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“At the concert you didn’t touch the chocolate covered strawberries, but you ate the plain ones.” He’s watching me again, thumbnail scraping across his dented lip as his eyes rove down my body with an intensity that makes my entire being ache to get closer to him. When he meets my gaze again, he adds, “I’m good with detail.”
Like this, he looks like a God. Perfect and eternally flawed all at once. A creature of myth and legend. A piece of art that pulls sensation and feeling from me.
Leo has a power that is unlike anything I’ve ever felt, even without touching me he affects me. He’s touching himself in the most innocent of ways and it feels like something epically forbidden and illicit. My lips burn from the way his thumb continues to trace his own, turning them redder with every scratch of his nail.
“Insightful,” I murmur looking at the island in the middle of the pond where the lazy ducks are all sitting.
“Huh?”
“You’re insightful.”
Getting up, he chuckles dryly as he wraps the chocolate croissant in the paper bag he ripped. His focus on the task is so acute, it’s almost like he is still hungry.
Maybe I’ve made him uncomfortable somehow, and that’s why he’s getting up before he’s finished eating his breakfast.
“You can finish, we’re not in any rush.” Standing a little wobbly thanks to my numb butt cheeks, I pull his jacket tighter around me.
“I…” Pausing, he pulls me to him before reaching into the pockets of his jacket and taking out his cigarettes and lighter.
He taps one out, puts it between his lips and lights it. A soft plume of smoke and sweet cherry, vanilla, and clove wafts toward me. I can’t help but sigh at the smell. The way he sucks the drag into his lungs.
God have mercy.
When he puts the cigarettes and lighter back in the pocket he took them from, he bends to pick up our coffee cups and I can’t help but appreciate the curve of his firm arse.
Barely managing to disguise my perving when he stands, I follow him back the way we came.
The sky is clearer, brighter and spring blue. There are taxis and expensive stately cars driving up and down The Mall, the famous stretch of Royal road.
At the square, he drops my almost empty coffee cup into a bin but keeps his and the uneaten croissant.
Leo starts for the National Gallery and my heart goes wild with excitement, even when we continue along the steps, I can’t tamp down the fire inside me.
Reaching the side of the building, he looks into the alcoves along it and then stops in front of a young homeless man. He crouches down and hands him the croissant and his barely touched coffee. My wild heart stutters to a jilted pause right before it melts in my chest.
How can a monster have so much kindness inside him?
I ask myself as I watch Leo hand the guy a folded-up note and then stand back up. Before he walks back toward the entrance.
He guides me up the steps and through the busy portico, the main vestibule and through the central hall. He’s walking around like he owns the place as we walk through room after room and then he opens a door with a guard on either side.
It’s one of the rooms that are currently closed for conservation, and he has just waltzed in. It’s bizarre.
There’s no one here apart from us and as I do a complete three-sixty, this place feels almost too big.
When I come to a stop, Leo’s watching me intently, his expression soft and for a moment, I really do think that he’s going to lunge at me and just hold me.
Instead, he turns and takes a few long steps until he comes to a complete standstill in front of a painting I’ve never paid much mind to. It’s beautiful for sure, the colours vivid and the light captured so perfectly that the textures from the fabrics and the surroundings are almost palpable on my fingertips.
Standing beside him, I look at it with maybe a little more fascination than him. I can imagine what the woman’s fine, silky hair feels like on her exposed shoulder. I can picture her stumbles as she kneels in front of the beheading block. The wails of the women around her resound in my ears. I can even smell the damp that would have made the room feel completely closed up and dark. Except it’s not dark, her surroundings are awash with light. It’s disconcerting.
I don’t understand why out of all the other beautiful masterpieces, this is the one he stops in front of.
We stand, glued to the spot quietly for what feels like an eternity. I’m getting restless. My insides are vibrating. My breaths are coming quicker. The more I analyse the painting depicting the execution of Lady Jane Grey, the more uneasy I feel.
Something heavy settles in my gut at the way the lord’s coarse features and shadowed eyes betray his gentle hands as he guides her down to her knees. Her face is soft and the way her lips are set timidly, in fear, is chilling me.
I know how she feels.
