The Muse

by Lauren Blakely

  She brushes her lips against mine, and I melt into her.

  We kiss with the sun warming us, lying on the green slats of Monet’s surreal bridge. As I kiss her neck, I tell her all the places I want to kiss her more, the visits I’d make on the treasure map of her body. X marks this spot on her shoulder, then this delicious one on her wrist, then this divine location at the hollow of her throat, as she shudders and pulls me closer with each touch. I’m an intrepid explorer uncovering a new land and claiming it with kisses. Even if time is ticking on the other side of the painting.

  But on this side, the moment feels endless.

  The moment feels like everything.

  And then it truly feels like another world when she wraps her arms around my neck and whispers in my ear, “I know what I want.”

  The words glide out, all sensual and sure.

  I meet her gaze, my body stilling, a wild hope racing through me. “Tell me what that is.”

  She doesn’t tell me. She shows me. She slides her hand down my chest, along my pecs, over my abs.

  To the waistband of my jeans.

  I swallow roughly, my throat going dry, my body buzzing from the delicious contact.

  And then from her eager hand sliding lower. I catch her hand, capture it in mine, and bring it to my lips, kissing her palm. “Are you sure? Now?”

  She shoots me a sharp stare. “I’m positive. Do you not want to?”

  “I want to. More than anything. I just don’t want to . . .”

  “Break me?” she asks with an eyebrow arch.

  “Well, you are magical. I’ve never . . . been with anyone like you.”

  “I should hope not,” she says with a laugh.

  I laugh too, loving that we can do that in this moment.

  “Also, shouldn’t you be worried I’ll break you?” she teases.

  I grab her head, tug her close, and bring my lips to her ear. “No. Just don’t break my heart,” I say softly.

  She sets her palm on my chest. “I won’t.”

  It feels like an unbreakable promise.

  I pat the back of my jeans, take out my wallet to locate a condom, and she laughs.

  “Eternal Muses can’t conceive.”

  “Oh,” I say, filing away that tidbit. “I’m clean. Safe.”

  “Good. Then put that away.”

  “With pleasure,” I say, returning the protection to my wallet.

  I shuck off my shirt as she fiddles with the buttons on her dress, and soon she tugs it over her head.

  My heart stops.

  Breath flees my body.

  She’s gorgeous. More beautiful than I imagined, and I have definitely imagined this.

  A lot.

  We reach for each other at the same time, all hands and lips and hunger. Exploring each other’s bodies, mapping skin, traveling along curves and planes.

  She’s eager, so eager, judging from the way she kisses me, from the frenzied way her palms journey over my chest to my jeans.

  I push them off, and here we are.

  Two muses.

  One human. One eternal.

  About to make love in Monet’s garden.

  Inside a painting.

  My life is so surreal.

  She climbs over me.

  Well now.

  This view is even better.

  It is incontrovertibly the best view ever as she slides on top of me. I loop my hands into her hair. “Come closer.”

  She bends down to me, her lips brushing mine so gently, so sweetly, I am sure I’m dreaming again, or I’m really flying. I don’t know, and it doesn’t matter, but she kisses me like a song, like moonlight, like a sonnet.

  Then, I guide myself into her.

  And we both gasp.

  And moan.

  And wrap ourselves tighter around each other.

  The ends of her hair brush across my chest, and a groan escapes my lips as she moves on me, rocking and arching, and holy art.

  Holy muse.

  This is the most surreal experience of my life.

  A Muse is riding me in a painting.

  Only it’s so much more than that.

  She is full of yearning and fire and heat, and all I can think is if I were to die right now, if I were to be struck down for being with a Muse inside a painting, then really, all things considered, this wouldn’t be a bad way to go.

  Because nothing is better than this. Nothing could be better than this.

  Especially when I shift us, move her under me, gaze down at the woman I adore.

  Yes, this is so much more.

  Because as I thrust into her, as she curls her legs around me, as we kiss and pant and move, this is more than an art kink.

