A glass of dark red liquid suddenly found its way into her hand. Isabella looked up. Forrest stood above her in his same black sweater, and his dark, unreadable eyes glimmered.
“Here,” he said. “Drink this.” She thought she could detect a faint smile through his sliver of beard. She knew it was against her contract to drink with her clients, but her muscles were screaming because their dog had found it necessary to drag her at a run through all of Manhattan today. The least they can do is liquor me up a little, she reasoned with herself.
“Thank you,” said Isabella. She took a sip of the wine. It was sweet and heady, and it made her head spin instantly. She looked up at him, surprised. “This isn’t wine, is it?”
Forrest’s eyes crinkled with delight. “It is Romanian honey mead,” he said, pouring a glass for himself from the crystal decanter that sat on the mantle. “It is said that Romanian honey mead can cure any ailment: a broken heart, a mortal wound. It is consumed at every important celebration and at the end of every week.”
“Why at the end of every week?” asked Isabella, taking another sip. Now her feet felt like they were floating. She resisted the urge to weigh them down underneath the sofa.
Forrest took a large gulp from his glass and looked at her over the rim. “To protect oneself against death, of course,” he said. As soon as the words left his lips, Isabella felt a strange sensation come over her. Her head, dizzy now and somewhat heavy, began to fall back until she was resting against the back of the couch. A warm, tingling interest swelled in her hips and found its way to her clit, and without thinking she began rocking imperceptibly against the cushion beneath her.
“I suppose that must be very important to some people,” she said, drowsy.
From far off, she heard the growl of his response: “Is it important to you?”
“I’m more interested in confronting death, I guess,” Isabella said thickly. Without thinking, she added, “After my mom died I had to get good at that.”
Forrest paused and tilted his head, his gaze probing. She shook her head. There. A little clearer now. Don’t talk about your dead mother, Isabella, for God’s sake. She looked down at the liquid in her hand. “This is strong stuff,” she said.
Forrest laughed deeply. “It’s a century old, it should be strong,” he said, taking another sip.
Isabella felt her mouth drop open. “A century? You are letting me drink something that is a century old?”
“Do you not like it?” said Anca, coming to the couch and sitting down beside her. A cloud of some kind of sweet, spicy perfume enveloped Isabella, and she breathed it deeply into her lungs before answering.
“No it’s delicious. I’ve just never had clients offer me anything other than tap water before.”
Anca frowned. “That does not seem very kind. You are performing a service for them, yes? They should be grateful for your services.”
It was Isabella’s turn to laugh. “You haven’t met many Upper East Siders. No one is grateful for anything up here.”
Forrest and Anca exchanged a glance while Vanator padded into the living room and collapsed in a bony, soft heap onto Isabella’s feet. She reached down thoughtlessly and let her fingers play with the tips of his ears.
“Would you like to stay for dinner, Isabella?” said Anca, turning to her and smiling widely. Maybe it was all the Romanian honey mead, but it looked for a moment as if Anca’s green eyes glowed. “We were going to whip something up, and it would be nice to have your company if you don’t have other plans.”
Isabella choked on another sip of honey mead. “My company? You want my company at dinner?”
“Of course,” said Forrest, a smile playing on his lips.
“You can change into my clothing if you’d like,” Anca offered. “I’m sure you want to get out of your running clothes, and I have too many things anyway.”
Isabella took a moment to let the current situation sink in: she was drinking with two of her biggest artistic heroes, who were now inviting her to dinner and offering her their clothing – most likely their incredibly expensive clothing – while their dog curled happily on her feet. She could either stay for dinner, or go home to her studio apartment in Bushwick and cook Instant Noodles with dry, questionable meat and freeze-dried vegetables. Isabella grinned.
“I would love nothing more than to stay for dinner,” she said.
***
“You are a painter! But this is wonderful!” cried Anca, raising her glass for the fourth toast of the evening. “Tell us about your work!”
Isabella leaned back in her chair, blissful. She’d cleaned her body of dog smell (a permanent fixture of her life now) in the Anghelescus’ shower, which was the size of her entire apartment, and spent fifteen minutes oiling herself with a rich, rare Argan oil in a dark blue decanter; now she was dressed in a long white tunic with a drawstring neckline and red embroidered flowers that seemed to drip down from her shoulders. Anca said it had belonged to a Romanian girl she knew once, and that it was from the late 1800s – “quite a new garment, actually, considering the things in my closet.” She couldn’t believe her life right now. She was eating dinner with these two magnificent people, Forrest on her left and Anca on her right, and admitting she was a painter, something she made sure never to mention to clients. Normally, she couldn’t stand the conversations that followed (“A painter? Really? How are you going to support yourself? You’re not going to walk dogs forever, are you? My, what a life plan”). But of course Anca and Forrest wanted to know about her work – of course they lent her clothing that was older than anything Isabella had ever held – of course she was wearing her dark hair down, in loose, wild waves, something she never liked to do around white people (for fear they would touch her hair without asking and say something stupid like, “How do you brush out all the knots in this?”). Isabella was finding she was a completely different person around these two. It was liberating. It was validating. It felt a touch like they were all flirting with one another. Isabella clinked her glass against Forrest’s and Anca’s and drank deeply before answering with complete honesty.
