Free Mistral's Daughter by Judith Krantz Page A

tried again,
without success.   Now, the spell of
inaction broken, Maggy gathered herself up with all her courage and pressed
forward, willing herself to open to him.   Every muscle in her long, strong legs was tensed, her toes were pointed,
her hands clutched the mattress and her back arched as she raised her pelvis
upward, his jutting, hot spur of flesh the only focus in the universe.   There was a flash of pain but she ignored it,
launching herself anew, met halfway by his mighty thrust.   Suddenly he was inside of her, suddenly the
spear, point and shaft and hilt, now a heavy fullness of mortal flesh, was
encompassed by her body and they lay still, panting like two gladiators evenly
matched who pause to salute each other before renewing the struggle.
    "I didn't know," he
whispered, his astonishment so great that it had only commonplace words.
    "I didn't tell you.
Would it have made a difference?"
    "No, no." Now they
lay on their sides, looking into each other's eyes.   One of Mistral's arms supported her shoulders
and, with his tree hand, he gently probed the damp tangle of her pubic hair,
finding the tender flesh he sought, and caressed it stealthily, steadily,
without stopping, even when she begged, until she cried out in bewildered joy.   Only then did he take his own serious
pleasure, but still carefully, with an unaccustomed caution, that added to the
swelling, rising fever that shocked him with its power when at last he burst
into her as potent as a great bull.
     

5
     
     
    The
first time Julien Mistral painted Maggy, the first time he went after the
shadow between her breasts, the first time he dipped his brush, unthinkingly,
into vermilion and painted that shadow, he heard a cosmic "Ah ha!"
rock his brain.   Stunned, almost knocked
off his feet, he saw, he saw as he had never seen before, he saw with his
entrails as he ravished the canvas, his brush flying almost out of control, his
fingers numb with discovery, the temperature of his body rising so that he had
to tear off his shirt, his impatience to follow his vision so great that
finally he dropped his brushes and squeezed paint onto the canvas directly from
the tubes.
    He was painting at last as he
had always known he could paint, without inhibition, without calculation, with
freedom so vast that it was as if the walls and the ceiling of the studio had
been knocked away and he was standing under the blue, open sky.
    Fascinated, Maggy watched
him, as she lay motionless on a heap of green pillows, not daring to move
until, long after an hour had passed, he finally stopped his attack on the
canvas and dropped at her side, radiant, bathed in sweat.
    In a gesture he had never
dreamed of before he wiped his paint-smeared hands on her pubic hair, branding
her with smears of green and Titian red as if she were another kind of
canvas.   He tore open his pants, without
taking them off, and plunged into her violently, grinding her down on the
pillows with his big, hot, wet body until he found a huge release that he met
with a sound that was a roar a triumph.
    Weeks passed while Mistral
painted Maggy.   He knew that something
about the way light interacted with her flesh had beenthe inspiration
for his breakthrough.   It was not only a
technical matter, a phenomenon that could be explained by the translucent
whiteness of her skin or the way her hair broke into shafts of fire or the fact
that his imagination was prepared, why he did not know and did not ask, to
seize on her particular physical qualities and use them to make the leap
forward.   It was also his spiritual
conviction that light poured out from the inside of her body, emanating from
it, so that when he painted her the very canvas became a source of
light. Maggy knew that something surpassingly important had happened to him but
when she asked him about it the few words he found were not enough.   Since the experience was not an intellectual
one, it escaped words, and Mistral felt a superstitious awe