Read Online House of Glass by Jen Christie - Free Book Online Page B

night would unfold.
    Mr. St. Claire returned carrying a handful of candles. He lit one and placed it on the floor beside me. Then, he went to a table and lit two more. A soft, warm light filled the attic. I saw much better and I could even discern the shapes beneath some of the covered items. A piano, draped over and piled high with boxes filled an entire corner. There were silver candelabras on top. Furniture was everywhere. I saw a dining table and chairs, their wooden legs visible beneath the skirt of linen. A spiral staircase that led straight to the roof, covered by a door. There was so much that my eyes couldn’t take it all in.
    “What are you doing?” I asked him.
    He was pulling huge papers out of a box and when he was done, he dragged another chair close to mine, and then he sat down. He held a pencil in his hand.
    “I am going to draw you.”
    A strange feeling of pleasure overcame me. “Me? Why?”
    “Don’t you know the answer to that? I believe you just gave it a while back in the garden. What was that you said? Beauty? Life?”
    He stood and came over to me. “I’m going to pose you.”
    His fingers grazed my chin, moving it ever so slightly toward the window. Everything slowed down for me, the sound of him moving, the storm outside. My breathing came faster and I couldn’t help but open my eyes and look at him.
    I could hear the quick inhalation of his breath. “No,” he said, “don’t look at me like that.” There was an anger in him that I had not heard before. “Never like that when I draw you,” he said, and he brushed his fingers over my eyelids, closing my eyes, and my vision went dark, though my world was drenched in sounds and smells.
    “Remember that moment when I found you? When you had fallen into the jungle?” he asked.
    “Yes.” I was whispering.
    “Think of that moment.” He removed his hands, and I felt a cold rush of air and knew that he had left my side. “Open your eyes.”
    As soon as I opened my eyes, I was no longer in the dusty attic. I was back there, in that awful place, and it was only he and I in a tumbling world of vines and earth that threatened to overtake us.
    “Yes,” he said. “That.” There was a charcoal pencil in his hand and it was darting furiously, angrily over the paper. His dark brows were furrowed and his eyes were greedy and came to my face again and again. There was brusqueness to his movements, almost as if his hand couldn’t move fast enough.
    He stared at me, and I in turn stared at him. The candles painted him in shadows and then small flickers of light chased them away. He looked eerie and beautiful.
    I wondered about him, about that dark nature he referred to, because it seemed more intense than dark to me at that moment. To see him in front of me, he was an artist, not an heir, or a criminal, or a scandal. The set of his eyes, the way he gripped the charcoal and his muscles flexed with a determined grace, I knew that he was a man who would coax what he wanted from the world and if it didn’t comply, he would force it.
    “You are staring, Reyna.” The sound of his voice, deep and resonating, surprised me.
    “I was. But you are, as well.”
    An enormous bolt of lightning exploded just outside the window and we were illuminated in a brilliant whiteness. Goose bumps rose on my skin, drawing my nipples to tight points, and I felt exposed with just a thin cotton gown covering me. His eyes roved over me, and I was suddenly aware that only a thin layer of cotton lay between my skin and his eyes. My thoughts returned to the other night, when I was so wild. I wished that same woman would leap out of me right then and there, but I only turned my head away slightly, flushing in the darkness.
    He laughed quietly. “I can’t figure you out, Reyna. How is it that you are innocent one moment, and a wanton the next?”
    There was no explanation that I could put into words. How could I explain the effect of the glass house? The fact that it gave