by Bianca Mori
"What?" he laughed.
She pulled a face. "Fuuuck. Gross, but true: he probably is. If that servant of hers isn't."
"You liked him, did you?" He waggled his eyebrows at her.
"He was cute."
He clutched her hand against his heart. "That hurts, my darling. You should have eyes only for me."
"You're full of it." She stuck out her tongue at him. "I feel sorry for him though; cute as he is. You know the Countess has him doing weird sex shit."
"If anyone needs it…?"
"She seem pretty tense to you?" she deadpanned.
"Oh yeah."
"You'd know." They paused at an intersection to let a group of Japanese tourists pass. "Mr. Kiss Her Hand."
He laughed again. "You think she bought the Boy Ingenue routine?"
They crossed the street and slowed down as they neared the busy Chausee d'Ixelles crossing. "I don't think so," she wrinkled her nose. "But she tried to convince herself she did."
"Good-looking men tend to short-circuit women's good sense."
"You're telling me," she said drily. "So how'd you train yourself to blush on cue? If I could do that I'd probably have Van Der Luyden eating from the palm of my hand."
"Stick around me kid. I'll teach you tricks you didn't know you needed."
"I wouldn't trust anything you had up your sleeve."
He squeezed her hand against his body, but stayed silent as they crossed the street. She could feel the warmth of him even in the slight chill this late in the day, and hurried to keep pace. The wine still worked its magic on her—she felt flushed and warm despite the waning sun, or perhaps it was the gorgeous man on the other end of her arm.
"Where are you taking me again?"
"We're nearly there."
A couple of minutes later and they stood in front of an eggshell-colored square building. A six-foot-tall black coin stood in front of them, framing the building sign.
"A museum?"
"You sound unimpressed."
"Museums aren't really my jam."
"Give it a chance," he said, tugging her by the hand and leading her in. He had a wide grin and his waves stuck up in different directions as they approached the ticket counter. She wanted to play spot-the-dimple and run her hands through his unruly hair at the same time.
"Two, please," he told the brown-haired girl behind the table.
She frowned —Peyton hadn't seen such a sour expression in quite some time. "The museum is closing in thirty minutes," she tutted in French.
"We'll be quick," he replied, turning on the high-voltage grin. Ticket girl looked a little less sour as she handed them their change.
"You shouldn't charm the pants off everyone," said Peyton.
"Jealous?"
Yes. "You wish."
They made their way to the galleries, briskly walking past the last stragglers heading towards the exits, Carson's hand clamped around hers as he led the way.
"You know your way around, huh?" she said.
"Shh. I really want you to see this."
Up the stairs, past a few galleries, around the corner and through a white passageway, and they were in a room filled with turn-of-the century hand-illustrated posters. The smile on Carson's face was as wide as though it was his birthday, and he led Peyton from poster to poster, remarking on the artist, drawing her attention to a flourish here, a block of color there; the shape of a dancing woman's leg, the sinuous curve of a demimondaine's neck.
After a while he shut up, sat on the bench in the middle of the room and watched as she walked around, looking at the pictures—of midnight-dark cats with bewitching yellow stares, at cowboys with gigantic scarves, and ladies—so many ladies—dancing and laughing with expressions of glee or else clad in classical shifts and heaps of blossoms.
"What do you think?" he asked softly, after her second turn about the room.
"They're beautiful," she said. She stopped in front of the black cat. "Which one of these is your favorite?"
"That would be like asking me who among my kids is my favorite."
She shot him a dark, questioning look, which he returned with interest.
She studied the ceiling. "Do you have any? Kids, I mean."
It took him a while to answer, and Peyton held her breath.
Finally: "No."
"Are you telling the truth?"
"As much truth as is possible." He scooted over the bench and beckoned her beside him. "As much truth as I can tell you."
"So no kids." She settled beside him but kept her eyes trained on the walls. "Tell me something else that's true."
He sighed and she felt his shoulders shrug. After a few moments of silence, he spoke.
