The sculpture stood center stage in one room, the light from the windows caressing the white marble figures of a man and a woman, shadows accentuating the muscles and the curves of their bodies. It was disarmingly beautiful and innocently erotic.
She circled the sculpture slowly, taking in every detail—the faces, the man’s hand, which rested hesitatingly on the woman’s thigh. When she looked up, James stood on the other side, and her heart skipped a beat on finding his gaze on her. Instinctively she knew he’d been observing her almost as intensely as she’d been taking in the details of the image in front of her.
“Do you like it?” he asked quietly.
“Of course,” she whispered back, stepping towards him. “It’s moving, don’t you think?”
“It was intended to be part of The Gates of Hell.”
She blinked. “I haven’t seen The Gates yet.”
“It’s outside in the garden.”
She nodded. “Why do you think The Kiss is part of the Gates of Hell?” She bit her thumb, taking a closer look. “Besides that he’s a reluctant kisser,” she mused. Much like James.
“Reluctant? Why do you say so?” The weight of his gaze rested on her, and she shrugged.
“His body. The way she urges him down, embracing him, and yet his back is so straight, tight, too tense. And his hands—” She leaned closer, taking in more details of the sculpture. “It’s almost as if he caved in.”
“He has.”
“Not Adam and Eve again? Apple and Snake?” She raised her eyebrows at him. The sculpture had nothing to do with original sin, she was certain of that much. The Gates were based on Dante’s Inferno as far as she could recall from her art history classes.
“It’s because he just read this little book.” James pointed to the man’s other hand, which was resting to the side, not touching the woman at all. An uncarved, unrefined object seemed to slip from the man’s fingers. “Dante’s Paulo and Francesca. They were reading about Lancelot and Guinevere. It’s a cross-reference. They’re about to be caught out for their little liaison.”
“Well, that’s depressing.” She gathered her hair over her shoulders with a frown. “I can’t remember much of the details. Did she seduce him?”
“Does it matter who seduced whom?” James asked. “He fell in love with her against his better judgment.”
“And she cheated on her husband, didn’t she? To be with him.”
He didn’t answer her directly but his jaw tightened, as he ground down on his teeth. “And what do you think about that?”
It was as if shards of glass had shattered to the floor, surrounding their feet and her way out. He was referring to his mom and her heart contracted at the pain he was trying to hide. She had to pick her way out carefully. “Besides the obvious wrongness of it all, she must have been miserable and hated herself, for hurting her husband. Because it must have hurt.”
“You think so? You are too kind towards the lady.”
“Probably, but her husband must have hurt even more. But I can hardly judge, can I? I’ve never been in such a situation.” Their eyes held across the sculpture, and when he looked away she shrugged off the heavy weight of his comments. She circled the sculpture and met up with him again. “Studying art has given me a much broader view of life. I’ve become much less judgmental, which has been a blessing, coming from… where I come from.”
He nodded, and she sensed he knew exactly what she meant. He chuckled as he took her hand, nudging her to a point where they could see the laps of the lovers in the sculpture. He leaned to her ear. “I believe in the original version the man had a full-blown hard-on.”
The intense moment had passed and she struggled to smother a laugh, trying to keep quiet in the gallery where voices were hushed undertones to feet shuffling on the floors. “Seriously? The things they censure out of our school art history books!”
“Yep.”
“It must have been a hard sell on a nineteenth-century crowd.”
“No pun intended.”
They chuckled together. He let go of her hand and rested his hand on her lower back. “We’re done in here. Let me lead you to the Gates of Hell.”
“That sounds so ominous.” She bit her lip to contain the laugh that still wouldn’t settle.
He directed her outside into the gardens and she lifted her face to the sunlight as he dropped his hand from her back, leaving a heated spot on her skin. Everything felt very far from hell right now. This was the closest she’d been to heaven.
Her gaze roamed the gardens as he urged her in the direction they should take. Flowers in full bloom stood thick in the hedges, their sweet summer scent compounded by the sun.
A minute later she spotted the Gates where they stood against a wall of the garden. It was a massive sculpture in the shape of a double door, cast in bronze. From afar, it looked disordered, as human figures were pulled and sucked into a wave, which only wanted to spit them out. The sculpture gave off a sense of chaos and angst, even more so the closer they got.
“Well, the Gates are closed. That’s gratifying.” She laughed as they walked closer and she could distinguish individual human figures, some contorted and in pain, others seemingly caught in the lava-like casting without their knowledge. “With all the misery going on on the outside, who needs hell, in any case?” She studied the individual parts of the doors more closely, and he stood back to give her space.
“What are these people doing?” she whispered in a low voice, pointing to some bodies contorted awkwardly, limbs protruding.
He bent over, closer to her and the door. “That, to me, looks like an orgy.”
She burst out laughing. “What? Really?”
“Rodin style.” He grinned at her.
Her laughter subsided, but her chest still rose and dropped with the joy of it. “I can tell you this much, my dad will never preach about orgies taking you straight to hell.”
She didn’t turn to look at James and he made no comment. Mila had to remember not everybody had been squashed into a box like her.
