Myths and Gargoyles by Jamie Hawke (interesting books to read in english txt) 📕

the door opened, we pulled forward again, entering a garage that was about the size of my off-campus apartment. This was nuts.

“Come on, I’ll give you the tour,” Elisa said. “I want to get to know my hero.”

“I, uh…” I turned back to Pucky and Red. They nodded.

“We’ll check back with Mowgli, see how long he thinks we’ll need to lie low before striking again.”

My look had really been directed at Pucky, though, because I’d been sensing a bit of hostility from her toward our new friend. But Pucky simply smiled and said, “We’ll find you two shortly. Maybe in the viewing room?”

“Viewing room?” I asked, earning me an excited smile from Elisa.

“You’ll see soon enough.”

She started to walk towards the door with me following behind, trying to not look like I was staring at the way her long blue cotton skirt clung to her ass as she went. I had a moment to turn back and say, “Are you sure? Maybe you two should come along first and—”

“Jack, you’ll be fine,” Red said.

“No labels,” Pucky added, shrugging.

Red turned to her with a questioning look, but I figured that was my cue. Elisa stood with hands folded in front of her, her eyes curved into her gentle smile. Two doormen stood with the door leading from the garage to the main house held open. Elisa took long, graceful steps in front of me as we walked, the guards following about three paces back.

We entered to find the inside was more glamorous than I could ever have imagined. Stepping in from the side entrance, we first walked through a hallway with a chandelier and old paintings of men in swan motifs, seven of them, and then into the main entryway with its mirrored stairs and a swan fountain at the top.

“Something tells me this isn’t just a safehouse,” I said.

“Guilty,” she said with a gesture to the stairs. “It’s based on a theme from my past, but it’s not quite what it seems. It’s not all really here, exactly. If anyone outside of our circle enters, agents included, they see a statue of a nude man in the fountain instead of a swan, and various other nudes for the paintings instead of my brothers.”

“Isn’t that awkward?” I asked.

“The nudes aren’t of my brothers, so… no.” She shrugged. “They’re actually ones I had commissioned as I’m something of an art connoisseur. You should see some of the work by the Huntsman of Snow, though she doesn’t often allow others to see it. Bashful, you see.”

“I can understand,” I said, guessing she meant the paintings of Snow were nude too.

“Not me,” Elisa said, starting for the stairs with me close behind, “although I’ve posed for my fair share.”

I wasn’t going to ask more on the subject, but as we reached the top of the stairs, I saw that I didn’t have to—there in front of us, covering the entirety of the wall, was a very realistic, very detailed nude portrait of her reclining on a sofa.

Stepping up to the painting, I was one part amazed at the detail and brushwork, another part stricken with how beautiful her small breasts were with their cute little, pink areolas and perky nipples. She was reclining in a position on her side so the top one sagged in, giving it a feel that it was larger than seemed the case, and they’d captured the shadow of that curve perfectly. Honestly, sometimes smaller breasts like this were a real turn-on, and in this case, one hundred percent so.

Damn, it was perfect. A perfect painting, perfect body, perfect everything.

When Elisa cleared her throat, I realized she was still standing there, watching me stare at this nude painting of her. All I could do was smile and say, “It’s really well done.”

She laughed, and turned back to the painting with a nod of her head, and when I saw we weren’t moving yet, I turned back as well.

I could stare at that thing for hours, but as my eyes moved to the hips, to the golden hair between her legs, there wasn’t much more I wanted at that moment than to see the real thing.

“Nothing to be ashamed of,” Elisa said, standing still so properly, staring at that image of herself nude.

“Not at all,” I agreed, feeling that lately all-too-familiar pressure in my pants.

She glanced over, then down, and smiled. “I see you enjoy it as well. Thank you for your compliment.”

With nothing more on the subject and leaving me quite embarrassed, she took the left hall. I quickly adjusted myself and followed, eyes wide as she told me about this and that famous vase that she’d acquired from Ancient Greece or a wine rack from Pompeii, Italy, three months before the volcano that buried the place.

“I actually paint,” I blurted out suddenly, and totally not on the topic anymore.

She paused, pushing open a door that led to a room that looked like an internal garden. “You don’t say?”

“Yeah, just something I was studying in college, a passion of mine.”

“And you’d like to paint me nude?”

“I—Oh, I didn’t mean it like that.” I took a step back, feeling like I needed to find some way to recover from this, fast, but she laughed.

“You just saw the painting of me back there, and you heard me say I’m not shy about all of that. Why should you be nervous?”

I took a big breath, paused, and then let it out. “It’s not that I wouldn’t love to paint you, I would, of course. It’s just not what I meant by the statement. I was making small talk, shared interest stuff.”

She considered me, then looked me up and down. “I’ll make a deal with you. Jack, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Jack. When we have some down time and know the plan, I’ll let you paint me nude if you let me do the same to you.”

The idea of standing or lying across from this woman nude, both of us painting each other, would normally have made me