Richer Than God - Amelia Wilde Page 0,45
black covers—and the archway into a massive walk-in closet. There’s also an attached bathroom that’s bigger than some of the two-bedroom apartments in the city. All of it is bright, except for the furniture. All those dark pieces remind me of anchors, holding down the room.
Maybe they hold him down too.
I get up the courage to walk past the closet, and that’s when I see them.
The artwork.
Frames, really. That’s all I can see from here. Black frames on white walls. They look simple but not cheap. And I can only see one corner of one painting in the floor-to-ceiling mirror. Another corner peeks out at the edge of the glass.
Paintings?
I have the sense that an alarm might go off if I cross the threshold, but after a thorough search for anything resembling a camera, I decide to risk it. My reflection winks across the glass. I look thin. A bit on the pale side. Soft.
The closet is bigger than I thought. And one wall—the inside wall, the one I couldn’t see from the main bedroom—has a neat row of paintings in it. They’re real paintings, judging by the brushstrokes, and they are the only art I’ve seen inside the whorehouse. There could be other paintings in the women’s rooms, but they wouldn’t be like this.
How can I look away? It’s impossible, because they’re so riveting. Art class in school was a joke compared to what’s in front of me. Paintings of people. But that doesn’t do it justice.
The first painting is of a woman I’ve never seen. I’m instantly jealous of her, this painted figure. She’s against a dark background, and it sets off the lovely curves of her. The swells of her breasts. She’s naked, but she stares out of the canvas unflinchingly. Even though she is covered in paint.
Not just the brush strokes that make up her body, but markings—long swipes of paint in dark-rust and midnight-blue. Someone has marked her with these colors, with their fingers and hands—possessing her. My own body responds to the thought of being marked that way. Possessed that way.
Zeus has done that, without paint.
But to see it here, as art—it takes my breath away. In the lower right-hand corner of the piece, a slim white card is tucked in the corner. Possession, it reads.
“Brigit?”
Reya’s voice shocks me to the core. I was lost in a fantasy world involving paint and a painter and someone looking at me the way this painter must have looked at this woman, and I scramble for the door. Reya waits on the other side of the threshold, her hand to her chest. “Oh, thank God,” she breathes. “I thought you were missing.”
“I’m here. I didn’t….” I can’t think of anything to say. “I was stretching my legs.”
“Good. That’s good.” She looks me up and down. “If you can walk, then the worst is probably over.”
“The worst of what?” There are a lot of terrible things on the agenda for my time here, and a good long nap wasn’t even in the top ten. Embarrassment creeps back in. “I know I passed out, but—”
“It was more than that.” Reya swallows, and her eyes dart away from mine then return.
“What was it?” The floor sways briefly, but I hold myself up. I haven’t been here very long, but it’s unnerving to see Reya look nervous, like someone’s lurking behind Zeus’s bed. That’s impossible. It’s snug against the wall, and nothing could hide there. I come out of the closet, trying my best to make the movement look natural. The bedframe is solid. Nothing underneath there either. “Reya?”
She blinks, and I realize she’s been lost in thought. “Zeus wants you downstairs.” Reya hustles me into the bathroom and makes amenities appear like magic. A toothbrush. A comb. A swipe of blush for my cheeks. A washcloth. Little by little, she puts me together until I’m pale and soft in a strappy dress that skims my knees. Finally, she pushes my feet into ballet flats. “Good,” she says. “Let’s go.”
I don’t want to leave the bedroom. Reya’s set expression is a warning, but I don’t know what it’s about, and part of me wants to dig my heels in and refuse to go until she tells me.
Men will want you sweet and compliant. The full reality is setting in again. Sleep didn’t chase it away any more than tears would. And more than I want to stay, I want answers from Zeus.
This is not about reliving the dream. It’s about following