The Artist's Muse Read online

  “But why was he there, and naked in your bed?”

  Lise sighs. “He is forever trying to get me into bed. And he tried that night, but before I could do anything to get him to behave, you’d knocked, and it was too late.”

  “And I thought you’d slept with him.”

  “I thought I’d ruined any chance of us,” Lise replies. It had ruined us, had thrust us apart. “And Marcel tried to convince me to come home, that our parents had forgiven me, and that we’d have an easy life. I couldn’t do it.”

  I can’t imagine having to withstand the pressure of a fiancé and parents. How Lise could…it amazed me.

  “I tried to find you, to call you,” Lise says, “but you were never home, and I couldn’t get up the courage to come into the bar.”

  “Instead you worked.” She must have spent hours every day painting, to have finished so much.

  “I never stopped. I drove myself until I dropped from exhaustion. Then there was a knock at my door.” She raises our joined hands to her heart. “Colette, it was Belanger. He’d heard about my work and wanted to see for himself. I thought maybe if I showed my paintings, showed you…that you’d come.” Her voice catches, and I take her in my arms, as I’d wished I could do for so long.

  “Je suis désolée,” I murmur against her hair. “I couldn’t stand thinking I’d lost you, so I avoided all chance of hearing for sure.” She would have been another Nathalie. “But now…”

  “Now?” Lise asks.

  “Now I feel silly,” I confide. Lise gives a choked laugh and her shoulders shake. At first I think it’s laughter, but as a sob escapes her, I realize she’s crying. I hold her close, blinking away the tears in my own eyes. She says something, but it’s muffled against my shoulder. She lifts her head and repeats herself.

  “Come with me,” she says.

  “Where?”

  “To tonight’s reception,” she replies. “Belanger wants to meet my muse. And after, come home with me. Please, Colette?”

  I won’t deny her. Not anymore.

  “Always,” I say. Our lips meet, and I taste the saltiness of her tears, and her sweetness. I wish we weren’t sitting on a bench by the cemetery. She seems to be thinking the same thing.

  “Let’s go home now.” Lise wipes her eyes, and her lashes are damp, stuck together so that they look like the points of a star. Bleu mauve et les étoiles. I’ve never seen anything so beautiful.

  We stop several times along the way, and a group of boys whistle at us as we kiss. Once we get to Lise’s, it’s all urgent fumbling, a desperate need. We don’t even reach the bed; Lise tugs me down onto the divan, pulling off her shirt. Her shoes are strewn on the floor, as are mine. I pull my shirt over my head and she tugs it away, halting me before I can undress any further.

  “Let me,” she says, her hands moving to my breasts, cupping them through the lace of my bra. The warmth from her breath as she bends to kiss the swell of my cleavage makes my nipples harden, and the need rises in me so sharply that it’s almost painful.

  I find the button of her trousers and wrest it open, pulling down the zipper. I don’t want to go slowly, not now. Not when I’ve regained all I thought lost. I shift away from her and slide off the divan, onto my knees on the parquet. I hook my fingers in the waistband of her trousers and underwear, and she lifts her hips without my having to say a word.

  Once she’s naked, I sit back on my heels, my hand resting on her knee, gently stroking her soft skin. She’s beautiful like this, sprawled on the divan, her eyes hooded, her hair mussed. I could look at her forever.

  Forever and ever.

  I rise onto my knees and lean forward, pressing her legs apart. Her thighs tremble as I flick out my tongue, teasing the hollow of sensitive flesh already damp with her arousal. I move to the other side, purposely avoiding where she wants me to be. I feel her hand in my hair, her nails scraping my scalp ever so delicately.

  “Please, Colette.” Her words come out with a gasping whimper, and I glance up. Her lips are parted and her chest rises and falls. Her cheeks are flushed and the pinkness spreads down her neck and her chest. Her gaze meets mine, and I lower my head. When I part her with my tongue, her head falls back and she lets out a moan.

  I love the taste of her, the sweet muskiness of her scent, the way her hips tilt up involuntarily toward my mouth. I take her clit between my lips and she arches up with a wordless cry. Her whole body shudders as I suck her, and her fingers tighten in my hair. She squirms closer, and I slip two fingers into her.

  Lise stiffens, her toes curling on the parquet, pushing herself against my mouth. My hand is soaked with her orgasm. She’s breathing hard when I sit back, her eyes closed, and I raise myself onto the divan next to her. She cups my cheek, and I turn my head to press a kiss into her palm.

  “I love you,” I whisper.

  Her eyes flutter open and I don’t even need her to say it; her eyes say it all. But she does.

  “I love you.”

  About the Author

  Alyssa Linn Palmer is a Canadian writer and freelance editor. She splits her time between a full-time day job and her part-time loves, writing and editing. She is a member of the RWA, the Calgary RWA, and RRW (Rainbow Romance Writers). She has a passion for Paris and all things French, which is reflected in her writing. When she’s not writing lesbian romance, she’s creating the dark, morally flawed characters of the Le Chat Rouge series and indulging in her addictions to classic pulp fiction.

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