26. Picasso
Chapter twenty-six
Picasso
Eoghan
T he French call an orgasm a petite mort , or a little death. The feelings of surrender, and mortality from the act of pleasured procreation could create complicated feelings, especially when society placed so much emphasis on the act. Some people regulate, exult, or condemn the act, and all of those things seeped into our consciousness to bring out surprising responses when the body felt the cosmic joy that a good orgasm could bring.
In Kira, it brought tears. Tears that I rapidly kissed away, tasting the salt on my tongue. I swallowed the bitterness of them because she was my wife, and they were my responsibility. Mine to mend.
And I relished the challenge.
“I’m scared, sweet Muse,” I said, kissing the back of each of her hands, before kissing each cheek again. “I thought that making you my wife would help quench my cravings for you, but it’s only grown tenfold.”
I kissed her throat and she moaned, her parted lips the picture of fatigued arousal.
“I’m scared of hurting you because I want you so much. I want to do unspeakable things, like placing bruises on your skin, and tattooing my name over your heart.” She shuddered at my words. “I thought putting my mum’s ring on your finger would be enough, but it isn’t.”
She gasped, as my lips trailed down her throat, to the swell of her breasts, taking the delicate bit of cleavage into my teeth - marking her, just as I wanted. I didn’t let her go until an angry red mark of my teeth was on her skin.
Her hooded eyes fluttered, as I went to the other breast, and did the same.
“I think you’ll like what I want to do, because you and I are two parts that make a single soul,” I whispered against her skin. Her light whimper made me shudder with unmet desire, my cock threatening to break free from behind my zipper. “But I have to keep you safe.”
Christ, I was doing it all wrong. I should give her space, time to breathe, so that we could talk about this without the haze of lust that clouded my vision.
“You…” I cleared my throat, feeling the heaviness on my tongue, her taste still on my lips. “You need to pick a safe word, my darling.”
She didn’t say anything, her eyes floating closed, as my hands traveled down her breasts to her torso.
“Eoghan,” she moaned.
She was falling asleep. Her orgasm made her drowsy in its aftermath.
“No, love… you can’t pick my name, since you’ll be screaming it in ecstasy.”
I should wait until she was more alert, and not coming down from the high of pleasure.
“Mmm,” she moaned, as I sat up on the bench, pulling her over to me so that her head fell to my chest, and I cradled her in my arms.
“Pick a safe word, love,” I said, feeling desperate to get this out of the way before the honeymoon started… truly started.
“Mmm?” her breaths grew heavy, her voice starting to even out into sleep.
Just as I despaired that I’d have to revisit this later, instead of delving into what I truly wanted - to ravish her to within an inch of her life - a soft word left her lips. I almost missed it, but it was enough.
“Picasso.” She yawned and slumped into me, trusting me to hold her in the vulnerable state of slumber.
I settled us so that my arms, my body, and my heart felt strong, and full. What was more masculine than taking care of your woman? There was no greater honor than caring for another soul.
My wife fell asleep in my arms, her back on my chest, my arms around her waist. Her forehead was tucked neatly into the side of my neck. Her legs were tucked up across the seat, as she reclined into me. Her wavy hair cascaded around her shoulders, her crown of orchids and leaves still pinned securely in place. If I had a choice, her crown would stay on. My queen of the forest. The queen of moonlight, and stars.
This was perfect. Bliss, in every sense of the word. A man, holding his wife, as she rested in his arms. It was a trust I would not take for granted. Not if I wanted to value myself as a man, and a husband.
Dairo drove us to the little country house, at the deepest end of Green property. It was outside the Green compound, where the soldiers trained in the forest and cameras pointed in every direction, keeping it secure from invasion.
This little hideaway was my mother’s own little secret garden. It was still alive, after a decade of neglect. Vines climbed the red brick walls, toward the sharp, black iron blades shaped like pikes that pierced through the bloom of black roses.
It was a cottage that looked like it came straight out of a Thomas Kincade painting. It was in the last gasp of evening, when the stars near the horizon began to disappear, washed out by a light blue that would turn pink once the sun peaked its head above the Catskill mountains.
Dairo idled the car in front of the cottage steps, as I cradled my wife to me. I pulled the latch of the door and kicked it the rest of the way open.
“Two days, Eoghan,” Dairo said, bringing down the divider, his head turned slightly to the side. “That’s as long as I can hold off your father. Then I’ll come back and bring you to the big house.”
“He would rather you take my place anyway,” I grunted. “Maybe she and I could just disappear, and you could become his heir.”
It had been a fantasy I had nursed for so long in silence, I felt strange saying it out loud. But maybe…
“No,” Dairo laughed. “You couldn’t pay me enough to come back to this life. This is your crown of thorns, cousin.”
So fucking dramatic… this was the problem with the education my father had paid for. He insisted that our rise in society would force me and Dairo into an echelon far above the station of our birth. He made sure we knew the classics and hired tutors to make it so. With the best schools, the most dedicated tutors, Dairo and I learned far too much about useless things.
