ColorMeBad (5 page)

He was trembling slightly as he spoke. Hecuba wrapped her
arms around his waist and leaned in to him. He relaxed slightly as she began to
speak. “When I was younger,” she said, “I took lessons in the mornings with my
cousins and their governess. Reading, mathematics—that sort of thing. The
afternoons were for learning deportment and dancing and other such skills, but
my parents were too poor and too low in society to care much about making me an
accomplished young lady. Once lessons were over, I trailed my father around the
house as he taught me how to walk silently, how to pick locks, how to dress to
stand out or blend in with the background. Or else I ran wild in the village
with the tradesmen’s children.” She let her polished tones slide back into the
flat country accent of her youth as she went on. “There’s not a lot of mystery
left between men and women when your best friends are the daughters of a
barmaid and the village tailor. We guessed most of it fairly early on. We
learned the rest as we grew older.”

Hecuba pulled back and saw that Mr. Rushmore was looking at
her with astonishment but none of the censure she’d feared to see. She put on
her gentry voice again, a habit which had become easier and easier over the
years. Sometimes she wondered whether she even had what could be considered a
natural way of speaking or whether it had all become masks she could put on and
take off at will. “The world has a great many rules for those of us who live in
it,” she said. “We learn not to expect the same kind of behavior from a
dairymaid as we would from a duchess.”

“You’d be surprised,” he murmured with a ghost of his former
humor.

Hecuba sent him a quelling glance. “I had to learn several
different sets of rules growing up, which makes it easier for me to adapt when
the world shifts and old habits no longer apply. You had no such advantage.
Right now you are troubled because all your rules for how to deal with me have
been overturned. I am either too virginal or not virginal enough. You said it
yourself—you want either to idolize me or to seduce me. You’re failing to do
either.”

His mouth tightened into a grim line at the frankness of her
statement. “Do you have a solution then?” he asked.

“Yes,” Hecuba replied. “
Listen
to me, Mr. Rushmore.
Believe that I want you as badly as you want me. Trust me to tell you what I
need and I will trust you to do the same.” She glanced down at their joined
hands. “My cousins and my aunt have brought home to me just what I can hope to
find in a husband—a steady man, probably a great deal older than myself, who
cares more for his own domestic comfort than for anything personally or
physically appealing about me. He will have neither title nor fortune and yet
he will expect me to be grateful for the opportunity of bearing his children
and managing his household. My allowance will be meager if he provides one at
all—and should I ever betray by word or deed that I have some dream or thought
or desire that does not revolve around him, he will be gravely disappointed.”
Her gaze lifted again, her mouth set firm. “You’ll forgive me when I say that
the ruin of my virtue in a blaze of passion is much less dangerous to me than
the dull, drawn-out oppression of a life barely lived.”

Mr. Rushmore was looking at her very keenly now. Hecuba forced
herself to breathe deeply and evenly because holding her breath in suspense was
unproductive. She felt lightheaded enough as it was.

Mr. Rushmore nodded once in sharp decision. “A blaze of
passion,” he said. “I like the sound of that.” His eyes on hers were resolved.
“But I still insist that we go slowly.”

Hecuba felt a ripple of anxiety, which dissolved when Mr.
Rushmore leaned down, slid the strap of the Grecian gown to one side and put
his lips to her shoulder.

The gentle touch scored through her, a comet blazing across
the sky between them. Hecuba held still, afraid that if she moved the spell
would be broken. He moved deliberately, leisurely over her skin, spreading fire
wherever his lips touched, going slowly just as he’d said. She fisted her hands
in her skirts to keep herself from reaching out to hurry him. It was torture,
but she was determined. She would stand firm and let him proceed at his own
pace. She would
not
submit, even though he flicked his tongue out to
taste the hollow of her collarbone and set her pulse dancing within her. It
didn’t matter that he leaned close enough that she could smell the spice of him
with each shuddering breath. It was nothing to her if all her nerves were alive
to the fact that his tall, hard body was separated from hers by the merest few
inches of space.

Mr. Rushmore slid the second strap off her shoulder, and the
bodice of the gown tumbled down around her clenched hands. Hecuba fought back a
moan. The gilt rope held the garment around her waist, but her bosom was now
naked in the chill attic air.

