Chapter 50 The painting
Isabella POV
When I woke up in the morning, I was so hot, what the fuck was I doing?
I’d always been attracted to Dante, but now I was starting to need him. I wanted all of him all the time. Once I got some of that intensity between us, I didn’t want to let go. A man had never made me feel the way he did. I felt so
sexy and beautiful, whether I was dressed in lingerie with makeup or lying around in a baggy shirt with a clean face. No man had ever made me feel this kind of addiction, of wanting more and more. I wasn’t sure if I could quit.
Now I had to wonder if I was doing this because I had to…or because I wanted to. That’s when I started to cry. I wasn’t the kind of person who cried. Crying was weak and annoying. My mother never did it, and I wasn’t going to start now. But I felt so trapped. I had no one to turn to for help, no one to talk to. I was stuck in this open prison, feeling things for the man who made me his captive. I liked kissing him. Touching him. Fucking him and I knew he felt the same way. Dante felt the same disgusting need I did. He wanted to be between my legs every night and not with other women. He hated me for what I’d done to his family, but he didn’t kill me because he’d
become too attached. I’d become too attached too. What would happen if I didn’t stop this?
Would I ever be free?
Or would I be the one who wound up dead? I couldn’t be the weak one. One of us had to kill the other.and I wasn’t going to let him be the one to pull the trigger. Only one of us could get out of this alive and it was going to be me.
As day went by, and I stayed at his place. He left me a key and the code to get in and out. I didn’t have access to the other floors, and I was curious to know what was there. He worked out, so he must have a gym somewhere. And he killed people, so he must have weapons too. But I didn’t find any. I worked on my painting most of the time, taking advantage of the morning light to get the best colors for the picture. In the beginning, it was strange to paint myself in a sexy way, especially when I knew what happened after this.photo was taken. We fucked nonstop.
But after a few hours, I got over it. I worked on all the specific details, treating the image as if it were a random person instead of myself. I spent a lot of time working on every single color to make sure it was as realistic as possible. I had to mix the paints and add
different concentrations to get the right consistency. Even the smallest touches were a long process because they required so much time and detail.
The days passed, and I kept working, getting so involved in the painting that I became more invested in it than I was at the beginning. I did my best to capture the right tone, to change the colors a little to set the mood. I painted
myself exactly the way he saw me, as a beautiful prisoner that he couldn’t torture but couldn’t release either. By the time I was done, I couldn’t stop staring at it. It was beautiful.
It wasn’t stunning because of me. It was stunning because it captured that moment in time so perfectly. That was the beauty of a painting versus a regular photograph. So much more could be captured with the colors and the texture. It wasn’t identical to the picture, and that was because a picture couldn’t capture the mood..But a painting could. Anyone could look at this painting and feel exactly what I felt, understand exactly what I felt. There was so much passion and restrained lust. There was so much affection and infatuation. I could feel his eyes on me as I stared at it, remembering exactly how it felt when he stared at me with that brooding
gaze. I didn’t just capture my presence in the painting but his. I set my brushes down and continued to look at it, imagining it hanging in his office. It was hard to understand why he would want a painting when he already had me. Why spend time looking at it when he could just look at me in the flesh instead. He wasn’t an art lover or an artistic person. So why did he want it?
And then it hit me. He wanted it because I wouldn’t always be around to look at. Because I would soon be a memory. And he wanted to remember exactly how it felt to have me, to have me in his captivity, to feel this balance between passion and hate. My fingers started to shake, but I forced them to steady. Dante had never misled me about his intentions with me. He enjoyed my body, but he would eventually stop my beating heart. He just had to decide when he was ready to do it, after he was finally tired of me. Maybe that was sooner than I realized. There was no time to waste.
The next time he was at my apartment, I would have to pull the trigger.and kill this sick monster.