Two men, fully dressed, reclined on the grass, having what seemed to be an intense conversation. Sitting next to the men and staring directly at the viewer was a woman, entirely naked. The men paid no attention to her nor to the woman behind them bathing in a stream. Mona wondered if the painting was Manet’s commentary on the art establishment, more interested in talk than the world around them. The woman was nature in the raw and the men wanted nothing to do with her. It didn’t surprise her in the least that Malcolm would want to recreate such a painting and rectify what he undoubtedly considered a moral failing on the part of the men.
Curious, Mona walked to the back room door and peeked inside. Malcolm had wasted no time preparing for the assignation. Instead of wooden floors, she found lush green grass under her feet. Instead of a ceiling, she saw a hazy blue sky. And instead of walls, she saw a silver stream through the trees. The day was halcyon. It looked like someone’s memory of a perfect day. She gazed around her and saw that nothing remained of the back room but the door, freestanding, like a portal to another world. Now she understood that in some mysterious way it was. Another world of Malcolm’s creation.
Somewhere close by people talked. She heard their voices, low but unmistakably male. Mona undressed, dropping her silk skirt and blouse onto the grass. She walked barefoot and naked toward the sound of the men. She spied them before they spied her, sitting beside their picnic blanket in their black suits as they exchanged friendly fire over something silly and political. Malcolm she recognized at once. The other man seemed familiar, but she knew her mind was tricking her. She’d never seen him before. She hid herself behind the tree and studied him. He had dark reddish-brown hair in a modern Brutus cut. His eyes were dark, but not black like Malcolm’s. They were midnight blue instead—she was sure of it even from a distance. Midnight blue eyes and a midnight smile as he spoke. He seemed the sort of man who made all his business deals in a bedroom, not a boardroom. He had a strong nose, strong chin, and strong jaw beneath his beard, and looked a little younger than Malcolm—thirty-five, maybe. Everything about him exuded quiet strength. He was desperately handsome, and in that alone he reminded her of Malcolm. He wore a ring on his left ring finger, but it wasn’t a wedding ring. It looked like an antique signet ring of sorts, large, ornately engraved, and silver.
Mona stepped into the clearing where the two men sat chatting. Malcolm glanced her way and waved her over, patting the blanket at his side. She sat, slightly self-conscious of her nakedness even as she knew the other man with the signet ring was nothing more than a figment of Malcolm’s imagination. He wasn’t real any more than the little pastel nymphs or the men who’d bid on her at the slave auction. He was no more real than the Roman prison guard who’d searched her body, no more real than the priestesses who served the Minotaur.
Malcolm placed his hand on her thigh as she stretched out on the blanket.
"It’s got to go,” Malcolm was saying to the other man. "It’s outdated, outmoded. It’s a relic.”
"Of course it’s a relic,” the man with the midnight eyes said. "I’m not arguing that point.”
"What is your point?” Malcolm asked.
"My point is…people love their relics. Don’t they?” the midnight man asked, turning to Mona.
"You’re asking me?” she said.
"You run an art gallery, don’t you?” he asked.
"She does,” Malcolm said.
"Then you know better than either of us that people love relics,” the midnight man said. "What painting would sell for more money—a bad painting that’s four hundred years old, or a good painting that was finished yesterday?”
"The four-hundred-year old painting,” she said. "Almost always.”
"See?” the midnight man said. "My point is proven. The monarchy remains intact.”
"You’re trying to end the monarchy?” she asked Malcolm. "A strange quest for an Englishman.”
"He’s a strange Englishman,” the midnight man said.
"It’s a relic of a benighted age,” Malcolm said.
"So is everything valuable that you detest,” the midnight man said. "Including marriage.”
"I surrender,” Malcolm said.
Mona laughed at them. They seemed to be dear old friends, though Malcolm had yet to introduce her to his friend.
"Let’s talk of something more pleasant than my two least favorite M words,” Malcolm said. "Let us talk of my favorite M word.”
"Which is?” Mona asked.
Malcolm leaned over and kissed her softly on the lips.
