In Clover 18+

Orion's Eyes - The Venus of Neptune

I never anticipated meeting the most beautiful person in the world at Finewaters Academy. I never expected someone of the opposite sex to have such a strong hold over me, and I didn't expect a girl named Clover Vale to strip me of every sermon my parents dressed me in.

The day we met again, I was taken aback. I was shocked at seeing such a face for the first time in years, and even more shocked at how beautiful she had grown up to be. The way her eyes lifted into mine was unnatural. The moment they connected, I couldn't help but believe everything my father had ever told me about girls, because how could someone so perfect not have a flaw somewhere?

I could barely look into her eyes. To me, they held nothing but lies as my father told me most girls' did. They were the color of the morning sky and with tiny stars dancing in them, feigning innocence, but I knew better than to fall into the pools of sin. She was nowhere near innocent, and father made sure I knew that when I met her as a child.

I wondered if she remembered me as I remembered her. If she remembered being the reason my father started whispering sermons into my ear and telling me what a man's purpose was, which wasn't to follow troublesome girls around. I wondered if she remembered that she was my first love, the girl who made me question my parents for the very first time...Because I remembered her. She was hard to forget from her name to her features that stood out like the moon in the naked night sky, but most of all, the way she almost convinced me to commit the biggest sin of turning away from my parents and God.

I never thought I would see her again when her parents moved away from Napels. I never wanted to, especially when my father told me what a girl's intent was. The only time I ever saw her again was in the beauty of pastels or the muted colors of the galaxy. I painted her in secret every day after she left, keeping the memories of my Urania hidden within a canvas.

When he caught me with her, father did something I knew he shouldn't have. He gave me a pill to help me forget that I had sinned by talking to a girl like her, but even at my young age, I knew that something wasn't right. So, I didn't take it. I slipped it in my pocket when he wasn't looking which was why for years he'd thought I'd forgotten her. But I could never. I tried day and night to get her off of my mind, but I couldn't, and that was when I started painting her.

Clover was too beautiful for her own good, and mine too. There was nothing virtuous about the way she looked from her light toffee skin to the point of her nose. I hadn't forgotten the beauty marks that balleted around her face like cocoa pliés on the stars, or the waning gibbous indention beneath her left eye. I hadn't forgotten the soft blue of her eyes or the darkness of her hair, darker than everything beyond our universe.

But I had forgotten that as I grew, she was bound to as well. She was no longer the sweet seven-year-old with uneven braided pigtails. She was much older, a woman, with a beautiful body that I knew I shouldn't have been staring at. Her dusky hair fell over her shoulders in dark spirals, stopping at the peak of her breasts, and my breath spurned at the sight of them. The cut of her top was so low that I couldn't help but to, but I knew that looking at them was wrong so I met her eyes again instead. The eyes I had to beware of.

They were pale blue—the color of Neptune, though she was Venus. 

That day, I could barely speak without withering into a cacoon of broken words and trembling hands. She made me nervous. She made me uncomfortable. She made me hot. The way her eyes melted against my body made me shutter, and an unfamiliar feeling passed through my blood whenever she was close to me. She was so close I could smell her. Her scent invaded my space more than she did, wrapping around me and engraving itself into yet another memory of her that I would never forget.

Her scent was the stars' appearance; golden and strong. She had a smell that I could never quite put into words, but I always compared it to the sound of a siren's song. When she was close by, a strange fruity melody with floral undertones began to permeate the air. Like a crescendoing jasmine covered in peach nectar, but there was also something sweeter glazing it.

Caramel, I guessed.

I loved caramel, I just didn't know it at the time.

I was disgusted with myself on the day we met again.

I was blinded by her beauty and steadied by her breasts. It was my first time seeing a girl in something so...revealing. There was a strict dress code at Finewaters, and she had been the first to ignore it. Maybe that was why I looked. Because I was just curious as to what a girl looked like beneath her top, but even then, I felt dirty. Especially for wanting to see more. For wanting to touch them a little bit.

I wondered if they were as soft as her hand when I shook it. Her skin was soft like the daintiest petal of a buttercup when, and her voice was the opposite. It was laced with the sound of sin, sultry and smoky like leather. Her breath was sweet like candy and her smile was the prettiest thing I'd ever seen.

I wanted her to leave again. For her parents to take her away from me like they did when we were kids.

They needed to get her away from me because, as father said, girls were evil. They would take you away from heaven just to watch you fall to earth and sink through the cold soil before you burned in hell. They were sadists, he said. They enjoyed a man's pain, especially when it was because of them. And the moment my pants tightened around my crotch and the heat from my cheeks rushed to my groin, I believed him. There was no scientific explanation for the way my body was reacting to her, or at least that's what I thought.

I was so clueless at the time. I was so...innocent. So fed on the lies my parents gave me, forcing me to learn from their books instead of the ones everyone else had.

They lied to me, and it took the "devil's whore" to make me see it.