“No, let’s go back up to the studio.” I wanted to be there with the paintings and easels and shelves of dried-out supplies I’d soon be replacing. My desire to create was so intense, I was almost frightened by it.
Once we’d climbed to the hidden bell tower, Julien opened the wine. I removed my jacket and my hat and shook out my hair and then, using the pins I’d left there, put it back up.
“My grandmother will never know that I’ve cut it,” I said as I examined myself in the mirror.
“So you are going back to dressing like a fine lady and keeping your studies a secret when you aren’t at school?”
“Yes, for the time being. I’ll set up my studio and keep my paints and clothes here. It’s close enough to school. I need to find the right way to tell her, and she’s quite busy now.”
Julien came over to me, handed me a glass of wine, then stood behind me and pulled all the pins out. “While you’re here, though, you don’t need to be so formal.” He ran his fingers through my hair.
In the mirror I watched his face with wonder. I’d never seen a man’s lust so clearly etched on his visage. Never watched muscles tighten in desire, nor noticed how lips parted, heard how breath quickened; never known how one’s natural scent becomes more exaggerated.
“The wine,” I said, pulling back a little and taking a sip. I couldn’t let him get too close, couldn’t let him touch me again. When he found out that I had no ability to take pleasure from a man, he’d reject me. And I didn’t want that to happen yet.
“Yes, the wine,” he said.
Stepping away, he picked up his glass and drank from it, never taking his eyes off me.
“What an intriguing picture you make, Sandrine. Half woman, half man. Quite fetching.”
“I don’t think anyone has ever called me fetching before.”
I sat down in one of the wooden chairs, and he pulled his over to be nearer to me.
“Your life has been very different from your grandmother’s, hasn’t it?”
“It couldn’t be more different.”
“So she didn’t have a great influence on you?”
“Hardly any influence at all. I visited here once, I think I told you, for a season. And she came to stay with us in New York three or four times. But who she is, what she does, was never really discussed. I knew she was younger and more exotic and beautiful than my other grandmother, or my friends’ grandmothers, but I didn’t really understand that she was a courtesan until shortly before I married.”
“You say that with regret.”
“Knowing my grandmother better might have been a help to me. Perhaps I would not have been so easily talked into marrying if I was more . . .” I shrugged. “It doesn’t matter anymore.”
“It does. This isn’t the first time that I’ve seen you come close to explaining your marriage and then retreat.”
“It’s not a worthwhile conversation.”
“If it disturbs you this much, it must be.”
I drank some of the deep, tangy wine. “I’m not able to be a proper wife, so I can’t really fault Benjamin for not being a proper husband.”
“Proper?”
I felt suddenly warm. Taking off my cravat, I laid it on my knee.
Julien was watching me.
“What is it?” I asked.
“You are so much more comfortable than you were when I first met you.”
“Well, you were a stranger to me, and you are not one any longer.”
“It’s more than that.”
“What do you mean?”
“When you arrived, you were running away from one thing, and now you are running toward another.”
He was right. I felt it inside of me. Unconsciously, I reached up and touched the necklace around my neck, warm against my skin.
“Those rubies become you; they bring out the color of your lips. I’m glad you didn’t pawn them.”
“How you flatter me, Julien.”
“It’s what I see.”
I felt myself blush. “I’m not quite sure what to do with you.”
“What would you like to do with me?”
What I did then was the most shocking thing I had ever done. More surprising than leaving New York, taking an assumed name, lying to people about who I was; more outrageous than stealing treasures to pawn, or dressing so I appeared more like a man than a woman, or applying to the école; even more astonishing than kissing Julien back when he kissed me.
Unbuttoning my blouse, I slipped out of it. Standing, I pulled my camisole over my head. Bare-breasted, I undid my trousers and stepped out of them and the pantaloons I wore under them. Finally naked, I walked over to Julien.
He had remained seated, and now looked up at me, staring at me. Inside, I felt a gathering and pulsing. Our eyes held for a moment, and then I bent over him, my hair falling into his face, and pressed my lips to his. I was the one who exerted pressure, who slid my tongue in between his smooth teeth, who explored his mouth, who gripped his shoulders and did not let up. Could not let up.
Julien reached up and pulled me down, positioning me so that I was sitting on his lap, maneuvering it without our lips coming apart.
“You’re shaking,” he said softly.
All I could do was nod. Everything I wanted, everything I had come to Paris to find, even if I hadn’t been aware of it, was here in this room. I had to know, was I truly capable of taking hold of it and making it mine?
Julien’s long fingers stroked my skin. Each touch set off trembles down the length of my torso. Little licks of flames dancing on my skin. Was it true? Was I feeling what I’d thought I could never feel?
Whispering my name, he moved his lips to my breasts.
I threw back my head, basking in the sensation that I had never known before: dark violet-and-ruby passion, powerful and dangerous and—most of all—delicious.
Reaching for his shirt, I undid the buttons, pulled it off, and started on his undergarments until I reached flesh and then pressed my breasts to his chest. I had rarely been naked with a man. My husband almost always took me while he was still dressed, hard and fast and rough.
This amazing fire I was feeling where our skin touched was more than I’d been able to imagine. My body was awakening. Every inch of flesh was alive. Every bone inside of me reverberated with the want coursing through me.
Julien lifted me up and, still pressed against me, moved to the daybed and laid me down.
“If I was an artist and painted you the way you look now, every man in Paris would desire you. The expression on your face, in your eyes, is magnificent. You want this as much as I do, don’t you?”
I nodded, not sure how to say it, but the feeling I had, odd as it seemed, was that I wanted him more, much more. That I had spent lifetimes wanting him.
“Hurry,” I said, suddenly impatient.
He shook his head. “No, no hurrying.”
Taking his time, Julien stroked my neck, my arms, my breasts, my stomach, then my thighs. Everywhere but the cleft between my legs. Softly and slowly, so slowly, but never stopping.
Writhing, I tried to move so that his hand would slip to where I wanted it, but he was in control. I arched and moaned. I begged, and even my own begging aroused me. That I could beg, that I was capable of wanting anything this much, made the flames rise.
When he lowered his head and placed his lips on my nether parts, I thought I might explode. Suddenly he stopped and waited. I thrust up toward him, and with a smile, he began again until my insides were dancing to a rhythm I had never known before.
He stopped again just as I had ceased being aware of where I was and what was happening. I opened my eyes to see him standing, loosening his pants, and letting them and his undergarments fall to the floor.