Page 49 of Art of Sin
21virility
I’m not drunk.
I’m not high.
I’m not crazy.
Crazy.
“This is fucking crazy.” The words are garbled, lacking consonants because I’m trying not to mess up the thick, drying paint around my mouth.
“No. It’s art.”
Naked except for a thong, my body covered front to back in a thousand strokes of color, I don’t feel anything beyond the present moment. He’s right. There’s nothing crazy or chaotic here. There is only laughter. Collaboration. Excitement. Joy.
This is the gift Gideon gives, the power he grants—to live fully in the present moment. No past, no tomorrow. Just now. Immersion in both the current experience and his sensual, unpredictable art of being.
“Stop laughing or I’ll have to redo this section again,” he grumbles, twinkling eyes glancing up from beneath lowered brows. He’s on his knees in front of me, a paintbrush angled at my stomach.
I’m an hour past the initial, painful peak of arousal triggered by his touch. The brushstrokes on my breasts and hardened nipples were a particular torture, as was Gideon’s knowing smirk every time I twitched.
“It tickles, asshole.”
Gideon chuckles as he stands. “Okay, a few more shots, please.”
Finn lifts a hefty black camera to his face. The shutter snaps and snaps, little plastic flutters of sound that dance inside my ears.
I have the basic poses down by now, so I shift around every minute or so. My gaze wanders, stalling repeatedly on what’s been taunting me since I walked in the room—a gargantuan wooden privacy screen obscuring one corner.
The panels are covered almost entirely by photographs from our first session. Hundreds of pictures—color and black-and-white—of my face and body in various poses and magnification. Hands. Mouth. Ears. Shoulder blades. My spine ass to neck. Even my freaking nose is on display from every conceivable angle.
It’s… oddly impersonal. One-dimensional. Faintly grotesque. I don’t see me but a caricature of a woman. A relief, since it means I don’t have to be affected by the images.
But it isn’t even the screen that tugs my mind, bringing my gaze back and back again. It’s what Gideon hinted at lives behind the screen.
A canvas.
My canvas.
The first of seven, he said, though he wouldn’t say more about their concept or purpose. I’m not allowed to look, but I don’t need to.
“What’s the first one, huh?” I mumble. “Which of the Seven Sins am I to embody?”
Gideon grunts in humor. “Does it matter?”
My eyes find him not far from the hidden canvas, leaning against the wall beside an open window. He’s smoking a clove, the pungent, blue-tinged smoke trailing from his nostrils. He’s bare-chested, spattered liberally with paint. A Celtic god breathing fire and spitting smoke.
My chest feels heavy, tight, and hot. So hot. Smothered by his beauty. Suffocated by his allure. My fingers and toes tingle. The roots of my hair itch.
I don’t know if this is a panic attack, an allergic reaction to the paint, or that tipping off point when reason flees from the path of something greater and infinitely more dangerous.
I cannot love this man.
His eyes haven’t left mine. No trace of his usual, lightly mocking smile.
“Finn.”
There’s a wealth of meaning in the word. A hidden language built over years of friendship. Gideon doesn’t move, and neither do I except to tremble, as Finn packs away his camera and slips from the room.