Eventually, she stepped back. “Where are the murderers and rapists? The child abusers. The wife beaters? Those are the real sins. And this Thinker at the top, is he even considering all of the other sins?”
“So you don’t seriously think it is a sin? Having sex? Outside of marriage?” He peered into her eyes from underneath furrowed brows.
Heat rushed to her face. The little nagging voice, which took on either the sober reprimanding tones of her dad or the more menacing pitch of her mom, had been deadly quiet for a few glorious hours. Had James needed to bring that issue up? “No. Yes. Sometimes.”
“Interesting.” He blinked and cocked his head. “If you can’t make up your mind you’ll have to give those answers some context.”
“People are all different. It’s not wrong to make someone happy, is it? To feel loved and wanted? To show love… physically?” She swallowed, dropping her gaze.
That morning hadn’t quite been that, had it? Showing love physically. That morning had been more in line with quenching a thirst. Now that James had taken her virginity, she wasn’t sure she would be able to drink from just any old tap, like some people tended to do. Having sex when and where and with whomever they pleased, like Stacey did. It was so out of her mental frame of reference, and now, having experienced the physical side of it, she knew it would be impossible for her. She needed more than sex; she needed soul too. She was glad James had been her first. Not a stranger she’d never see again. How messed up would that have been?
She looked to the trimmed hedges and the path that led to some trees.
He stepped away from the Gates. “Let’s walk the gardens.”
She nodded and followed him, finding her inner equilibrium again after walking for some time under the flickering shade of the trees.
“I honestly don�
��t care what other people get up to, but for me—” she started softly, and he lowered his head to her. “It’s when sex is unwanted, whether in marriage or not, or forced on one party.” She looked up at him. “And when it leads to other issues…” She broke off. She didn’t want to think about those other issues.
“What issues?” he asked softly.
“Unwanted pregnancies.”
He was studying her face, then shrugged. “Usually avoidable with contraception.” He scanned her eyes, but as if the agonized turning in her gut had mirrored in her eyes he said, “What’s happened to make you say that, Mila?”
She groaned, wishing the tightness in her throat would retreat. “My younger brother Ruben has asked his girlfriend to have an abortion.” She blinked. “I’m not supposed to know. They thought they were alone, but they got to the heart of their heated argument so quickly, it was too late for me to tell them I was there and I was forced to eavesdrop.”
She was supposed to be in church. Listening to her dad’s Sunday morning sermon. But she’d played the truant that morning, and ever since Mila had been paying for it. She’d wished so many times that she hadn’t been there, standing in the laundry, folding some clothes, when Ruben and Stella had barged into the adjoining kitchen, already quarrelling. They hadn’t seen her, and soon words like “sex,” “broken condom,” and “pregnant” had been tossed around.
Mila and James came to a standstill under a shady cluster of trees and she hooked her thumbs in her jeans’ front pockets. James was studying her face, and the heat on her cheeks had become a permanent sensation.
“The worst of all was,” she spluttered, when he said nothing, “that Ruben said he doubted the baby was his, and that she was trying to trap him into marriage. He said she must have an abortion.” Her throat tightened more, and she bit on the inside of her mouth to divert her focus to some sort of pain. She was not going to cry in front of James again today.
“He didn’t suggest a paternity test?” James asked, his voice dry and scratchy.
“No, how cruel is that?” She swallowed hard, letting her anger at her brother overrun her disillusionment. “To just bark at her to go have an abortion?” Her brother’s actions had come as a shock, but worse had been his attitude towards the situation, which had left her stone cold and in doubt whether she knew her own brother. “You can imagine if my parents found out… if my dad found out… Good Lord. If his congregation found out!”
He still said nothing, but his hands rose to her shoulders and he drew her towards him. He hugged her tight, and for the umpteenth time that day she felt the stress seep from her as she melded her body against his.
James rested his chin on Mila’s head, her body flush to his. He couldn’t hold her any closer and heaved out a breath as he felt her relax. He pressed a soothing kiss to her hair, not knowing what to say. She’d reached the point where everything got an awkward type of transparency, where she realized things had another side to them, that what she’d thought was two dimensional was actually in three dimensions, and beliefs she’d held to all her life were being exposed as frauds.
James had been born into that phase; he’d skipped the entire coming of age part. It had sucked to know that all things were broken and that way of thinking had influenced his way of life. But it had been for the better because until now he’d come through life unscathed, or so he’d thought.
Eventually, she turned her face and leaned back to look at James, and reluctantly he let her go, reaching for her hands.
“What does my shrink say I should do about that?” she whispered.
His chest tightened at her honest question. She wanted advice and he had no idea what to say to her. He shook his head. “I can’t really say, never having been in such a situation before.”
She shot him a woeful smile. “A situation where someone tells you such a shitty story or having a pregnant girlfriend who demands marriage, knowing you’d cave in because your family is a bunch of holier-than-thou churchgoers?”
