For the Love of Art Pt. 05

Ice rolled down my spine. Mr. Ryne hadn't told me this hefty tidbit.

If I didn't place at all, I ruined the chances of my peers participating the following year? It'd been a loosely noted fact before, that I was representing my current university. It was a cutting reality now. Returning to class once Christmas break was over would be hell. I may not have known this gala was hosted every year, but could the same be said for my classmates? What if they knew and they were waiting on the results in hopes that I placed, thereby giving them a chance to participate next year?

I didn't like it. I lowered the champagne glass and took a deep breath. Was my art piece actually that bad? So bad that this girl decided to show up out of nowhere and tear it apart as though she had a personal vendetta?

Who was she anyway?

"Did you enter a piece?" I asked, searching.

She found this amusing, another laugh and barest brush of her fingertips to my arm. "Of course I entered a piece, but everyone knows you're not supposed to look your own work until presentation." Which explained why she was so comfortable judging mine to my face: she didn't think this was my artwork simply because, like an idiot, I'd come and stared at my own piece. "Besides," she said. "My father owns this gallery. I'd be slaughtered by the critics if I didn't enter something."

"Then you're not a university attendee or prodigy of anyone?"

She shook her head.

My mouth was suddenly very dry. I'd thought I was achieving some sort of advantage because my tutor was the gala coordinator. Her father owned the gallery itself. He was the true head of it all, and if she was able to enter a piece every year, then that meant—assuming they followed their own guidelines—she must have placed every single year.

Was this why Mr. Ryne had pushed me so hard? Was he not some force larger than life but merely a man using me as his puppet, someone to get him back on the scene? If so, why didn't he enter two other students to up his chances of one of us placing? Or was he only allowed to "skeeve" in one student after last year's alleged failure? Even if that were true, what the hell could have possibly given him the idea that I was his golden ticket? Especially given how fond he was of giving nearly everything I created a low grade.

I looked back to my painting, feeling sick to my stomach. He'd assured me all of the other works here paled in comparison to mine, but what if he'd only said so to quell my nerves? Worse, what if he actually believed it? What if he was so egotistical of his own ability that he hadn't noted how concept art on a canvas was a fading trend in light of digital art software? And what if, by my blind admiration of him, I'd condemned myself to an inevitable failure?

"Look at me, talking away," Sabrina said beside me, and then she held out her hand. "I didn't catch your name."

Nor was she going to.

I feigned a mild coughing fit and took a page from her book, touching her arm lightly as I said, "If you'll excuse me a moment. This drink..." And with that, I made my getaway. Not just from her, but the scene as a whole. All of the people, walking judges with eyes not made to capture beauty but the hideous ineptitudes of what artists had poured themselves into.

The building was as large as it was magnificent, and stepping out from the main attraction that was the gallery's atrium was the same as wandering into a labyrinth. With that in mind, when I entered the long hall of warm, golden walls and crystal lights, I was mindful not to stray too far. But far enough. Enough so that when Sabrina's words came tumbling back to me, curious gazes wouldn't slide my way as I struggled to breathe.

We'd only practiced four days. Four days! There were probably others out there, other Sabrinas who'd practiced for years. This was a stroll in the park for them, an effortless pastime, meanwhile this was everything for me.

And how had I spent that time?

Obsessing over something that now seemed so indefinably trivial I felt my legs weakening. I was going to botch this. I was going to get up in front of all of those men in their suits and women in their delicate fabrics and I was going to stare out at their faces and what words would exit my lips? What if nothing came out? What if no one even paid attention to me because they were too busy looking to the portrait Mr. Ryne had seemed so confident in, laughing silently while I floundered like a fish out of water?

I retreated further down the hall, and eventually, at the first room I saw nestled between two pedestals holding vases with roses, I entered. The lights were off in what appeared to be a display room for wooden art, from the frames holding flatter mediums to the thin threads descending from the high ceilings, different wooden shapes attached to them. The nearest was some sort of contorted avian with its wings chipped and crooked, dangling dangerously close to its beak. Broken. I knew how it felt.

