Page 10 of Iron Blade

Stop Talking About Breasts

Eoghan

She was a tough customer. I had never had to work so hard for a woman. Then again, that was the appeal. Nothing easily won was of value.

Though I was playing the gentleman, we were most definitely in a battle. She wanted to put me in my place. I wanted my place between her thighs.

We stood in front of one of the world’s most beautiful paintings: a scene of Revolutionary France as the people climbed over the barricades.

She stared at the painting in genuine awe. Her keen eyes were, no doubt, taking in every brush stroke.

I, on the other hand, was taking in every curve of her body.

She belonged in a Botticelli painting, but with sweeter, bronzed skin and fuller hair. Her proportions were perfect - slim at the shoulders, long on the torso, and round about the hips. Her tight, sheath dress didn’t hide the beautiful little pouch below her belly - a small, feminine roundness that many women starved off their bodies to seek these beauty standards that meant nothing. Not to me.

There was nothing more feminine than those curves.

I was obsessed with the possibility of painting her naked, in all her glory, with nothing but her unfastened hair adorning her skin.

“Liberty leading the people, by Eugéne Delacroix.” I announced the obvious, as she leaned in to observe the grand painting that was over a hundred inches tall, and almost as wide. A great classic borrowed from the Louvre for this event.

Her slight lean forward made her round backside even rounder. She was at the perfect angle to be taken from behind… a fact that went straight to my cock.

I coughed, and continued, “Or in French, La Liberté guidant le peuple.”

I flagged down one of the waiters and had them bring me a glass of wine. I would have preferred an absinthe, but I was unlikely to get that here.

She raised a curious, black brow, holding back a smile. “You speak French?”

“Bien sûr,” I said. Of course. “Don’t you?”

“I speak English. Olelo Hawai?i if I’m really pressured. Not much though. I lived in an English-only household.”

“Ah, that’s too bad.” I puffed out my chest because my education was nothing to scoff at. My father took great care to school me and my cousin, Dairo. That included the classical languages. “I speak French, of course, and Gaelic. Latin, and some ancient Greek. Enough Russian to not be bamboozled by the bratva menaces that hang in these parts of the city, and a bit of Italian.”

She looked impressed. I wanted to tell her that my talent with tongues didn’t end with conjugations.

She smiled politely, before her eyes turned back to the painting, to the woman holding the French tricolor flag, her chest exposed, one strap of her blouse artfully broken.

Her eyes scanned the masterpiece, her pupils following the lines of the movement, from Liberty’s raised arm, down to the bare foot as she stepped over a mountain of chaos and death.

“Times were simpler in the olden days. You could lead people to freedom by simply baring your breasts.” She smiled, lightly gesturing to the painting with her wine glass as if she was dropping the greatest wisdom.

Ah, so my little muse had a sense of humor. That was good to know.

“I’ve always wondered why she had to step over a pants-less man to do it.” Her eyes turned to me, the wine glass to her bottom lip, curving it downward, as she baited me to come up with something witty.

How dare you be so perfect, little Muse…

The un-pantsed man she referred to was a dead soldier on the bottom left quadrant of the painting. His pubic hair was on display, though his cock was tastefully hidden by his strategically placed bare thigh. One sock dangled from his limp foot. Dead and naked, he symbolized violation and the death of innocence, as well as a stroke of bad luck.

But she knew that. She was as knowledgeable about art as I was. As meticulous and studious, too. A trait one didn’t often find. But we were well past the understanding that we were of the same mind. I knew that from the first day I listened to her lecturing her art groupies.

“Ah, that’s just pantless Pierre,” I said without a hint of humor. “He came to the soiree that way.”

She snorted, then placed her wine glass to her lips to stop the noise. She looked at me sideways to see if I had noticed. I flattened my lips together to repress a smile.

“He came with just one sock on?” She grinned, turning her black eyes back to the painting.

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