Skullduggery {sapphic thriller}

CHAPTER TWELVE

But she was way off with that one.

"From the Rosenberg?" I laughed, a little insulted. "Oh please, they were a bunch of tools."

"They?"

"Three drunk Russian kids. Completely trashed the canvases from what I heard so they didn't get shit for them." I had nothing to lose revealing what I had heard and Desirae had everything to gain from it. "Besides, they bludgeoned the guard. I'm not into violence."

"Says the Cinderella vigilante."

The lamp clicked off, veiling us in a blanket of darkness. I could no longer see her in front of me, but she felt even closer than before. The warmth of her body sent goosebumps over mine.

"What do you know about a stolen Lucian Freud?" she whispered close to my neck.

The old bait and switch. I wanted to ask her how she knew it'd been me, but I also wasn't ready to go back to prison. I tried to calm my heart, slow my breaths. Every exhale still dragged a dagger across my ribs. As I leaned back onto the bed, I felt her move with me.

"I'm uh, not familiar," I managed to say.

"One of his unfinished paintings of a woman went missing from a little gallery near Brescia about nine years ago."

My first date with Artie. About two weeks after my first sitting with her.

I had made a passive comment about Freud and the way his women were splayed in some of his work during our contemporary art class. Artie countered my criticism. We argued back and forth until the professor interrupted us to move on.

In a matter of hours, Artie had scrounged up a fake passport for me and we were catching a red-eye into Milan to see an exclusive exhibition. Freud's paintings made me even more uncomfortable in person. Uneasy. The way they had them arranged in the palazzo made the flesh of the subjects even heavier.

As Artie guided me through to her favorite piece, she barely took her eyes off me. I thought she was still just dead-set on proving me wrong until she admitted that night that she was jealous of my reaction. That she hoped she could make people feel that way about her own work someday. And that she knew I was right about Freud, but she couldn't feel it herself.

I guess I wanted to try to stimulate that reaction for her by offering her a new intimate perspective. What else do you get a girl who can practically afford anything in the world?

That night, she broke up with Cora.

Desirae's knee sunk into the mattress between my legs, pulling me back to the present. My heart started to race again as moonlight carved out her outline, hovering above me.

"You know," I murmured, sitting up closer to her, "if people realized how easy it actually is to break into some of these galleries, it'd kill the mysterious allure of art heists."

"I'm sure that will work great in your defense." Her words were hot on my neck, teasing my ear, but I was barely listening to what she was saying.

"My defense?" I echoed, sliding my fingers along the back of her leg to coax her closer. She obliged, inching farther onto the bed, kneeling over me.

"For when the U.S. decides to go after you now." Her hand caught mine as I stopped at the hem of her shorts to actually comprehend what she was saying. "You're on my side of the bed, by the way."

The smile fell from my face as I stared up at her through the darkness. "You think they'll do that? Wouldn't that be like, a huge dis to France?"

"They could if they wanted to."