Moments where she was in front of me—on our cliffside, at the beach, or in one of our rooms. Moments I pulled from memory—her laugh and her profile, the way she looks on a surfboard or when she’s writing in her notebooks.
“I can’t believe you were always right there, and it took me so long to see you,” she whispers. Tears shimmer in her eyes when she lifts her head to look at me. “If I had only met you first, what would life be like right now?”
“If you had met me first, we would have just ended up here anyway.” I walk around the bench, taking her into my arms and letting the blanket on her shoulders fall to the floor. “Or maybe you would’ve fallen for me right away, and he never would’ve gotten to know what it’s like to be loved by you.” I pull back, swiping a thumb beneath her eyes to take away her tears. “The highlight reel, remember?”
She sighs deeply, but finally nods.
Keeping her head against my chest, she turns, flipping another page of my old sketchbook. “You did all of these before…everything.” She looks up at me, brown eyes glimmering. “Have you drawn me since?”
I shake my head. “I’ve been too afraid.” I cup her cheek, dragging my thumb over her bottom lip. “You still feel like a reverie to me. Something fleeting, like you could disappear. I’vebeen terrified to cement you like this, because it would make the pain of losing you again unbearable.”
“Draw me,” she whispers. “Draw me right now. Just like this.”
“Elena…” I sigh as she steps back, forcing me to drop my hold. The golden light casts against her naked figure like she’s being bathed in warmth. Ethereal and glowing.
“I know what I’m asking, Augustus.” The plea in her sparkling eyes makes my knees buckle. “Please.”
I can’t pretend I don’t still hold fear of losing her again, but I’m not sure I’ll ever escape that entirely. The conviction in her voice pierces that fear, and I realize there is no risk with her not worth taking.
I relent, grabbing my newest sketchbook and my bag of charcoal pencils and erasers from the corner of my desk beside the workbench. “Lie down on the couch,” I rasp, nodding toward it.
She saunters over, sprawling herself out and turning to face the chair that sits across from it. I sit, crossing one leg over the other as I position the canvas paper on my thigh before pulling a sharpened pencil from my bag and fastening a spare behind my ear.
When I glance up at her, she’s smiling like I lassoed the moon and handed it to her, and I have no idea how or why I got lucky enough to have her look at me like that. To have her in front of me like this. To even be granted the privilege of witnessing her existence.
“Are you going to draw me like one of your French girls?” Her voice is pure silk, causing my hardening cock to pulsate.
I snort, shaking my head at the reference. “You’re my only girl.”
She shifts onto her side, draping her arm over the flawless curvature of her body. The other tucks behind her head,propping it up as she smiles at me with sultry eyes so molten they appear nearly caramel in this light.
She’s not donning any sapphires, no jewelry at all, outside the two small bars through each of her nipples. Elena’s completely bared to me, dressed only in the ink across her skin—the ink I put there.
The violets and vines on her forearm meet the serpent snaked around her thigh where her hand rests at her hip. The dripping stars and crescent moon across her sternum cup her perfect breasts, and as she bats her eyes at me, her neck stretches, revealing the cluster of stars behind her ear.
She’s art personified, and I am a god among men to be granted the privilege to draw her like this. To take this vision of her and make it eternal, knowing it’ll only ever be for my eyes.
“I can’t believe you kept all of those things. The drawings. The poems. All of my writing.”
“They’re important,” I respond, dragging my pencil across the page. “You’re a storyteller, Elena. Each piece of art you create, or that’s created with you in mind, is like a page to your own story. I’d never throw them away.”
“I guess…” She sighs. “I guess I didn’t think I was a story worth telling.”
“Your voice is my favorite song. Your words are my favorite book.” I lift my eyes to hers, studying the curvature of her hip and waist, the flare of her breasts. “Your body is my favorite canvas, and your face my favorite sculpture. You are art to me.”
Her bottom lip trembles, like there is something she wants to say but can’t speak. Eventually, she closes her mouth, offering me a soft smile as I continue to draw in silence.
“Would you ever tattoo me again?” she asks after a while.
“I’m always itching to touch you, Elena. In whatever way you’ll have me.”
“Is it the same, though? As drawing me? Or my writing poems for you? Are the tattoos the way you show…” she trails off.
“I consider it art, of course. I love doing it. I like that people offer me a piece of their skin, that they trust me to create something beautiful on it, but at the end of the day, the tattoos are for them. It’s their art, I’m just helping bring it to life. It’s rewarding, and it makes me feel like I matter, but it’s not the same as sketching something from my own head.” I sigh. “It’s different with you. With you it’s…possession. It’s ownership. I’m taking that slice of your flesh—your body and your soul—and making it mine. I have never felt that way tattooing someone else before, but it’s not the same as when I draw you. The drawings are an appreciation.”
“That’s so hot,” she murmurs. “I like being owned by you.”
I smile to myself. “I know.”