My father prepared us for a one percent that wasn’t half as educated as he thought they would be. Where he had seen nobility, there was nothing but spoiled dilettantes. It infused us with a flair for drama that did not match the blood we regularly soaked our hands in.
“But I’ll take care of Morelli, in the meantime,” Dairo said, with a slight smile.
My cousin could be a bit of a sadist. We both could.
We were monsters by birth, but we hid it behind our fancy suits.
“Thank you, mate,” I said, as I positioned my wife in my arms.
Dairo was covering for me, for sure. He knew what kind of menace would happen when I brought Kira home. But he would keep my secret until I was ready to reveal it. That was all that mattered. A few stolen moments, before my father let loose the dogs of war.
I stepped out of the car, my wife in my arms, her long train barely grazing the moonlit ground.
I heard the whirr of the driver’s side window rolling down.
“Eoghan!” My cousin called from the driver’s seat.
“Aye?”
“You deserve happiness,” he said, his somber, blue eyes looking at me with a sadness that was unusual. “But for God’s sake, warn her. Warn her of everything, or you’ll lose her anyway.”
I clenched my jaw, knowing what he meant.
My cousin drove away in the car, leaving me isolated and alone in the middle of the woods. When the sound of the car disappeared in the distance, it was replaced with the croaking of frogs, and the soft rippling sound of the creek nearby.
My wife moaned in her sleep, adjusting then settling back into my arms, as I walked over the cobblestone drive to the stairs that led to the little wooden door.
The cottage was made of stone and plaster, the roof wasn’t thatched anymore, though it once had been. The thick walls were a relic from a time before electric heat and central air, with the small windows bisected by black metal.
The door was unlocked, needing only a little nudge to open.
The thing didn’t lock from the outside. But it could be bolted from the inside, if needed. The heavy wood door creaked open into the small living room, with an adjoining kitchen. There was a hearth and fireplace, and a single room further back. Easels and paint, glass jars of water, and other art supplies lined a wall. They were my mother’s, and now they were mine. I didn’t place my wife in the bedroom. Not yet.
Instead, I placed her on the grand sofa, and lay her head down on a soft, deer hide pillow.
When she was nestled on her side, I crouched before her, took her right hand in both of mine and kissed her palm.
I knew I wouldn’t tell her enough about my world because I was a coward. And more than honesty, I needed to keep her. I needed her by my side more than my next breath.
Happiness. What was that? Was that the feeling that crept over my chest, as I looked at the woman before me? The woman who wore my mother’s ring? The woman whose belly would swell with my child.
“Blood of my blood,” I breathed into her hand before I kissed the place where a wound should have been, had I done things right. A wound where we would mingle our blood, our hands fasted together as we swore vows that, in my world, meant more than the piece of paper we sent to the government that was far, far away from my existence.
I let her sleep, even though my body hummed with the need to have her. The need to possess her. My cock had been rigid from the moment she stepped through the doors of the church, and it hadn’t let up in all this time. But the desire was delicious too. It had been so long since I had wanted anyone, that the agony of denial soothed the soul I had thought numb until I laid my eyes on her.
I took a paper from one of the easels, and began to sketch with an old, discarded charcoal.
Black was the color of my true love’s hair. It draped around her face, and her beautiful form like she was a fairy queen in an old Renaissance painting, draped not in a dress, but in the stars of the Milky Way, clothing her in light.
I sketched until dawn, when the sky turned pink. The words of that song circled through my mind.
Black is the color of my true love's hair,
Her lips are like some roses fair.
She's got the sweetest face and the gentlest hands
And I love the ground whereon she stands.
But those words didn’t quite fit her, did they? The old words of the folk song weren’t perfect for her, and I could feel that the words would change with time. They would grow like the strange feeling in my chest, until they were suited to fit the woman I now called my wife.
She stirred when the light slanted in from the narrow windows, traveling over her body, until it warmed her cheek.
She moaned and fluttered her eyes open. Bleary and exhausted, her eyes came to me and I was greeted with the most beautiful smile that ever existed.
“Good morning, wife,” I said, moving to the couch, so I could take her hands.
“Husband?” she responded, with a little smile. “I can’t believe we did that. Married? Was that for real?”
“Does it feel real?”
She looked down at her hand, where an emerald glinted back at her. It caught the light and danced across her skin. Christ, she was a goddess.
“It does,” she sighed.
“Then it is real, my love.” I took her chin in my hand and turned her to face me. I placed a kiss on her lips, and she opened without hesitation. She cupped my face in her hands, as I swiped the hair from her shoulders. “I want you.”
“You have me,” she said, smiling against my lips. “What more do you want?”
“Are you teasing me?”
“Maybe.”
I bit her lower lip, before I plunged my tongue between her teeth.
