“I don’t,” I say quietly.
“Ah. Then all this is…?”
“This is private.” I’m at his elbow, craning to see over the arm he has braced against the doorframe. I can’t remember which painting I left on the easel.
Damn it, it’s the abstract painting featuring the color of his eyes…every shade, in every type of lighting. Not that he’ll recognize it for what it is, right?
He stalks forward, canting his head aside. “This color looks familiar, Baz. Where have I seen it before?”
Yeah, he’s obsessed with his own beauty. He’s going to figure it out.
“Forget about that.” I skip in front of him, blocking his way. “Let’s go back out to the living room.”
He takes me gently by the shoulders and moves me aside, picking up a painting of gold lines, luminous and glinting, the exact color and sheen of his hair. I chew my thumbnail, bouncing lightly on my heels while he inspects it.
“Baz,” he says softly, picking up another painting, a small vignette. “What are these?”
“Pieces I don’t want to display or sell.”
“Why not? They’re very good.”
“They’re special.” Shit, I’m blushing. I’m heating up all over. “It’s hard to explain.”
Dorian turns the full force of his beautiful eyes on me. “Try.”
I knit my fingers together behind my back like a kid caught doing something naughty. The truth jerks out of me in broken phrases. “I’ve really been wanting to paint you. Dying to. But I can’t, and even if I chose to, I couldn’t paint you from memory, when you’re not in the room. That’s a no-no for someone like me. So I’ve been painting…bits of you, sort of. Impressions, lines, colors, shapes…it’s a way around the magic. I can’t help it.” I sink onto my stool, arms hanging limply. “You inspire me. Weirdly, when I’m painting ‘not you’ like this, that’s when I feel…” I break off, my pulse veering wildly into dangerous territory.
“When you feel what?” His voice is quiet, pacifying—the hunter speaking to the deer—but there’s a line of tension in it that betrays his eagerness.
“That’s when I feel most connected to you. Like I can understand you. Like I might want to say yes.”
A pounding silence. Me, emptied of my secret, and him, frozen by hope.
“Then by all means,” he says, “keep painting ‘not me.’”
“But I can’t sell or show them. I’ve put too much of myself into them.”
“You feel protective of them.” He nods. “I understand. Basil used to feel the same way about certain pieces of his. They were for his eyes only. And mine. Did you know he painted me several times? There were multiple versions before he made the One.”
“I didn’t realize that.”
“He used to speak of a strange feeling he would get sometimes while he worked, like a tugging sensation in his chest. He kept sketching and painting me in different ways, some clothed, some nude. The morning after we made love for the first time, he began the painting I own now.”
“And you didn’t realize what it was.”
“Not until it began to change. One morning, I cut my hand, and it healed almost instantly. Later I noticed a red line in the same spot on the painting’s hand. That’s when I began to suspect what was going on. And from there—well—my experiments turned into excesses, and occasional indulgence became perpetual debauchery.” He sets down the vignette he’s holding. “Keep them if you like. The excursion I’ve planned for us tomorrow should give you a fresh wave of creativity. Just don’t get too attached to any new paintings our trip may inspire. Artists have to yield pieces of their souls for the evaluation and censure of the masses, you know.”
“And for the critics,” I add.
“Oh, the critics. They’re the worst.” His smile doesn’t reach his eyes or pop his dimples. A long, slow sadness shines in the blue depths of his gaze, and he’s not pushing it away, he’s holding it. Feeling it.
“Oh, Dorian,” I murmur, rising from the stool, and I move to him impulsively, wrapping both arms around him, comforting him even as my heart sinks. “You still miss him.”
Every muscle in his face tightens, hardens with the tension of resistance. But he only half-raises the walls before letting them crumble again, leaving himself open.
He draws in a heavy, shuddering breath, his body bowing in the circle of my arms. “I never let myself feel it much,” he whispers. “I was so angry with him. So full of grief and love that I couldn’t stand it. Ididn’t know what to do with it. So I shoved it away. I kept shoving it away, into the painting, so it was never purged. It never quite left me, even after he was long gone. But you were right, what you said that night at Scoundrel. I need to feel it. I think that’s the only way I can heal and—move on to something new.”
And just like that, my sinking heart rises again, bobbing to the surface with a thrilling lurch.