Though not for long. One of his hands slipped to her waist
and the other closed warm and firm around her breast.

Hecuba screwed her eyes shut as the shock of that touch
streaked through her. He moved his lips to her ear. “This isn’t
too
slow
I hope?” he asked.

The laughter in his voice surprised her into opening her
eyes. He was
grinning
at her. She glared at him in return. “You devious
bastard…” The words trailed away on a gasp as his fingers pinched her nipple
and his teeth closed on the tender lobe of her ear. He chuckled. That dark,
lush sound finally undid all her reserve. Her better intentions fell away and
took her inhibitions with them.

She unclenched her hands from her skirts and loosened the
gilt rope belt. It fell to the floor and took the gown with it, leaving her
clad in nothing but candlelight.

She half expected him to pull away, but instead he bore her
down to the floor and pushed one trousered thigh between her spread legs.
Hecuba had but a moment to glory in the friction of his clothes against her
bare skin before he leaned down and took her nipple in his mouth.

Heat and pressure and the sweet, sliding motion of his
tongue soon had her writhing beneath him, the floorboards hard and cool against
her naked back. His weight pinned her in place, though it was pure delight to
arch up and feel the heft of him against all the points on her body that were
crying out for more contact. When he lifted his head from her breast, she took
advantage of the respite to say, “Your clothes, Mr. Rushmore.”

“What of them, Miss Jones?” he returned. Hecuba had no time
to muster a reply before he bent and slid further down her body. She jumped a
little when he brushed kisses along the sensitive curve of her stomach, the
warmth of his mouth a counterpoint to the rough scrape of his jawline.

“Are you going to remove them?” she went on, though words
were increasingly difficult to arrange amid the tumult of her senses.

He smiled against her skin. “I’m wearing only a shirt and
trousers, Miss Jones.”

“Socks,” Hecuba pointed out, lifting one leg and sliding the
sole of her bare foot along the back of his calf.

“And socks,” he agreed on a gratifying moan. He splayed his
hands wide on her hips as he slid lower still, holding her fixed and bending
down to press his mouth against the throbbing bud between her legs. Hecuba
gasped and trembled as he punctuated his next sentence with long licks from
that clever tongue. “No boots…no waistcoat…no coat…no gloves…no cravat.” He
gave her a teasing glance, arch with false dignity. “And you want me to be even
less presentably attired?”

She didn’t know why he was demurring, but she didn’t
particularly care. Instead Hecuba groaned, threaded her fingers through his
hair and pushed his head back down.

He sighed with pleasure, the sound rumbling through her and
adding to the pitch of her arousal. His tongue left no part of her untasted
while she arched and cursed and begged for more, pressing her heels against the
floor to push herself more firmly against that wonderful, devilish mouth. There
came a point when Hecuba believed she really, simply couldn’t take another
second, when the pleasure was so intense it nearly became pain—and at that
moment he put his lips around her bud and sucked.

Satisfaction tore through her in waves, ebbing and fading
only to return again with new strength, while he teased at her slick flesh and
she cried out in sheer relief. She was left boneless, shaking, while Rushmore
stretched out alongside her and pulled her into the warmth of his embrace.

Hecuba sighed and snuggled closer. The haze of gratification
didn’t prevent her from noticing that beneath his trousers he was still
prodigiously hard. Idly she wondered if he might ask her to do something about
that. It could be interesting…

He brushed something gritty from her shoulder with one hand.
“An attic floor,” he said. “How terribly romantic of me.”

“It was your only option,” Hecuba replied, her cheek against
the soft old linen of his shirt. She was not quite ready to let him go just
yet. It was not entirely a comfortable realization. She shivered a little
against the chill.

He brushed more dust from her back—paying particular
attention to certain lower parts of her—then, to Hecuba’s frustration, he rose
to his knees beside her. “I shall arrange something better next time,” Rushmore
promised.

“So there is to be a next time,” Hecuba said. Her discomfort
evaporated like dew beneath the sun. She stood and padded behind the screen
where her clothes rested.

“We have three more sittings according to the terms of our
bargain,” he said, following her to the screen and watching while she donned
her clothes and restored her hair to decency. He wasn’t dodging surely?