“Both, actually,” he answered with an empty chuckle. He wanted to get her mind off her worries, but it wouldn’t be easy to let go of her brother’s perceived sins. He understood why, and he would have hated to land in such a situation. Lucky for him, Marlène had been more neurotic than him regarding pregnancy, the horror of a baby ruining her body, and then the years of dealing with a snot-nosed kid having put her off having children for life. “Take your own advice, Mila. Don’t judge. It’s usually the only thing you can do.”
“You have no idea how hard I’m trying.” She bit her lip and turned her head towards the avenue of trees. “But it irritates me to hell and beyond that my brothers can go around and do what they want, and I’m to be as holy as the Virgin Mary until I get married.”
My sassy little rebel. God, what he would give to see her totally unleashed.
“Let’s walk this way,” he said, letting go of her hands, knowing that with each touch he was building up physical anticipation in himself. Was she even aware if it? Of the pile-up of tiny touches, each one more intimate, stretching their mutual boundary bit by bit, to a point where there was only one way to release the pressure.
They’d reached a bench in the park which overlooked the freshly-mowed lawn, with the view of the house at an angle. The late afternoon sun blazed the greens into fluorescent brightness.
“Can we sit here a while?” Mila asked.
He glanced at his watch. “Sure.” He’d be able to check in with the closing of the European financial markets as he did every day, if he could get his head to concentrate while sitting next to her.
She sat down and dug her paint and paper pad out of her bag, then looked up and stared at the scene in front of them for a few minutes. She exhaled a pent-up sigh, and as if sinking into a deep inner peace she started to draw. He leaned back, watching as the blank paper came to life under her fingers.
A tremor ran through him. Unscathed? How had he ever thought that? He was in it deep—for the first time. Had he waited his entire life for Mila Johnson to grow up, so that she could come and scar him with her innocence?
chapter 19
“I’m done,” Mila said with a grin, turning towards James and lifting her drawing so he could see.
The sun enveloped her face and she squinted to see him against the rays. He’d been watching her for a long time, the weight of his gaze shifting occasionally, sliding over her body. She didn’t mind him observing her. It made her feel warm inside, with a glow that she couldn’t quite define, having never felt it before.
He took the pad from her, studying it for a second, then gazed back at her. “It’s beautiful. Will you paint it later?”
She took out her phone and took some photos of the building and the garden from where she was seated. “Yes, I’ll use these photos as reference. Unless I have time to come back and it’s another gorgeous day with the light as it is now.”
“We can stay longer?”
“I promised to broil you a chicken breast.”
“You did.” His face split into a slow grin. “But I hope to convince you otherwise.”
“You are way too conniving for your own good.” She stretched lazily. “After that lunch, we should only eat a broiled chicken breast.” She checked her phone and gasped. “It’s already five thirty! Aren’t they going to throw us out soon?”
He got up and picked up her bag for her. “Yes, it’s closing time, but it was nice not having to rush you.”
Her heart swelled at his comment. He had such patience, sitting with her, not interfering or being chatty. She’d liked the quiet companionship he’d selflessly offered, and if she’d dared, she would’ve leaned back against him for a cuddle. Oh Lord. A cuddle? With James Sinclair? Of all things, he didn’t appear to be the cuddling type. Although each time in his arms had been just perfect.
With fumbling fingers, she collected her things and sl
ipped them into the bag he held open for her. “Thank you,” she murmured, avoiding his all-seeing gaze.
“Why so shy, Mila?” he asked softly.
“Just tired.” Her little prayer for forgiveness was taking on mammoth proportions at the rate she was throwing white lies around.
“Let’s amble over to the bookshop for a coffee.”
She nodded absentmindedly and walked abreast of him to the museum’s exit, where he hailed a taxi.
“Where’s the coffee shop?” She’d thought it was part of the museum.
“Not far from here, but we’ll catch a ride. Your feet will take enough of a beating tomorrow in the Louvre.”
Her pulse sped up at his words. She couldn’t wait to explore the Louvre, and yet, today had been pure perfection. “I really enjoyed spending the day with you.”
A taxi pulled up and he opened the door for her. “And I enjoyed spending it with you.”
She clambered in, and when he got in next to her he gave her a mischievous smile. “We are not done.”
His words dropped like a warm water balloon in her belly, letting desire, which had been taking a much-deserved nap whilst they were in the garden, raise its head with a slow stretch and a “what were you saying?” yawn. Earlier that morning, she’d come a second time after hearing those words. As the memory of every ripple of that intense orgasm spread through her body, she held her breath, her core muscles tightening of their own volition. The things he could do to her by just hinting… she bit her lip, restraining the unsettling urge to straddle him and kiss him, hard.
She turned her burning face away to look through the window, deciding with a tense exhale, which she tried to hide from him, that she shouldn’t reply.
When the taxi pulled up to the sidewalk ten minutes later he got out and waited for her to get out of the car. He reached out to her and she hesitantly put her hand in his. His fingers were warm, firm as he pulled her out and towards him, his lips to her ear. “Stop fretting, Mila—a promise I make, is a promise I keep.”
The Paris Apartment (Love Nests Book 1) Page 12