"Mona,” he said.
"A much better topic of conversation indeed,” the midnight man said. Mona looked at him and found him at her other side. She stiffened when he leaned in to kiss her as well. She assumed he was there to be an audience to her and Malcolm’s lovemaking. It seemed he was to participate as well. Malcolm had never let anyone else have sex with her in these fantasies he conjured for her. Would that change today?
"Trust me, love,” Malcolm said, and it was all she needed to hear. The man with the midnight eyes smiled at her and Mona found herself returning the smile, her naked body blushing crimson. It was all a fantasy anyway, wasn’t it? He was a figment of Malcolm’s imagination, a figment who would be gone the moment she returned to the outside world.
The midnight man kissed her mouth, a kiss both tender and cruel. He held her chin in his hand so that she couldn’t move away from his lips (not that she wanted to). His tongue probed the inside of her mouth as if she were something the man had purchased sight unseen and wanted to see if he’d gotten his money’s worth. She grew warm as he kissed her, warm and then hot. He pushed her gently but forcefully onto her back and kept kissing her. As he kissed her, Malcolm fondled her. She would know his touch blindfolded in the dark. He fondled her breasts while she and the midnight man kissed deeply, his beard tickling her chin and cheeks. Malcolm rolled her nipples around his fingers until they hardened painfully, and when they were too sensitive she thought she would scream, he took one in his mouth and suckled it. She moaned into the midnight man’s mouth and he chuckled at her ardor.
"Beautiful whore,” the midnight man said. "I may have to keep you.”
He laughed again softly before kissing her again roughly. If it were possible, and she doubted it was, the man seemed even more arrogant than Malcolm. She was starting to like him. His tongue touched hers and she felt something electric pass between them. It made her heart jump and her stomach tremble. Or perhaps that was merely from Malcolm’s touch on her naked body as he trailed a hand from her breasts to her thighs and up again.
Malcolm pressed her legs apart and lay between her thighs. She tried to break the kiss when Malcolm opened her labia and licked her, but the midnight man didn’t allow it. He forced her to keep kissing him even as Malcolm lapped at her clitoris. The kiss turned into the sweetest form of torture as Malcolm played with her vagina, rubbing along the front wall and pushing his fingertips gently into her most shivering and sensitive places. To kiss and come at the same time was nearly impossible, but the two men seemed intent on forcing her to do it.
The man with the midnight eyes took her breast in his hand and squeezed it while he deepened the kiss even further, delving into her mouth with his tongue as if to eat her every moan. He tasted like he’d been drinking honeyed wine and eating freshly plucked pears—an intoxicating, delicious mix, like sangria. She opened her mouth wider to him as Malcolm pried her tight pussy open with his thumb and forefinger. She moaned into her new lover’s mouth and she felt him trying not to smile.
Mona sensed Malcolm moving. She couldn’t see what he was doing as the kiss prevented her from raising her head. But she felt it, felt him put the thick tip of his cock into her. She tried lifting her hips, eager for more of him, but he held her down on the ground. He brought his mouth onto her left breast again and sucked. The midnight man kissed her along her jawline, nibbled her earlobe and finally took her right breast into his mouth. Never in her life had two different men sucked her at the same time. Her head fell back and she arched on the ground. Yes…this was it, bliss beyond words. These two hot sucking mouths and her body their property and possession. The man with the midnight eyes took her breast in his hand and squeezed it. He plucked at the nipple. He tugged it and twisted it, not viciously but not gently, and the sensation pieced her chest all the way to her back. The man with the midnight eyes stared at her breast while he fondled and sucked her. He seemed to find her mesmerizing, almost as if he were as surprised to be here doing this deed as she was. Who was he? He seemed far more substantial than the shades and shadows of people Malcolm had conjured in his other fantasies. He breathed the word "lovely” before kissing her nipple again. She twined her fingers into his rust-colored hair. She found him impossibly beautiful. Malcolm had done well with this fantasy man. Perhaps Malcolm had read her mind and found her ideal lover. She wouldn’t put it past him.