"Stay put," I ordered, and strode to the kitchen, muscles loose and easy for the first time in a week.
When I came back, he hadn't moved. I handed him the mug. Our fingers brushed, and he jumped like he'd been tased. I locked eyes with him, let the moment linger a second too long.
He dropped his gaze, but not before I saw the flare of want.
I grinned. He might not know it yet, but he was already mine.
I settled back into the chair, sipped my own coffee, and let the weight of my stare pin him in place while he drank. Every so often, he'd look up and catch me watching, then glance away, like he was embarrassed to be caught thinking about what else my hands could do.
Good. Let him stew in it. Let him squirm.
Eventually, he finished the mug and set it down on the side table, hands still trembling just a little.
"You want to get out of the house for a bit?" I said. "I could use another pair of hands in the workshop."
He nodded, a little too eagerly, then stood and waited for me to lead the way.
I made a show of rising slow, stretching until the hem of my shirt rode up and the scars on my hip flashed in the sunlight. Henoticed. He looked away, but not before I saw the way his pupils dilated.
I caught his wrist as we passed in the doorway, fingers loose but unbreakable.
He froze.
"If you need to stop, you tell me," I said. "Understood?"
He swallowed, throat working, then nodded. "Understood."
I let him go, and we walked out together, my shoulder brushing his as we cleared the hall. I didn't look back. I didn't need to. He followed, just like I knew he would.
The walk to the shop was short, but every step was an exercise in self-control. Newt kept pace a half-step behind, arms folded over his chest, eyes locked on the gravel as if the rocks might spell out the secret to his continued existence.
I didn't say much. Never felt the need to fill silence. The wind was sharp and dry, scented with pine and the distant musk of horse manure, but under that was the clinging resin of fresh-cut timber—my version of holy incense.
The shop sat near the main road, down the driveway from the house, a long two story building with windows clouded by sawdust. My brother Quiad’s apartment was on the top floor.
Clients came and went through the side entrance, never the front, a holdover from the days when my grandfather ran a side business out of the same space and liked to keep things off the books.
I pushed open the door and stood aside so he could enter first. Newt hesitated on the threshold, maybe expecting a trap, then darted in like a deer crossing a two-lane.
The air inside was dense, layered: cut wood, glue, drying shellac, oil, the faintest note of ozone from the old bandsaw's electric motor.
I closed the door, flipped on the overheads. Light poured down in slanted sheets, throwing every speck of dust into sharp relief.
The benches were chaos incarnate—one held the carved body of a guitar, another a set of cherrywood cabinet doors, another a half-finished crossbow I'd started for a client and left to gather a film of dust. Pegboards along the walls were crowded with tools, sorted by size and function, each one in its assigned slot.
He took it all in, blue eyes round with something between awe and longing. I watched him, watched the way he moved—slow, deliberate, almost reverent. He wandered over to a rack of hand planes, reached out and hovered his fingers just over the brass handle of a Lie-Nielsen No. 7, then drew back as if it would bite.
"Go ahead," I said. "It's just a tool."
He glanced at me, waiting for the punchline. There wasn't one. He picked it up, turning it over in both hands, thumb tracing the polished curve of the knob.
For a second, I thought he might ask permission before putting it down, but instead he lined it up exactly with the edge of the workbench, squaring it by sight and touch.
I felt something hot coil in my gut.
He drifted along the wall, stopping to touch a chisel here, a rasp there. Each time, his fingers moved slow, careful not to scar the finish or draw blood. I catalogued every movement, every flex of tendon and micro-gesture, and found myself getting hard beneath my fatigue pants.
Jesus.
