckles overwhelmed his pants, a skinny stretch of white spandex. In short, he looked like colorfully coordinated rainbow, and he was confident pulling it off.
“Kyle, always a pleasure,” she laughed, standing up to meet him. They hugged, Kyle enveloping her in his lanky arms and Rachel, patting him on the back with three small taps of her hand. “Come to see the gallery?”
“Of course,” he nodded happily, following her as she led him away from the desk and over to the left wall. It had large cursive script that spelled, ‘Dark and Dangerous.’
“It begins here,” she motioned to the writing and continued on to the next wall where a set of six inked pictures hung. “These are six commissions by Andrew.”
“Andrew Howeth?” Kyle asked, raising an eyebrow. Andrew had done some art for them in the past—a little scenery, some sea life, but the work before them touched something even Rachel hadn’t expected from the recent graduate. Each of the inked artworks depicted a couple in the midst of a sexual act: a woman tied to a headboard, a man on the receiving end of a paddle, a couple handcuffed together—each was a window into the life of a deviant.
“I love it,” Kyle declared.
Rachel smiled softly, proud for Andrew. “Then you’ll love this,” she said, leading him further down to a three-dimensional installation of leather and rope. The rest of the wall space was filled with similar subject matter, all ‘Dark and Dangerous’ in keeping with the theme. Kyle was impressed.
“You’ve really outdone yourself this time, Pierce,” he said. Rachel walked him to the door, smiling when he did one last look around. “Especially with that one,” he added, pointing to a portrait of a nude woman in the back.
Rachel tensed when she realized it was hers. “Do you—”
“Think it’s a good idea? Of course!” he shook his head at her, flapping his hand as if waving the very idea away. “And someone’s going to buy it, I’ll tell you that right now. In fact, you should sign it while you have the chance!” With a final goodbye, Kyle stepped back out onto the street with a flourish, his scarf catching the wind to elegantly fly behind him as he walked.
So. He’d liked it.
Rachel just hoped that the public would be as welcoming.
“There’s a line outside.”
Rachel stopped talking with the kids they’d hired to pass out the food for the event and looked over at Cynthia. “What?”
“A line,” she pointed out the window. “You’ve got one.”
“But we don’t open for another thirty minutes,” she said, frowning as she walked over to her friend. “Are you sure it isn’t for the restaurant next door—” But no, the line started with a group of teenagers leaning against their door and extended out down the side of the street.
“Pretty sure, Rach,” Cynthia said as she crossed her arms, watching them.
“This is an eighteen and up event,” Rachel said as she scanned the young faces in the crowd. Cynthia laughed. “If they’re legal, then it’s got to be by just barely.”
“What’d you expect? It is a college town,” Cynthia rolled her eyes. Then, in more of a mutter to herself than to Rachel, she said softly, “There has to be at least forty kids out there.”
By the time they finally opened at seven, the line had more than doubled. It seemed like the kids had all come in groups, perhaps too embarrassed to come alone, so that when Rachel opened up the gallery doors to the street it was as if she’d opened up a gateway to an obnoxious grade school cafeteria. Everyone was talking over each other, and it took Rachel a few tries before they quieted to hear her announcement.
“We’ll be opening momentarily,” she said for the fourth time. “Please, have your ID’s out and ready.” A few kids groaned, but most simply reached for their back pockets or inside their purses. Rachel nodded to Adam and Jake and let them block the doorway, each armed with a flashlight and the knowledge to spot a fake.
Fifteen minutes in, and barely half of the people who had been waiting in line had successfully made it through. Rachel didn’t mind—in fact, she’d have preferred if all of the kids had been turned away. She could already spot some of their usual patrons in the back of the line, looking uncomfortable and surprised at the crowd of teenagers blocking them. It was painful to watch.
Busying herself with the people already inside, Rachel walked among the guests in their jeans and t-shirts with her black dress and high heels. As she passed various artworks being giggled at, she went to the right of the exhibit, stepping into a quieter corner where her own painting was.
No one was laughing at it, thank god, but no one was looking at it, either. It was walked right by, apparently not risqué enough for the kids that were currently invading her gallery. The next time she held a provocative exhibit, she’d be smart enough to charge some sort of cover at the door.
“Huh.”
Rachel jumped slightly at the sudden voice so close by. She glanced over her shoulder, shocked to see a man actually stopped and standing in front of her painting.
His confident stance immediately reminded her of Kyle, but the similarities between her friend and the stranger wearing a black business suit s ended there. He wasn’t one of the college kids, that much was obvious, but he also wasn’t one of her regulars, either. Rachel pretended to look at a sculpture of breasts opposite the painting and kept her back to him.
He was silent as he took in her self-portrait, so quiet that she kept shifting to slightly turn her head and make sure that he was still there.
“Atalanta Arcadia…” he said quietly, reading her artist statement aloud. “Art is not merely a business of money for goods, but rather the trade of ideas and skill. In my painting, a woman is depicted defenseless yet protected, aware of herself but forever conscious of her appearance.”
Rachel stared ahead as she heard him give breath to her words, and she considered turning around to talk to him. “Excuse me, miss!” His sudden outburst had her whirling around, but as she opened her mouth to answer she realized that he wasn’t talking to her, but to one of her attendants on the floor. As Sarah came rushing forward, Rachel realized that he must’ve seen her nametag and assumed, rightfully so, that the girl worked there.
When Sarah got close enough, he flicked his finger at the painting. “Can I buy this?”
Before Sarah could answer, Rachel stepped between them. “Hello sir, I am—”
“Hey, hey,” he warned, waving a finger at her. “I was here first. I’ve already decided to buy it, so buzz off.
”
Rachel blinked, taken aback for a moment. Did he think she was trying to buy it out from under him? “My apologies,” she laughed nervously. “But I run this gallery.”
That made his sharp shoulders slouch, his threat gone. “Oh,” he said. “So, you’re the manager? No, no—the dealer? Art representative?” Suddenly snapping his fingers, he guessed again, “Curator?”
“Quite,” Rachel agreed. Turning to Sarah, she sent her on her way again. “I understand,” she said, looking back at the man. “That you wish to purchase this painting?”
“You heard right,” he grinned, leaning back on the balls of his feet as he slipped his hands into his pockets. “How much?”
Out of respect for each artist and what they believed their work was worth, Rachel never displayed a price next to an artwork. Basically, she didn’t require one—as long as an artist paid for their space in the exhibit, they could make as much (or as little) profit as they chose.
But that also meant that she hadn’t taken the time to create one herself.
“Uh,” she said, immediately embarrassed of herself. She cleared her throat, and tried again. “One hundred and seventy-five dollars, sir,” she rambled off. It wasn’t a high number, but it wasn’t a low one either. She watched the man’s face, wondering if he would protest and argue for her to knock the price down. Would she? The most she’d ever gotten for a painting had been fifty dollars, and that’d been in college.
The man merely broke out into a grin. “Sold,” he said happily. “Now, is there a counter in a back room somewhere, or…?”
“Right this way,” Rachel directed him, holding out a hand as she motioned to the left. They walked side by side to the front counter, with the man just barely a step ahead of her. Rachel wondered about that when she noticed. After all, wasn’t she the one supposed to be leading the way? “Here we are,” she said, motioning for him to stay in front of the counter while she slipped around it.
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