Free Intaglio: The Snake and the Coins by Danika Stone Page A

thigh, the bike creaking slightly as she did.  Her
hands were no longer shaking.  She ran them up and over his shoulders;
wrapping herself around him, shifting nearer as she did. 
    The kiss dragged
on.  She pressed her breasts up against his chest, her hips tight against
his.  There were small mewling sounds coming from the back of Ava’s
throat, sending stabs of lust directly to his groin.  Cole could feel his
restraint wavering, , and he knew if he wanted to keep himself under control
that he needed to end this right fucking now . 
    With a
frustrated sigh, he broke contact, letting his cheek rest against hers, panting
against her ear, unwilling to pull away.  He stroked her hair, then ran
his fingers down her shoulders to her back.  He didn’t want the night to
end, even though it was already very early morning.  Ava’s breathing had
slowed, and she glanced up at him, her eyes wide and luminous like the morning
sea after a night time storm. 
    Calm .
    “I’m gonna go,”
Cole said.  “I’ve got to get a bit of sleep.  I need to start working
on the back of the sculpture to get it done for the show.”
    Ava nodded, her
fingers sliding down the front of his jacket and finding his hands.  Her
gaze fluttered down to their joined fists, and then back up to his face.
    “This was...”
she said, one corner of her mouth lifting, “a good date.”
    “It was,” he
agreed with a smile.  “And thanks,” Cole added, “for all your help with the
sculpture tonight.”
    Ava grinned,
letting go of him and stepping back from the bike.
    “Anytime.”
    He pulled on his
helmet and lifted a hand in farewell, starting the bike back up.  In
seconds he was gone, heading away from her before he could change his mind. 
     

Chapter 10:  The Snake and
the Coins
    Ava was painting
in the studio late the next afternoon when she heard the heavy tread of a man
walking up the stairs.  She assumed it was Chim so she didn’t turn around,
focused instead on getting the mix of colour and light correctly balanced in
the painting.  She had had the dream again in the hours after Cole had
dropped her off, and had awoken with a burning need to capture it in
paint. 
    The painting was
of a landscape, she realized now, though the perspective was completely
skewed.  The greens, blues and golds were actually a vision looking down onto a place, not a view from the side.  Though it wasn’t any place she
remembered visiting, but the strange familiarity of it left her throat
aching.  In the last hours of painting, the shape she had thought might be
a snake on top of a shower of gold coins had morphed into a river heading
toward the nearby sea.  The arc of blue, she now saw, was the sandy
shoreline next to a cluster of gold-leafed trees.  She’d just been seeing
it from above .  She grinned, lifting her brush off of the canvas,
feeling things starting to fit together. 
    She was in flow.
    Absorbed in
painting, Ava jumped as someone’s hand touched her shoulder.
    “Shit!” she
yelped, spinning around. 
    It was Kip
Chambers, his face rapt with awe, engrossed in her painting.
    “Sorry,” he
muttered, but his eyes were on the painting in front of them.  “Ava, this
is just… just… wow .” He stepped forward, getting closer to the impasto
surface, eyebrows pulled together in concentration.  “Shit!  Raya
wasn’t kidding about this.”
    Ava glanced
around, unnerved by his unexpected appearance in her space.  Over in
Marcus’s studio, she could see Raya Simpson, her hands slicing through the air
as she talked with Chim.  The two of them had some kind of folder laid out
on the table before them. ‘Chim’s official portfolio,’ Ava
realized.  Simpson and Marcus were chatting in low tones while he pointed
at his canvas, his hands tracing different elements, gesturing at the faded
echoes of the portraits underneath.
    “I thought when
Raya called,” Kip said, “she was talking about a graffiti piece in the yards,
but