  This is making love, and falling in love, and falling into each other.

  We are racing and frenzied, as bodies collide, and my muse, my woman, arches her back, parts her lips, and comes apart beneath me.

  I follow her there, losing myself to bliss, to pleasure, and I’m sure to pain.

  Because I just don’t see a way for us to be together.

  For her to ever be free.

  I’m spent, and she is too, so we lie like that, in our oasis that can’t last, that’s about to be pierced by responsibilities and rules.

  By all the things that bind us.

  But I let the moment wash over me, breathing in this last bit of secret hideout-ness, breathing in Clio.

  20

  Hand in hand, Clio and I amble through the garden toward the blue irises where the painting opens up. If I walk any slower, I’ll be at a standstill. But as much as I want to stay with this woman—this Muse—I’d prefer it not be inside a painting. Especially the Renoir, where we’re at the mercy of Max-slash-Renoir and whatever blight is afflicting the other art.

  No, I swore I’d protect Clio, and I can’t do that from in here.

  Along the way, we walk across the bridge. At the top of Monet’s arched bridge, Clio nudges me with her shoulder. “What are you thinking?”

  With our fingers still linked, I tug her close and wrap my other arm around her like we’re dancing, à la Fred Astaire, sort of, until we get off-balance on the slope of the bridge and stumble against the railing, catching ourselves with our clasped hands. Clio throws back her head and laughs as I put my other hand on the railing too, playfully penning her in.

  “I’m thinking,” I say, “about how much I enjoyed being here with you.”

  Her laughter quiets to something more gentle, and she reaches up to smooth the furrow between my brows. “That doesn’t seem like something to frown about.”

  I catch her hand and kiss her palm. “Only because I don’t want to leave.”

  She sighs. “But you must.”

  I nod and hold her hand against my chest. “I have to go so that I can work out how to free you.”

  Clio looks as if she hardly dares to ask, “Do you think you know how?”

  I kiss her softly parted lips. “Not yet,” I murmur when I finally allow a hair’s breadth between us. “But I will figure it out. And I know more now than I did. Maybe enough to ask the right questions.”

  Tipping her head back, she closes her eyes and breathes deep, as if basking in the painted light and savoring the last bit of our evening together. When she looks at me again, her smile is sweet and spicy, like she’s thinking about everything that’s happened since she brought me into her painting. “It feels like a whole different universe than it did before.”

  I tug her away from the bridge’s railing for another embrace before we continue on. “Why, Clio, are you saying I rocked your world?”

  She swats playfully at my shoulder and starts a cheeky reply—and then stops, mouth hanging slightly open as if she’s seen something baffling. Only she’s not looking at any one thing, but rather all around us.

  “Julien . . . do you see this? I assumed ‘a whole new world’ was a figure of speech but . . .”

  I see immediately what she means. From the apex of the arched bridge,
we’ve stepped onto its mirror image. It might even be the same one, but the light is different, brighter and greener than Clio’s garden.

  I know where we are. I didn’t think anything could surprise me now, and yet this latest twist has proven me wrong. Somehow, Clio and I have walked into another painting in the Musée d’Orsay.

  This is The Water Lily Pond: Green Harmony. Same bridge, different painting, one of Monet’s many versions of his Japanese bridge.

  We follow where it leads and step off the planks and into the museum. Clio stares wide-eyed as if we’ve been transported to another planet instead of a different gallery in the Musée d’Orsay—a gallery nowhere near Clio’s painting.

  Finally, she looks at me as if hunting for an answer, but I’m looking at her for the same thing. Her bewilderment makes it even more of a shock—she’s been living in her painted world for more than a century, and has been a Muse for much longer than that. If she’s surprised, I’m flabbergasted.

  “Did you know you could do that?” I ask her.

  She shakes her head slowly. “I had no idea. And I’ve searched every corner of my painting. The bridge never went anywhere except across the pond.”

