Chapter Twenty-Five
In which it is Couple’s Paint Night.
A week later…
Alexsey…
I'm staring at my blank canvas, waiting for inspiration to strike. It's an enormous one. With only one working hand and that useless prosthetic, it took me half the afternoon to stretch it over the frame and heft it onto a reinforced easel.
Glancing at the prosthetic on my left hand, I wonder if the surgery is worth it. I tend to think almost everything Sally told me was an upbeat pile of shit. But Choi, in his cranky way, told me the reconnection of some of the nerves had good results.
"Not perfect, of course," he'd said, pinching his cigarette to extinguish it and throwing it out the window and on to the clinic's tasteful boxwood hedge. "But getting three fingers to work changes how you use that hand, eh?"
Before, I could line-draw a basic sketch of what I was thinking. Now, there's no such thing as nuance. The music throbs through the speakers, something slick from The Weeknd. Even with the industrial-style ceiling fans and the air conditioning, it's hot as fuck. I'm stripped down to my jeans.
Picking up a brush with a long, tapered tip, I dip it into the blue pain, a cobalt shade that's vivid against the canvas as I draw it down. A slow arc. Like the curve of a woman's waist and hip. It reminds me of the painting in the guest bedroom, the one I didn't think about when I put Liria there.
"Oh! Sorry, I didn't know you were home."
Speak of the devil.
Liria is frozen by the kitchen counter. There are some cheeses, a bag of apples and another with artichokes laid out there. Roan and Danyl are nowhere to be seen, so she must have let them go for the night. She's withdrawn again, not looking at me as she moves around the kitchen.
With brutal clarity, I remember how I treated her last time she caught me trying to paint.
No wonder she's desperate to get out of here.
We've moved around each other like roommates this week, very polite.
She went back to her bed the morning after the attack.
I could tell it was not the time to demand that she stay in mine
"I'll just put these away and go upstairs," she says, rapidly sorting the food into the fridge.
I wait until she's crossed the living room and has one foot on the stairs before I say it.
"Wait."
She freezes, just the way I knew she would.
"Come here, Liria."
She looks at me, shocked, and I realize it's probably the first time I've called her by her name. Her wide eyes are assessing me, most likely for my mood. Spinning the paintbrush between my fingers, I nod toward the canvas. "I'm not sure you call it a work in progress yet."
Her smile is stiff, like her uncertainty is ready to chase it off her face.
I have turned into a bastard and a bully.
It's never clearer than when she reacts to me.
Still, she takes a slow step in my direction, then another.
It's a vast, cavernous space, so it takes her a while.
When she's finally close to me, I can smell her.
Resin from piano keys, the sharp grapefruit scent of her shampoo, a slight, salty tinge of sweat.
"Where have you been, Liria?" I watch her pupils flare, just from me using her name.
"Shopping at the farmer's market down the street," she says reluctantly, tucking a black curl behind her ear. "I went to a studio to work on something earlier."
The loft isn't much cooler than outside and the space between her breasts is damp, staining the green fabric of her dress. Circling behind her, I dip my head, running my nose along the line of her shoulder. "To work on what?"
"Um…" She's stiff, uncomfortable with my closeness, but she doesn't move away. "A piano piece. Something I've been composing for a while."
It hits with brutal clarity. Her piano, of course.
Liria has not dared to leave much of an impression on the loft, flowers bought from the little Ukrainian market down the street, the citrus-scented candles that she burns in her room. But the piano…
"Why haven't you shipped your piano here?" I ask.
She looks over her shoulder at me, her eyes are the color of a storm sweeping over the ocean, dark and furious. "Because my father took it away." She seething with fury and loss. "It was mine, a gift from my grandmother on my mom's side but he still stripped it out of my condo when I wasn't there."
The one thing we can always agree on is what a bastard Dritan Krasniqi is. "That heartless fuck," I say. "I didn't think about it until now, that you didn't have it. Your piano is part of you, like-"
Her gaze darts to my prosthetic. "Not as bad," she says seriously. "There's always another piano, your gift is different."
"It still feels like something's been cut out of you."
Nodding rapidly, her eyes well. "Yes."
"So, you've found a local studio where you can play?" I ask, admiring the curve of her neck as it meets her shoulder, the gentle swell of her breasts over the neckline of the dress, which isn't nearly low enough for me.
"Murray's Studio. Just down the street. His grand pianos are…" she shrugs. "They're adequate. I mean, they're fine. Good enough."
What she means is, they don't begin to compare to hers. I've never seen her piano, but it's a certainty that it would be a masterpiece.
"Um, what are you envisioning here?" She's anxious to change the subject, embarrassed, I think, that I witnessed her grief.
"I'm not sure," I admit. The bass throbs through the speakers as Doja Cat croons about "Baby, show me what it's like." Putting my hands on Liria's hips, I turn her to face the canvas, moving closer. "There's lines you can only find on a woman's body, curves and slopes that flow so well together."
