Ophelia felt betrayed by her body as Tristan’s deep chuckle caused a spasm in her womb, but she ignored it as he drew the cloak around her shoulders and carefully tied the strings together again. He then stepped away, taking his body heat with him, and Ophelia shivered again.
“Time to start then,” he said, waving a hand toward her unfinished canvas.
It took her a second to do so, but Ophelia finally moved from the spot her feet had rooted to, and she began to set up her easel.
“I am assuming that you are once again going to insist on watching me?” She asked.
Tristan’s lips twitched toward a smile but didn’t quite make it.
“You assume correctly.”
Ophelia made of show of rolling her eyes, even though she was growing more comfortable with his attention with each visit. Once her easel, canvas, and paints were set up, Ophelia took a moment to close her eyes, and drew in a breath.
Her new reality faded away. Her father was no longer sick. There were no financial struggles. There was no need to take a husband. She was free. She was talented. And she began.
“Where did you learn to paint like this?” Tristan asked, his warm breath fluttering over her air.
She didn’t shiver this time. In fact the feel of it made her sink deeper into her relaxation. The outside world no longer existed and it was just her, her art, and Tristan.
It was an hour later and Ophelia had captured the web of ropes in hues of wheat gold and brown and was starting to paint one of the two men crawling toward the beautiful woman in the center of the web.
“It was not so much learned as it was practice,” Ophelia answered, leisurely drawing a steady line of flesh-hued paint down the back of the would-be well-muscled man.
“Why did you want to practice so much?” Tristan asked.
Ophelia shrugged, carrying on her work.
“It relaxes me,” she confessed, “Takes me away from our suffocating society. Even when I was just starting to teach myself and was going through endless paper and paints, it calmed me down.”
Behind her she could feel Tristan grow closer, but she could not find the usual urge to tell him to step back. His warmth felt…nice, and she even smirked a little bit, feeling as if she was using him with him knowing it.
“Why do you find our society so suffocating?”
The question brought Ophelia’s hand to a stop, and she turned to face him with a questioning look.
“Are you seriously asking me that?” She chortled.
“Is it such a ridiculous question?” Tristan asked calmly.
“You are the one that operates an illegal erotic club. You tell me,” she remarked.
“I never said it wasnota suffocating society,” he countered in an annoyingly calm, polite manner, “I am asking whyyouparticularly, find it so.”
Ophelia studied him, unsure it he was genuinely asking or if he was using his manners to goad her into a jest. After a moment she turned away from him and went back to her painting.
“Ever since I could remember, I felt different from everyone else,” Ophelia explained. “I do not know how I knew, or why. It was just…evident. I did not want to be told what to wear. What to think. How to act. I wanted to discover it all for myself. Make my own choices. My father encouraged me to do so, but he was the only one.”
A shot of pain sliced through her heart.
“Until recently, that is,” she quietly added.
A moment of silence passed between them.
“I had heard that your father had received some bad news regarding his health,” Tristan acknowledged, “My deepest condolences.”
Yet again, Ophelia was not annoyed by Tristan’s manners, but surprised by them.
“Thank you,” she replied. Ophelia felt some of her pain start to rise to the surface, and she shook her head, as if to dispel it.
