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Then his gaze lowers to my mouth again, and something in me tightens.

“I’ll draw you again,” he says.

Not can I. Not I’d like to. Not even I want to. Just: I’ll draw you again. Like it’s inevitable.

This man is pressing on the structure of my existence.

That sounds dramatic. It is dramatic. But he walked into my day and spent the last however long peeling back layers of me I didn’t authorize access to. Nobody flusters me. Nobody. People annoy me, bore me, occasionally amuse me right before I develop homicidal ideation, but they don’t get under my skin like this.

He steps even closer.

I don’t know when my next step back becomes impossible. Either way, I’m trapped there now, staring up at him, every nerve in me humming.

A drop slides down from my temple, tracing a line across my cheek. Another gathers at the edge of my jaw. I don’t wipe them away. I can’t seem to move properly when he’s looking at me like this, like he’s still sketching me in his head.

Then he lifts his hand.

I should catch his wrist, shove him back, and remind both of us that I’m not the kind of person a stranger gets to touch whenever he feels like it.

Instead, the moment his fingers reach me, I freeze again.

His thumb brushes my lower lip beneath the rain, and my entire body goes tight.

And then, before I can figure out what the hell he is doing, something presses past my lips.

A lollipop.

I blink.

I have no idea where he got it. I was too busy dissecting him with my eyes to notice anything else.

It tastes like raspberry.

There’s rain running over both of us now, dripping off my lashes, dampening my hair, soaking into my clothes, but all I can feel is that one point of contact.

His voice is lower when he speaks. “You’ll be my new muse.”

I tremble.

The shame of that can haunt me later.

Right now I’m too busy trying to remain upright.

My throat works around another swallow. My hands are useless at my sides. The knife at my back might as well belong to someone else. His thumb lingers for one more second, enough to ruin the next five years of my life, and then he pulls his hand away.

My skin still burns where he touched me, and I have the deeply humiliating urge to catch his wrist and put his hand back. I feel strangely hollow, like something important was taken from me.

He takes a step back, finally putting some space between us, and I drag in a breath so shaky I pray the rain hides it. He looks at me, taking in whatever expression I’ve failed to control, and then he smiles.

His smile pulls me out of my own head, and suddenly I don’t care that it’s raining. I don’t think about what rain usually makes me remember. I just watch him. It’s unfair how easily he can make me forget things that used to consume me. I’ve spent so long hating the rain, and now all I can think is that he looks fucking divine underneath it.

Ilya

One year later.

I stand at the edge of the ring with my arms folded, happily watching my two best friends beat the living shit out of each other.

The main boxing arena in Bloodburn is tucked far enough behind the south courtyard to give the administration plausible deniability, and close enough to the lecture halls to remind everyone what kind of institution this really is. Yes, having a sanctioned blood-sport pit inside a private college is completely deranged. Disturbing, even.