It had crushed both of them to see it just wasn’t in there. Nothing more than hollow technique.
Saskia stood in front of a canvas, painting another scene from the club with the bird cages. This one was a self-portrait. She was the focal point of the piece, locked inside the bird cage, blindfolded, a lost expression on her face like a lamb on an altar. Hands seemed to crawl up out of the cage itself to touch her. In the background were men who all wanted a piece of her, waving money. But she didn’t seem able to see or hear any of it. The only reality was that cage closed in around her, and the endless parade of hands poking and prodding her thighs apart.
It didn’t really matter anymore if Saskia painted the truth about herself. It wasn’t going to ever see the light of day. No one would care. No one would buy it.
She wasn’t sure why she painted now. There was no real reason to. She knew she’d never be good enough. She’d never please Quill on any artistic level. Perhaps with her body she could please him—until he finally grew bored with that. But they were not colleagues. He was not her teacher. She was not his prized pupil.
The work wasn’t about him anymore. It wasn’t about the imagined outcome. It wasn’t about money or fame or acclaim or respect. It wasn’t about gallery openings and parties. It was just this thing inside her that pushed its way out onto the canvas in spite of all the ways it had been beaten down along the way. When she’d run out of places to hide behind polite landscapes and had run the gauntlet of trying to force the work through a filter of the imagined expectations of others, what was left was an undiluted, raw work that may never hang in any gallery—even this one—but it felt honest, at least.
Saskia stood back from the still-wet painting to take it in, trying to experience it as a stranger seeing it for the first time. She didn’t hear Quill come in. She jumped when his hand rested on her shoulder.
“Yes,” he whispered.
***
That Yes from him... It was everything she’d thought she wanted to hear. And yet, it was the beginning of the end for her. Soon after, more work came, flowing out of her in a great rush like Ari’s waterfall in the white room.
When enough had accumulated that pleased him, there was a party in the private gallery. The walls were covered with all her work. Quill invited enough people to fill the gallery, and she never knew which of his aliases all the attendees knew him by because she didn’t recognize any of the faces of the guests.
But it couldn’t just be his art crowd.
It was a specific gathering of others like him—art married with kink. Not just in the subject matter of the work itself... but a comfort with the real thing. Saskia imagined that most of the people in attendance had been at the party when she’d been in the box. Sure, she’d seen those who’d touched her that night later on the video feed, but it was on a screen and in such brief snippets as Quill had fast forwarded through all but the most interesting interactions.
So if anyone at this party had been at that party, she didn’t remember them. There was a price on every painting of hers in the gallery. Not insane prices, but definitely respectable.
If Saskia had expected she would have some grand artist’s introduction in good taste in an evening gown, she’d been kidding herself.
The reason she knew this crowd had to be comfortable with the real thing was because she’d been put on display as an art installation once again. Only this time, Quill didn’t grant her the anonymity she’d so craved at that first party, the anonymity she’d reluctantly relinquished, even if only for Nolan. The installation was another “Jacob Hunter” piece. It was called “The Artist, Exposed”. Quill didn’t go much for subtlety.
For this piece, she’d been stripped bare except for her collar and chained down, straddling a large shiny black round piece of marble. It was a ball just small enough that she could manage to straddle it without too much difficulty. Once she’d been chained in place, a switch was flipped and the ball began to roll gently on top of a sort of platform it was situated on, engineered for such movement. Water gushed forth from small openings in the piece creating an effect of sheets of water flowing over this moving ball.
And as if that weren’t enough, the ball itself sort of pulsed and vibrated underneath her. The pulsing and movement and warm water caressing between her legs sent her cresting over the edge of orgasm repeatedly. If it weren’t for the intense sensations, Saskia might have been able to appreciate the artistry and engineering of such a contraption. Only from the mind of Quill could such a bizarrely erotic piece have been realized.
But tonight there was no box to protect her, nor any blindfold to keep her in the dark where she could pretend whatever she wanted to pretend. Tonight it was real exposure, and she wasn’t entirely sure which thing was worse, the installation she was a part of, or her art on the walls being judged by those with the money to buy it.
Mercifully, at this party, no one was allowed to touch her. It wasn’t part of the piece. They were only allowed to observe her. The oddest thing about all of it was that she must have had a good twenty orgasms in the length of time she was kept on the installation, and yet, they acted as if this were some serious piece of art that actually said something instead of Quill just looking for another way to display and humiliate his property.
