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He was nude, but that word didn’t do him justice. The candlelight made his skin glow warm from the broadening of his shoulders to the curve of his feet. His nipples were like dark halos against the swell of his chest, his stomach was flat to the grace of his belly button as if an angel had touched that flawless skin and left a delicate imprint, a line of hair dark gold, almost auburn, traced the edge of his stomach, and ran in a line down, down to curl around him, where he lay swollen, partially erect, caught forever between sleep and passion. The curve of his hip was the most perfect few inches of skin that I’d ever seen. That curve drew the eye down to the line of his thigh, the long sweep of his legs.

I remembered with Jean-Claude’s memories what the curve of that hip had felt like under my fingertips. I remembered arguing about whose hip was the softest, the most perfect. Belle Morte had said that the lines of both their bodies were the closest to perfection she’d ever seen on a man. Jean-Claude had always believed that Asher was the more beautiful, and Asher had believed the same of Jean-Claude.

The artist had painted white wings on the sleeping figure, so detailed they looked as if they’d be soft if you could touch them. The wings were huge and reminded me of renaissance pictures of angels. They seemed out of place on that golden body.

Psyche was peering around the edge of one wing, so that it shielded her upper body, yet revealed a shoulder, the edge of her body, down to that first curve of hip, but most of her was lost behind Cupid’s body. I frowned up at the picture. I knew that shoulder, the curve of the ribs under that white skin. Though traced with golden candlelight, I knew the line of that body. I’d expected Psyche to be Belle Morte, I’d been wrong.

I looked past the long black curls that didn’t so much hide the figure as decorate it, and the face peering around the candle’s edge was Jean-Claude’s. It took me a second to be sure, because he seemed more delicately beautiful than normal, until I realized that he was wearing makeup—that centuries-old version of it, anyway. Things had been done to soften the line of his face, make his lips more pouting. But the eyes, the eyes were unchanged, with their black lace of lashes and that drowning deep color.

The painting was too large for me to stand next to the fireplace and see it all, but there was something about the eyes of the Cupid figure. I had to move close to see that they were open a mere slit, enough to show the cold blue fire that I’d seen when the hunger was upon Asher.

Jean-Claude touched my face, and it made me jump. Damian had moved back, giving us space. Jean-Claude traced the tears on my cheeks. The look in his eyes said clearly that I was crying tears for both of us. He couldn’t afford to appear weak in front of Musette. And I couldn’t help it.

We both turned to Asher, but he was standing as far away as the room would allow. He had turned away, so that all you could see of his face was that golden fall of hair. His shoulders were slightly hunched, as if he’d been struck.

Musette came to stand on the other side of Jean-Claude. “Our mistress thought, since you are together again as of old, that you would enjoy this little reminder of days gone by.”

The look I gave her around Jean-Claude’s shoulder was not a friendly one. I saw the girl who was her pomme de sang on the other side of the couch. I hadn’t even been aware she’d moved away from the fireplace. If the bad guys had wanted to take me out, they could have done it, because I had seen nothing for a few minutes but the painting.

“The painting is our guest gift to our host, but we have a more personal gift just for Asher.”

Angelito moved up beside her like a dark mountain, a much smaller painting in his hands. There were remnants of the paper and twine that had covered it like a discarded skin on the floor. It was half the size of the other, but obviously in the same style, realistic, but in glowing colors, hyperrealistic, very Titian.

The only light in the painting was firelight,