All I can think is that being painted by him feels a lot like being fucked by him, but he already knows that.
“Phillipe,” I beg.
He thrusts the brush back up inside of me, and my hips start to flex against his sinful hand. I turn my head, so our mouths are almost touching. I feel myself getting impossibly wetter, and he licks his lips as his hand shifts again.
“This is wrong,” I say, panting.
He grins demonically, nibbling my lip. “All the best things are,” he agrees. He drags the brush out from my confused and needy body, and then he pushes it back up inside of me again. “Now, close your eyes, Gemma, and go with it. Who cares if it’s wrong? How does it feel?”
I have no words for him as I stand there, grinding down on the brush that is now deep inside of me. All I can do is what he told me—feel.
He starts to thrust it in and out of me, quicker with each movement, and that’s when I hear him softly humming the strings of Pachelbel’s Canon in D in my ear. Everything about the situation is fucked up.
What he’s doing and how I’m responding is beyond fucked up, but there’s not one thing I can do when he bites my ear. I scream out my shockingly intense and inappropriate climax. Once again, I find myself unsure and ashamed of how I’m left feeling.
Phillipe took me back to the chateau after my performance and told me how moved he was when he watched me play. I could tell by the way he spoke to me that something was different.
He was touching and talking to me as though he had never seen me before. Maybe he hadn’t.
My mother always told me that I came alive when I was on stage. Maybe that’s what he saw.
“I knew you’d be amazing tonight, but, Chantel, I have no words.” He paused and sighed. “You were simply breathtaking.”
I kissed him softly. “Well, I don’t want you to stop breathing.”
His lips covered mine in an almost desperate kiss. When he pulled away, he stroked a hand down my cheek. “I don’t plan to, not for a very long time, and neither will you.”
He kissed me again, and almost as though he couldn’t stand to be still, he lifted me off the ground, twirling me around as I laughed. He slowly lowered me down his body. “Will you come and stay with me, Chantel?”
Automatically, I went to say yes, but he kissed me before I could even make a sound.
“Don’t say no, please. Tell me you’ll move in with me? Let me see you when you awake. Let me be inspired every time I turn a corner, and you’re there.”
Laughing at his eagerness, I stroked my fingers over his impossibly high cheekbone. “My parents and Beau wouldn’t understand why I would choose to stay here in France or why I would move in with you, a man I have just barely met.”
He kissed my mouth, and I felt myself sliding under the waves again.
I asked him, “Is this wrong? Are we crazy?”
This time, his lips pressed against my forehead. He whispered, “Probably. But who cares? How does it make you feel?”
My answer was simple. It made me feel complete.
The next day I moved into the chateau.
Chapter Nine ~ Want
Day 8
I am ashamed to admit that I hid for two whole days. As I am lying here in bed, I continue to find myself reflecting on everything that happened that day up in his studio. With a paintbrush, no less.
I’m still trying to understand all that took place, but what it ultimately comes down to is that I invited Phillipe Tibideau into my body.
Well, in actuality, there was no inviting. It was more of a hostile takeover. He took over my senses, including any common sense I possessed before arriving here.
Reaching up to my mouth, I touch my lips and remember his on mine as he played my body so expertly out in the vineyard only a couple of days before.
One thing is certain. My judgment becomes compromised when it comes to Phillipe, and I have no immediate idea on how to stop myself from wanting to be compromised over and over again.
Today though, I want some answers from him. I want to know why people thought their relationship was unhealthy. Why did the world turn against a man that only months earlier they had revered?
The obvious answer seems too simple. There has to be more to it because the man I am coming to know doesn’t fit with all that I have read.
Why wouldn’t he defend himself publicly? Why wouldn’t he save his name?
Twice now, I sat in a dark room—a room that for all intents and purposes is cut off from the world—and he blindfolded me. He had every opportunity to do as he pleased, yet he didn’t touch me while in pose.
No, he waited until my sight was restored, and my attention was focused, focused solely on him before he…what? Seduces me? Tempts me? Destroys me?
That is the word that my mind keeps returning to—destroyed. That is the word that has been thrown around and used in conjunction with his name, but I don’t feel destroyed. I feel alive. I feel needy and hungry.
Lying here with just my thoughts for comfort, I’m shocked to discover that I feel no shame in what we did, even though I probably should. In the face of reflection, I’m craving what I am seeing instead of running from it.
Suddenly, I understand Chantel’s words because the wave has come, and I feel it pulling me under.
Want ~
This morning, I awoke to an empty bed, or to be more precise, an empty mattress.
Phillipe had decided that since we were spending so many hours in the studio, we should just bring a mattress up here. So, two days ago, he’d done just that and hauled his huge mattress up into the studio. It had all been very romantic when he’d placed it beneath the window. Kissing me, he had pulled me down onto it and told me that now he could touch me under the stars, just like he’d touched me under the sun.
That was not all that happened. This morning, I discovered what it means to truly want another. Want in every way that the word can be used. To need, crave, and desire another.
Phillipe had gotten up early. I could tell because there was no sun warming my skin, like it had every other morning. Rolling over, I reached my hand across the pillow beside me. I noticed that it had already cooled, so he’d been up for a while.
That was a shame because I had wanted him to make love to me this morning. I was restless.
Sitting up in the makeshift bed, I held the sheet to my breasts and called out to him. “Phillipe?”
When I got no answer, I lay back down and shut my eyes, waiting a few minutes before calling out for him again. “Phillipe?” This time, he responded from the foot of the mattress, surprising me with his sudden nearness.
“Yes?”
“Oh, there you are.” I responded as, I felt the sheet being tugged on at my feet.
“Let go, Chantel,” he instructed, his voice darkly persuasive.
Releasing my grip, I almost moaned as he pulled it away from my body. It slid down in a silky caress until I was left lying there naked, save for the beginning of the morning sun that was warming my body as it finally started to rise.