Chapter 10
CHAPTER TEN
MONTY
H olding still is not a skill I possess. Perhaps I should have thought of that before I made a binding bargain to pose as a model. Though I suppose I expected a little more time to prepare. I certainly didn’t anticipate being told to freeze the moment I stepped into the parlor of Daphne’s apartment. Furthermore, I’m fully clothed. This is probably the most surprising, considering the weasel-man on the sketch she showed me was bare-chested.
My muscles twitch with restless energy, even though it’s only been five minutes.“Can I?—”
“Don’t even open your mouth,” Daphne says, standing on her settee with a sketchbook in hand, a look of pure madness in her eyes. She’s dressed in loose gray slacks with a white blouse and suspenders, her short black hair tucked behind her pointed ears. I didn’t know what to expect of her living space, but as my eyes wander the interior, I can’t imagine any dwelling suiting her better.
Her apartment is located on the third floor in one of many identical row houses on her street. Though there is one marked difference between her apartment and all the rest—the tree growing through the center of it. From the outside, it simply looked like a large tree was growing directly behind the house. But now I find it’s growing straight through Daphne’s apartment. Its trunk serves as a central pillar, the roof composed of tightly knit branches hung with an eclectic array of lamps. Though the outer walls are brick like I imagine the rest of the apartments are, boasting large windows that let in the morning sunlight, the interior walls are more like partitions. A wall of loosely knit vines here, a drape of ivy there. From where I stand, I can see her kitchen off to one side of the parlor and what I assume is her bedroom on the other.
I drag my gaze back from her bedroom, not daring to stare at her most private quarters.
“There!” She grins down at her sketchbook. “It’s finished.”
I throw my head back with relief. Thank fuck I can move now. “I’m surprised,” I say, shaking out my arms and legs. “That may have been torture, but I expected to pose much longer.”
She looks up from her sketchbook, brow arched. “We haven’t even begun. That was just practice.”
“Practice? For what?”
“I’ll show you.” She steps from the settee to her tea table and down to the floor in a matter of a few graceful hops. It reminds me of how she moves when she’s a pine marten, leaping onto furniture and climbing with ease. I’ve only seen her acting reserved and self-conscious in her seelie form before, so I must admit I’m pleased to see her in such an energetic mood. She must be more comfortable in this body when she’s in the safety of her own home.
She scampers the rest of the way to me and shows me the sketch. It’s rough, merely an array of messy marks and hasty shading, yet it’s clear what she’s drawn.
It’s me. My face. A shaft of sunlight falling over the bottom half, marred slightly by the faint bruising that colors my jaw. The contusion healed mostly overnight, but there is still evidence of the kick that knocked me out.
“As soon as you stepped into the parlor,” Daphne says, “the light fell over you just right. I had to draw it.”
My chest warms as I study the sketch once more. I can’t be mad about holding still for so long now, can I? “What are you going to do with this sketch?”
She shrugs. “It’s just a practice sketch. I don’t do anything with them. I just…do them.”
“May I keep it?”
Her eyes turn to mine as if it’s only now dawned on her that I’m here. She takes a step away and averts her gaze, a coral tint to her cheeks. “I suppose,” she says, tearing the page from her book. Instead of handing it to me, she sets it on the tea table. “But only if you hold still and be a good model for me.”
“Don’t we already have a bargain in place for that?”
“This,” she says, tapping the sketch, “is collateral. Our bargain only stated you’d pose for me, not that you’d pose well .”
I infuse my tone with mock excitement. “You mean I can perform my side of the bargain terribly and still fulfill our terms?”
She gives me a withering stare.
“I’m kidding. I can behave and…stand still for a goddamn eternity, if I must. Just tell me what to do.”
Daphne directs me to the far end of her parlor, past her sitting area near one of the bright windows that line the walls. There, her easel is set up before a waist-high bureau. Upon the bureau is a plush pillow draped in a knitted shawl.
