7 Baz
7
Baz
“Shit,” I mutter as we approach my house. “Mrs. Dunwoody is waiting for me to get back. I don’t want her to see you. She’ll think—”
“That you brought a bloody beautiful man back to your house for sex?” Dorian purrs, his English accent deepening for a moment.
“Oh god.” I roll my eyes. “Just…just walk behind me, and try not to let her see your back. It’s dark. Maybe she won’t notice the blood. At least I left my entry light off.”
“Fortuitous,” mutters Dorian.
“Who says ‘fortuitous,’ weirdo?”
“People of intelligence?”
I shake my head as we turn toward my front door. Mrs. Dunwoody’s balcony light is on, a warm glow outlining her plump frame. She waves, but to my relief, she doesn’t say anything. She’s probably glad to see me back safely…and also judging me for bringing home a man.
I hustle Dorian inside, hissing, “Don’t let the cat out!”
Screwtape makes a dive for freedom anyway, but I manage to block him, get everyone inside, and shut the door against the night.
I flip a switch, and light flares from the overhead lamp. Screwtape takes one look at Dorian and skitters away to the bedroom.
“My hellcat is scared of you.” I walk forward, turning on the lamp by the sofa. “He’s smarter than I thought. Now, give me back my phone, and let me call you some help.”
“There’s no point. I’m already healed.”
“The fuck you are.” But even as I say it, a true picture of Dorian Gray begins to form in my mind—a suspicion of what he really needs from me. “Come into the bathroom.” I grip a fistful of his shirt front and drag him along. Well, he lets me drag him. I’m strong, but I suspect he’s stronger. Once we’re in the bathroom, I face him. “Take off your shirt.”
“For you? Anytime.” The corner of his mouth starts to curve up, but I shake my head.
“Nope. None of that smirky shit.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He shoots me a smoky glare instead, which is even hotter… Fuck my life.
Dorian unbuttons the shirt and pulls off what remains of it. The back is all ribbons and blood. He eyes my tiny, overflowing bathroom trash can doubtfully, then tosses the shirt into the tub with a sodden slap.
I saw a hint of his abs under a T-shirt when I ran into him near the marina. That was a sneak peek, a trailer, and this is the feature film, the sculpted reality. He could model for—well—literally anything.
“Turn around,” I say, breathless.
He rotates, showing me his back. Flawless slabs of muscle, shallowly indented across the shoulders, the groove of his spine flowing down to his waist. The landscape of him is bloodstained but unharmed.
He’s healed. Completely, perfectly healed. And that can only mean one thing.
“You already have a portrait,” I whisper. “Why the hell do you want another?”
Sighing, he faces me again. “Can I wash up first? This is a you-better-sit-down talk we’re about to have, and I’m guessing you don’t want blood on your sofa.”
Blood…on the sofa…
He has no way of knowing how those words affect me.
All strength drains from my body, leaving me weak and shaking.
“No,” I murmur. “No, I don’t want that.”
I try to move past him to the door, holding myself tight and small so I don’t touch him. The humming heat of his bare chest is right there; he’s so close, and it’s overwhelming, it’s terrifying.
I lose my balance and sway, my hip bumping the sink hard enough to bruise.
“Baz.” Dorian’s hand presses to my back, a steadying warmth. “Are you all right? Maybe you’re the one in shock.”
“Fuck off,” I whisper and hurry out of the bathroom, away from his touch.
I stumble into the kitchen and dizzily go about making tea. The motions of finding the teakettle, filling it, and turning up the heat are all automatic, conducted with trembling fingers while I blink away tears and memories.
Blood on the sofa…
A body, broken.
The shower starts running in the bathroom, liquid gurgling through the pipes in the wall. This old house is anything but soundproof.
The flow of water is soothing. I pace the kitchen, waiting for the teakettle to heat.
Dorian already has a soul-bonded portrait. He healed because the portrait took the damage. That’s how it works. Hurt the person, and you damage the portrait. Harm the portrait, and the person’s body will reflect that damage.
Who painted Dorian’s portrait? When? And why does he want another?
The teakettle whistles. I open the cupboard, take out the canister of blackberry-sage tea, and extract two tea bags, inhaling deeply. The rich, dark aroma calms me at first—until another odor seeps into my awareness.
I rush down the hall to the bathroom and yank the door open without knocking.
