2. Every Painting is a Portrait
EVERY PAINTING IS A PORTRAIT
ASHER
T here was no mistaking him.
Faded copper hair and a close-cropped beard, freckles like paint splattering every inch of his skin, or at least every inch that Asher had glimpsed while scouring the internet. And those eyes—blue-gray like stormy waters midwinter, like a sleeper wave.
Even at forty, Leviathan’s towering frame and stocky build harkened back to his rugby roots, making him every bit as imposing as his disposition.
His features were so symmetrical, drawing him was a study in perfection. Perhaps only Leviathan would be up for the challenge, but he’d never released a full self-portrait—only one with the eyes scribbled out.
Asher should know. He had a copy tattooed over his heart.
“Are you alright?” Leviathan said, casting a cloud of mist from his lips. “I’m Leviathan.”
“I know who you are,” Asher said in a voice that sounded nothing like him, terrified and awestruck, like he’d stumbled upon an angel and couldn’t decide if he should fall to his knees and beg for his life or worship at his feet .
Leviathan drew closer, extending his hand, fingers trailing towards a handshake.
Asher had studied those hands in motion and at rest, covered with paint, pastels, and charcoal.
Leviathan wielded his paintbrush as masterfully as if he’d sharpened his craft over hundreds of years and traveled through time after outgrowing the Renaissance Age.
Remembering his manners, Asher met Leviathan in the middle, and shook his hand. Leviathan had a powerful grip, not in a show of force, but quiet confidence, which made sense.
After all, Leviathan had nothing to prove. He was art royalty, a prodigy born from a prodigy, interred in the hallowed halls of lauded artistry before he’d turned eighteen. A predator completely comfortable at the top of the food chain.
Asher’s body warred with his head, wanting to catalog every sensation to reminisce over later and scour his hand with soap until he erased any trace of him.
Because Leviathan ruined every man he touched.
He’d left no shortage of brokenhearted artists over the last twenty years, plying them with compliments and his cock, and after he was through with them, they were too heartbroken to paint.
Maybe that was why he was so talented. He’d stolen everyone else’s muse.
Leviathan released his hand. “Asher Blakely, I presume?”
How did he know?
“You’re our last straggler,” Leviathan added, as if he’d read his facial expression, if not his very mind. “The others have been drinking for hours, so I volunteered to fetch you, lest I wind up with more than one pupil lost amongst the moors. I’m sorry I frightened you.”
“You didn’t.” Asher hid his trembling hands in the pockets of his jacket.
Leviathan tracked the motion and clicked his tongue. “You must be cold. That rain jacket is hardly warm enough. Let’s get you inside.”
Before Asher could protest, Leviathan snatched up his duffel bag. “Christ. Did you fill this with bricks?”
“I packed to win, sir.”
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. He hadn’t meant to flirt or say sir .
Almost three years had passed since he and Ben broke up, but Asher’s submissive tendencies still lingered.
“Sir?” Leviathan’s eyes widened, then glinted with mirth as his face stretched into a smirk. “Please. I’m not that old. You may call me Lev.”
Asher’s cheeks burned. “Look, can I just have my bag back?”
Leviathan clutched the bag to his chest. “Of course not! No guest of mine will slog up this wretched hill with a bag that weighs more than him.”
“My bag does not weigh?—”
Leviathan strode off, calling over his shoulder, “Come along, pretty American.” Mist engulfed him, and he disappeared like a mirage.
“Don’t call me that,” Asher said, hurrying after him.
Leviathan slowed. “Oh? What shall I call you then?”
“My name.”
“I couldn’t possibly. Asher strays my mind to what your skin would look like with charcoal on it.”
Leviathan was just playing his rakish role, but the suggestion that his hero had thought about drawing on his bare skin tantalized him.
What would Leviathan think if he knew Asher had already transformed his body into his canvas? Not that Asher would ever give him the opportunity.
“Call me Blakely, then.”
“I’ll try my very best.” Leviathan flashed a conspiratorial grin.
A wave crashed behind them. Asher jumped.
Leviathan rested a staying hand on his shoulder for a second before lifting it.
“Fret not, Mr. Blakely. The ocean sounds closer than it is. High tide is still a few hours away.”
Asher didn’t reply, thoughts swimming with the surreality of meeting Leviathan Marks. His hero had flirted with him, had worried about his warmth, and consoled him when the waves startled him.
God, Asher was so fucked.
“You know, I was frightened too when I first moved here,” Leviathan said.
Asher’s elation wilted like the waterlogged thistle lining the path. Leviathan had moved to Lichenmoor with his family after doctors diagnosed his mother with terminal cancer. “You were seven, and I’m not scared.”
“How do you know how old I was?”
Asher shrugged. “I’m a fan.”
