His mouth opens against mine and I let him in and his hand in my hair tightens and I make a sound I've never made before, something between a gasp and a whimper that I'd be mortified about in literally any other context except that I FEEL him react to it, a shudder that moves through his chest and transfers into mine because we're pressed together now, my back against the display case, his body against the front of mine, and the heat of him is everywhere. His chest, his hands, his mouth. I can feel his heart through his shirt. Hammering. Hammering like his body never, ever lets on, like his face would never admit, and that knowledge, that he's as undone as I am, that his composure is a lie and his pulse is telling the truth, does something to me that is beyond crushes and beyond planner entries and beyond anything I've filed in any cabinet.
I pull back. Not far. An inch. His forehead against mine, his hand still in my hair, our fingers still tangled together with the handkerchief crushed between them.
"You're holding my hand," I whisper, and it's a stupid thing to say and a true thing to say and my voice is shaking.
"Yes."
"You wouldn't let me touch your hands."
"No."
"What changed?"
He pulls back enough to find my eyes. His are dark and his mouth is red from mine and he's looking at me exactly as I was looking at the handkerchief. Like I'm the thing that crossed an ocean and survived four hundred years and deserves to be held with careful, reverent, slightly-trembling hands.
"You did," he tells me.
I close my eyes. His thumb moves across my cheekbone, the same path as three nights ago at my cabin door, and I lean into it like his body leans into my hands during sessions, the reluctant yielding, the muscles that want to soften and have forgotten how, except I haven't forgotten, I'm softening right now, I'm dissolving against his palm, and I think:I want to stay in this room forever. I want time to stop. I want to live in this gallery with this man and this handkerchief and never go back to the real world where he owns this ship and I work on it and the distance between us is a geography.
But time doesn't stop. And over his shoulder, past him, through the glass partition at the front of the gallery, someone is standing in the corridor.
Mila.
I see her for one second, maybe two, before Artem's head dips and his mouth grazes my temple and my eyes almost close again. But in that second I see her face.
She's smiling. The same warm, generous smile she gives me over coffee, over lunch, over gallery necklaces and breakfast croissants and all the small kindnesses she's wrapped around me like a blanket for the past three weeks.
Her mouth is smiling.
Her knuckles, wrapped around the gallery keys, are white.
Star
HIS MOUTH IS ON MINEand the sun is in my eyes.
That's what I keep thinking, stupidly, giddily, while he kisses me against the railing on the owner's private deck, a place I didn't know existed until forty minutes ago when he took my hand in the service corridor and told me "Come with me" and I asked "Where" and he answered "Up" and I followed him, because apparently all this man has to do is say a single directional word in that low rough voice of his and my feet just go, no questions, no consultation with the planner, no risk assessment, just blind obedient locomotion toward whatever monosyllabic destination he's decided on. He told me "up" and I went up. Through a door marked NO ACCESS that opened to his thumbprint and up a narrow staircase and onto a deck that is, apparently, his. Just his. No loungers, no bar, no guests. A strip of teak with a railing and the whole Mediterranean spread out below, blue-green and glittering, and the morning sun hitting the water so hard the light bounces up and turns everything gold.
He kissed me before I finished looking at the view, which I'm going to bring up later in my formal complaint about his time management because I was enjoying the view, that was a VERY GOOD view, I hadn't finished appreciating it, but his hand found my jaw (the same spot, always the same spot, like he has a favourite coordinate on my face and he's never going to pick a new one and I don't want him to) and his mouth found mine and I made a sound against his lips that I should probably be embarrassed about except I've used up all my embarrassment. I've exceeded my lifetime allotment. I exceeded it somewherearound the gallery kiss and there's been no restocking since, so here we are: embarrassment-free, sun-drunk, being kissed on a private deck at ten in the morning by a man with rolled sleeves and a jaw I could write poetry about if I wrote poetry, which I don't, because I'm a massage therapist and my art form is knots not sonnets, but if I DID write poetry it would all be about his jaw. Every poem. Just jaw.
Add to planner: 10 AM, be kissed on private deck. Revision: be kissed on SECRET deck. Further revision: he's going to correct me about the word "secret" in approximately three seconds—-
The gallery was dark. The gallery was midnight and spotlights and the plausible deniability of shadows. This is ten in the morning and the sun is everywhere and he is kissing me in it and I can see his face when he pulls back, really see it, and his eyes aren't iron in this light. They're warm. Brown with grey threaded through, or grey with brown bleeding in, and his lashes are dark and his mouth is red and he's looking at me the way he held the Mayflower lace. Like I crossed an ocean. Like I survived four hundred years. Like I'm worth holding with both hands.
I'm going to die on this deck and they'll find my body and the cause of death will be listed as a thirty-four-year-old man who looks at a twenty-year-old masseuse like she's the most valuable thing on his ship.
"You brought me to your secret deck," I murmur against his mouth.
"Private deck."
"That's what I called it."
"You called it secret. There's a difference."
"What's the difference?"
"A private deck is on the ship's blueprints. A secret deck would mean I'm hiding something." His thumb traces the line of my jaw. "I'm not hiding anything."
"You're hiding me," I point out, because I can't help it, because even inside the joy there's a splinter of reality that won't stop pressing. "From the guests. From Mr. Green. From anyone with functioning eyes who could see you kissing the twenty-year-old masseuse and—-"