Dorian Gray, shirtless and damp, slouches against the wall beside the window he has cracked open. A lit cigarette dangles between his elegant fingers, and water beads along his collarbone. He’s looking down, his hair falling in wet strands over his forehead, his lashes painting dark semicircles against his cheekbones.
He’s only wearing a pair of black boxers. Blood must have gotten on his pants, too. Of course it did.
God, I need to paint this man, in exactly this pose, with the light over the sink glowing on the angles and slopes of him and the red spark at the tip of his cigarette.
He turns toward the window, momentarily in exquisite profile, and breathes out a swirl of smoke before glancing at me. “Problem, Officer?”
“I guess not, as long as the window’s open. I don’t like the smell of stale cigarette smoke in a house.” Because of Mom.
Dorian lifts the cigarette to his lips. Takes a long drag. “I suppose you’ve never smoked?”
“I have. I quit. Not a fan of lung cancer.” I cock my head at him. “But you don’t have to worry about that, do you?”
“No.” His smile is broad, exultant, but there’s a hysteric glitter in his eyes. “I don’t have to worry about overdoses or withdrawal, alcohol poisoning or hangovers, STDs or lung cancer. My body is an immaculate temple to hedonism.”
I want to ask more, but I need to get the teakettle off the stove. “I’m making tea. Come to the living room when you’re done with that.” I nod to the cigarette. “And wrap yourself in a towel or something.”
After steeping the tea, I carry two steaming mugs into the living room and set them on the slick cherrywood coffee table I inherited from Aunt Jessie. It already has several cup rings, all formed since I moved in. I’m not really a coaster girl.
Planting myself in a chair, I sip my tea and wait.
Dorian saunters into the living room a few minutes later and sets our phones, his wallet, the lighter, and the pack of cigarettes in a neat row on the coffee table. Then he drapes himself on the couch, one arm along the back. He’s not wearing the towel I requested, just the boxers. At least they provide decent coverage, and nothing’s peeking out.
“Where would you like to begin?” he asks. “With the wolf made of yard waste or the other thing?”
I’ve already decided which matter is more pressing. “Who painted you the first time?”
“Your ancestor, Basil Hallward. Back in 1886.”
“Wait, so…” That’s too much of a coincidence. The restaurant, Circa 1886, and now this…
“The restaurant’s name is a little private joke between me and a friend of mine, someone who invested in the place when it first opened. He’s the only one who knows my secret. Or at least he was the only one, until tonight.”
“1886… So you’re—old. Really old.”
“One hundred and seventy-ish.”
“And you want a new portrait because…”
His gaze shifts from mine, and he puckers his lips briefly. “Let’s just say I’ve enjoyed my invulnerability to the fullest, thinking I had no expiration date. But my deeds have taken a toll on the painting. It’s been a decayed wreck for years, and now it’s beginning to disintegrate.”
“I didn’t know that could happen.”
“Apparently it can. And I fear once the decay works its way inward and touches my actual form within the painting—”
“You’ll begin to die,” I murmur.
“Don’t look so fascinated.” He lurches up off the sofa, nervous energy humming in every line of his long body. “This is my life we’re talking about. I noticed the decay three months ago. In the interim, I’ve been more careful about my…indulgences, trying not to hasten the portrait’s decline. But I’ve grown used to a certain standard of living, Baz, and I won’t give it up. That’s why I had to find you.”
“What makes you think I can help you?” I sip my tea, watching him warily over the edge of the cup.
“Don’t play dumb.” He halts in front of me, a pillar of lean male muscle. “You’re Basil’s last living relative. You bear his fucking name, for god’s sake. You have to help me. You have to redo the spell and transfer my soul into a new painting without killing me. Can you do it?”
“It’s not a spell,” I reply.
“Fine…an ability, an inherited power, whatever. Baz, you must do this for me. I’ll pay you well, as I’ve promised.”
“It’s not that simple,” I tell him. “For a complete, perfect soul transference to occur, the circumstances have to be right. And the painter must be emotionally connected to the subject on some level. The depth of the connection influences the strength of the bond between the portrait and the subject. It’s complicated.”
“Emotionally connected,” he murmurs, nodding. “Yes, that makes sense.”
“You and Basil were friends?”
“Lovers.” He says the word with a sneering hitch of his lip. “A dangerous thing for two men to be in those times. He couldn’t allow himself to live the life I wanted for us. He left me, ran off to France, and married some woman to please society. He betrayed his own nature and me.” His gaze turns suddenly malevolent. “In a way, you’re the product of my heartbreak.”
