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Saskia licked her lips. “Can I? Um... please can I... help you out there?”
He smirked. “Not right now. We have a lot to accomplish today, and we’ve wasted far too much time already. Contrary to what young men may have told you to get inside your panties, we really won’t die if we don’t fuck something.”
Quill removed the butt plug. Saskia had somehow forgotten it was there. She’d been too distracted by the endless pleasure to be concerned about a little mild anal penetration.
He unlocked the cuffs around her wrists and ankles and pocketed the key. “Now, pull yourself together, get dressed, and come back to the studio. We have a lot of work ahead of us.”
He left her and shut himself in the bathroom. From this end of the gallery, she could hear the shower water running. Saskia was sure he was jerking off in there and found herself strangely jealous of his hand.
11
Saskia’s hand was cramping by the time they’d finished painting for the day. She lay back on the chaise while Quill straightened the space. It didn’t matter how much they’d worked; he wasn’t willing to let the studio turn into her own personal hurricane.
“Stay here,” he said when all the tubes of paint were closed and put away and the brushes had been cleaned.
She was only too happy to comply. They’d taken a brief break for lunch and another for dinner, but both had been hurried. No words had passed between them in the dining room as they’d eaten. There had been no time for anything fancy for lunch. Just sandwiches. One of the servants had somehow gotten him to sit still long enough for roasted chicken when dinnertime came but only because it was done and ready to put on the table when he reached the dining room.
There was an intensity about Quill while he was in this art zone. Saskia had never seen anything like it. Once they’d started sketching and painting, sex wasn’t a thing that existed for him.
There was no innuendo, no inappropriate touches. It was as if everything that had happened before in the gallery had been a mere mirage. She was sure if she asked him about it, he’d tell her she was crazy, that it had never happened.
How could he flip a switch and compartmentalize all of that? As much as he liked his kink, art came first. If she wanted to be jealous of something, it should be the art. The art was his first love, and Saskia would never unseat her.
When Saskia stood behind a canvas with a brush in hand, she was just his student. All he cared about were the colors, the brush strokes, and bleeding her soul out with carefully mixed pigments for the consumption of the masses. Or that was the hope, anyway—that the masses would consume.
Nothing could sway his focus from trying to teach her to somehow translate all the things pent up inside her onto canvas.
She’d had no idea what she would paint until she started. Saskia closed her eyes, remembering what Quill had said in the studio.
“You don’t decide what to paint. The subject picks you. What’s inside you? What are you consumed with?”
“I don’t know.”
“You know. Put it on the canvas.”
She hesitated.
“I need to sketch it first.”
“I don’t care what you need to do. Do it. Stop holding back. You have so much promise. It’s all there in your portfolio, you have to stop painting what you think the world wants to see and start painting what you actually have to say. No one in this world gives a shit about your hollow fakery. Least of all, me.”
She’d been so intimidated by his technique. She knew even beginning painters could learn to paint wet-on-wet, and she could do it if someone held her hand step-by-step and gave her something specific to paint and walked her through it. But she just couldn’t see a painting that way. She couldn’t think that fast. Quill had confirmed that the thinking has to happen first, because when the paint is out, it’s too late to think. The luxury of slow-drying paint is necessary in wet-on-wet. But even that can only go so far.
The Italian word for the technique wasalla prima,which means: at first attempt. The idea of painting somethingrightthe first time in a single session or a couple of them stretched over two days at most—and that only if the paint dried slowly enough—intimidated the hell out of her. And it didn’t help with the artist she worshiped hovering over her. She was sure he would be more impressed with her if he’d let her paint the traditional way she was used to. Many layers... letting each dry in between. Then she could take days, weeks, months, a year or more if she wanted on a single painting. It was so much less pressure.
“No, you’re overworking the brush. The colors are going all muddy,” he said.
“I can’t do it this way!”
“Of course you can. This is a single afternoon. Do you think I learned to paint like I paint in a single afternoon?”
“No, but... I’ve been to art school. I’ve been painting for years.”
“Not the right way. As far as I’m concerned you’re starting from scratch.”
“Are you implying alla prima is the only right way to paint?”
“Of course not, but if you have to let every layer dry, you’re stretching out the learning curve. You have to paint a lot to become great. You have to practice. The only way to do that with your technique and to actually progress at a reasonable rate is to have ten or more paintings going at once. And you’ll see uneven progress that way. If you will just try it my way, in a few weeks it will feel natural. And you’ll be able to produce far more work. I’ll walk you through it.”
