5. Shackled Muses
SHACKLED MUSES
ASHER
A n artist’s sketchbook was supposed to be sacred, a private vessel for ideas newly birthed. It was a first draft—a zero draft, really—a place to repurpose pain without fear and let his thoughts run amok.
Stealing a glance inside an artist’s sketchbook was like reading their diary. In Asher’s case, the sketchbook was his diary. He recorded his version of events there every day through sketches and notes to later refer to.
His sketchbook was his lifeline to the truth, to knowing who he was, and Lev had rifled through it.
“Forget I’m here,” Lev said, as if such a notion was even possible.
Asher paused his paintbrush and shivered, inhaling the earthy scent of tea and the same hint of jasmine in his cologne. Did he always smell that good?
Breathing through his mouth, he dipped his brush into phthalo blue and mixed it with burnt umber before adding the faintest hint of titanium white until he’d created the murky gray of the Bolton Strid, a fatal stretch of river hidden beneath an idyllic stream.
The Strid looked shallow enough to traverse on foot, and narrow enough a single leap could bridge the gap, but that was a lie. One misstep on the slippery stone, and the Strid would claim another victim.
Destruction lurked beneath disarming charm and enigmatic magnetism. Even with warning signs, and crosses marking lost lives, the allure was too strong for some, coaxing victims into a watery grave with a single question:
What if? What if he stepped a little closer? What if he dipped his toes in? That wasn’t so dangerous, was it? What if he jumped?
That’s what men like Leviathan Marks and Ben Swarthing were.
Asher wouldn’t fall for it again. He would ignore the call, just like he had when he stopped at the Bolton Strid on his way to Lichenmoor. He knew better. He knew if he jumped, Lev would drown him.
“If I may…” Lev’s words caressed Asher’s neck as he reached for his hand, easily eclipsing it.
Asher stiffened. Ben had courted him similarly. Maybe they’d trained together and compared notes on breaking hearts.
There was a subtle difference, though. Ben’s flirtation had made Asher uncomfortable from day one, whereas Lev’s touch was too comfortable.
Highjacking Asher’s hand, Lev led the brush across the canvas like a debutante across a ballroom.
The tattoos beneath Asher’s clothes tingled, each mark a brand buzzing with recognition. Their creator was near.
Could Lev hear his heart racing?
Asher swallowed thickly. He wanted to lose himself in the professional ecstasy of making art with Leviathan Marks, but he’d rather forfeit the mentorship than implode his career again.
Besides, what kind of cocky bastard thought so highly of himself that he took control over another artist’s work? Was this a test? Surely Lev lusted for artists confident in their craft.
Asher jerked his hand free, slashing his canvas with gray paint.
“Forgive me.” At least Lev had the grace to don a mask of roguish embarrassment. “I have an issue with control.”
“Clearly,” Asher muttered.
Lev laughed. “You’re oh so prickly, little dormouse, just like the thistle and rose vines on the moor.”
“I told you not to call me that.”
“But Blakely is so dreadfully boring.” Lev harrumphed and slouched onto his stool with boyish playfulness.
“Not all of us can be named after sea serpents.” Asher picked up a new brush and feathered viridian fern fronds between rocks on the river’s edge. “What about calling me by my first name—or do you call it a Christian name here?”
He’d stretched Christian into three syllables with a sharp T sound, as he imagined Lev might say in his accent.
Lev waved his hand airily. “I want to have a name for you that no one else has. I think I’ll call you Ash.”
Asher snorted. “Last night you said Asher reminded you of charcoal on skin, and now you’d rather call me Ash?”
“Did I say that? How wantonly slutty of me.”
“You said a lot of wantonly slutty things.”
“Are you certain? That doesn’t sound like me. You’re very cute when you smile like that, Ash.”
Asher bit into his lip. “I’m not smiling.”
Lev tapped the side of Asher’s mouth. “Your dimples betray you.”
The briefest touch of Lev’s finger on the side of his mouth nearly compelled Asher to turn his head and suck.
“Has anyone ever told you that you’re orally fixated?”
“What?” Oh my God. Had he said that out loud?
“You rake your teeth over your bottom lip, roll your lips inward, wet them with your tongue, pinch them and rub them with your fingers. What about Ashy?”
“Fuck no.” Asher paused his paintbrush and added, “Sir.”
Lev boomed a laugh that startled Asher so sharply a splotch of paint fell from his brush. Asher refused to laugh too.
