“This is fucking crazy.” The words are garbled, lacking consonants because I’m trying not to mess up the thick, drying paint around my mouth.
“No. It’s art.”
Naked except for a thong, my body covered front to back in a thousand strokes of color, I don’t feel anything beyond the present moment. He’s right. There’s nothing crazy or chaotic here. There is only laughter. Collaboration. Excitement. Joy.
This is the gift Gideon gives, the power he grants—to live fully in the present moment. No past, no tomorrow. Just now. Immersion in both the current experience and his sensual, unpredictable art of being.
“Stop laughing or I’ll have to redo this section again,” he grumbles, twinkling eyes glancing up from beneath lowered brows. He’s on his knees in front of me, a paintbrush angled at my stomach.
I’m an hour past the initial, painful peak of arousal triggered by his touch. The brushstrokes on my breasts and hardened nipples were a particular torture, as was Gideon’s knowing smirk every time I twitched.
“It tickles, asshole.”
Gideon chuckles as he stands. “Okay, a few more shots, please.”
Finn lifts a hefty black camera to his face. The shutter snaps and snaps, little plastic flutters of sound that dance inside my ears.
I have the basic poses down by now, so I shift around every minute or so. My gaze wanders, stalling repeatedly on what’s been taunting me since I walked in the room—a gargantuan wooden privacy screen obscuring one corner.
The panels are covered almost entirely by photographs from our first session. Hundreds of pictures—color and black-and-white—of my face and body in various poses and magnification. Hands. Mouth. Ears. Shoulder blades. My spine ass to neck. Even my freaking nose is on display from every conceivable angle.
It’s… oddly impersonal. One-dimensional. Faintly grotesque. I don’t see me but a caricature of a woman. A relief, since it means I don’t have to be affected by the images.
But it isn’t even the screen that tugs my mind, bringing my gaze back and back again. It’s what Gideon hinted at lives behind the screen.
A canvas.
My canvas.
The first of seven, he said, though he wouldn’t say more about their concept or purpose. I’m not allowed to look, but I don’t need to.
“What’s the first one, huh?” I mumble. “Which of the Seven Sins am I to embody?”
Gideon grunts in humor. “Does it matter?”
My eyes find him not far from the hidden canvas, leaning against the wall beside an open window. He’s smoking a clove, the pungent, blue-tinged smoke trailing from his nostrils. He’s bare-chested, spattered liberally with paint. A Celtic god breathing fire and spitting smoke.
My chest feels heavy, tight, and hot. So hot. Smothered by his beauty. Suffocated by his allure. My fingers and toes tingle. The roots of my hair itch.
I don’t know if this is a panic attack, an allergic reaction to the paint, or that tipping off point when reason flees from the path of something greater and infinitely more dangerous.
I cannot love this man.
His eyes haven’t left mine. No trace of his usual, lightly mocking smile.
“Finn.”
There’s a wealth of meaning in the word. A hidden language built over years of friendship. Gideon doesn’t move, and neither do I except to tremble, as Finn packs away his camera and slips from the room.
The sound of the door closing shoves my stomach off a cliff.
Gideon takes a final drag of the clove, smoke curling around his face, obscuring his eyes. Then he tosses the butt in a nearby cup of water.
“Come on, let’s get you cleaned up. You’re going to need help.”
Without even a glance in my direction, he stalks across the room and swings open the door Finn just disappeared through.
“Wait, what about—” I gesture helplessly at my paint-covered feet. “I can’t—”
Gideon pauses but doesn’t turn. “Fuck the carpet, Deirdre. Once all that paint dries completely, it’ll be a nightmare to wash off. Get moving.”
The command crackles hotly in my body, pushing blood to my skin. My inner thighs. Fingers. Back of my neck. I have no confidence. No control. And I have no idea what the consequence of following him will be, only that it will leave invisible scars.
But I have so many of those already—what’s a few more?
