Chapter 8
Sette
Every window in the parlor adjacent to Sette’s studio was opened. Fresh, warm air blew in, carrying with it a helping of pollen that an artist like Sette usually tried to avoid having fly around her home – particularly near the studio. That day? She didn’t give a horse’s ass.
“Wow,” Zara said, holding the dried canvas in her hands. “Wow. This is great.”
“Isn’t it?” Sette paced behind the chaise lounge Zara occupied, occasionally glancing down at her finished painting of June.
She had arrived late enough the night before to eat dinner, but instead took her sketched canvas straight to the studio and stayed up all night imbuing it with fantastic colors.
I never do that. Sette liked to let her sketches sit for a week or more before editing the lines and even considering the colors.
From the moment she left the Manoir, however, with her hours with June fresh in her mind, she had no choice. It had to be painted right away.
“It’s more than great.” Zara brought the canvas closer to her eyes, careful not to smudge it with her nose.
“It’s fucking fantastic. Probably your best since that painting of Versailles.
Only this time there’s a naked woman on it!
” As Sette wandered away to pour herself more iced tea, Zara continued, “This is that hot blonde from the Manoir? You slutty bitch.”
“It is her.” Sette did her damndest not to think about the details of yesterday, lest she start getting excited in all the wrong ways.
She was… divine. The more she got to know June, the more Sette realized that “divine” was probably not a word often associated with brusque and honest June.
Yet Sette couldn’t think of any other word to describe her.
Beautiful no longer had any meaning. Exquisite made her sound like a fancy French dish.
No, she was more than beautiful, more relatable than French cuisine.
Hearing her life story fit her aura so much that Sette could only think of capturing her essence on the canvas.
When she walked into the Manoir the day before, Sette had not considered sex with her.
Then June had become too perfect to resist. Everything about her was perfect.
The way she felt beneath Sette’s body. The way she moaned…
not fake at all. The way she writhed. That didn’t even touch the way she physically felt on the other end of Sette’s touch.
That couldn’t even be described in a mortal’s words.
She makes me want to be a poet. Muses were dangerous.
“Now, I know she doesn’t look like she had sex because you did her. Either she’s the biggest pro in the universe, or she had done some other sod before you got there.” Zara’s grin was too stupid to bear. “You have to pay extra to get her after another client?”
Sette didn’t deign that with an answer. As an artist, she had wanted to capture everything she saw on June after having sex with her, but as a woman, she refrained from adding the more vivid depictions that resulted from two people coming together.
She did not, however, hold back on the dark blond hairs on June’s mound. Perfectly groomed. Perfectly womanly.
She couldn’t stand to think about it.
“Your agent is going to love this, Sette.” She probably wasn’t aware of her actions, but Zara’s finger hovered over the lighting of the window as it poured over June’s flawless skin. “I’m serious. You need to call her up right now and tell her your next collection is all nudes.”
“I’ve been thinking about it. Doing a collection, that is.
” Five hundred portraits of June everywhere Sette could put her.
Not just on her bed. In a chair by the window, out in the garden, in this home.
Now, Sette had to stop thinking about that before things got too wild in her head.
At the end of the day, June was not a normal girlfriend, no matter how much she played up a fantasy when they were together.
Zara grinned. “You should do that Grace girl next. She had an ass to die for.” She cleared her throat. “I would know… saw it.”
“Did it, I’m sure.”
“To be sure.”
Sette sat down next to her friend. “I don’t want to do the others. If they’ll let me, I’ll do a collection based around June.”
The smile fell off Zara’s face. “Now I’m worried about you. All fun and games when we’re talking about all the ladies. You obsessing over one? Eh.”
“I think she might be my muse.”
“Now, hold on.” Zara clapped her hand on her friend’s shoulder.
While Zara was not the kind of woman who was afraid to show affection, least of all to close comrades like Sette, she understood how uncomfortable it made some people…
like close comrade Sette. I’m not a touchy-feely girl, even if I am an artist. It was what made being a doctor so easy.
While she felt for her patients, she was able to emotionally distance herself from them all.
Made certain decisions easier to handle.
There were times she had to make last-minute decisions in the delivery room that made novice obstetricians cry…
like doing a last-minute cesarean because otherwise both mother and baby would die.
At her level of clientele, though, the mothers weren’t always so understanding of the scars they were left with.
Didn’t Dr. Christie know that they had to go back to modelling?
That people were waiting to see what bikini fashion they would sport at the marina next summer?
What were they supposed to do with this?
Some thanked her for doing the right thing, but others acted as if they would’ve rather died.
One of many reasons Sette had to retire.
“Hey, listen to me.” Zara snapped her fingers, getting her friend’s attention. “Watch yourself. Don’t get emotionally involved with a woman like that. That’s a quick road to heartbreak, friend.”
“Would you know?” Sette asked dryly. “Anyway, it’s not like that.”
“You fucked her, though, right?”
“Why do you keep asking me that?” They were beyond girl talk now. That wasn’t mirth in Zara’s eye. Don’t act so concerned for me. Like Zara had any room to talk. “If I had, don’t you think I would’ve told you? I’ve got nothing to hide.”
So, why was she lying?
Zara gave her one last hard look before turning away. “You fucked her.” She pointed to the picture. “There’s more than one meaning to ‘that’s your work,’ and I’m looking right at it. You didn’t just bang her. You did the impossible, which is taking a woman like her to heaven.”
Sette steadied her breathing, but felt her cheeks heat up. They better not have turned red. “So what of it? You screwed the other one.”
“That’s different. That was just sex. She might influence some of my work for a while, but it won’t go beyond that.
This is mixing work and pleasure here.” Zara kept jabbing her finger toward the canvas.
“Don’t get too attached. Her job is to seduce you and bleed your wallet dry.
How much do you get charged? I’ll tell you right now, my credit card statement says I owe them an extra ten grand after our visit. ”
Only that much? Aside from the modeling charge, Sette was looking at more than that. The Manoir charged her for the sex. Before she left, June urged her to write a personal check to cover her charges that didn’t go through the madam. Altogether, it was at least five thousand.
“I can take care of myself, thanks.” Sette got up and took the painting from Zara’s possession. “Besides, don’t you think a collection based around one woman is more powerful than many? Feels more intimate.”
“Yeah, sure. Intimate.”
Zara didn’t stay much longer. When she left, it was with a final word of advice.
Something about Sette needing to look for a real girlfriend while she did what she had to for the sake of her art on the side.
The woman sounded like she had never fallen in love with a muse before.
Maybe she hadn’t. Maybe Sette was too old-fashioned like that.
As soon as Zara had left, Sette picked up her phone and perused her contacts for a certain number. “Hello, Joy?” she said when her agent answered. “I’m working on a new collection and finished the first piece. I think you’re going to like the direction I’m heading in. Can you come over?”