4. Stop Talking About Breasts
Chapter four
Stop Talking About Breasts
Eoghan
S he was a tough customer. I had never had to work so hard for a woman. Then again, that was the appeal. Nothing easily won was of value.
Though I was playing the gentleman, we were most definitely in a battle. She wanted to put me in my place. I wanted my place between her thighs.
We stood in front of one of the world’s most beautiful paintings: a scene of Revolutionary France as the people climbed over the barricades.
She stared at the painting in genuine awe. Her keen eyes were, no doubt, taking in every brush stroke.
I, on the other hand, was taking in every curve of her body.
She belonged in a Botticelli painting, but with sweeter, bronzed skin and fuller hair. Her proportions were perfect - slim at the shoulders, long on the torso, and round about the hips. Her tight, sheath dress didn’t hide the beautiful little pouch below her belly - a small, feminine roundness that many women starved off their bodies to seek these beauty standards that meant nothing. Not to me.
There was nothing more feminine than those curves.
I was obsessed with the possibility of painting her naked, in all her glory, with nothing but her unfastened hair adorning her skin.
“Liberty leading the people, by Eugéne Delacroix.” I announced the obvious, as she leaned in to observe the grand painting that was over a hundred inches tall, and almost as wide. A great classic borrowed from the Louvre for this event.
Her slight lean forward made her round backside even rounder. She was at the perfect angle to be taken from behind… a fact that went straight to my cock.
I coughed, and continued, “Or in French, La Liberté guidant le peuple. ”
I flagged down one of the waiters and had them bring me a glass of wine. I would have preferred an absinthe, but I was unlikely to get that here.
She raised a curious, black brow, holding back a smile. “You speak French?”
“ Bien s?r ,” I said. Of course. “Don’t you?”
“I speak English. ōlelo Hawai?i if I’m really pressured. Not much though. I lived in an English-only household.”
“Ah, that’s too bad.” I puffed out my chest because my education was nothing to scoff at. My father took great care to school me and my cousin, Dairo. That included the classical languages. “I speak French, of course, and Gaelic. Latin, and some ancient Greek. Enough Russian to not be bamboozled by the bratva menaces that hang in these parts of the city, and a bit of Italian.”
She looked impressed. I wanted to tell her that my talent with tongues didn’t end with conjugations.
She smiled politely, before her eyes turned back to the painting, to the woman holding the French tricolor flag, her chest exposed, one strap of her blouse artfully broken.
Her eyes scanned the masterpiece, her pupils following the lines of the movement, from Liberty’s raised arm, down to the bare foot as she stepped over a mountain of chaos and death.
“Times were simpler in the olden days. You could lead people to freedom by simply baring your breasts.” She smiled, lightly gesturing to the painting with her wine glass as if she was dropping the greatest wisdom.
Ah, so my little muse had a sense of humor. That was good to know.
“I’ve always wondered why she had to step over a pants-less man to do it.” Her eyes turned to me, the wine glass to her bottom lip, curving it downward, as she baited me to come up with something witty.
How dare you be so perfect, little Muse…
The un-pantsed man she referred to was a dead soldier on the bottom left quadrant of the painting. His pubic hair was on display, though his cock was tastefully hidden by his strategically placed bare thigh. One sock dangled from his limp foot. Dead and naked, he symbolized violation and the death of innocence, as well as a stroke of bad luck.
But she knew that. She was as knowledgeable about art as I was. As meticulous and studious, too. A trait one didn’t often find. But we were well past the understanding that we were of the same mind. I knew that from the first day I listened to her lecturing her art groupies.
“Ah, that’s just pantless Pierre,” I said without a hint of humor. “He came to the soiree that way.”
She snorted, then placed her wine glass to her lips to stop the noise. She looked at me sideways to see if I had noticed. I flattened my lips together to repress a smile.
“He came with just one sock on?” She grinned, turning her black eyes back to the painting.
“When you go to bed with socks on, you rarely wake up with both feet covered.”
I was beyond pretending that I cared about the art. They were lovely, but I had seen them before in Paris, London and at times, Milan. I didn’t come here to see them for the hundredth time. I came to watch her looking at them…
“ You sleep with socks on?” Her brow arched, before coming down again to a neutral position as she composed herself.