“I wasn’t thinking of the sitting but about what happened
afterward,” Hecuba said. “I assume you, as a man, know of certain ways to
prevent me from conceiving? And that you would not hesitate to use them?”

He nodded.

“Good,” Hecuba said. “That makes things much simpler in the
long run.”

“I agree,” Rushmore said. With a single guttering candle, he
guided her back down the stairs and to a convenient side door, providing her
with a key to the lock, which was a thoughtful touch. Before Hecuba turned the
corner, she allowed herself one glance back at the window where Rushmore stood
sentry, that lone candle glinting like a lighthouse on some faraway shore.

Hecuba shook off the fancy and vanished into the darkness.

For the next two days and nights, John lived in a waking
dream.

Memories flashed continually before him—Hecuba’s skin in candlelight,
Hecuba swathed in green, her warrior’s poise, her menacing figure as Circe, the
sound of her fluent cursing and the taste of her cunt on his tongue. With these
images came other visions, daydreams and allegories, all making his hands itch
to be working as he went dazedly through his normal social rounds. He had been
inspired after that first kiss—or had it been the second?—but that had been but
a pale shadow of the urges that drove him now.

When on the second evening he found himself seated three
rows behind Hecuba at a musicale, he found it difficult to convince himself she
was really, physically present and not simply a figment of his overzealous
imagination. He spent the whole time staring at the line of her neck and the
arrangement of her hair, some complicated whirl of red strands, curled and
pinned. Her gown was a delicate ivory and seemed likely to have been originally
made for her rosy, dark-haired cousin, as the color made Hecuba herself look
wan and ghostly. She disappeared with her aunt and uncle shortly after the
performance ended, which only added to John’s impression of otherworldliness.
He’d gone home and immediately filled several sheets with images of her turning
her head, craning her neck or leaning forward to better hear the music.

And tonight she was due to return.

He knew better than to imagine, as some men did, that he
could simply slake his desires with one riotous fuck and move on. It would be
like a man dying of thirst thinking he could save himself by plunging off a
cliff and into the sea—merely a different danger. Nor did he imagine that
fucking Hecuba would be anything less than life-changing. She’d nearly sent him
up in flames the other night and remembering it only made him burn more.
Physical pleasure had not been unknown in his life, but it had never taken him
with such force before. He’d poured this longing into his art, and the results
had been immeasurably gratifying.

Of course that begged the question—if he spent all that
energy in bed with his muse, would there be any left for his painting?

It was that fear that had compelled him to remain clothed
the other night, even as he had indulged his need to take her, just a little.
John knew that he would not be able to resist temptation a second
time—especially since the lady herself seemed quite determined to be debauched.

It was inevitable, John decided at last. He exerted himself
to finish as many sketches and studies as he could before the well went dry and
decided to paint something wildly ambitious before he let himself burn on the
sacrificial pyre.

So when Hecuba Jones arrived in the north attic on that
fateful night, she walked into a room transformed.

Circe
was leaning against one wall, set aside until
it had dried enough for John to add finer details and highlights in a richer
layer of paint. A stack of prepared canvases lay beside it. Most of the other
sketches and papers had been tidied away, so previously mysterious hulks were
revealed to be an old desk, an armchair and a divan with fraying upholstery.
The green wool blanket from the earl’s study had been spread in the center of
the floor and spectacularly lit by the combination of an enormous candelabra
and a strategically tilted mirror. A broad basin of water lay at the base of
the mirror so that the rippling of the water was reflected back over the wool
in waves of eddying light. John was working at his easel, filling in the
background—a shadowed forest in green and gray, crowded with mournful willows
and ethereal birches. A deep pond lurked ominously on the left-hand side,
ringed by a sheltering stand of trees.

The thief walked over and considered the scene with a
wrinkle of her nose. “Tell me you’re not going to turn me into Ophelia,” she
said.

John shook his head. “You don’t strike me as the type to go
mad because some waffling prince throws you over.”

“I’m not,” she replied, her satisfaction evident.

“You strike me as the type to take what you want, when you
want it badly enough,” John continued equably.