She steps up to the pillow-shawl combination and grips it. “Your hands will go here,” she says, giving the pillow a squeeze. Then she darts to her easel and turns the canvas to me. Upon it is the woman she showed me in her sketch last night. She gestures toward the blank space beside her. “And you’ll stand in this general area. Pretend the pillow is her hips and the shawl is her skirt.”
As I approach the pillow, I’m overcome with a sudden wave of embarrassment. I can normally take on professional levels of humiliation, for what do I care for my reputation? Yet with Daphne’s hopes pinned upon me, I want to get this right. I want to be of use to her and her art.
My motions are stiff as I get into place. “Like this?” I ask, my voice cracking slightly.
She studies me for a few beats before coming to position me herself. With a few decisive touches, she moves my hands, orders me to splay my fingers, and helps me shift my stance. My pulse quickens at how easily she touches me. She’s not an overly affectionate person and only accepts touch from those she knows. Anyone who tried to pet her in her pine marten form risked losing fingers. Yet she moves me around like I’m a prop.
I suppose that’s what I am in this moment.
She steps back and gives an approving nod. “Now hold that—wait.” Her gaze sweeps over me. “You’re still wearing a shirt.”
“There it is,” I say with an amused grin. I was wondering when the demand to remove my clothes would come. “Don’t worry, Daffy Dear. I’ll strip with haste.”
“Just your shirt,” she mutters as she scurries back to her easel.
I step back from the bureau, though I try to keep my previous position at the fore of my mind as I loosen the buttons of my waistcoat and undo my already loose cravat. Once I shrug out of my shirt, I toss my clothing to the side and step back into place. As I grasp the pillow, I cast a questioning glance at Daphne, seeking her guidance?—
I nearly choke on my urge to laugh.
Daphne’s expression is so comical, so fucking cute, I can’t stand it. She’s somehow managed to embody the sweet innocence of her pine marten face but with an expression she could only make in seelie form. She stares unabashedly at me from behind her easel, neck craned to get a full look. Her eyes are round, her lips pursed in a tight knot as she attempts to hide her smile.
“Like what you see?” I ask, shifting in place to better get into position.
“You’ll do,” she says, lips still pursed, and then darts back behind her easel. “If I ignore your bruises. You know, you should be more careful not to damage my merchandise for the duration of our bargain.”
“Merchandise,” I echo with a chuckle, though my stomach plummets. If she asks me to stay away from the club, I won’t be able to grant her wish. A visit from Cane and Meathands this morning confirmed that getting disqualified was not part of the plan, which means I didn’t make last week’s payment. Subsequently, my secret is set to come out one week earlier—the end of July instead of the beginning of August. I can’t miss any more payments, and since I can’t afford the ridiculous amount of interest, I have to participate in the fixed matches.
She begins to draw, the sound of graphite on canvas filling the air. Once again, I feel like I’ll lose my mind after what can only be several minutes.
“Can we talk while I stand here? I need a distraction. Either that or an abundance of smoke breaks.”
“Fine, we can talk,” she says, tone begrudging. “I’ll do your face last. But don’t you dare move anything else.”
“As you wish, Daph. Let’s talk about my case study, then.”
The grumble she makes tells me she’d like to talk about anything else. Too bad for her.
“I told you we could alternate choosing which principle to follow,” I say, “so I’ve brought my manuscript with me for you to read. You can familiarize yourself with the topics we could address.”
“Ah, is that what that stack of papers is all about?” She tilts her head at the stack I left on the small table near her parlor door when she told me to freeze upon entering.
“It is, but you don’t need to rush to read it. I already know which topic we can start with. It’s a foundational principle for everyone seeking a mate. And that is: to find a partner, you must go to where your potential partner is. In other words, socialize. So our first experiment will be a social one.”
She releases another displeased grumble.
“Is there anywhere specific you might like to go? If you’re looking for a husband, we need to go where you might meet him.”
“Mmm. Meat,” is all she says.
I scoff. “Don’t mmm meat me and ignore my question.”
Another grumble. “I don’t socialize. I don’t even know where people go.”
