AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I want to see his favorite places and works of art with that mesmerizing passion shining from his eyes.
He stops in front of a painting titled The Birth of Venus, and I blink out of my unrealistic fantasy as Ansel invites me to look at it closely.
We’re not in Paris.
Though, I suppose, I could be.
A gold plaque sits below the large framed work and names Alexandre Cabanel as the artist.
My gaze moves across the canvas and takes in the soft lines of the female form. The angels hanging above her. The way her hair rests on top of the water and the tender curves of her body.
“I think this is the tenth Venus I’ve seen today,” I joke, and Ansel’s responding chuckle causes a smile to kiss my lips.
“In Roman mythology, Venus was the goddess of love, sex, beauty, and fertility,” he explains, and I look away from the painting to meet his eyes.
“And what does she mean in art?”
“She’s the feminine image of love,” he says. “Da Vinci, Picasso, Monet… Every great artist has a Venus.”
I quirk a brow.
“Their Venus is their muse,” he adds. “The woman who consumes their mind and inspires them to paint or sculpt until they either die or their fucking fingers fall off.”
I giggle. “That’s a bit extreme, isn’t it?”
“Not at all.” His brown eyes glaze over with something more, something deep, something poignant.
“That’s…intense,” I respond on a mere whisper, and I don’t know if I’m responding to his words or describing his eyes.
God, those eyes. I feel like they can see everything. Like they can see me. All of my good and my bad and my ugly. All of my imperfections. All of my hopes and dreams.
I stare into them for a long moment, just letting myself bask in their beauty and mystery and familiarity. They suit him so well.
“What color were your eyes before the accident?” I ask without thinking. I’ve been wondering about it for too long, and I’m unable to ignore my curiosity any longer.
“Brown,” he says without hesitation. “I thought it was weird at first…” He shrugs. “That my new eyes are nearly the same color as the old ones.”
“It’s fate,” I declare, and he laughs.
“Fate…or biology. It turns out, over fifty percent of the world’s population has brown eyes.”
“Maybe,” I nod. “But these aren’t just brown. These are something special.”
Ansel slips his fingers under my chin and leans down to press a soft kiss against my cheek. His next words brush across my skin. “A muse, a true muse, changes you forever. When you find your Venus, she alters your art and your soul in such a way that there is no going back.”
My heart flutters and flips inside of my chest, and goose bumps roll up my spine and arms and neck in disquieting waves.
My eyes flick to his lips, and before I know it, without rational thought or reason or anything but letting feelings and fate guide me, I stand up on my tiptoes and press my mouth to his.
Gently, tenderly, softly, at first, but quicker than it started, the moment consumes me, and I lose sight of where we are or what we’re doing. My lips turn gluttonous when he slides his tongue into my mouth to dance with mine, and the power of it all has me balling my fists into the leather of his jacket.
When the kiss grows deeper, I moan against his mouth.
He slips his hands into my hair, and everything solid in my body melts into him.
This kiss, this fucking kiss, I don’t want it to end.
Suddenly, the sounds of shoes resonate against the tile floor, and I’m yanked back to the present. To the fact that we’re not alone. To the reality of our very public display.
Shit.
I pull away from Ansel to find two female employees walking into the room, completely oblivious to us and our activities as they talk quietly about setting up a new display.
My lips tingle, and I lift my hand to touch them with my fingertips. It’s like I can still feel his mouth on mine. I can still feel his kiss.
But also, fuck, what was I thinking?
I shouldn’t have done that.
I shouldn’t have just up and kissed him like that.
“That wasn’t supposed to happen,” I whisper, and Ansel grabs the flesh of my upper arms to steady me.
“It’s okay, Indy.”
I shake my head, and he nods.
I stare up at him, trying to find reason in this situation, but the only thing I want to do is taste his lips again, and my heart and mind respond with fervor, racing a mile a minute. But he doesn’t give me any more time to get lost in confusion and doubts.
“Now,” he says and holds out his hand. “It’s time to show you my favorite Monet. Well, my favorite Monet that’s at the Met.” He winks, and just like that, we’re back to simply walking through the museum together.