“No, lass,” I chuckled, stepping closer to her.
She didn’t step back. She stood her ground until I was barely a hand’s breadth away from her, our foreheads almost touching.
She was keenly aware of me, just as I was of her. Her heat, and the sparkle in her eyes. The slight rise and fall of her chest under the modest neckline that cruelly started above her cleavage. But that didn’t stop my imagination from seeing their rounded shape even beneath the dark black professional attire. Hell, I could close my eyes and see every curve already, and it made me lick my lips in anticipation.
“What do you sleep in?” she whispered.
Her lips parted. Was there a hitch in her voice? I wanted more of that. More of her unsettled.
“Nothing.” I could smell her light, floral perfume. I couldn’t quite pinpoint what it was. Like driftwood and oak, but with a hint of feminine musk. “You? I imagine you in an emerald, green negligee - sheer, your breasts as bare as Liberty over there.”
She gasped; her round breasts threatened to break free of the constraints of her frock.
Was she getting aroused? Did she feel the crackle of electricity that existed within our words? Was she ready to let me bed her?
She shook her head, her shoulders tugged back. She acted like she could shake off the magic between us the way a dog shook off the water from a bath.
But the electricity was still there. Pulling us together like an invisible string that would smash us at the hips until we cried with ecstasy.
She turned, walking away. Her normally purposeful gait was a little shaky, and I took great pride in that.
“Sleeping in the buff is freedom,” I called out to her. Just to tease. To get more of those reactions that I craved. Her indifference could be maddening. Her walking away? Devastating. “That’s Liberté, Egalité, et Fraternité.”
I rattled off the French slogan: Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity.
She paused. With a slight turn of her head, and I saw the upward turn of her cheek. She was smiling.
“In that painting’s case,” she said with a small smirk pulling up her burgundy lips. “It’s Liber-tits, Egali-tits, and Fraterni-tits.” She then turned towards me, the small spin the most sensual thing I had ever witnessed in my life. “And there’s nothing fraternal about you sleeping in the buff.”
Ah, there it was. A small hint that she felt the same. That there was nothing brotherly about my approach was accurate. There was also nothing collegial about it. I wanted her in a simple, biblical sense.
She turned her head to the next painting, her mouth parting, as it always did, when she was stunned by a great piece of art.
“Pero breastfeeding her father Cimon,” she said wistfully. “The Seven Works of Mercy by Cerevaggio, I think, was the most famous version of this story. I don’t know this one… who is it by?”
Hearing her talk about art was the greatest aphrodisiac. She may as well have been parading around naked. Though, if she had, I think I would have plucked out the eyes of every straight man, and gay woman in the entire gallery.
This woman was crafted by whatever higher power existed especially for me, and me alone.
I turned to face the art. It was a modern version of Pero and Cimon, as she had rightfully identified. Cimon was sentenced to starve to death. His devoted daughter had visited him every day and nourished him with her own breast. When the guards found out, her act of charity moved them all to pardon them both.
I stood behind her, daring to get closer than propriety allowed. One eager breath and I’d be against her, spooned like a familiar lover.
“This was painted by a woman.” Her comment gave me pause.
“Why do you say that?” I leaned in just a little further.
The hair that loosened from her bun moved with my breath.
How I wanted to close that gap and fall into her warmth. I wanted to make a place for myself against her skin, cocooned with her arms around my neck.
“He’s got a decent latch,” she whispered.
Was my mind playing tricks on me, or was she leaning towards me as well?
“The other paintings tend to sexualize the presentation of the breast.” Was her voice becoming breathy and unstable? Was she affected by my proximity? Was she losing the manicured control she always had? Would she come undone in my hands if I touched her? “In this one, the breast isn’t…”
“Stop talking about breasts,” I quietly growled into her ear, my hands grabbing her by the bicep and pulling her back against my chest as I leaned in so my cheek grazed her temple.
The relief of feeling her, even through our clothes, was immense. She molded into me, and I wanted to push her for more.
But I needed to be gentle, despite my aching need.
I cleared my throat and whispered, “Stop talking about breasts or I’ll need to taste yours.”