He’d commented about how pretty I looked tonight, which was fine, but then proceeded to tell me about the champagne suite of the hotel, which was not fine. Of course I’d refrained from letting him know his son had already shown me around it, managing to defile me in six different spots inside said suite.
The fifteenth level was a private floor. In the elevator index, it was described as the Art Room. When I got to the floor, I swiped the card against the digital screen and watched a green light blink back at me. The door slid open. I stepped out into the room, my heels hitting the marble floor. The breath knocked out of my chest.
The vast, open room was full of replicas of famous sculptures—life-sized models of The Thinker by Auguste Rodin, The Discus Thrower and Venus De Milo by Alexander Antioch, and the Elgin Marbles. Then, in the center, Michelangelo’s David stood staring at me, imperial and almost patronizing, a towering more than six feet of sheer maleness—much smaller than the original, but just as striking.
My legs shook at the mesmerizing beauty and violence dripping from the sculptures. One thing they all had in common—they were stark naked, unapologetically erotic. The room had no chairs. No couches. Nowhere to do anything other than stand and admire the beauty in front of you. I briefly wondered whose idea this room was, but I didn’t have to think about it. Not really. I already knew.
The man who was as beautiful as a painting, as ruthless as art, as hard as marble.
I sauntered across the room, my hand brushing over the broad, carved chests and mouths slacking open in pleasure. The room smelled clean, cold, and of chipped stone. It was dimly lit, and mostly dark blue.
I thought about Dad, about the experimental treatment our new insurance company had offered him this week, about the hope in his eyes when he’d broken the news to me and the faith in my heart, its seed blooming into something I was afraid was going to grow beyond my control. Everything was moving too fast and yet not fast enough since I’d joined LBC.
“I’m scared.” I crouched down and stared at a marble woman sitting in a bath, fingering herself. She wouldn’t spill my secret in anyone’s ears. She would listen. Maybe she would even understand. Her face was defiant. Fearless. She wasn’t ashamed of what she was doing.
“My life is in shambles, and my father is dying. All the things I want seem unachievable, so far away. Is your heart lonely too?” I whispered, caressing her cheek.
I can’t fall in love. This is lust and confusion. This is what happens when you’re about to lose a parent and gain a dubious lover.
I’d come to this room to be with Célian, but Célian wasn’t mine to be with. If I told the Jude of three months ago what I was about to do, she would punch me in the tit, because an engagement was an engagement. The word’s definition meant he was committed to someone else.
Then I remembered the way he’d looked at her up at the gala, like she’d killed his dreams.
And the way she’d clung to him, like she knew and didn’t care.
“Yes,” a dark, masculine voice whispered behind me, and I twisted around to take him in. Célian stood at the elevator’s door, a shoulder leaning against the frame, playing with the electronic card between his fingers. “That’s why we do what we do. Why we can’t stop this.”
He took confident steps into the room, each of them making my heart swell a little more, until there was a monster in my chest, hungry for his touch. The look on his face alone engorged my clit. I squeezed my thighs together, my underwear damp between them.
“Whose idea was this room?”
“Mine.”
“Why?”
“Because I like beautiful, lifeless things.” His finger hovered over my face, making minimal contact with a lock of my hair and moving it behind my ear. “They can’t talk back. They can’t screw you over. They can’t fuck your future.”
“Is this where you take all your one-night stands?”
His slight smirk made my chest hurt.
“If you were a one-night stand, you wouldn’t be standing here. And no, I don’t make a habit of fucking women against these replicas. They’re worth over 300k apiece, and hard to come by. Pick a favorite,” he ordered—not asked—gesturing to the vast room.
I resumed my stroll among the marble statues, feeling his eyes burning a hole in my back, seeing through my dress and skin and bones, devouring me from the inside. I studied every sculpture carefully, like there was a wrong and right answer, before finally gesturing at David.
I turned around to face Célian.
He tsked, running his callused fingers over his jawline. “You can do better.”
“What’s more beautiful than Michelangelo’s David?” I challenged.
“Not many things. Which makes it very cliché. The first nude statue made in the Renaissance and the one sculpture every eejit knows. The Beatles aren’t your favorite band, right, Jude?”
“No,” I scoffed. “Too mainstream. Actually…” I licked my lips, snorting out a laugh. It was a ridiculous thing to say, but I didn’t mind showing Célian my weirdness. For all the bad things he was, he never judged me. “I always thought David’s penis was disproportionately small. And, um…soft.”
Yep. That just came out of my mouth.
“The original one is attached to a seventeen-foot-tall sculpture. Pretty sure you still couldn’t fit it in your smart mouth. Think harder, Humphry.”