They spent an equal amount of time studying her as they did studying her art hanging on the walls. There were a lot of “Hmmms” bandied about, and the sharp ripping of checks from checkbooks that had endless check-writing potential. She’d never seen so much check writing. The members of Quill’s circle must never have heard of the magic of the wire transfer. Or maybe writing a check was more convenient when one didn’t want to be bothered with technology and account numbers.
One by one most of the pieces were bought, except of course, for her.
Eventually the champagne ran dry, and the waiters carrying trays of tiny food seemed to fade into the background and disappear as the guests filtered out, some carrying bits and pieces of Saskia with them in frames.
Quill, being a good host, joined his guests outside to see them off. Marcus remained behind. He unchained Saskia from the installation and caught her as the water propelled her forward without the chains to hold her in place.
She clung to him, her soul eviscerated. She felt that only shattered ribbons of her being remained behind, barely enough to reconstruct a full person even if she wanted to.
Quill had forged her in the fire of chains and whips and sex and slavery and prostitution and violation. And what had risen from that contorted dark wreckage had been a real artist who’d been made to feel so much it had to go somewhere. That somewhere was a canvas for the consumption of the masses.
And Quill was pleased.
And she was barely holding onto the last slip of her identity.
She hadn’t known what it would cost her to create like Quill. The things it had cost him were different. It had cost his humanity and any soul which once might have existed within him. It cost her an identity and freedom. And whatever dignity she might have once possessed in some distantly faded past.
Everyone paid a price to speak something worth saying.
Saskia struggled to stand on her own and ran clumsily for the door, not caring about her state of undress. But Marcus stopped her and held her against him.
“Shhhh. Everything will be okay,” he said, petting her hair.
She struggled in his arms. He released her but moved to block her exit, leaving no doubt as to whose side he fell on.
Women only came first on lifeboats and elevators.
“How can you defend him? Don’t you at least care about me? I thought...” Oh God, don’t say it, Saskia. Don’t be even more stupid and pathetic than you already are. Have an ounce of dignity.
“We both care in our way,” he said.
Saskia dropped to her knees, the tears coming full force now. “Please, sir, take me out of here. I’ll be yours. Just yours. We can go anywhere you want. Why can’t you just report
him? Why can’t you just leave him? Pick me.”
As she said it she cringed at even the idea of leaving Quill. She only found the courage to say the words because she knew Marcus would never leave him either. It just felt right to say them, to make some halfhearted attempt at ending this insanity.
Marcus pressed a finger to her lips. “My place is with him. And so is yours. You need to accept that. We can be comfortable here.”
Comfortable. What bullshit. Marcus could be comfortable. She would be destroyed.
The echo of the outer door made her jump. Moments later, Quill was in the gallery, watching her clinging to her guard. Her master’s face was inscrutable.
“Marcus. I want to be alone with her.”
“Yes, sir.”
Quill watched her for several moments after Marcus had gone. Finally, he spoke. “What was that I just walked in on? An escape attempt?”
Was her face that emotionally transparent?
“Master, please just let me go. I can’t... it’s all...” The words came out among half-strangled cries. If she didn’t get them out now, she might never gain the courage again.
Despite the ongoing foolishness of her desire to be his... it was... too much. He was too intense, too frightening, too large for any world to contain. Surely he’d developed some attachment to Saskia in all this time, some echo of love. Surely he would show her mercy and release her from her debt. Hadn’t she yet paid for the terrible crime of taking money he’d never needed?
Quill’s expression turned dark. “I knew you were just like her. Just waiting to abandon me.”
“What do you care? You keep me at arm’s length. You won’t let yourself get close. You’re scared, aren’t you? If you’re too scared to really have me, why can’t you just let me go?”
His hands clenched and unclenched at his sides. “I will never let you go.”
“I won’t tell anyone anything. You know that. I’ll keep all your secrets. Please, I’ll die like this.”
His face was a stone wall; his lip curled in a sneer. “Don’t be so dramatic, Saskia. You won’t die.”
“Please. You know how I feel about you. I love you. I respect you. I would die for you if I could do it in some faster way. But I can’t do it like this. You have to release me before I’m too broken to exist outside of you.”
He closed the distance between them and stroked the side of her face. In spite of herself, she pressed closer against the warmth of his hand.
“You can relax. We passed that point a long time ago. I felt it the day you broke in my hands.”
