“Doodles?” Beckett made a rude noise. “You got my arse perfectly, and you haven’t even seen it proper yet.”
“I have a good imagination,” Arden said primly.
“I’ll say. Let me look?”
“No.”
If this was Jack, he wouldn’t have pushed beyond that.
This was not Jack.
“I want to,” Beckett said.
“Trust me, you don’t.” Arden couldn’t have picked a worse thing to say, could he?
Beckett was instantly suspicious. “Why?” His voice pitched up a little. “You drawing other men’s arses in here?”
Arden gasped. “No! Just yours.”
“Then why can’t I look? What won’t I like?”
Arden’s gaze locked with his. “There are other sketches of you.”
“Other than my arse?”
Arden nodded. “Yes. They were from m-memory, not, um. Not my imagination.”
Beckett smiled at that, lookingpleased.
At Arden’s discomfort, that smile slowly drained. “Arden?” he said.
Arden gave a jerky nod.
Beckett opened the book and paged through, starting from the most recent ones that Arden had sketched just this afternoon, and moving ever closer to the ones he’d sketched when he first arrived at Greylag.
“I—” Arden broke off, then tried again when Beckett glanced up, waiting for him to continue. “Um. Never mind.” What was there to say, anyway?
Beckett returned his attention to the sketches. He paused at the double-page spread of his own body arching over the viewer. Something dark and satisfied flashed over his face, and he slid Arden a heavy look.
And then he reached the double-page spread of his face, sketched over and over from all different angles but always with the same expression.
He stopped.
Arden hadn’t looked at the stupid sketches since he’d drawn them, trying to shake that expression out of his head so he’d stop seeing it every night before he fell asleep.
Beckett was so still, Arden didn’t think he was breathing.
The sketches were rough. Barely more than a suggestion of a form. The eyes, though, and the cruel, beautiful mouth?
Those were drawn in painful, lifelike detail.
Beckett took a deep, slow breath, and lifted his head to look at Arden.
Arden fidgeted, cleared his throat, rubbed the side of his nose even though it didn’t itch, and finally met Beckett’s eyes.
They weren’t, as he’d expected, indignant, or critical, or even defensive. They were soft. A little sad. Arden blinked.
Beckett nudged him gently. “Reckon you should let me keep these ones,” he said.