“I thought you didn’t have any heartbreak in your past,” I say softly.
His lips twist briefly before he says, “I don’t usually let myself feel it. I channel it into my portrait—any emotional pain, guilt, or regret. I can feel my link to the painting, you see—like a thread that’s tied just here.” He touches the center of his chest. “The transference of physical harm to the painting is automatic, and any associated pain is brief and minimal. When I start to feel anything emotionally uncomfortable, I just push it along that tether, and it goes away. I can make every bad emotion disappear if I want to. But this fear—this knowledge that my days may be numbered—is ever-present. I can’t get rid of it.” His voice is taut with stark desperation. “You have to help me.”
“I wish I could. But I’ve vowed to myself that I won’t use this thing inside me ever again. I used it once, before I knew what it meant, and someone died horribly. Someone I loved.”
He hesitates, pacing the room a couple of times.
“You used your power before you understood it,” he says. “But you understand it now, don’t you? So why not use it for your benefit and mine?”
“Didn’t you hear me?” I set down the mug of tea and lace my fingers together, trying to stop them from shaking. “I lost someone to this—this curse . I won’t risk that again. I don’t paint portraits of anyone, not even strangers, because my mother told me even the smallest affinity to the subject you’re painting can create a partial transference, and I won’t risk it. It’s almost impossible to avoid a link to your subject when you’re doing a portrait. Things can go wrong in so many ways if the connection is imperfect or if the session is interrupted. My mother told me stories—”
“But in this case, I’m fully informed.” Dorian continues pacing the room with impassioned steps. “I know the risks, and I consent. By doing this, you won’t be hurting anyone else. You’ll be saving my life. We simply have to create the right conditions, and then—”
“No.”
He stops behind the sofa. Grips the back of it with both hands. Different rings today, same long fingers. A pianist’s fingers. I wonder if he plays.
“No?” he says, low. His eyes crystallize to cold blue ice.
“You’ve had almost two centuries, thanks to your first painting. Don’t you think maybe it’s time to—make a graceful exit? I know that sounds harsh but…you’ve had so much more time than most people get.”
He stares at me, frozen, but I sense the impending crack, the explosion of the iceberg.
“I don’t even know if what you’re asking is possible,” I venture. “Altering a completed transference, moving your soul from one portrait to another… I don’t know if it would even work.”
“And you won’t try.” His lips barely move over the words.
“I don’t think it’s right for you to have that advantage over everyone else.” Heated indignation is rising inside me.
“I never claimed to be overly dedicated to fairness. I’m thinking of my own survival. That’s evolution, darling. Pure and simple.”
“Fine. If you can’t empathize with humanity at large, let’s make it more personal,” I say. “Did you ever think about how I might feel, gifting you this kind of deathless immunity when I can’t have it? People like me can’t paint self-portraits and tuck ourselves into them. We have to decay and die like everyone else. Why should you get to be ridiculously rich and immortal?”
“That’s your real reason, isn’t it?” His brows furrow, a sneer curling his mouth. “Selfishness. You can’t have it, so no one else will. I thought you were better than that.”
“You don’t know me,” I hiss. “And how am I the selfish one here?”
“You’ll let me die because you can’t handle the emotional trauma from your past. That’s fucking selfish.”
I open my mouth to yell a protest, but I hesitate.
Is he right? Am I being selfish?
I’ve never encountered an offer like this, a situation like this. Maybe I’m reacting too quickly, without thinking it through. I’m being harsh, expecting this man to resign himself to death.
There has to be another option. A way to give him what everyone should have: a single mortal life.
“Look, my mom mentioned something she did once—a process to remove the subject’s soul from a painting and put it back in their body. It’s painful for everyone involved, but I think I remember how she did it. I could try to make that work.”
“But then I would be normal again.” Dorian strides around the sofa, his eyes like blue blades, splitting me open. “I would grow old . I can’t bear to grow old, to become wrinkled and spotty, thin-skinned and leaky. I won’t sag and shrink and crumple. You can’t ask that of me, Baz. That’s just cruel.”
I vent an incredulous laugh. “Cruel? That’s life. That’s the shit everyone deals with! You called my ancestor a coward, but I’m starting to think you’re the coward here.”
Too far. I think I went too far with that one.
The blaze in his eyes is hot enough to consume me alive. Every muscle of his bare body is rigid and contracted, and his fingers twitch as if he’s itching to clamp them around my neck.