I'd not had a normal, peaceful day since the last day before Christmas break. And it hurt, because I knew the reason, the cause, and that reason and cause had a head of raven curls and cyan eyes that inserted a feeling of hunger and fear and confusion in one flitting glance.

I couldn't get him out of my head before, but now I couldn't get him out of my head as I considered just how enraged he would be when I failed him. It would be like the past all over again. Him assuming I was capable of more, only for me to fall short and disappoint.

My fingers curled into my palm as I headed towards the windows, needing to feel the cold from outside sink inside, permeate something—anything—inside of me. In front of the landscaped windows were display edges of transparent marble encasements. Multiple works were set inside of the protective cases, bas-relief figures and even cuneiform imitations peering back at me, lamenting for me; I placed my hand over the cool surface and leaned my forehead forward onto the chilling relief of the window.

Outside, the frigidity of winter was persistent, the effulgence of the streetlights and city lights coalesced to make the night into a picture perfect image. Dazzling. Peaceful. Contradicting to the cataclasm I felt inside.

"It's maddening, isn't it? Keeping secrets."

I started, whipping around and squinting into the abject dark at a shadowy figure. It didn't take long for the figure to disclosed itself as none other than the man who had my mind like this to start with. As he approached, features touching the scarce gloss of the city lights, I instinctively wrung my hands. What had he said? Secrets?

"I thought you were helping for the start of the presentations," I evaded. How did he single me out in this room out of the many? I hadn't seen him anywhere in the atrium.

"I was, until I saw the girl of the hour leave. I thought to myself, maybe it's time I stopped watching her scramble around. Maybe it's time I spare her."

"I don't think I understand," I said honestly.

He was in front of me now, and there was nothing pleasant about the way he looked down at me. "Don't worry, I can make it very simple for you. My phone is linked to my email account, you see. It ensures I have a notification for all incoming news. Events, sale replies, business offers—when a certain website is accessed from an unknown IP address."

Holy.

Shit.

"But see, this person, they thought to use a VPN, a novice tactic. And I wondered, who has been acting out of sorts lately? Who would be curious enough to dig up a dead domain and sign in to it? But I didn't have time to inspect the situation too much, seeing as you're very right, I was busy assisting with the gala. Not that it mattered, because I already had my suspicion around one person. The same person who couldn't stand a simple kiss earlier. The same person who, just some days ago, was the lead actress when I checked my home's security footage."

No, no, no.

"Mr. Ryne—"

"The photo you found in the book, I can forgive, though your inspection of it was surprising." He drew closer, his hand running along the length of my arm before curling around it. I felt a sweat beginning to break out. "But imagine my further surprise at seeing innocent, little Grace, in my bedroom, rummaging through my personal belongings, only to then after trot downstairs and speak to me as though nothing was wrong."

"I . . ."

"You what?" he wondered, still in that easy, cool voice that made me feel as though I was nothing larger than a butterfly and he had me under a microscope. "You didn't think I would keep 24/7 surveillance of my property when everything inside is worth a substantial sum—or you didn't think I would find out what you did, Miss Larson?"

My lips parted as his grip on me tightened. Fear, I'd never felt it as strongly as I did in that moment. I'd gone and handled my hard-pressed paranoia the way I'd seen fit. I'd invaded his privacy on multiple scores, intruding on his affairs of the heart to validate my own. All the while, it'd never occurred to me he'd known all along. A butterfly under his microscope as he observed quietly, waiting to see what I did. And now he'd grown bored of watching and opted to make his presence known.

"Mr. Ryne," I made out quietly, my voice trembling. He was too close. Staring up into his eyes was too much. "I'm sorry. Really sorry. I didn't mean to pry—"

"Someone made you, then? Was there a ghost the cameras didn't catch?"

Tongue like sandpaper, my breaths came out in shudders. "N-no, of course not. I did it because... because I had to know." It'd been like a compelling impulse, an itch that needed to be scratched. I never asked to see the woman in that photo or the little girl.

"It never occurred to you to ask me?" he challenged, his thumb now moving back and forth across my chin too softly. His grip on my arm felt more like a snare, his gaze a constant lash against me.