* * *
Gideon’s master bathroom is one of those modern masterpieces that look like it’d be nice to visit but faintly depressing to use every day. All white, chrome, and slate gray, with glossy cabinetry and frosty white marble. The shower is a dark behemoth—a glass-walled walk-in with two waterfall showerheads, plus rows of additional sprays marching down both sides.
As Gideon opens the glass door, I manage to squeak, “I’ve got it from here, thanks.”
He ignores me, cranking dials until the sudden, torrential water flow is accompanied by billowing steam. Then he steps back out. Hands planted on his hips, he stares down at me with that distant look I loathe and crave. Like he sees me as art instead of flesh and blood.
“If I don’t help you, you’ll never get it all off.” The words are soft, almost questioning, like maybe he wants me to insist he leave.
But I can’t.
Because I’ll die if he doesn’t touch me again.
I pull my paint-sodden thong away from my body and wiggle the material down my legs. The novelty of being covered in paint has worn off, and I’m itchy and eager to get rid of it.
“I’m not fucking you,” he says.
My thong splats when it hits the shower floor. Colors swirl from the material, reds and blues and yellows. Washing them is pointless; I’ll have to trash them.
“I know,” I reply, stepping past him. Close enough that paint from my shoulder and arm smears across his pale chest.
He mutters something under his breath. I feel him watching me as I step into the heavy spray. My back to him, I stare, transfixed, at the thick swirls of color dripping down my chest and stomach.
“You really piss me off, you know that?” he says from behind me. A second later, a soapy cloth drags across my shoulders.
I’m so fucking relieved he’s touching me, warmth melts my kneecaps. Sagging forward, I brace both hands on the wall to stay upright.
“I know.”
“You know everything, do you?” he murmurs. I don’t answer, shocked silent by the feel of his bare hands on my spine, digging into my waist, dragging across my hips. “Let’s get your face clean.”
He turns me by the shoulders. “Deep breath, close your eyes.”
I gasp at the first touch of a cloth on my nose.
“Close your mouth, Snowflake.”
His touch is gentle and thorough, and the process takes several minutes. Small circles of astringent soap cross my brow. Eyes. Jaw and cheeks. Finally, my lips. Then the cloth is rinsed, and the process begins again. On the third round, my face feels raw but clean.
“All right. Turn back around. Let’s get your hair clean.”
Another slow process, his strong fingers massaging my scalp. Rinse, wash. Rinse, wash. He slathers an aromatic conditioner on the strands, then drops another, clean washcloth on my shoulder.
“You can do the rest.”
“I want you to do it.”
I hear his smile in the words, “Nice try. I’d rather watch.”
My belly flutters. Turning, I find him under the other showerhead. My thoughts stutter and stall. Water sluices over his shoulders, running through the valleys of muscle in his chest and stomach. Down to the erection he doesn’t bother to hide.
I look up, find those enigmatic eyes on my face. One brow cocked in challenge or contempt. God, this man…
“That looks painful,” I say, my bravado feigned. I grab the bar of soap he discarded on a small shelf and lather up my washcloth.
He shrugs. “Instant gratification is boring.”
“You’re a masochist.”
A low grunt. “And you’re a sadist, because what I want is to see your hands on your body.”
Can arousal kill you?
It feels that way, the edge so bright and sharp I can hardly think or move. The daily, dull routine of washing myself is excruciatingly intimate. A door into my private self forced open by his hand.
Sluggish, drugged with need, I wash my chest, my legs. And when Gideon plants his feet, leans back against the wet wall, and begins to stroke himself, I decide I’ll never shower again without thinking of him.
When my slick, soapy fingers finally slip between my legs, Gideon’s fist picks up speed.
“What does it feel like?” In opposition to his fierce expression and straining, blood-filled cock, his voice is cool. Detached.
But I know him well enough to see through it, now. Gideon is the least detached person I’ve ever met. If anything, he’s the opposite. Too alive. Too impassioned.
“Hot,” I tell him, water misting from my lips. “Creamy. Sensitive. Painful.”
He hisses. “Can you make yourself come?”
