She heard him walk away and settle into the desk chair behind her. Moments later, the air was filled with the soft scrape of the pencil against paper.
The room was quiet except for that, and to keep herself from drowning within her own head, she told herself to focus on the things she could hear. The soft scratch of the pencil, the distant orchestra, her own heartbeat.
She had never been looked at like this. Not examined for flaws or assessed for value, the way her mother used to measure her before social calls. Thomas was not searching for herinadequacies to memorize them and frequently toss them in her face to make her question her worth.
Jane could feel the difference in the quality of his attention – it wasacquisitive, she thought, it was the gaze of someone who wanted to possess what they were seeing. Not in any diminishing sense. The way one would desire to possess a thing they find remarkable.
It made warmth pool low in her belly, which was inconvenient, because it made her want to burrow in a small hole and hide away until it had passed.
She wasn't certain how much time had passed – though she knew long enough that her arms had begun to ache slightly and the distant music that reached her ears had changed key – before she became acutely aware of what she was doing. Standing unclothed in a locked room at her friend's ball while her husband drew her from a desk chair eight feet away. The reality of it settled over her like cold water.
She turned slowly to face him. Thomas looked up from the paper immediately, as though he had not been entirely focused on it, his eyes focusing on hers in question.
“Someone could come,” she said, inhaling deeply as she noticed the unintended sultry tone of her voice. “Someone could hear us in here, or notice we're both missing, or–”
She glanced down at the paper in his hands. “And that. Someone could see that. Do you not think this is dangerous in the slightest?”
Jane had made her way to his desk and she placed her hand on the top, leaning forward slightly, so Thomas had to look up at her.
He set the pencil down, rose from the chair and walked around the room to her in four steps. Jane did not move, unable to resist the familiar burst of warmth in her as his scent permeated the air around her once more.
“No one will see it,” he stated as a matter of fact. “I would not allow it.”
“You cannot guarantee–”
“Jane.”
He uttered her name in such a reverent manner, his voice low as though he could not bear to let any one else know of it.
“This is mine,” His eyes moved over her slowly and came back to her face. “All of this. What you've given me to look at. What I've put on that paper. It belongs to no one else. I would sooner burn it than allow someone else to –”
Thomas stopped as something moved through his expression, fierce and unguarded for just a moment. “You have my word.”
She believed him. That was the thing she kept running into – she believed him, and she had not expected to.
“What do you feel?” she asked, and then immediately felt the heat rise in her face, because she had not planned to ask that. “When you draw me. What do you – I only wondered if it was purely an artistic – if it was just –”
“No,” he said. “It is not simply artistic.”
She held his gaze. “Then show me.”
He was still for a moment. Then he reached back to the desk and picked up the pencil, and she thought he was going to return to the drawing, but instead he brought it to her skin. The blunt side, not the point – he drew it along her collarbone, slowly, watching her face.
“Here,” he said quietly. “The line of this. And here... and here as well.”
The pencil moved to the curve of her shoulder. Down her arm, the length of it, then up to her chest and down her sternum as she felt her breathing change.
“Every time I put this on paper, what I feel is –” He stopped as pencil traced the soft curve of her waist. “Want. I just want. There is nothing abstract about it.”
Her hand found his wrist.
Not to stop him. Just to feel that his pulse was as unsteady as hers.
He set the pencil aside. His hands – both of them now, warm and slightly rough from old war-scars – found her waist and drew her in, and she went along, pressing her palms flat against his chest. She could feel his heart through the fabric of his shirt, the strong, steady thrum of it calming her nerves slightly.
“We should go back,” she said, and made no move to do so.
“We should,” he agreed, and lowered his head.