It addled my senses, my speech. It seemed every time we took one step forward, it was but three steps backwards in disguise. Back at his home, in his bed, he'd smiled, and we'd made notions of a relationship, joked over sensualized matters and serious matters, and he'd made me think this could actually be a normal relationship, but I knew now, as he lowered his lips towards mine, it'd never been normal. Would never be normal.

"So then that was it?" he said. "You went off in your own mind and decided to fear me based on the things you saw?"

The room's darkness, the solitude it inflicted made me shake my head, reluctant to upset him any more than I already had.

"Then let's try that kiss again, Miss Larson, and see if you can do it properly." The whisper was lethal blades, reminding me of the moment in the car. Telling me that I had better get it right this time.

I swallowed tightly, breathing in the scent of him as I didn't really have any other choice, and when his lips brushed mine, I felt myself falling into a place I couldn't escape from, and with the way he moved in on me, I felt he sensed my falling. And was intent on digging the trench deeper. And deeper. And deeper still.

Until I hissed and attempted to pull away from his grip that'd become too tight. It only made his hold become more vise.

"Does it hurt?" he asked, like he wanted it to, lips a breath from mine.

The fire spreading in my arm and across my lips flared in answer, but I shook my head in negation. I shook my head because I knew this was the answer I was supposed to give and maybe the pain I deserved.

He kissed me again at this and asked, "Tell me, have I become too lenient with you?"

Lenient? As though to imply he had ever let up on me. Had ever not scrutinized, picked me apart, and practically waited for me to mess something up. I shook my head again.

I'd come to this room to find relief from the judgement and impending failure that waited for me outside only to find a more suffocating doom here. I'd only wanted to know the truth. He had to understand that, and more importantly, he had to see that I was sorry.

"Sorry, sorry, sorry," Mr. Ryne mocked as though extracting my thoughts. "Is that all you know how do, apologize? Cower? Instead of holding yourself accountable?"

I pursed my lips. What did he want me to say to that?

"Answer me." I felt his true anger towards my actions then. The upset he'd kept hidden. How long he'd known I'd been snooping, how many chances he'd given for me to stop, all of it flaring in his gaze. He'd watched, he'd waited. He'd waited until the moment in the car where I'd shifted away from him. I understood then, that moment had been the line for him, the mark where he'd decided he had to step in because watching me betray the fragile trust had been one thing, but for me to deny his touch was the game changer.

I owed him a reply. "I—"

"Look at me when we talk," he ordered, a recurring command one would have thought I'd have mastered by now, but staring into the eyes of someone you wronged was like staring up at the sun until it seared.

I forced myself to look at him anyway and it was as though he'd become ten feet tall for how tiny I felt. Eyes no palette could replicate, the foreboding shimmer of his piercing threatening to hypnotize. "I'll ask next time," I promised him, voice small, stomach quivering. This wasn't how the night was supposed to play out. I wasn't supposed to feel as if a void had opened up between the two of us, so that his touch burned like the worst kind of fire.

"Next time?" he murmured.

"W-when I want to know something regarding you," I stammered damn near soundlessly.

Quiet, his hands explored. A deft finger tracing my lips, teasing the ends of my hair, creating chilling trails along my throat, and pausing when I swallowed. He waited. He held the tension until it submitted to him and curled around my nerves. Allowing the transpired events to marinate, the guilt to curdle inside of me. Finally, his hand brushed past my breast to my stomach where he took hold of my waist with both hands. I felt his lips on the crown of my head, my face buried in his chest, trapped in the chilling scent of him.

"There is nothing you have a right to know about me," he said.

No one had any right to anyone's private business, until it came in contact with their own lives. And the relationship he and I had, if it could even be described as that, it warranted some substance. "I just wanted to get to know you better." Translation: I feared the monster he was, and needed proof of my own paranoia.

His fingers bit into the flesh of my waist, a harsh tsk of wind cutting through his teeth. "Get to know me? You still think that's what this is about?" he whispered vehemently at my ear. Disgusted. Disappointed.

I didn't know what to think. What to say. Or how to stop myself from trembling long enough to afford him something other than a 'sorry' that I knew would push him over the edge. But as I thought of the moment in his bed, the brief glimpse of serenity I saw in him and the moment we shared, I found it in myself to ask, "What are we, then?" Because the blurred line was doing things to my sanity.