I nod, gasping as my index finger grazes my swollen clit. My other hand lifts instinctively to my breasts, squeezing to relieve the pressure.
Gideon’s head thuds against the wall, his heavy gaze on my face, mouth, chest. Between my legs where my hand moves. Flicks of my thumb on my clit, two fingers plunging inside. When I find that perfect rhythm, my hips begin to move. Gideon’s hand slows, his pace matching mine, like he’s with me. Inside me. And I’m inside him.
“Fuck, you’re beautiful.”
We come within seconds of each other, his groan and my cry chasing our shared pleasure. As I jerk and shudder through aftershocks of my orgasm, he milks every last drop of his climax. Semen pools in his clenched fingers, stays there as he stares, frozen, at the evidence.
“Gideon?” I whisper.
He slants me a look so loaded with emotion—blame, confusion, helplessness—it slices me. Cracks me apart. I take a step toward him, one hand feebly lifted. I’ll do anything to take away that look of pain.
“Don’t,” he says. Harsh and abrupt. He turns, rinsing quickly, then cranks off his side of the shower. Naked, dripping, he strides out of the bathroom.
I stare at the dark pools of water left by his footsteps.
22 PAST
16 YEARS OLD
“Tick, tock.”
The voice is bodiless in the dark, full of sinister mirth. I know he’s hard beneath his tailored slacks. There isn’t much he loves more than punishing our small acts of defiance.
I squeeze Nate’s hand tighter, so tightly his jagged fingernails pierce my skin. He’s shaking, his breath panting against my face.
“Where oh where are mis muñequitas?” he sings. His little dolls. “Tick tock, time’s running out.”
There’s a crash as he knocks into a stack of old boxes. Glass shatters mutedly, a sad tinkle of heirloom crystal never to be used. He curses, hissing out what he’ll do to us for breaking the basement’s only lightbulb, what he’s going to do when he finds us.
Our punishment for hiding.
Who he’ll give us to for that punishment.
I slap my other hand over Nate’s mouth to stifle his whimper.
The man keeps searching, growing angrier and angrier, louder and louder with his threats, until the sound of car tires over gravel distracts him. After a pregnant moment of silence, the doorbell rings. We can hear it—anywhere in the house, we can hear that bell.
“Lucky dolls,” he croons.
Heavy feet pound up the basement stairs. We wait until we hear his voice—the smooth, polished tone reserved for business associates—and several sets of footsteps reentering the house. Our safety assured for the moment, we emerge from our hiding spot.
Nate starts crying. Deep, silent heaves that jerk his narrow shoulders. I finish concealing the entrance of our secret place, replacing cushions over the hollowed-out inside of a sleeper couch, then draw him into my arms. He’s taller than me now, but more fragile.
I don’t cry.
23 absence
Six years—that’s how long it’s been since I’ve dreamed of that basement. The couch our jailer finally realized we hid inside. The ever-present dampness. The stale, acrid smell from some rodent dying in the walls however many months before.
When he figured it out, there was punishment. Oh, there was punishment. And not the type that leaves scars on the skin, but rather inflicts those deep soul-cuts that never heal. That the mind has to just… accept. Ignore. Deny in order to live any sort of normal life.
It was bad for me, but worse for Nate. I sold my virginity for a bus ticket; I didn’t have any self-worth left by the time our keeper found us half-starving and freezing our asses off under an overpass in Riverside. But Nate had a little still, leftover from his life before.
His parents, devout Mormons, kicked him out when they found him kissing another boy in his bedroom. He begged for forgiveness, tried to explain that he liked girls, too, but they said there was no room for him in God’s Heaven, and therefore no room for him in their house.
But until that day, he’d felt loved, and after, his two little sisters called him every day, missing him, pleading for him to come home. Until his parents shut off his cell phone.
Until he found us.
Until our teenaged souls, already cracked and dirty, were warped into twisted, ugly shapes.
Until the monsters changed us.
Until we became the monsters.
