Variations Three Read Online Free PDF

bisecting a dagger of sea-glass green against the stark
white canvas ground. The oils were dry, the swirls upon the palette
board blots of crusty color. Nikita had not painted today. It
seemed that she had not painted yesterday. And Nikita painted every
day. It was not unusual for her to paint through the night and into
the next day, when the passion was upon her.
    I searched the rest of the studio, but found
nothing further to alarm me: Her clothes, her completed works, her
meager cash were all in place. The tiny refrigerator held a quart
of milk, four eggs, half a loaf of bread, a depleted bottle of red
wine. All precisely as it should be, lacking only Nikita
herself.
    On the point of quitting her apartment, I
paused, frowning at a blank space on the cluttered wall.
    Nikita had done a self-portrait at the
beginning of the summer--a radical departure from her modernistic
style. It had hung in this spot, now vacant, among the other
paintings she considered worthy of being framed.
    A short search discovered it, stashed behind
six much-despised abstracts, near the edge of the shrouded window.
Framed in stark stainless, the canvas showed a wire-thin woman in
paint-spangled jeans, wearing a man’s white shirt, untucked, like a
smock, the sleeves rolled to her elbows. Her face was a study in
the simple power of line and shadow, her eyes great and dark
beneath thick eyebrows. She stood at an easel, of course,
paintbrush in hand, poised on the balls of her feet. The impression
of the whole was of power, of intensely focused, living
passion.
    Carefully, I lifted the painting, carried it
across the room and hung it in its place.
    Then I went to tend the others.
    Michael’s door was ajar, but Michael was not
within. Chris and Amy were with Quill, coaxing him to call it a day
and lend his enthusiasm to a threesome destined for Amy’s day bed.
As I left, he allowed himself to be convinced, and began hurriedly
to put his brushes by.
    As last evening, I met Fortnay on his way to
dine. As last evening, I refused an invitation to join him and
turned the corner, on my way to Sula’s studio.
    Michael knelt in the center of the hallway,
blond head thrown back, a rigor of ecstasy upon his features. The
ivory column of his throat glowed in the silver dimness; his naked
chest ran sweat.
    The figure standing behind his right
shoulder, jeweled and painted fingers stroking his sweat-slick skin
while pressing its lips to that place where the sweet blood ran
swiftest, raised its head and snarled.
    It was an admirable face for
snarling--pinched and paper-white, a bare stain of claret across
the stark cheekbones, the lips glistening dark.
    "That human is mine," I said, and stood
forward. The other licked her lips, slowly and with
satisfaction.
    "He showed no mark. He came willing." She
ran her skinny fingers along the sweet curve of his ribcage.
"Didn’t you, Michael?"
    "Yes," he gasped, hoarse and trance-locked.
"Oh, God, yes!"
    She smiled and bent her head to tongue the
place, tantalizing herself.
    "Have you no more for me, Michael? Shall I
stop?" Her voice was velvet, warm and suffocating, resonant with
power. A human could no more stand against it than a dog against
his master’s command.
    "No!" Michael gasped. "Take me. I’m yours
...all yours..." He was groaning, back arched in passion, his
manhood straining against the prison of his jeans.
    She smiled. "All mine," she murmured and
fastened again upon the heart vein. Michael cried out, sobbing in
his frenzy, the passion roiling off of him in sweet, delicious
waves...
    In my desire to ensure the safety of my
household, I had not yet taken nourishment. Here before me lay a
feast. I went forward and wrapped him in my embrace, drinking his
rapture as the other drank his heart’s blood, riding the rising
tide of his passion until, at the pinnacle, while I clung, drunk
with him and able to do nothing else, save drink more--at the peak
of this ecstatic experience, Michael--was gone.
    Besotted,