She looked at him with narrowed eyes. John entertained a
fleeting notion to paint her as some Eastern assassin, sly and strong and
bristling with filigreed blades. “That does not sound like a compliment,
Rushmore,” she said.

“But is it inaccurate, Jones?” His name on her lips without
the formal prefix caused an alarming surge in his blood—he wanted to confirm
the growing intimacy between them, but her Christian name once spoken aloud
would ensnare him, he was certain. The more so since her Christian name was so
very pagan. He wondered if she had been witchlike from birth or if she had
merely felt compelled to live up to the regal name her parents had given her.

Hecuba’s mouth turned up at the corners. “Jones,” she
repeated. “I quite like that.” Her smile warmed further as she continued to
look up at him in the candlelight.

John’s mouth went dry and he was suddenly intensely
conscious of how thin a barrier a mere shirt was against a woman like Hecuba
Jones. And this was a virginal Hecuba. What would she be like once she knew
precisely what pleasures a man’s body could bring her? John was petrified by
the idea—in more than one sense.

He took a steadying breath and shook off his reverie. He
would deal with that complication later. For this last brief window of time, he
must think more about art than about her. “I’m going to make you a naiad,” he
said.

She raised a skeptical eyebrow. “A water nymph?” she asked.

“Specifically the nymph who seduces young Hylas and drowns
him while trying to love him,” John said pointing at a mossy bank on the right
side of the painting, where a nearly nude youth reclined on one elbow. A
leopard skin thrown over his hips was his only concession to decency. His
hunter’s spear was tumbling from his hand as he stared in astonished surprise
at absolutely nothing on the pond’s edge.

Hecuba leaned closer to the canvas. “Rushmore,” she said,
looking at the painted man’s face, “is that
you?
”

John felt a dull flush clamber up the back of his neck at
the amusement in her tone. “I hadn’t the time to secure the services of a male
model and I have always been more comfortable painting from life.” He pointed
to the figure of Hylas. “I tried to make his features more youthful and perfect
than my own, but I’m not quite sure if I succeeded. He needs to be someone
worth taking advantage of—someone so helpless and beautiful that abducting him
is plausible.”

Hecuba’s gaze flickered over John from neck to knees. She
might as well have run her hand over the length of him the way his body
responded to that look. She turned back to the painting, comparing the nudity there
with what his current clothing revealed. “He doesn’t look helpless—he looks
ready,” she said. “Look at the tension in his thighs, the way he’s half-rising
from the ground—he isn’t running away, he’s running
toward
.” She smiled.
”Poor boy.”

The fond tone and the latent heat in her expression
galvanized John. It was just the expression he needed for the painting.

It also made him want to throw her to the floor and fuck her
until she screamed his name.

But he couldn’t do both—he had to choose one. “I’ve taken
the liberty of selecting a costume,” he said.

She followed him behind the screen, where he’d unearthed a
bundle from some long-forgotten theatrical something or other. The gown was
constructed of ivory fabric then covered with layers of sequins and netting and
tulle in shades of teal and turquoise. The whole mess glittered and fluttered
like a trapped butterfly between his outstretched hands. “It’s a little more
complicated than the last one,” he said in apology.

Hecuba stared at it for a long moment as though he’d offered
her a rotten apple from the ground beneath the tree. “No,” she said at last.

Disappointment pricked at him like a thorn in the side.
“Because it makes you look too exposed?” he guessed.

She rejected that with a most unladylike noise. “Because
it’s too ballerina-pretty,” she replied. Her expression was frank. “Do you want
me to be a monster or don’t you?”

John found himself speechless. Hecuba took the glittering
netted thing from him and began turning it this way and that, sifting through
the diaphanous layers. “Naiads are supposed to be pretty,” he stammered.

She made that sound again, an earthy grunt of rejection that
against all expectation sent the blood rushing to his cock. “This one is also
supposed to be fatal. She pursues her own pleasure to the point where it
destroys an innocent young man.” She knelt and spread the costume out on the
attic floor then glanced up at him. “May I make some slight alterations?” she
said.

John swallowed half a dozen perilous suggestions for other
things she might do from that position. “Please,” he said simply.

Hecuba gripped one shimmering turquoise panel of tulle and
pulled.