I swallow hard, crushed by the sudden realization that he’s only holding back because he needs me. I’m the last of my line, his only chance at a new portrait.
If I wasn’t, I’m pretty sure he’d kill me right now.
Instead he darts forward, bends, and clamps both hands on the armrests of my seat, which brings his face suddenly close to mine.
I recoil against the padded back of the chair, thrilling from top to tail. Desire tickles between my legs, and my nipples tighten immediately as my heart rate kicks up. Truthfully, I’m more scared of my own sudden arousal than of his intensity. I want him with a violent surge of hunger, with a craving more visceral than I’ve ever experienced, pulled out of me not only by his beauty but by the sheer magnetism of his personality.
“I’ll do anything.” His fingertips glide up my bare thigh, sweeping inward, just beyond the hem of my dress. “Anything you want. Make you come so hard you see stars…”
I smack his hand. “Stop it, dummy. Go sit on the sofa again.”
“I won’t.” He sinks to his knees, his expression wild and pleading. “I can give you a life beyond your dreams. My friend Lloyd-Henry—the one I’m staying with—has connections here in Charleston, people who know me through him. We can get your art in front of the right eyes. Anything you want—money, introductions, nights of debauchery at the best clubs, international travel, every pleasure you could imagine—will all be yours.”
“I feel like you’re a demon offering me a bargain.”
“Except it’s not your soul we’re bargaining for. It’s mine.” He gives me a sudden, charming smile. “Maybe you’re the demon.”
It might have worked if he hadn’t used that smile. The one from the TikToks. The one he has no doubt practiced in front of the mirror for over a hundred years. The impulsive, disarming, dimpled smile, the one designed to make people feel as if he really sees them.
I believe in you , says the smile. I believe you’re a good person, and you’ll do the right thing here.
It’s a smile designed to get Dorian Gray exactly what he wants.
He must see the change on my face, the slipping of the tenuous hold he’d gained over me—the fish turning away from the hook, warned by the glint of sun on metal.
I open my mouth to refuse him again, but he cuts in. “Don’t answer yet. Give me time to prove to you how much this deal could help both of us. I’m not asking for guarantees, just for you to keep an open mind. Let me give you a glimpse into the life you could have. No strings attached. An experiment, if you will—a trial. Two weeks. At the end of it, if your answer is still no, I will accept it. And you can keep any advantages or possessions you gain along the way.”
Two weeks of living the high life, meeting prominent people in the art community? And at the end, I still get to say no if I want to?
Damn, that’s tempting. Especially since I already know I’m strong enough to resist the charms of Dorian Gray. I can do this. I can accept the desperate offer of a dying man, keep what he gives me, and still deny him…
Fuck, no, I can’t.
“If I say yes, that will make me a terrible person,” I protest. “I’ll be giving you hope when I fully intend to say no at the end. It’ll be terrible karma.”
“Worse karma if you refuse me this chance to change your mind,” he counters. “It is my life at stake, after all. I deserve the right to fight for it.”
It’s hard to argue with that. “I’ll think about it—minus the sex part, obviously,” I tell him. “That’s the most I can give you right now. This is a lot for me to take in. I never expected—”
“Of course. Think it over.” He rises from his knees and returns to the sofa, giving me a look at his perfectly rounded ass, cupped by the soft material of the boxer shorts.
No—I refuse to admire the ass of a man whose centuries-old soul lives inside a decaying painting.
I clear my throat. “In the meantime, let’s talk about that stick-wolf. Did that have something to do with you?”
“No. I’ve seen many things, some natural and some not,” he replies, seating himself on the couch. “But I can honestly say I have never seen anything quite like that.”
For some reason, I expected him to have answers. It’s disconcerting when he doesn’t. “So should we research it online or something?”
Dorian shakes his head. “Occasionally you can find accurate information about such phenomena online, but you have to dig for it. I prefer to get the answers from someone who has already done the digging and has plenty of reliable resources.”
“And who is that?”
“My roommate, confidant, best friend, and supernatural consultant, Lloyd-Henry Woodson. He is an expert in—” The choked sound of my half-functional doorbell cuts him off. “Ah, that’ll be Vane with my clothes and the car.”
He says it cheerfully, like he’s Batman and Alfred has just arrived with his things.
But from what he’s hinted, I suspect the man lounging on my sofa is anything but a hero.