"I'd always wanted to be an artist. My father, he also…worked with art." Their eyes met and she caught a sweet grin on his face; she could guess how his father made his living. "You could say I got my appreciation from him."
"Ah."
"He was very skilled, my father; he mastered many techniques. He could do you a mid-Century cubist piece and whip out a Spanish medieval the next day." He looked at her again as his cheeks reddened. "Maybe I'm bragging."
"You think?"
"Anyway. He trained me very well. And then when I said I wanted to go to art school, he surprised me by saying yes. And I left home for college, determined to be A Real Artist."
His dark brows drew together and his tidal pool eyes darkened like the sea in a storm.
"You know why I like these posters so much? They're from the Belle Epoque. There was such respect for craft, such celebration of skill in–in everything, from the clothes that the courtesans, the demimondaines, wore, to the fantastic hats on their heads. There were monthly exhibitions and annual art fairs and people would argue, really have these impassioned debates, on the value of what artists created with their brushes and canvas. And when you went and opened a play or wanted to advertise something as mundane as soap, you could have these amazing, incredible artists doing your posters for, I don't know, a shot of absinthe and a couch to crash on. Toulouse-Lautrec, Cheret, Tissot—you could walk down the streets and see literal works of art plastered to the walls. Anyone could see it! Can you imagine? It was the age of beauty, and if you had the ability to catch that beauty and pin it down between paper and pen, well..."
There was real sadness in his face, a real ache in his voice, and when he looked she could almost see the scene in his mind, and in her head it was like the movie Moulin Rouge. It was not real, but it was Carson's own fairytale.
Everyone needed a fairytale, but not everyone understood that fairytales were never meant to come true.
"Of course, it's different now," he said, with a touch of bitterness. "I learned that the hard way. I went to school and I had all these skills, and you know what they told me? 'Paintings are passé.' Passé! Would you call Portrait of Madame X passé?"
"Not that I know what that is but I'm…guessing…not?" smiled Peyton.
Carson turned from contemplating his past to look into her eyes. In a moment, the intensity passed; only to be replaced by a look of bitter resignation.
"My skills…they're not really essential. Save to help rich people make smart purchases. Today, if you wanted to be a celebrated artist...? You could encrust a human skull with diamonds, or obsessively gnaw on a giant block of lard, or sit silently across the table holding hands with someone until they cried or whatever. But paint something? When there's Photoshop? Why would anyone bother?" He sighed. "I was born too late."
She could not think of anything to say, so she ran her cold fingertip against his strong jaw and pulled her hand through the pleasant abundance of his messy curls. She leaned close to touch her lips to his and kiss the pain of that sigh away.
He closed his eyes at the touch of her mouth, and a soft moan escaped him as he kissed her back. He kissed softly and haltingly, his lips velvet, his tongue tentative. He kissed like he had all the time in the world to kiss her, and for her, time did stop.
&n
bsp; Then his hand was threaded in her red tresses while the other found its way through the opening of her coat and stroked her waist and belly. His fingers crept to the hem of her blouse and dipped inside to trace patterns against the charged skin of her torso.
She gripped his jaw tight and pressed him against her, surrendering to the kiss, shutting her eyes tight against the room of beauty—her awareness alive only to the feel of his tongue dancing against hers, the heat of his mouth as his kisses grew more insistent, more needy, and the strong grip of his fingers on her waist and inching ever higher.
He tore his mouth away from her and pressed his forehead so that all she could see, her whole world, were his eyes: brown and translucent and speckled with green and gold, tidal pool-eyes. Who knew what spun in their depths? His hand caressed her curls as he murmured: "Crimson. Vermillion. Scarlet."
"Ginger," she whispered back.
He kissed her again, as deep as he could, and she sighed into his mouth as his hand dropped from her hair and traveled down her neck like a warm, fluttering leaf. It brushed against her chest and paused to cup each breasts, before his other hand tightened against her waist.