“My work is influenced by your work, actually,” she said. “Portraits of Vampiric Maidens was what made me want to be a painter in the first place.”
Anca brought a bejeweled hand to her breast. Forrest leaned forward on the table, smiling beatifically.
“Oh, how lovely,” said Anca in a hushed voice.
Forrest tipped his head, his dark eyes ever inscrutable. “What is it about Portraits of Vampiric Maidens that inspired you so, if I may ask?”
Isabella frowned, trying to put words to the fondness her memories of those paintings held for her. “I guess,” she replied, “it’s something about the beauty in brutality. Like the two of you understand that only through intense pain can a woman, or I guess even an artist really, can discover their true selves, their true sexuality. I don’t know, does that make sense?”
She looked back and forth between the married couple and saw something pass between them. Something that looked like… lust? For her? No, it couldn’t be, no one ever felt lust for Isabella Cole. Anca pressed closer to the girl and sighed, “That is too kind, Isabella.”
Isabella knew she was getting drunker now, because the way her name sounded in the Romanian woman’s mouth was enough to send shivers up and down her spine.
“No,” Isabella protested. “No, please, it’s kind that you even want to know about my work. No one ever does. Or,” she took another sip of her wine, which she’d been told was from nineteenth century Avignon, France, of course, like all of their beautiful and antiquated belongings. “I guess I just never tell anyone, because it doesn’t seem that important. So thank you for caring, or something.”
Anca touched her hand and stroked her along her knuckles. “How could we not care?” she said softly. “You are a magnificent person, Isabella. So very strong, and brave, and talented, and beautiful.”
Isabella drank in her emerald gaze, the alc
ohol and the other woman’s attention causing her head to swim. “How could you know that?” she pondered. “How do you know I’m brave or any of that?”
Anca’s full, dark lips parted in the most understanding smile the girl had ever received from anyone. “I am…intuitive,” she said. “You have lost your mother, yes? You mentioned this.”
Isabella felt breathless. She nodded.
“It takes strength to make it as a woman in this world without a mother to hold you, does it not?”
Her heart was in her throat. She felt as if no person had ever looked at her this closely before; as if the woman were gazing directly into her soul. Anca nodded sympathetically. Now her fingers were trailing up the dark crook of Isabella’s arm.
“It takes bravery to be a woman of color as well,” she continued. “I would know this. The world can be cruel to us.”
Isabella felt tears sting at the corners of her eyes. “Yes,” she whispered. “That’s true. God, that’s true.” Anca’s hand slid up to the hard, round bone of her shoulder and circled her there, fingernails raising goose bumps up and down the girl’s body.
Forrest cupped Isabella’s face in his broad, weathered hand. She could smell walnut oil and oil paint and turpentine, the scents she cherished most in the world, and she felt her heartbeat quicken. She was growing warm between her legs.
“And we know you are beautiful,” he said, his voice a soft, deep timbre, “because we know your mind, and we can see your face. You must learn to see yourself this way, Isabella. This is how you will find your true power.”
A tear rolled down Isabella’s cheek, catching on Forrest’s long, pale fingers. “Thank you,” she said haltingly. “It’s been so long since I’ve felt… heard.”
Anca pressed her lips to the soft downy fuzz beside her ear. “You should always feel heard, Isabella. You should always feel cherished.”
Isabella closed her eyes. She could feel their hands sliding over her shoulders, her arms, around the base of her neck, down the braid of her spine. Suddenly the dress she wore felt paper-thin; the heat of their touch electrified her skin and sent shocks of intimacy throughout her body. Even her toes felt as if they were tingling. Without thinking, she began ever so lightly rocking her hips against the seat of the chair, as she had earlier on the sofa. Their ministrations and petting gained a new weight. Fingers slowly slid to her collarbone and untied the drawstring neckline. The dress fell down her shoulders, stopping only at the very tip of her breasts, where her hardened nipples rubbed tantalizingly at the fabric. She felt Anca’s hot breath on her neck, below her jaw, and Isabella found herself gripping the edge of the chair. This probably shouldn’t be happening, she thought lazily. I should probably not be letting this happen. Forrest’s mouth came to her ear.
“We will stop any time you wish us to,” he whispered, and his voice thrummed the bones of her body all the way down to her clit, her concealed pink button of pleasure. She rocked her hips wider now. When his hand slid down to her breast and cupped her, feeling her swell and her hard little point, her mouth fell open and she knew: there was no chance she would be stopping either of them from doing exactly what they wanted to do to her. Anca’s tongue licked the length of her neck. She murmured something in Romanian, seemingly to Forrest, because Forrest’s other unoccupied hand began massaging her scalp. Isabella gasped and her head fell back, the tension leaving her, her entire skull in the cup of his strong, clever fingers.