“If I may propose a solution…” Lev said.
Asher rolled his paintbrush as if to say, “You may.”
“If you let me call you Ash, I’ll let you call me Lev.”
“But I already call you Lev.”
“You’re very cute. Are you sure you don’t want to be called Ashy?”
Asher scowled.
“You’re even cuter when you’re cross,” Lev said.
Asher added a final stroke, and rested his paintbrush on the palette. It would take days more to layer details, but he was content with what he’d started, and he’d had enough of this discussion.
Lev clicked his tongue. “Come now, Blakely. Have you finished already?”
Did Lev have any idea of the effect those words said in that accent did to a man? Probably.
Asher should have called him out on it, but words escaped him. His dick hardened down his right pant leg, impossible to miss in sweatpants stretched tight over his thighs.
As if lured by a spell, Asher turned his face toward Lev, and froze, locked in the depths of azure irises made of shards of lapis. Ginger lashes flashed downward to cheeks dusted with cinnamon freckles. Lev was looking at Asher’s lips.
“If I chose you, what kind of art do you think we would make?”
Asher wet his bottom lip. Not on purpose. His mouth was dry. What had Lev asked? What even was art?
A bell sounded, a hollow tinkling, like one pulled on a string. Asher jumped and turned back toward his canvas, saved by a literal bell .
“Ah. That would be breakfast.” Lev’s footsteps retreated.
Servant bells? It was almost as if they resided in a timeless realm. At least that explained the faint ringing he’d heard last night.
“While I’d love to stay and explore the delicious sexual tension brewing between us, we should go.”
Asher’s jaw dropped. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Little dormouse, lying doesn’t suit you.”
“Neither does that nickname.”
Irritation drained the blood from his dick. He couldn’t make it one day without falling for Lev’s wiles. He gathered his brushes, dropped them into the cup of water, and brought them to the sink, then scrubbed the bristles with far more aggression than necessary.
“Oh, don’t sulk. You look so much prettier when you sulk.”
“Don’t wait up,” Asher said when Lev made no move to leave.
“Nonsense. You’ll never find your way out of the labyrinth without me to escort you. Besides, I don’t want the others to think you aren’t taking this seriously if you arrive late again.”
“You can tell them I’m jet-lagged.”
“I couldn’t possibly. I can’t show favoritism, even if you’re my favorite.” Lev leaned his elbows against the counter and held out a clean towel for him.
“I don’t want to be one of your favorites .” Asher emphasized the word with air quotes, flinging diluted paint against Lev’s forearm.
The muscles in Lev’s arm twitched, but he made no move to clean it.
“I’m not sure if you’re aware, Blakely, but I’ve instituted a new policy. No fraternization with prodigies, protégés, and other such p-words. I was just having a little fun, but if I’ve made you uncomfortable, I apologize. ”
“ Right. ”
Lev raked derisive eyes up and down Asher’s body, then rubbed his beard, sending paint droplets tracking lines down his forearm. As Asher watched the paint descend, he had the strangest urge to lick it from his skin.
“Not to mention, you’re practically an infant.”
Asher snorted. “Then you’re practically ancient.”
“You still haven’t answered my question. What kind of art do you think we could make together?”
Asher turned off the tap and watched the water spiral around the paint-stained porcelain sink before slipping down the drain.
“Best-case scenario, we’d make the kind of art that hurts in all the right ways.
Worst case…” Asher took the towel and wiped his hands.
“You’ve said it yourself, haven’t you? That it’s better not to learn under others, that in doing so you shackle your muse and what you make isn’t art, but a charade of what your art should have been. ”
Lev frowned. “I don’t recall saying that.”
“I’m not surprised. You looked pretty blitzed in that interview. It was back when you were in your bad-boy artist phase.”
Lev pouted. “I thought I never left that phase.”
“Nope. You’re in your mysterious recluse phase. Sorry.” Asher smirked.
“Is that so? Is there some sort of fan club that votes on these things?”
“I don’t know if you have any fans. I think the only followers you breed are fanatics.”
“Are you saying you’re a fanatic, Blakely? Please tell me this isn’t going to turn into some dreadful Misery sort of situation?”
Asher had just been about to confess that, yes, he was president of the fanatics, that he’d paid thousands of dollars and hours of pain to etch his art into his skin so it would always be with him, but he couldn’t say that .
Lev would lose all respect for him.
Because Lev was no narcissist. Beneath the facade of condescension and bloated self-importance was a man who hated himself.