Leviathan gasped. “You are?”
Asher resisted the urge to say, obviously . How often did he meet an artist who wasn’t a fan of his work?
“I must admit, I’m a fan of your work too,” Leviathan said.
“Really?”
“Of course. Why else would I have invited you?”
As much as Asher wanted to bask in Leviathan’s praise, it was hard to believe. No matter how many paintings he sold within hours of listing, imposter syndrome told him he wasn’t good enough.
“I’ve been dying to know where you get your inspiration,” Leviathan said. “Who influences your work?”
Asher cleared his throat. “You do, sir.”
“Ah-ah,” Leviathan chided. “If you keep calling me that, I may start calling you lad .”
Yes, please, especially if he put good in front of it.
“I’m sorry. It’s a habit.”
“How very polite of you.” Leviathan stroked his ginger beard. “Where were we? Oh, right. You were saying I was the reason you became an artist and that I should thank myself for creating you.”
Asher rolled his lips inward. He wouldn’t let Leviathan charm him, or make him laugh, or seduce him.
With the feigned nonchalance of a jealous lover, Leviathan said, “Well, I can’t be your only influence.”
But Leviathan was his only influence. No one else’s art gave him that burst of dopamine that had his pulse thrumming, his skin buzzing, saliva filling his mouth. Not even Leviathan’s father, Lucian Marks.
“It’s not a pop quiz,” Leviathan prodded.
“I have as many influences as there are color combinations. Tears turning hazel eyes green, soft moss blanketing a tree, the sharp angle of a paper cut, the look on a mother’s face when she can’t afford food and formula, so the person behind her pays for both. That’s what inspires me.”
Leviathan slowed his pace and turned toward him. “Were you the person who paid for her groceries?”
“I paint portraits of other people, not myself.”
“Ah, but every painting is a portrait of the artist regardless of the subject. That’s lesson number one.” Leviathan’s gaze raked over him. “I paint in textures and emotions, too.”
Asher’s lips tipped up. “I mean, is there any other way?”
“Not if you want to make art.”
“And you’re the gatekeeper?”
Leviathan scoffed. “The only gate I keep is the one to Lichenmoor. Anything can be art, and any person who picks up a paintbrush is an artist, whether they’re any good or not.”
“And here I pegged you as an art snob.”
“Interesting word choice.”
“For a dirty mind.”
Leviathan’s laughter boomed across the moor. “You’re not the meek dormouse I was expecting.”
Asher bit back a smile. “And you’re exactly as I imagined. ”
“Oh? What did you imagine?”
“Big and loud. Insatiably flirtatious.”
But that only scratched the surface. Leviathan was a Russian doll of a person. Beneath the layers of old money and bad boy socialite, bohemian artist and humble philanthropist, the man was deeply lonely. Asher saw it in his art.
Leviathan clutched a hand to his chest with a sharp gasp, startling the hell out of Asher. Was Leviathan having a heart attack? Forty wasn’t old. Then again, Asher’s bag was heavy, and Lucian had died unexpectedly.
“Words hurt, Blakely.” Leviathan pushed perfect lips into a pout.
The fist around Asher’s own heart unclenched. He exhaled a nervous laugh. “You scared me.”
“Don’t worry, lad. I’m made of sturdier stock.”
Okay, so Leviathan calling him lad was going to haunt his wet dreams for weeks—no. No wet dreams. He was here for art and art only.
Asher loped ahead. They had to be almost there. He just needed to keep his mouth shut until then.
Leviathan caught up quickly. “Please stay close to me. I’d hate for you to get lost again.” He lowered his voice, drawing Asher’s ear closer. “Not to mention, some say the moors are haunted. Tell me, Blakely, do you believe in ghosts?”
Asher shook his head. “If ghosts existed, we’d have video evidence by now.”
Leviathan clucked his tongue. “Your generation has no imagination.”
“Or we had less lead poisoning.”
“Touché.” Leviathan laughed. “Once we’re out of these woods, the road hugs the cliff’s edge closely. I assume you believe in gravity?”
“Hilarious,” Asher deadpanned.
The path snaked around tree trunks Asher could barely see. The scent of pine and macerated leaves competed with the salty breeze. He wished he’d arrived in better weather.
Lichenmoor’s forests appeared almost enchanted in the photos he’d found online. Old-growth pine, alder, and birch trees towered over the Fuilteach River, intersected by a series of medieval arched bridges.
“What about curses?” Leviathan asked next.
“Folklore claims centuries of battles and bloodshed once lured the ocean onto land, giving it a taste for man, and that’s why the tide is so hungry.
When the ocean retreated, it left behind a curse that all who die here will spend an eternity walking circles in the mist.”
“I read about that.”
“Where did you learn these things about me and my land?”