  “So, what happened?” I have to say it aloud, even though we must be thinking the same thing—the only thing that’s changed in the century she’s been trapped is . . . me.

  Her gaze flicks to the painting and back to me. “We touched the bridge together. Our hands, remember? You were distracting me at the time, but I think that must be when something changed.”

  “Or the bridges in the paintings connected right at that moment.” I rub my chin as I speculate. “The moment when two muses touched it together?”

  “It must be,” she says, still wide-eyed with amazement.

  A new voice enters the discussion from not far away. “Convenient, wouldn’t you say?”

  Clio and I both jump and turn to see Dr. Gachet, Van Gogh’s doctor from his famous portrait. It’s the first time I’ve seen him corporeal. He stands, hands behind his back as if studying Monet’s painting rather than us.

  “What’s convenient?” I ask.

  His voice is low and sonorous as he gestures idly to the water lilies. “That the Impressionists painted so many versions of that bridge.”

  I know that—Monet’s garden was apparently a popular place to paint—but now my mind boggles at the implications. “They connect?” I ask Dr. Gachet. “The bridges all connect?”

  He spreads his hands in front of him in a noncommittal way. “I merely offer an observation. After all, I’m not the one jumping in and out of paintings.”

  I can only stare as the doctor, in his royal-blue coat, wanders along the hall. In the corner, Olympia stands, the sheet from her painting draped around her, waving flirtatiously at him. I’ve never seen her moving about either, but now she and the doctor link hands and walk off.

  Clio whispers, “I think Olympia and Dr. Gachet have a little something going on.”

  Some of the impish humor is back in her eyes, and I shake my head in dazed amazement. “Just another night at the museum,” I say. “If muses and bridges can hook up, why not famous portraits?”

  “I don’t blame them one bit,” Clio says, wrapping her arm around my waist.

  I drape mine over her shoulders as we head toward her gallery, then I’m struck by a thought. “You know what? We have another one of the bridges on loan to the Hermitage as part of a Monet exhibit. We could go there sometime.”

  Clio stops and grabs my arm. “I would love to do that. Do you think we really could?”

  Glancing back at the Monet before it’s out of sight, I shrug. “You’ve been a Muse a lot longer than I have. What do you think?”

  She stretches onto her toes, twines her arms around my neck, and kisses me like there’s no tomorrow. Breathless, she pulls back enough to say, “I think we have a date.”

  I walk her back to her canvas, kissing her again before she reenters. I can’t get enough of her, can’t remember a time when it took so much willpower to let a woman out of my arms.

  Once I manage it, I ask her something that’s been lurking in the back of my mind, where I’d pushed it so as not to spoil our time together. It doesn’t seem fair to bring it up and leave her worrying all night and day, so I couch the question carefully.

  “Clio, about Renoir . . . if he managed to work a curse to keep you from inspiring ordinary people and starting this new age of artistic enlightenment, what lengths might he go to in order to stop it now?”

  Her shrewd and level gaze says I haven’t slipped anything past her. “Do I think that, having failed to get his hands on this painting by forgery, he might try outright theft?” Fists on her hips, she says, “After spending more than a century trapped in here, I’m inclined to think the worst of him.”

  As am I.

  I can’t resist one last kiss, because she’s as lovely fired up and indignant as she is any other time.

  And kissing her distracts me from the rest of my thoughts, the part I don’t want to say. I’m worried about something more destructive than theft. Renoir might not be able to bring himself to destroy the painting of Woman Wandering in the Irises, but if a human muse is the key to this prophesy, well, I don’t think he’ll have any qualms about destroying me.

  I have to get to the bottom of this for both our sakes.

  Simon and I grab lunch in Saint-Germain-des-Prés the next afternoon and eat outside on the steps of the church, where my friend is happy to give his opinion.

  “I don’t know, mate. If it were me, I’d have offed you already.”

  He takes a carefree bite of his cheese sandwich, and I give him a look. “How is that helpful exactly?”