All at once, with a crass abruptness, he saturated all of my space, caging me just before he jerked the refractive fabrics of my dress up—and my panties down, tearing them as if they were made of paper.

I gasped, gripping the ledge of the display case, only for him to rip my hands away and hoist me onto the surface; he was inside of me before I could protest.

It was the roughest he'd ever entered me, as if this were both punishment and warning, and it was the fastest I'd ever come. A stark bliss that clouded my judgement irreparably.

And my body, no matter how hard I willed it, wouldn't reject, wouldn't push him away. As if the mere idea of it was an impossible notion, a temerity it'd never learned. My fingers simply curled at his chest, gripping his perfectly ironed shirt. "Mr. Ryne, the presentations—" was as far as I made it before he clamped a hand over my mouth and stabbed his length into me a second time.

"This is what we are," he gritted as he slammed into me again, sending a spasm up my spine that caused my body to seize up. His didn't. It ravished. It defiled. He pounded into me until the action transitioned into a silent message relaying his disappointment, spilled rage. He kept his eyes locked with mine on each thrust, the cyan turned a sinister shade in the lighting. And the sounds I made, each cry of something that skirted the frail line between pleasure and too much pain, went muffled.

But the words weren't needed. I understood.

To him, this was the relationship. No matter how deeply I dug or what tools I used, this was all I was going to find at the core of it. A sadistic form of hedonism, wrapped around a heart married to art and all it entailed.

Anything more was but an apparition, a figment of my imagination. When he'd used the term "girlfriend" in the bedroom to define where we stood, in my mind I'd heard significant others that shared their feelings, their pasts, who they were and what they someday dreamed of becoming. Their other half. What he'd meant was raw sex partners who shared a love for art, but kept their feelings, pasts, who they were and what they someday dreamed of becoming locked in an indestructible box and offered to the Bermuda.

I'd been trying to domesticate us, unearth all there was to know about him and ensure he wasn't a monster like paranoia told me—find something that would tell me the thrill and infantile happiness was okay. But the truth of it had been there all along, no matter which way I angled my perspective or how I attempted to brighten a rudimentary dark image with tangible evidence: he was a monster, as were we all in our own way, and even demons have their own demons. Some worse than others. And whatever demons slept with him at night had undoubtedly disliked sharing its bed with that woman, Clare LaMonte—with anyone. Unless it was on his terms: art and sex and nothing in between.

Certainly no invasive, paranoid females in between.

The man really was in my thoughts, as the moment he found his release with a low grunt, he said in that quiet way of his, "I told you earlier: in this jar, there's room for only one spider, Miss Larson."

Which meant either I accepted that barrier, or just left the damn jar alone altogether—because there was zero chance of my getting inside of it.

As he stepped back from inside of me, I let my hands fall to the display case beneath me and my head hang forward. My eyes slipped closed at the sound of him tucking himself away and straightening his clothes. Erasing the session.

This was all. There was nothing deeper. The depravity I'd seen was an irrelevant hoax on my own self.

"Mr. Ryne," I whispered so low I must have thought it.

"Miss Larson," he said, not missing a thing.

"Does this mean you won't tutor me anymore?" Only now did that possibility cross my mind. That my actions could have led to my jeopardizing the golden opportunity to study beneath the artist I admired most. And why would he still tutor me? What reason did he have not to cast me aside as wasted, inert talent? If I had even that considering all Sabrina had said.

There was silence in the blackness around me. I felt his hand take hold of my chin, inching my head up and beckoning my eyes open to look at him. When I did, there was pressure between my legs as he began cleaning me with what must have been a handkerchief he carried routinely. My cheeks burned with embarrassment at the handling, but more than that, my entire body felt exposed to this man and this man alone, no matter how dark the room around me was.

Only when he finished did he answer. "My goal was never to tutor you, Grace, but to make you rise." The words were sanguine, but settled ominously. And when his lips came and brushed mine for what would be the final time this night, I felt something inside of me chip away. Something I couldn't put my finger on but knew was vital to myself as an artist. "All you have to do," Dimitri Ryne said. "is follow my instructions; I'll make you into a star."