“Fair enough. I suppose I’ll pick our location. What kind of husband are you looking for?” The question makes my pulse quicken, though maybe it’s merely my nerves fraying as I continue to force my body to hold still.
“He must be tall and muscular with a rippling abdomen and excessive sex appeal.” She says it in a rush, as if it’s rehearsed.
“Is that just what you want in a model?”
“The bare essentials.”
“Model work aside, what do you want in a husband? Personally?”
“Someone who will marry me by Lughnasadh. And, if I allow myself to be particular, he should have no qualms about me continuing my career after we marry. And I suppose he shouldn’t insist on having children for at least a few years, as I intend to enjoy my career thoroughly first.”
My heart falls. She has yet to state a single quality that has to do with her wants. Only her needs. Her work. And why the hell does she need to marry someone by Lughnasadh? I state the question out loud.
She glances up from her canvas to meet my eyes. Her lips pull into a grimace. “Well, as it turns out…I’m sort of…engaged.”
My breath catches in my throat. It takes me several long moments before I realize how tightly I’m squeezing the pillow. With a slow exhale, I loosen my grip and splay my hands in their proper position. “You’re engaged,” I say, doing my best to control my voice. Why am I so worked up over this surprising discovery? “To whom?”
She rubs her brow, leaving a smear of graphite on her forehead. “A honey badger named Clyde. It’s not a real engagement. Well, it’s sort of real. Sort of not. I can get out of it.”
“I think I’m going to need a better explanation than that.”
Her shoulders slump. She rubs her brow again, darkening the smear on her skin, and returns to her sketch. “Every Lughnasadh I return to visit Cypress Hollow, an unseelie village in Earthen Court’s northern forest. I consider it my hometown, as it was the first communal place I lived in. One of the most popular celebrations during Cypress Hollow’s Lughnasadh festival is matchmaking. And the primary matchmaking ritual is handfasting. Not the kind of ceremony modern couples act out during their weddings these days but an older version. One that serves as a trial mating—an engagement of sorts—for a year and a day. After said year and a day, during the following year’s Lughnasadh festivities, the couple may permanently seal their vows or dissolve them. But they must agree one way or another, or the village elder will make the final choice. And I can’t trust Elder Rhisha to take my side because Clyde is her damn nephew. Cypress Hollow has strict rules about mates and commitment, so if I end up mated to him, I’ll have to stay in my village with him and give up my life here.”
“You don’t want that, right?” I ask, and my pulse kicks up in anticipation of her answer. Why does it feel like my heart will crumble if she’s impartial to staying in Jasper versus marrying a honey badger?
“Of course not,” she says, and my lungs loosen. “I regretted performing the ritual as soon as I awoke the next morning. Especially when I remembered I can’t paint as a pine marten.”
“You can’t?”
She flourishes her free hand. “I need thumbs. I tried my best with paws, but my art was atrocious. Even more so than weasel-man.” She says the last part under her breath. “Besides, the residents of Cypress Hollow have no interest in the kinds of paintings I like. They favor functional art or woodworking, not illustrations of scantily clad ladies and gents on the verge of coitus.”
“Ah.” I chuckle. “I can see how limiting that would be for you.”
“Quite so. And my dream to be an illustrator had already taken root by then. The roots were thin, but they were there.”
“Then how did this happen? Were you forced into it?” It takes all my restraint not to strangle the pillow again at the thought of her being coerced.
“I wasn’t forced. I was drunk.”
“Drunk? I’ve never known you to be unable to handle your liquor.”
“Yes, well, it was your fault,” she mutters.
“My fault? How so?”
“Hmm? No talking. Hold still.”
My mouth is stuck open. I know I heard her right. She said her inebriated state was my fault. But if this happened last Lughnasadh, we weren’t…
The truth strikes me like a blow to the chest. Last Lughnasadh was shortly after I was fired from Fletcher-Wilson.
When I hurt Daphne with my dismissive goodbye.
