Then, the kitchen.
My stomach rolled over. There was a nest of shredded paper. And there, huddled in the center, was a creature of pure lines and shadows.
Me.
But again, not pathetic. He had drawn the curve of my bare leg emerging from the paper with a loving, obsessive detail. He had shaded the hollow of my throat where my pulse must have been hammering.
And then, the images from last night.
The heat flared in my belly, sudden and violent, a physical echo of the charcoal lines.
He had drawn me on the floor. He had drawn the moment they pinned me.
In my memory, it was a medical assault. Cold pads. Rough hands. Screaming.
In the book, it was… worship.
There was a sketch of Daniel straddling my legs. He looked like a titan, a mountain of protective mass. And me, my head thrown back, mouth open in a silent scream, my hands clawing at his forearms. It looked like a Renaissance painting of a martyrdom or a ravishment. It was explicitly, undeniably erotic.
But it was the next page that broke me.
It was a close-up. Just my hips. And a hand.
Simon’s hand.
I somehow recognized the long, slender fingers, the square nails, the stains on the skin. He had drawn his own hand disappearing inside me.
The detail was obscene. He had captured the wetness, the slick sheen of my fluids coating his wrist. He had drawn the way my thighs clenched around his forearm.
But he hadn't drawn it like a medical procedure. He hadn't drawn it like triage.
He had drawn it like a prayer.
There were notes scribbled in the margin, frantic and barely legible.
Texture: Velvet/Fire.
Response: Immediate. Desperate.
She tastes like salt.
I dropped the book on the duvet as if it had bitten me.
"Oh god."
I pressed my hands to my face, my cheeks burning. The smell of ink and graphite seemed to rise from the pages, mixing with the scent of brine and blackberries that was currently fermenting on my own skin.
I squeezed my thighs together, a reflex, but it was the wrong move. The friction sent a jolt of electricity straight to the center of me, finding the tender, swollen ache that Simon had left behind.
My body remembered.
It remembered the fingers, the rhythm, the way the "Graphite One" had leaned over me, whispering into my skin, demanding I break.
I realized they aren't looking at me with pity,I thought, the realization settling over me like a heavy, suffocating blanket.
People looked at "Graduation Girl" with pity. They looked at the viral video and saw a pathetic creature who couldn't control her biology. They saw a victim.
Simon didn't see a victim.