Did she taste different now than she did before? She tasted sweeter than the last time. Sweeter, because she was mine, and I was hers. Sweeter, for being bound before the altar of the church. The realization that she would be mine in all ways - handfasted, and vowed by blood, carrying my children, and fighting by my side - hit me like a bolt of lightning. The electricity spread and the need to hold her close overtook every cell of my body.
I needed her naked, now.
The need I had denied myself from the moment she slapped me in the museum was taking over a hundred fold. My hand went up to the bodice of the dress and I tugged until the sound of ripping fabric filled my ears.
“Kira,” I whispered against her mouth, before stealing more kisses. I was stealing the very air from her lungs because I needed it for myself. I needed her more than air itself. “You’re mine, now.”
“Yes.” She wrapped her arms around me, and leaned into my touch. I could feel the heated, uncovered flesh of her breast in my hand, as I pushed the damned fabric from her shoulders, letting it fall to her waist.
She moaned, throwing her head back as I pinched a sweet nipple between my fingers. I looked down at my handiwork - the torn dress, the ripe breast in my hand, and the other that waited for my attention.
“Fuck,” I groaned, as I leaned down to take her dark, brown nipple in my mouth and sucked it between my teeth. Her fingers threaded into my hair, as she pulled me into her. She drew me closer and closer, needing me as much as I needed her. I let her nipple go with a pop, and I placed my forehead on her chest. “Let me taste you, Kira. Let me taste your cunt. I need you on my tongue.”
She moaned as I pulled up the skirt of her dress, and I wrenched the fabric apart, creating a slit where there had been none. I ripped it up, high until it opened where her thighs met the place I would know as heaven from this day forward.
I moaned as I started to dive in.
Reaching my arms beneath her thighs, I cupped her arse. I pulled her to the edge of her seat, and she leaned back against the sofa, looking at me with a lustful gaze that I wished I could commemorate in a photograph.
I salivated at the sight of her, my tongue heavy and eager, like I had been starving in the desert and now was offered a feast.
I dove in, fucking her with my tongue and she hummed. I assaulted her clit, sucking it between my teeth as she screamed in ecstasy. Her orgasm came fast, and I was delighted to know that the more she had, the faster she could be pleasured. That was dangerous knowledge, and I would abuse it with vigor.
She was bleary-eyed and gasping when I crawled up her body, eager to see how I fit inside her heat.
I carefully unbuckled myself and took my aching cock in my hand, leading the tip to my own version of Eden. Even with her slickness coating her inner thighs, I felt resistance. Wet, and eager, she was still tight. I groaned.
A full-bodied woman with a tight cunt, flowing hair, and eyes as dark as midnight would be my undoing. Had I dreamed her and made her real? I wasn’t sure.
But as I slowly pushed in, I felt her gasp beneath me.
“Are you alright?” I asked, not wanting to hurt her.
“More,” she whimpered.
“Your wish is my command, wife.” I pushed in just a little further, but I grew dizzy with her tightness. She clenched, as if resisting me, but she’d have no chance to keep me out. “Oh, my love, I am at your complete mercy.”
She almost laughed, but was interrupted as I pushed in further, making myself halfway home.
“I think you’ll realize it’s the other way around.” She was breathless. So was I.
Sweat trickled down my forehead, as my lower back tensed with the need to push in. The tension from simply going slow so I did not hurt her was doing my body in.
“No, love,” I kissed her throat.
Her skin had the faintest sheen of sweat as well, adding a flavor to her floral musk. I was gratified to know she struggled just like me.
“I am your servant, madame.” Another push, and I was sheathed inside her. Heaven. That was the feeling in my chest. I had entered heaven, and it existed inside my wife.
“You’re so chivalrous,” she said, with a slow, lazy smile, her hips slowly thrusting back, then forward, growing used to my intrusion.
“I will be your sovereign, your jester, your knight, if you wish me to be.”
“My artist?”
“Yes.” I kissed her chin, and then her lips.
“You’ll do anything for me?”
“Yes.”
“Then fuck me, Eoghan Green. Make me feel married.”
There was no command I was more willing to obey than that. With my hands on her hips, I pulled out, then thrust inside, again and again and again, and with each halted breath, I professed my love. She said it back, though I wasn’t sure if she was conscious of it.
We idly made love, slow and sweet. Far from the uncontrolled pounding I had imagined. Instead, something far deeper and more intimate occurred. Missionary. Plain, old, missionary, as I gazed into her eyes, and stroked her hair, kissing her at my leisure as her hands roamed up and down my back.
Somewhere in our tenderness, all clothes were removed, but I couldn’t remember any of it. Not when the world had been reduced to sensations, feelings, and blurred thoughts of tender lust.
When she crested the wave of pleasure, I followed close behind.
The seed of fear marked itself on my soul, like a black, inky fingerprint. She would always go before me, and I would follow. She would run, and I would follow wherever she went. I’d follow her into the very darkness of Hell, and shield her from the dangers she could not see.
For now, until forever.
She took the place of every bit of worship, as I poured all reverence into her, releasing my seed into her and knowing, beyond any doubt, that on this night, we would create life.