It was like an unspoken command, a connection between them that had been resurrected, and at the feel of his hand gripping her waist, she leaned back and placed one leg over the edge of the bench, straddling it.
He groaned as she pulled him back against her, her kisses turning into fire as she clenched her fists against his suit. He gave as much as she got, and the hand that had stopped to cup and caress her chest now traveled down and under her skirt.
His hand brushed against her inner thigh, his thumb pressing into the creamy flesh, traveling to her center. Then the hand jumped and caressed the other leg, and Peyton whimpered at the miss. Carson smiled against her mouth, and then his hand made its way back to her panties, brushing up and down the damp fabric.
Peyton sighed and leaned back, releasing her grip on him, giving him more space to work with, and his mouth left her lips to pay homage to the column of her neck. The hand against her waist pinned her in place, and between her legs his other hand crept inside her panties to stroke her aching wetness.
She shivered with pleasure, leaning against her palms, and shut her eyes tight—partly to focus on the pleasure he was drawing out of her, partly to turn away from the klaxons blaring in her mind. Something in her screamed YES at how his fingers entered her and teased her while another cried in dismay of letting him in again.
"Ehe-hem!" a loud cough sounded from the far end of the room. Peyton opened her eyes and found a very amused-looking security guard leaning against the entrance, watching them with a critical—if satisfied—eye.
"I'd hate to stop you," he said simply in heavily accented French. "But the museum is closed."
They hurriedly disentangled from each other, Peyton drawing the coat around her while Carson smoothed down his jacket and hair. He took her hand and marched past the guard, who watched their exit with the most avid leer. Out they walked, blissfully haughty expressions upon their faces and noses proudly (though admittedly red) thrust in the air, even as the sour ticket girl looked on eagerly at their exit.
Carson was grim as they made their way back across the city to their hotel room, silent save for the terse directions he'd given their taxi driver, eyes focused with burning intensity that Peyton did not understand. Throughout their silent journey he kept his hand entwined in hers, his grip tight, his thumb stroking the back of her hand urgently, like he was telling her something she had to understand, and understand now.
They pulled up into their hotel. The bellhop opened the door. Carson paid the driver and led her inside, her hand still in his. He remained silent in the elevator, staring unseeing at their distorted reflections in the gilded doors, while his hand continued to communicate something deep and elemental to hers.
The bell chimed, the doors opened, and he led the way to their room—Gustave had taken it for granted they'd be staying together—and without a fumble nor a twitch of the fingers, he had the card key out and the door opened.
Then the door snicked closed, ending the world outside, and Peyton found stood face to face in a dim hotel room hallway with an uncharacteristically serious Carson, his eyes boring into her. Her hand was still tight in his grip.
He watched her gaze flick to their entwined fingers. "I don't want to let you go," he whispered.
"You'll have to."
He shook his head and took a step closer, and another, and another one; until she was pinned between the bottle-green wall paper and his navy-jacketed form. His hand remained closed around hers while the other drifted up to cup her face.
"Things should have been different between us," he whispered, touching his lips delicately to hers. He kissed her on the temple, and then on the cheek. "Every day, I wake up and I see you sleeping just inches from me," his lips found the hollow behind her ear, "I want you so much." His nose nudged her jaw and then he held her cheeks between his hands. "I want you so much it makes me ache." His lips touched her bandaged forearm and then murmured against her neck. "Even if there's all this between us. I'll take you any way I can. If you'll have me."
Her hands went back to his curls and she pulled him away to stare back into his eyes. The weight of them seemed to pin and drag her beneath their depths. "I shouldn't," she whispered. "You're drunk and you want me, but you're only trouble," she sighed.
He only stared back, and Peyton drifted in the undertow.
"I shouldn't, but I want to," and then she parted her lips for him and he kissed her deep.
