“I needed space,” he said.
My voice came out quieter than I wanted. “From what?”
He didn’t answer. His silence wasn’t absence, it was pressure. It filled the air between us until I felt it in my throat.
So I turned slightly, forcing the words past the quickening in my chest. “Or from who?”
Something flickered behind his composure, a tightening around his jaw, a muscle working just beneath the skin.
“Be careful, Miss Carter,” he said softly. “You might not like the answer.”
My breath caught. “So I do have something to do with it,” I murmured.
He tilted his head, voice low, dangerous in its quiet. “Do you want to?”
“I asked first.”
“That’s not how power works.”
I turned to face him fully now, the brush still trapped between my fingers, my wrist stained green. “Then what are we doing?”
“I don’t know,” he said after a pause that made my stomach twist tighter. “And that should concern both of us.”
It should have. But it didn’t. Not the way it should have.
“What if I said I wasn’t afraid?” I asked.
“I’d say you were lying.”
“I don’t want to play games,” I said, voice hushed, though my body betrayed me, the pulse at my throat, the tremor in my breath, the tingling warmth spreading low in my belly.
He looked down at my mouth before finding my eyes again. “Neither do I,” he murmured. “But you keep showing up in my blind spots, Edwina. And I’m not sure whether that’s by accident or design.”
The space between us pulsed, heavy with breath and something unspoken.
He moved then, reaching for the brush resting in the jar beside me. His hand didn’t shake; his control was infuriating. “You’re thinking too hard,” he said, cleaning the bristles with measured movements. “You have to feel the color. Not control it.”
He stirred the paints with unhurried focus, each motion measured and quietly absorbing in its rhythm. Then he handed me the brush, fingers brushing mine for the briefest second.
The touch was small, barely contact, but it jolted through me, a current that started in my hand and spiraled downward until the ache settled deep in my core. My breath hitched.
He leaned closer, his words a whisper of heat against my ear. “Here. Try.”
I obeyed without thought. My hand moved, guided by the faint rhythm of his breathing. When the brush touched the canvas, it no longer felt like painting but a response pulled from somewhere deeper, the space between us tightening, charged, alive with current. He didn’t touch me again, but I felt him. Every shift of his breath brushed against my neck, every pause filled with the sound of our shared silence. My pulse throbbed beneath my skin, my body caught between restraint and hunger.
Each stroke of the brush seemed to pull something from me, something raw and trembling. The air felt charged, thick enough to taste, and with every breath, that tingling ache in my core deepened until I wasn’t sure if I wanted to step away, or closer.
The painting blurred in front of me. All I could feel was him.
When I faltered, he didn’t correct me with words. He simply placed his hand over mine, his touch unhurried but commanding, the weight of it enough to guide me back into motion. His palm fit over my knuckles with a heat that seemed to hum beneath my skin, his chest close enough behind me that I could feel the faint rhythm of his breath, deep and measured, brushing the space between us.
“Keep going,” he said, voice grazing just behind my ear, low enough that I could feel it more than hear it.
I trembled, the brush slipping slightly before finding its rhythm again. My body was trembling, caught somewhere between awareness and surrender.
When it was done, I didn’t pull away. Neither did he. His hand stayed over mine, still guiding, still holding. The quiet between us thickened until it felt almost visible, pressing againstmy ribs. My eyes drifted downward to where our fingers rested together, his skin roughened, warm, veins shifting faintly with each pulse. My hand looked smaller beneath his. We stayed like that, suspended.
He didn’t move, not even when I turned, slowly, until my shoulder brushed against him. He was already watching me. His eyes found mine, and for one fragile second, something inside me snapped its restraint. My cheek grazed his.