  “Well, if a human muse is going to usher in the new renaissance for the common folk, those who want to stop it would get rid of you before you can team up with the other Muses. Ipso facto, elitist art snob wins.”

  “I figured out that part for myself. I mean, how does it help, you telling me that?”

  “Seeing as how you head home well after dark every night since that painting turned up, and nobody’s conked you over the head and dumped you in the Seine yet, that seems to suggest Renoir doesn’t see you as the threat.”

  That leaves Clio as the target. I don’t think Renoir has it in him to destroy his own work. But steal it? No question. Make sure it’s lost forever? Certainly.

  My phone pings with an incoming text.

  * * *

  Remy: How fast can you get over to the Marais? Seems one of our forgers has recently found religion.

  Remy fits in well in the Marais, with its mix of trendy and vintage, chic and quirky. He greets Simon and me, and we set off toward the vintage place where Cass Middleton has set up shop, literally and figuratively.

  “I already figured out that this was about Cass Middleton,” I say as we pass her store. “Want to explain the rest?”

  “You’ll see.”

  At the corner, we turn into an alley full of boxes and trash cans beside the back doors of shops and restaurants. By counting the doors, I know which goes to Cass’s shop, and directly across from it is an unexpected pair of arched doors. Remy yanks them open, and the three of us head down a stone path that ends at a church.

  Remy leads us inside, where it’s musty, cold, and quiet. A few candles flicker by the altar, and a pair of painted Madonnas watch over the nave from high above.

  “We’ve been keeping tabs on Cass Middleton,” Remy says. “Sophie has spotted her crossing the alley to this church with easels, stretched canvases, and paint supplies.” There are no signs of a makeshift studio—not so much as a whiff of linseed oil.

  “Are you sure this is where she was headed with them?”

  “Yes. She’s been going back and forth—was here this morning, in fact.” He looks around as Simon and I do the same. “Maybe she’s using another room or a basement?”

  “Let’s spread out and look,” I say.

  Simon heads for th
e altar, and when he’s out of earshot, I ask Remy in a low voice, “Did you ever learn why Suzanne Valadon asked your family to keep Woman Wandering in the Irises safe?”

  I’m almost certain I know, but confirmation would be nice.

  Remy shakes his head, seeming to genuinely regret that he can’t give me an answer. “Only that there was a woman trapped inside the painting until a human muse came along. The family henceforth had to keep it safe until then.”

  From the start, it’s seemed like anyone involved has a piece of the puzzle, but no one has the whole story. Remy doesn’t know there’s an eternal Muse in Woman Wandering in the Irises. Clio doesn’t know what happened to her painting after Renoir’s last words, cursing her.

  As for Renoir, I don’t think he has all the answers either. His forged papers were convincing, but none of his stories have been. Maybe I can’t figure out his plan because he’s still figuring it out himself.

  Remy and I fan out too, but there’s not much to search. The church is tiny, and there’s no sign of a way into another room or a basement. I throw up my hands in frustration. “Nothing. Now what?”

  “Now,” says Simon from where he’s casually leaning against the altar, “I dazzle you with one of my random bits of knowledge.” He taps the top of the altar. “A lot of these old alleyway churches have served as handy places to stash relics, refugees, riches. But sometimes . . .”

  He braces his shoulder against the raised altar and shoves like a quarryman. The stone altar groans as it moves over a few inches to reveal a door in the floor.

  “Voilà. You get a hidden staircase in front of everyone’s eyes.”

  “Consider me dazzled,” Remy says, his sculpted eyebrows climbing. I think he’s more surprised by Simon than the door, but that’s my Scottish friend all right—more than he seems.

  Simon holds up a hand as if demurring applause. “It’s nothing. Brilliance is all in a day’s work for me.” Then he takes the first step down, looking back at me. “You coming, mate?”

  “Of course.” I hurry over, and Remy follows, peering at the uneven stone steps and wrinkling his nose.