Could it be that she was so upset by my cold words that she drowned her sorrows in booze and wound up engaged to this Clyde bastard?
“Doesn’t the fact that you were drunk negate the bond?” I ask. “You couldn’t have been in the right mind to consent.”
“This is a matter of magic, not law,” she says. “My best bet to dissolve the handfasting is to bring proof that I can no longer fulfill mating vows. I must state, in full truth, that I have strong ties here in Jasper. Hence marriage.”
“Aren’t your ties already strong enough? You have a job and an apartment.”
“I can exit both without much lingering attachment. I must be able to state that my roots in Jasper are strong. I hoped advancing my career would serve that purpose. My next performance review is at the end of July, and Mr. Fletcher may promote me to full-time illustrator. If that ends up happening…” She heaves a wistful sigh. “Then I can say, without an ounce of deception, that my career is important enough to keep me here.”
“But you’re afraid that won’t happen,” I say. “Which is why you’re considering marriage.”
She nods. “Mr. Fletcher didn’t promise to promote me, only that he’d consider it based on my performance with this commission. And I can’t rely on any hope that Clyde will agree to dissolve our bond of his own accord. He’s always been in love with me, and I never gave him the time of day. Until last year.”
“Did you…uh…” Why the fuck am I asking this? I shouldn’t ask. Don’t ask. “Did the two of you…what I mean is, did he take advantage of your inebriation? Physically?”
She gives me a look of pure horror. “You mean did we mate? No. He’s like a brother to me. For one reckless moment, he seemed safe, that’s all. Someone who would…stay with me. No matter what, even if it could never be romantic on my side.”
Another invisible blow strikes my chest. He’d stay with her. Unlike me, who left her in such a curt manner. I swallow the lump in my throat. “You’ve gotten yourself in a proper pickle, Daph.”
“That’s what I have you for.” She gives me a halfhearted grin. “Now I mean it when I say no talking. It’s time for your face.”
I groan. Thankfully, she lets me shake out my arms and legs. But when it’s time to return to my position, she presents a greater challenge.
“Look at your invisible lover like you want to ravish her.”
I frown at the blank space before me, then rework the muscles in my face to form something like a passionate stare.
She snorts a laugh. “You look constipated.”
“Daph!” Heat crawls up my neck, though I can’t help but laugh too. “This is harder than you think.”
“Can’t you pretend you’re looking at something you desire?”
“I’m not an actor,” I say, though I’ve been a capable pretender in the past when it has served my purposes. When I want someone to dislike me, I act unlikeable. When I want someone to see me as a heartless rake, I give them a heartless rake. Yet, for some reason, when it’s just Daphne and me, it’s hard to put on any kind of false persona.
“I’ll see what I can do.” She leaves her easel and scampers into the kitchen. I watch her through the partition of ivy, witnessing as she climbs onto her countertop and kneels before a bowl of fruit. Again, I’m amused at how much of her unseelie behavior she’s revealing. “Do you like apples?” she calls out to me.
“They are…adequate, I suppose. As far as fruits go.”
She skips into the parlor, a red-gold apple in hand, which she holds in front of my face. “Look at this like you want to ravish it.”
I lick my lips, and that’s as far as I get before I burst into laughter. “This is ridiculous. How am I supposed to look at an apple desirously?”
Her grin tells me she’s greatly enjoying my discomfort. “What else can we use? Something to inspire a serious yet desirous expression.” She wanders to a table strewn with loose papers. “Oooh! Want to see my breasts? I’m not sure they’re much to look at, but they might do the trick.”
Heat floods my face as I struggle to process her question. I’m stammering by the time she returns to me, a piece of paper in hand. I drop my gaze…
And it all makes sense.
My panicked shock shifts into amusement. “ Drawings of breasts. Not your breasts.”
Her eyes go wide. “Well, they’re my drawings. I didn’t mean mine as in mine . Though…some of these are mine.”
I ignore that last part and study the sketches that crowd nearly every inch of space on the paper. Breasts in all shapes and sizes grace it from every angle. “You’re trying to arouse me.”