Encouraged, she felt someone’s – whose? It didn’t matter whose at this moment in time – push the embroidered fabric past her breasts now, down to her hips, and lips and tongues caressed her skin, nibbling and sucking and lapping at the lines of her body. Isabella felt herself grab both of the painters’ heads and push them towards her nipples. They greedily suckled at her, teething the tightened skin and swirling around her areolas. Their hands gripped her oiled skin at her waist and ran up and down the rise of her belly. In her hands, their hair felt slippery and full, and Isabella twisted it around her fingers before tugging experimentally. She was rewarded with moans and hums that vibrated down to her throbbing clit. A familiar slickness began to collect beneath the secret folds of her cunt.
As if reading her mind, Isabella sensed a finger running down over her belly button, eager to plunge into that slickness, and she opened her legs wider. With someone else – any of the boys she’d met at bars, for instance – she might have felt embarrassed that she hadn’t shaved herself between her legs in many months. She’d had no reason to, or so she thought: no one want her. But this finger seemed to luxuriate in her dark, bristly curls, twisting them as she twisted the hair on their heads, twirling in eddied circles until –
“Shit,” Isabella hissed, because the clever finger had found her clit and was now dancing just around the hood, pulling and lightly pressing, and she found herself bucking into its touch, wanting more, needing more, and these hot, wet mouths felt her bucking and sucked harder at her nipples, and now faces were rubbing in the space between her breasts, noses consuming the scent of her flesh and teeth tugging at the sensitive skin beneath the rise of the mounds. Isabella pushed and tugged harder on the two dark heads, her breathing audible now, the finger engaged in an unpredictable pattern of pressing and withholding, and if she hadn’t known it before, she knew now that she wanted these two artists, these two people who had looked inside her and seen her for what she really was, to devour her until she could no longer stand.
The mouths withdrew from her chest. Isabella cried out, frustrated, but her cry transformed into a kind of gasp and laugh as she felt Anca and Forrest lift her from her chair together and carry through the doorway of their bedroom. They laid her down gently, and oh, were those silk sheets? Now they were tugging off her dress altogether, and she looked bashfully up at the couple as they gazed at her dark, bare flesh and licked their lips.
“You are extraordinary,” murmured Anca.
“Truly a work of human art,” agreed Forrest.
“Please,” begged Isabella. “I need…I want…”
“Say it, my darling,” Anca said, smiling, and if there was a different kind of edge to that smile now, it was one that made Isabella sit up and capture those perfect brown lips with her own. Anca tasted sweet, like flowers and woodlands and soft rain in a garden. Was it possible for a person to taste that way? She didn’t know – her mind was growing more and more frantic, because their tongues twisting together and rimming the tops of teeth were driving her almost to the point of insanity. Now it was her turn to pull Anca towards her until the woman was between her thighs. Isabella buried her hands beneath all of the other woman’s fabric and tugged until it fell to her ankles. Anca, beautiful in clothing, was even more breathtaking without it: lean and taught and browned, a sliver of hair just barely concealing the lips of her cunt. Somewhere it registered in the girl’s mind that Anca’s skin was cold to the touch, but nothing could deter her now from pulling at the woman until she was straddling Isabella’s body. Anca, still kissing her, held down Isabella’s hips and began rocking her cunt against Isabella’s, angling and shifting until their clits rubbed against each other. Isabella’s moan turned needy and keening almost instantly. She bucked up into the other woman’s bones. Their white slickness mingled together, and they picked up speed, rubbing and gasping into each others’ mouths. Isabella flexed her muscles and hooked her leg around the other woman’s waist, and they were moaning and flailing and rocking –
Suddenly Anca stilled. Isabella cried out, needing to come, desperately seeking to come, but Anca held her down and shifted away, and then Isabella’s cries turned into gasps because now Forrest – naked, pale, gleaming, his body lined with ancient scars – was turning her over onto her left side. She looked over her shoulder and caught a glimpse of his thick, tumescent, long, quivering shaft, and then she felt him enter through the lips of her wetted folds to the dark entrance that craved to be filled. His cock, so thick and long, was cold against the fleshy walls of her hot cunt. Isab
ella gasped and made animalistic sounds she’d never made before as he pushed until he was completely inside of her, then froze. She tried to hump the cock inside her, but their hands held her still while Anca lavished her body with kisses and toyed with her swollen, aching clit.
“Please,” Isabella tried again, and even though her voice broke in the middle of the utterance, no one laughed at her desperation.
“Please what, my darling,” Forrest murmured into the nape of her neck, his fingers pressing deliciously into her ribs as he held her down.
“Please fuck me,” she begged. “Oh God please fuck me.”
“And is that all you wish?” said Anca, sultry, playing her clit like a musical instrument until Isabella squirmed, so desperate with desire she could hardly breath.
The Naughty Collection Page 114