With a shearing sound, the small panel tore away from the
rest of the costume. She found more pieces in the same shade, ripped them out
and lay them to one side. When she’d found all that she could in the mass of
fabric, she put the despoiled garment back behind the screen and took her
plundered scraps to the basin beside the mirror.

With a casual, matter-of-fact gesture, Hecuba pulled her
black shirt over her head.

John stood rooted to the spot.

She loosened her hair from its chignon, tucking pins into
her trouser pocket, until soft waves fell around her shoulders, the ends
curling flame-bright against the pale linen of her chemise.

Breathing became a Herculean labor and John clenched his
fists hard enough to drive his own nails into his palms. Only that spike of
pain kept him from reaching out for her.

Hecuba dipped her hands in the basin and ran wet fingers
through her hair until the locks were dripping and twisted around one another.
Reflected ripples danced over her kneeling form as she picked up the tulle
scraps, soaked them and draped them over her upper body—bare shoulders, arms
and the long line of her collarbone.

She turned suddenly to face him, palms flat on the planked
wooden floor, elbows bent, head low and menacing. Droplets of water streamed
through the hair at her temples while the colored netting made her skin
shimmer, wraithlike and weird in the undulating radiance from the mirror. The
tulle’s sequins became scales, winking treacherously in the watery light.

A jolt shook him. Had her eyes always been green or was it
simply a trick of the light?

John was suddenly stretched taut as though he were tearing
free of an old skin long outworn. “
Don’t move
,” he commanded and hurried
back to his easel and the paints he’d spent so long preparing.

She disobeyed, turning slightly as he changed positions so
that when he reached the easel she was still facing him. John was too enraptured
to thank her and all but threw himself at the canvas.

He began with the pale colors—shoulders and arms in gleaming
ivory with hints of eerie green. He gave in to temptation and allowed his brush
to trace the curves of her breast and even point out one delicate, dark nipple,
knowing he could paint her into modesty later if she asked him to. The
scale-sequins glittered, sleek and pointed, alluring to the eye but knife-edged
for the unwary.

John picked up a different brush and loaded it with both
chrome orange and Indian yellow—not so they mixed, but so they unrolled in
tandem as the paint flowed onto the canvas—and traced the sinuous curls of wet
hair on her brow and down the back of her neck. They hugged her arms like
snakes, making her as much Medusa as nymph. He would add other layers later,
glazing to make some areas darker and scumbling others lighter for highlights
and contrast.

When he finally stopped for breath, a reasonable facsimile
of Hecuba Jones was just emerging from the painted pond, water lapping at her
waist, an alluring smile on her face and a determined light in her eyes. But
the appearance of the nymph meant Hylas’ face had to change as well—James took
his finest brush and made a few careful alterations. The youth was now more
spellbound than shocked, wondering rather than terrified.

John glanced back at the real Hecuba just in time to see her
shiver. If he hadn’t been observing her so closely for such a length of time,
he’d never have caught it.

He put his brush down at once, appalled by his lack of
thought. “Your patience verges on saintly, Jones,” he said, walking over to
kneel beside her. “Please know that you can ask for a respite at any time.”
With careful hands he removed the chilled, damp tulle from her shoulders. Her
skin was cool beneath his hands and her chemise had gone nearly transparent
with water from her hair. John ignored this temptation, shook the dust from the
blanket on the ground and bundled her in green wool—not without a nostalgic
pang. He was never going to be able to look at this blanket the same way again.

“Thank you,” said Hecuba then shivered again.

Mildly alarmed, John pulled her into his lap.

She wriggled closer and made a sound—such a sound!—in the
back of her throat. It was just the sort of pleased, pleasured groan a
water-veined nymph might have made when clasped by the warm-blooded arms of a
living mortal man. The sound threw caution and art right out of John’s head and
replaced them with memories of sweet-scented flesh and tangled limbs.

“There’s a fire downstairs,” he blurted.

Hecuba’s eyes widened.

“In my bedroom,” John clarified. “For you.”

Hecuba blinked—and just as John realized how he’d sounded,
she started to shake with helpless, wrenching laughter. “It’s a boon for
humanity that you are a painter and not a poet,” she chortled.