He was probably right, but knowing that window had already slammed shut didn’t bring her any solace.
Saskia glanced around the gallery at what remained of her paintings adorning the walls. She’d created her best work with him—her only work that counted as anything more than mimicry. They were each their best when they were together... artistically at least. Outside the art, they were a tangled mess destroying each other. And it only grew more perverse the longer it went on. Couldn’t he see that?
Quill turned and strode out of the gallery, the doors clanging behind him in a deafening finality that echoed along the walls. Saskia went after him, reaching for the handle to follow him out, but the lock turned before she could pull it open.
“No!” She pounded on the door. “You let me out, you fucking monster! I fucking hate you!”
She slid to the ground, her ear pressed against the wood, listening for the outer door that would signal he’d left her. But there was no clanging outer door—just a silence that was everything but empty.
She felt pressure push back against the wood, and heard a sliding sound and a soft thump, and she realized Quill sat on the ground on the other side, wrinkling his nice suit.
She pressed her cheek against the door. This locked door was always between them, even when it wasn’t. He wouldn’t let her in, yet he wouldn’t let her go. Would she always be in the gallery, frozen in this limbo?
“Saskia...” There was a long pause while he seemed to gather his thoughts. When he continued, the words were broken, filled with more emotion than she’d ever heard from him, more emotion than he ever would have let her witness without the door as a buffer between them. “I know I’ve destroyed you... I know... I’m fucked up. And I’m not going to stop. You can’t rehabilitate me. Your love can’t change me. I’m going to just keep pushing you and pushing you until there’s nothing left. I know you hate me... and I don’t blame you.”
“I don’t hate you.”
“You said it. You said you loved me. And you said you hated me. Which is it?”
“Both.”
“You want me to let you go. What will you do if I let you go?”
Die.
“Just let me in,” Saskia said instead. “I can’t stand it out here in the gallery at night anymore. Please. If you aren’t letting me go, why can’t I really be with you? In the main house. In your room. Please, just let me stay with you.”
How had she gone from wanting to escape him to just wanting to be closer to him? Like a child that announces he’s running away from home because his wishes aren’t being fulfilled only to return in time for dinner.
Quill was so right. She’d already broken apart. There was nothing left to run from or to. Nothing to try to save or salvage. The only thing left was the relief of surrender.
There was a long silence, and she wondered if he was still out there or if he’d abandoned her yet again.
“You will sleep in the cage,” he said, his voice back to the cold indifference she’d grown uncomfortably used to.
“I-in your room?”
“Yes.”
“Okay.” At least it was with him. “Will I be able to stay in there with you permanently?”
There was a long pause, and she was afraid she’d pushed him too far, that he might take back what he’d just promised.
“Unless you’re being punished for something, yes.”
“C-can we go now? To your room now?” She looked back at the paintings on the gallery walls, convinced she saw some sign of hostile jealousy in them.
“Yes,” he said.
The door opened abruptly, and Saskia tumbled backward. Quill towered over her in the doorway, that hard look back in his eyes. He held out a hand, and she took it and allowed him to help her up off the ground. He pulled her against him, closing his arms around her. It was a clawing clinging vise, not an embrace, not a give and take. There was no trust in the movement. Only fear and possession.
Saskia felt his self-loathing in the way he held her. He believed he deserved to be abandoned, and the only way forward was to capture and imprison what he wanted to hold onto. Even if he’d never admit he wanted to hold onto her.
But at least he would imprison her in his room with him. He might never truly let her into his heart, but for now at least, his room was enough.
Quill pulled back and looked hard into her eyes. Time, as Saskia knew it, stopped. She waited for something from him. Anything that would give her some hope that he could let himself care for her, that he could risk some piece of his heart for her soul’s survival.
Instead, he said, “Miss Roth, in a just world, we’d both be in prison right now. And in a sense, we both are.”
About the Author
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Kitty ^.^
Acknowledgements
Thank you to the following people for their help with The Con Artist:
Robin Ludwig @ gobookcoverdesign.com for the fabulous cover art!
Thank you to Cathy for copyedits!
Thank you to Michelle for great beta read suggestions and for holding my hand while I was freaking out over a new writing process.
Thank you to M for digital formatting. Love you!
If you enjoyed The Con Artist, you may also enjoy these other titles by Kitty Thomas:
Comfort Food
Mafia Captive
Guilty Pleasures
Big Sky
The Last Girl
Kitty Thomas, The Con Artist
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