“If it makes you look less constipated, yes.”
“They’re nice,” I say, returning the paper to her, “but it’s a little strange trying to get aroused by drawings of breasts in front of my friend while she sketches me.”
She nibbles a thumbnail as she stares down at the paper. “Would it help to see real ones? To see mine?”
I’m struck dumb all over again, my mind draining of its faculties.
“Maybe that’s not appropriate,” she rushes to say. “Nudity is confusing to me. I’m not covering anything in my pine marten form. If I lift my tail, my entire sphincter is on display and no one is offended by it.”
I lower my head, relinquishing my pose to brace my hands at the edge of the bureau, stuck between a fit of laughter and my stupor over the subject matter at hand. Good God, Daphne is destroying me. Did she always have such an unfiltered way of speaking?
She continues. “What I mean is, why could Marshall Bruisemaker fight shirtless but Gabby Stabbington couldn’t? I understand it’s all part of the rules of seelie society…but I don’t truly get it. It doesn’t seem fair.”
“Welcome to misogyny and the good old double standard,” I manage to say, my head still hanging low, eyes closed as I fight to regain my decorum.
“So you agree? I can see your nipples. They’re right in front of me. So why can’t you see mine?”
I push away from the bureau, forcing myself to straighten. If we don’t change the subject soon, I’m going to lose my composure entirely. “Can we change?—”
My gaze locks on her right as she shrugs free of her suspenders and tugs her blouse over her head. I expect to see layers of clothing beneath it. A chemise. A corset. Yet there’s none of that. Instead, I find her bare, broad shoulders, her soft abdomen, and a flimsy layer of pale blue silk covering her breasts in two meager triangles lined with lace. This is very much a fae-style undergarment—a bralette, I believe it’s called—and not anything I’ve seen in person.
My heartbeat pulses to a crescendo, a rush of blood pounding through my ears. I need to tear my gaze away from that silk, from the small dip of cleavage above it and the peaked buds of her nipples behind it, but my eyes won’t obey.
“This should work, right?” she asks, oblivious to the cacophony my heartbeat is making in the space between us. The way my chest lurches with every beat. She rambles on. “Just pretend they’re someone else’s. Someone you like.”
Her fingers move to the bottom hem of her bralette, ready to tug it upward.
I step forward in a rush, my hand landing firmly on top of hers.
She freezes.
I freeze.
The whole fucking world freezes around us save for the riotous slam of my heart. Her eyes lift to mine, and color flushes her cheeks as if she only now realizes what she was about to do. Meanwhile, I’m too aware of her nearness. My hand on hers, the bottom of my palm skimming the lace hem she was about to lift. My other hand…on her hip. When the fuck did I put it there?
And her face. So close I could count every one of her dark eyelashes. The freckles I never knew she had.
That’s when I feel it. The tightening in my trousers. The desire pulsing low in my abdomen. The pleasure and pain that comes from want.
This is dangerous.
“Daphne.” My voice comes out in a strained whisper.
“Stop,” she says, and my terror is so strong I’d give anything to disappear.
She must feel it. She must know I’m hard right now. Hard for her ?—
“Don’t move an inch,” she says, a smile curving her lips. “That’s it. That’s the look. Hold still.”
She darts out of my arms and scampers to her easel so fast, I’m left frozen in place. The sound of graphite moving over her canvas mingles with my still-raging pulse.
“Damn you, Monty,” she says, her tone light despite her chastisement. “You lost it. Don’t worry, I can still picture it. There was an intensity in your eyes that was perfect. Don’t move though. The rest of your face is just right.”
My breaths come out erratic as I try to calm my nerves and convince my cock to stop straining the front of my trousers. And pretend that Daphne isn’t standing there, drawing me from a mere few feet away in that tiny lacy bralette. Pretend I’ve forgotten the feel of my hand on hers, stilling her as she was about to lift the hem.
Pretend I don’t wish—at least a little—that I hadn’t stopped her.