"Like the line drawing over the fireplace in my room," she says, pleased to contribute. "I could stare at it for hours. Well, I probably have."
Using the wooden handle of the paintbrush I'm holding, I slide it down her arm and over her waist, slapping her thigh. She yelps, pulling away.
"Do you want to help me create it?" I ask. It comes out huskier than I planned, an invitation for more than making art.
"What would I do?" My wife is looking up at me, her lips full and sweet. I'll bet her mouth tastes like apples. She was eating one when she came in.
I move her until her back is against the canvas. One strap of her sundress is sliding over her shoulder and when she reaches up to straighten it, I pull her hand away. "Don't move. Can you do that for me?"
That furrow between her brows is sweet. "Oh- okay," she stammers, flushing as she stands straight.
"Such good posture," I say. Warm, and teasing, like that night all those months ago. There's an impassable gorge between then and now.
Isn't there?
"Posture that a well-bred young lady would have," I continue, brushing the soft tip of my brush against her collarbone.
Kolinsky sable hair. It's soft and resilient, and still holds a fine tip.
"Relax against the canvas, like you're lounging on the couch.
" Her eyes flutter shut. "There's a fan in front of you, blowing cool air because it's so damned hot.
The air moves along your thighs and you open them, wanting to cool down your pussy. "
What the fuck am I doing?
"Can you feel it?" I murmur, dipping the brush in a brilliant silver pigment, tracing it along the outline of her arm and waist. Liria feels the soft glide of the brush along her skin, staining it silver, like the canvas.
Licking her lips, "I think so."
"Arms above your head," I say. "Cross them." Her eyes open, staring up at me, alert again. "For the painting, Liria."
Slowly, she does and I can't resist running the brush up the sensitive skin of her inner arms and she bends away from it with a nervous chuckle. "Ticklish."
"Good to know," I whisper in her ear. Another paintbrush with a thicker tip, dipping it a shadowy gray color and I move along the lean line of her arms, noting how it makes her back arch. The gray sweeps on the canvas are bolder and she shivers once when the brush moves over her skin. "Liria?"
"Hmm?" She licks her lips, unconsciously, I think. My wife is not a practiced flirt.
"How attached are you to this dress?" I can hear the soft inhale of her breath, held in her lungs, pushing her breasts out. She lets it go in a long rush.
"It's not my favorite," she murmurs.
"Good." I always have a palette knife within reach, always exceptionally sharp.
Borne from a lifetime of being prepared.
It's resting on the bench with the paints and I pick it up.
The gleaming tip of the knife slides under one strap and the fabric parts easily.
Then, the other strap and the dress falls to her hips.
I tug it loose, pulling her away from the canvas, then she settles back on her own.
The late afternoon sun lights her skin, her perfect, round breasts still covered by a simple cotton bra. Her breasts. How I remember. Her sweet nipples, how stiff they'd get when I plucked on them. Soft, white skin. A perfect handful.
Fuck. I'm instantly hard. I dip a brush in pink paint, almost the shade of her nipples.
When I touch the tip to her breasts, she doesn't move.
Good girl. So sweet and eager to please, even after I've been such a bastard.
I stipple the paint along her skin and while she's distracted, I cut her bra loose.
I don't deserve this. My wife, standing here, so beautiful, so trusting. Her breasts are even more delectable than I recalled. I dip the brush in the paint again and swirl it around her nipples before detouring to trace it along her waist and hips against the canvas.
"You're breathing faster, sweet girl." My lips are right against her ear and I suck on her silky lobe before pulling away.
I pull the huge canvas off the easel, laying it on the floor.
"I want you on the canvas." I kiss her throat, my thumbs circling her hipbones as I slowly pull her panties down, a little cotton pair that matches her bra.
These proper undies make me want to defile her, debauch her sweetness.
"Stop."
Growling under my breath, I do.
"Are you going to be a bastard afterwards, Beauford? If we…"
I'm paying attention, I swear it. I'm also running my fingers along the pink paint on her breasts, smearing it. "Mrs. Wellington, I've been a bastard for too long to you, haven't I?"
"Oh, yes," she says pointedly.
"I don't know what this is…" I can't keep my fucking hands off her paint smeared skin. "But you deserve respect. To be treated well."
"I'm not your enemy!" It bursts out of her. "We've both been hurt by the Krasniqi Fare."
Taking my fingers off her breasts, I hold her hands instead. "I know. You don't deserve how I've treated you. I'm sorry."
She pulls back, looking up at me. "Was that an apology?"
"It is." I kiss one hand, then the other. "It will take much longer than one apology to make it up to you. But I should start tonight."
Our hands are slippery with sweat and paint. I want to put them all over her, to recreate her as my art.
"Does your lavish apology involve sex?" Ah, I recognize that tone, lush and teasing.
I scoop her feet out from under her and lay her down on the canvas, naked and squirming.
"Oh, yes, sweet Liria. Fucking and biting. Licking and spanking. I'm going to play with every inch of you."
***
Der'mo - Russian for shit.