"Peyton," he sighed, pulling off her coat, gently peeling away her blouse, kneeling and pressing his face against her flesh. "Oh, you smell so good." His breath was hot against her skin as he rubbed his cheeks against her ribs and belly. One arm wrapped around her hips while the other danced about her skin. "You're a goddess, you know that?"
"Don't you ever shut up?" she murmured, her own hands, buried in his curls, raising his head to kiss her again, deeply and completely, and then she fell against him.
"I can't shut up about you," he said, turning so she lay under him, and now he kissed-nuzzled-smelled her, burying his face and kissing and licking against her neck and in her cleavage and against her belly, grazing his teeth and running his lips against her elbows and on her waist, like a man enjoying her bounty, like someone who could not get enough of what she had to offer. She felt welcoming and warm and abundant, a rich red apple, a fairytale temptation.
In Carson's arms, Peyton was a feast.
His fingers busied themselves removing her brassiere and zipping off her skirt, and in a languid unfurling of limbs and flesh, she was bare beneath him. Carson groaned at the sight. She cupped his face.
"I think of you," he said, feverishly shrugging off his jacket, unbuttoning his shirt, ripping off a foil packet. "All the time." His hand reached out to cup her own cheek and traced a path from her jaw, down her neck and along the milky river of her skin. His finger trembled slightly.
"Kiss me," she said, raising herself on her elbows.
And then he fell upon her, giving himself over to the kiss, and they were a tangle of arms and limbs eager to strip the remaining clothes off him, and the sigh that came from them when they were both bare, skin finding home in skin, was that of relief.
Carson's hands and mouth were greedy; unable to decide where to linger, they roamed all over her. Peyton was no less insistent: her thighs clamped around his waist, her nails raked his back, her teeth sharp against his neck and shoulders and jaw and arms as his movement against her drove her wild. She skirted the edge of control, unable to find the edge of her desire, and when she felt him hard against her she arched up, took him in her hands and guided him inside.
The first sensation of him inside her was intense—she whimpered and shut her eyes at the power of the feeling. It was mingled desire and satisfaction; a sense of surrender and fulfilment; and at the center of the emotion, stronger than she imagined poss
ible, was a sense of home. Her body felt engulfed and whole with Carson inside her, and though there was bitterness at the edge of her pleasure at the thought of his betrayal, her flesh pushed the thought away and delighted in their coupling.
He thrust against her, his mouth avid along her jaw, and she gripped him tight within her arms and legs, willing him deeper, inarticulate in her pleasure.
"Peyton," he said, and the helplessness in his voice made her whimper.
"Peyton," he said again, a plea. "Peyton." He sounded like he was begging. He buried his face in her neck as he begged again and again, thrusting desperately inside her.
"Carson," she finally answered, bucking back, matching him thrust for thrust, the sweat pooling between them, their shut eyes now opening and finding each other's gaze as they pressed and they pounded and chased their ecstasy.
When it hit, it felt like the earth opening beneath her. She was swallowed up in the climax, the overwhelming wall of pleasure so complete and full that her breath left her for a few moments, and above her Carson was similarly frozen. It felt that they were spinning out in the vastness of space, and the only tether that kept them from flying completely away was the connection between their eyes.
They clung to each other as they floated back to earth.
Chapter 9
She awoke with a start to the sound of murmuring voices. Her arm smarted; the night's activities dislodged the bandage. One eye squinted in the dim room—a lamp cast a feeble yellow glow and the drapes were still drawn—but at the round table near the TV where business travelers were supposed to set up their laptops and work, two silhouetted figures sat and talked. She realized who the second figure was, and in a brief flash of panic (A lamp shining on her face! Where was she?) she yelped and drew the duvet around her.
A switch was flipped and the cove lights came on.
"Ah, Mademoiselle Peyton," said Gustave. Peyton glanced at the clock underneath the TV. Improbably, and at six in the fucking morning, Monsieur Gustave was impeccably dressed in one of his shark-gray suits, his longish hair expertly styled into place. Carson looked bleary and dim beside him in his hotel bathrobe.