a pretty girl from Madame Chapet’s maison tolerée, brothel. Lillie de Pontier was the prettiest of all the girls at the House on rue des Moulins. He picked her out of three girls simulating sexual encounters with each other, writhing all over a large four-poster with abandon, touching, caressing, kissing and sucking on each other’s breasts.
She seemed pleased when he chose her, snuggling up to him, blowing in his ear, rubbing her firm derrière back and forth across his crotch, making gestures about the firmness of his buttocks. But he no longer needed her services. He was nervous. Edgy. The redhead would be conscious soon. He must sneak Lillie out the back way without the two girls seeing each other. He was frantic. He didn’t have much time.
“I will show you for free, monsieur, what all Paris would pay to see.” Lillie pulled off her tight black garter and her rose-colored silk stocking slithered down her creamy thigh in a slow, serpentine crawl.
“Put your stocking back on, Lillie.”
The girl ignored him and leaned toward him. He noticed beads of sweat between her nude breasts. For a moment he couldn’t take his eyes off her. She wore only a corset in peacock-blue satin, tightly laced around her tiny waist and pushing up her exposed breasts. Her ample bosom swelled out in all directions in delicious curves, pleasing him. Full, bulbous cups of white flesh seduced his eye with the promise of delights to come. A crinkly pink ribbon tied in a neat bow around her neck completed the effect.
He reached out to untie the bow when—
He stopped, his hand raised in midair. A sound from downstairs caught his ear. Was that a moan he heard? The redhead?
“Your private show is about to begin, monsieur,” Lillie said in a husky voice, curling her lower lip and hissing the phrase with a deliberate purr. Her long white fingers pinched the end of her pink stocking as she pulled it off, then she wiggled her naked toes playfully before slowly spreading her legs to expose a gentleman’s peek at the yellow-gold triangle of pubic hair between her perfect thighs. Sa chatte. Her pussy. Well-groomed and beckoning him. He had not expected this. She tilted her head toward him, her eyes asking, What do you think?
“You tempt me, Lillie, but I—”
Did he hear someone moving about downstairs? Opening drawers? Banging them shut?
“I’m the best at Madame Chapet’s at chevaucher.” Lillie chewed on the end of her fingernail then touched the inside of her thigh, running her fingers up and down, ever so lightly, coming closer and closer to her soft pussy. “I can ride the stallion for as long as the gentleman desires.”
She slapped the air with an imaginary riding crop, and for a moment he was tempted. Very tempted. He was in need of release from the pent-up passion throbbing within him. He could imagine himself sitting on a chair with Lillie spread out over his lap, his cane sliding up and down her toned calves, her thighs. Then, slapping her firm, naked buttocks ever so lightly before turning her over, he would take her, her mouth wide open, his tongue licking her lips, his hands grabbing her all over, her breasts, her waist, her thighs, everywhere.
He ignored the bold desire in her eyes, eyes telling him what she wanted. Baiser. Make love. To her. Tonight. He shook his head. No, he couldn’t, though she was beautiful. Her angel-pale skin gleamed white with rice powder from China with skillfully applied brown pencil arching her brows. Deep blue shadows flowed across her eyelids and over her temples, enhancing the size and luminosity of her eyes. He could see where she had dabbed the color of a pink dawn over her cheeks with a hare’s foot, the lobes of her ears and her chin. The touch of artificial gold rinsed her hair. Garish but effective.
La belle fille possessed all the skills of a woman schooled in the art of illusion. And that was why she could never be his perfect model, why he could never paint her with the vigor of reality, because everything about her was an illusion.
Mais non, it was someone else who held him in rapture, someone more provocative, more alluring, more sexually exciting.
“I have no need of you tonight, Lillie,” he said, dismissing her. He should have known a woman with Lillie’s skills would not give up so easily.
“Watch me, monsieur,” she whispered, twisting her pubic hairs then inserting her fingers inside her pussy, “as I wind up my music box to play a tune that will please you.”
He wasn’t surprised when she began moaning, quite convincingly. He had no doubt she’d had much practice, but he had no time for love. It was a foolish emotion he refused to give in to; it drained his energy, his passion to paint. Art was his mistress. He could never love a woman as much as his art.
Never.
He ran his fingers over the ebony handle of his cane carved into the shape of a couple making love. His own penis was also hard, unbending, like the unique design of the male figurine hovering over the woman, lowering his erect outil, tool, into her. Lillie, moaning louder, also noticed his hard cock. She kept repeating what a strong, muscular body he had, and how she would find such delicious pleasure burying her face between his hard thighs, sucking on him. He tried to ignore her obvious overtures. He must get rid of her. He must. But how? Sweat slicked his grip as he slid his hand up and down the cane. Why was he so tormented, so affected by his passion to paint the redhead?
He knew why. She was the seductress chosen by the gods to be the perfect model for his masterpiece upon which he could stamp his art with an impulse of his true feelings, the inner emotion of his soul. He never would have believed it possible such a woman existed in his world.
A different urge settled in his groin. Primitive. Lusting. He couldn’t wait any longer.
“Put on your clothes, Lillie,” he ordered. “I can paint no more tonight.”
Her chemise lay on the floor, crumpled into a thousand fine little wrinkles, with one rose-colored stocking strewn carelessly on top, along with her violet two-piece taffeta dress and petticoats, violet button shoes and tiny matching hat with its long, curling veil.
“Pardon, monsieur?” she asked.
“You’re leaving.”
“But we haven’t played the game—”
“I have no time for games. I have another engagement.”
“At five o’clock in the morning?”
“Do as I order or Madame Chapet will hear about your insolence.”
“That old garce? Bitch. She cares only about making money, and I make plenty for her.” Lillie threw on her petticoats, then her shoes, though she didn’t button them.
A door slammed. Downstairs.
She laughed. “I believe your other engagement couldn’t wait, monsieur.”
He panicked. “No! She can’t leave. She can’t!”
Paul grabbed his cane, then his voluminous black cape and swirled it about himself like a creature of darkness about to take flight on the cloud of a dream. He raced downstairs, flung open the door, then ran outside, blending into the landscape of mendicants scouring the boulevards of Marais, their baskets on their backs but no names on their souls. The clean, dry air was still.
Where had the girl gone?
He stopped a poor chiffonnier, ragpicker, and asked her if she’d seen a young girl