* * *
The last person in the world I expect to see when I leave the firing range the following afternoon is Gideon. Yet he’s leaning against the driver’s door of my car, arms crossed and eyes closed. He looks relaxed, happy to be soaking up the sun in a dingy parking lot in downtown.
When he hears my heels nearing, he opens his eyes and smiles. No shadows in his eyes. Like last night never happened.
“Lovely day, isn’t it?” he asks.
I squint at him, wondering for half a second if I’m hallucinating. “What are you doing here? How did you know where I was?”
“Technology is a wonderful thing.” He gestures vaguely to my car. “Most vehicles these days are equipped with tracking mechanisms. You know, for safety.”
I huff in annoyance. “I never should have started sharing my phone location with Maggie. What did you bribe her with?”
A hand rises dramatically to his chest. “I’m hurt.”
I stare at him until he laughs.
“It was nothing—a painting she admired at the house.”
My eyes widen. According to reports, his paintings sell for between ten and eighteen thousand dollars. Gideon notices my reaction and shrugs.
“It was a fair trade. Don’t tell her I told you, though. She’s scared you’ll be angry.”
“I am angry.”
“No, you’re not. I think you missed me. You didn’t say goodbye last night. I feel used.”
“You’re a real piece of work.” Struggling not to smile, I walk the rest of the way to my car and wave him away from the door. I open it and toss my purse inside. “What do you need that a phone call wouldn’t have sufficed?”
“I called you three times,” he says, eyes searching the dark lenses of my sunglasses. “You didn’t answer. I was worried. So was Maggie. She said you left abruptly this morning claiming to be sick, but you haven’t taken a sick day or missed work in three years.”
Fucking Maggie.
I’m not about to tell him about my nightmare, waking up to a familiar—horrifying—scent, and the sensation of being watched by a fathomless darkness. Or what happened after, when I turned on every light in my condo at three in the morning, then locked myself in the bathroom with a kitchen knife until it was time to get ready for work.
“I had a headache.”
“So you decided to spend the day shooting guns? Try again.”
My frayed patience snaps. “Can you just leave me alone?” I snap.<
br />
A brow cocks. “No. Not for another five months. Let’s go on a field trip. Take me somewhere meaningful to you.”
Closing my eyes, I pinch the bridge of my nose between my thumb and forefinger. I don’t actually have a headache—more like a soul ache—but if this conversation keeps up, I will soon.
“I have to go back to work.”
Gideon laughs. His fingers peel mine away from my face, and I open one eye to see his grin. He’s standing close enough that if I leaned forward, I could rest my head on his chest.
I wonder if he’d let me.
If I’d let myself.
“You know what? Fine.” I jerk away and slip into the car.
He jogs to the passenger side and gets in, buckling his seatbelt then rubbing his hands together like we’re kids going to Disneyland.
I start the car and reverse out of the parking spot at a speed just short of reckless. My body hums with frenetic energy, with the looping echoes of gunshots and the concussion of recoil. It wasn’t enough—tearing holes in a paper man. I thought it would help, ease the pounding in my gut, the fear that’s spread like a fungus in my heart since I woke up this morning with a dead man’s cologne in my nostrils.
I almost called Nate a thousand times today just to make sure he was okay. Thankfully, some part of me remains sane. At best, I would have worried him, and at worst, I would’ve sent him into a downward spiral. I can’t—won’t—do that to him.
Nate is—has always been—the better of us. The softer, kinder one. He would never let me steal from people who looked hungry or poor, or had kids with them. Even after everything, he’s retained that innate goodness.
Maybe I never had any.
There’s no redemption for me. All I have left is the swiftly disintegrating lie I’ve lived for the past decade. Though I’m sure it was inevitable… if Gideon hadn’t come along, there would have been someone or something else. A person, a memory. Something that catalyzed my unraveling.
The thing with rabbit holes—you can’t stop halfway down because you’ve suddenly changed your mind. Just ask Alice. Once you start falling, you’re gonna hit bottom no matter what.
Art of Sin: Illusions Duet : Book One Page 10