Chapter 8
Seven-thirty PM. Security office. The monitor reflects my face. I’ve been sitting here all day but haven’t learned a thing because I can’t get my mind off Daphne’s face, her body, her expression. The way she looked right back at me.
Usually I have to pay women to look at me without flinching, but she never stops looking. And never flinches, not even when I grabbed her in the alley and hauled her up to the apartment like a sack of potatoes, and chucked her on the bed.
She never flinches. Never looks away. Never asks difficult questions.
The inner monitor shows the Hallstein file, cross-referenced personnel logs against the dock breach. But I can't concentrate.
I save the file. Lock the drawer with the small key. Stand from the desk.
The back hallway stretches ahead. My footsteps echo off concrete walls that smell like refrigeration and citrus from the loading dock. The service stair's bare bulb flickers on the second landing. Needs replacing. I note it, keep climbing.
At the top landing, I turn toward the apartment door, and push it open.
I stop at the threshold.
Daphne stands near the back wall, framed by the bed and the oak desk.
Her back is mostly to me, the line of her spine visible beneath a sweep of tangled hair.
One hand steadies a plastic palette on the desk's edge; the other holds a narrow brush, which she uses to finish a stroke on her hip.
The lamp I moved to her bedside pools gold light, and the evening sun slants through the south window.
She wears white cotton panties. Nothing else.
My cock twitches inside my jeans, thickening and thickening as I trace the lines of paint across her skin, her shoulders, her thighs.
Bougainvillea and leaves spiral across her body in botanical lines.
Pinks and greens, with shadows of ochre and black.
A painted vine climbs her right calf, wraps the knee like a silk garter, and curls up her hip, where it dissolves into delicate blooms along her ribs.
A spray of leaves and tiny thorns arcs across her chest and down the swell of one breast. On the back of her left hand, the heritage rose she painted days ago is dry and set, now nested in the larger composition.
I swallow hard, fighting back a groan. My cock feels ready to burst free. She hasn't noticed me yet—her dark hair is pulled back, revealing the curve of her neck as she leans over the desk. The wet brush moves in slow, deliberate circles, pink paint glistening in each stroke.
My eyes track to the source. Above the bed hangs the bougainvillea painting, my trophy from her father. The same flowers. The same dispersal across pale ground. She's been studying the painting for two weeks. Now it covers her body.
Thirty seconds pass. I don't move. Don't close the door. Don't speak.
I'm twelve paces away, and I see everything: the tremor in her hand as she dabs the paint, the way her calf muscle flexes when she shifts her weight, the faint pinkness where she's wiped away a mistake.
The lamp does her no favors, highlighting every flaw in the paint, every uneven patch on her skin. But the sum of it is staggering.
My painting walked down the wall and put itself on her skin.
I stay frozen. I don't want to startle her.
My breath hitches in my chest. All I feel is hot lust and the ache of skin pressing skin.
I imagine running my fingers across the painted lines, smearing pink and green until it's a muddled riot.
I dream of pressing my hard cock between her thighs, slipping it into that slick, aching pussy, fucking her slow and deep until her body trembles in my arms.
But I hold still. I will myself into control.
Minutes tick by. She finishes that last tiny bloom at her hip, sets the brush down with a soft click, and straightens her spine. Her shoulder blades flex under the paint. She inhales slowly.
Then she lifts her head and meets my gaze.
She doesn't flinch. She doesn't cover her breasts. Instead, she stands perfectly still, chin tilted up, daring me to break the silence. Her eyes are black pools in this light—neither inviting nor warning, just steady.
My heart hammers. My cock pulses painfully inside my jeans. I want to step across the threshold, to run my hands along every painted vine, to fuck the art off her body.
But I remain planted in the doorway, waiting for her to make the next move.
She walks to the desk, where her phone waits.
The phone I returned to her, minus the sim card, days ago.
The movement is controlled, a dancer's walk, all her joints aligned, no wasted motion.
She presses the screen and music starts: not pop, not classical, but something in between—minor chords and a metronome pulse, like a ballet score gone feral.
She moves her body into the open floor, lamp at her back, hair wild around her shoulders, and she begins to dance.
She starts slow. Controlled extensions, weight shifting through her core, arms tracing shapes that make the painted vine seem alive.
The lamp light catches pink blooms as she rotates.
Green leaves shadow and brighten with each gesture.
The floorboards creak under her weight shifts.
Her breath comes in soft exhales with each extension. My hand tightens on the doorknob.
For three minutes I watch, frozen, hand still on the doorknob behind me, feet refusing to enter fully or retreat.
In the first minute, I see the outline of her training.
The postures, the transitions, the way she can balance on a single foot with her other leg extended behind.
I read the lines of her muscles, the intention in her core.
Every roll of her shoulder or bend of her wrist says: I own this body, and I will decide what it's for.
Her small breasts rise and fall with each extension, her legs float, and I feel my cock thicken as my gaze moves over her from head to toe.
In the second minute, the operational reading collapses.
My mind blanks. There's only the heat under my skin, the sense of something not quite pain, more like hunger.
She's here, moving for me, choosing me as her audience, and my cock pulses at the thought.
The lamp makes her skin glow. The music pulls something from her body that wrap skirts and teaching voices never touched.
She is both exposed and invincible, and I can't reconcile it with the other women I've known—who flinched, who looked away, who made me pay to touch them, to see them.
She's not giving herself to me. She's not giving herself to anyone.
She's taking something for herself, and letting me witness it.
By the third minute, I feel it in my chest. The wound I keep hidden, knotted up since discharge, since the last time I let anyone see me without the armor.
My eyes burn. My fingers tremble. But here I am wanting.
Needing. I want to cross the room and touch her, to paint her myself, to make her mine.
But I won't step forward, because I know exactly what it costs her to move like this. I won't take what isn't given.
She stops moving. The music continues, but she stands in the center of the room, chest heaving, sweat darkening the small of her back.
The painted petals shimmer, some of the fresh work smudged by her own skin.
She looks at me, slower this time, with a question in her eyes: Will you see me, or will you turn away?
I turn away. The discipline snaps back into place, as if the past three minutes never happened. I start to close the door behind me, to retreat into the hallway and let her have her moment alone.
But before the door can latch, she's there. She moves across the room faster than I would have expected, silent, and slams the door with her palm.
Her hand closes around my forearm.
The contact stops everything. Her painted hand on my bare forearm where the sleeve is pushed up. The rose on the back dry and set. Fresh bougainvillea pigment wet on her palm and fingers. Skin to skin. The first deliberate contact between us.
I stop. Don't pull away. My discipline breaks at her touch.
The paint is still wet on her hand. She doesn't let go. She looks at me, really looks, dark eyes wide and unblinking.
She speaks. Her voice is low, even, but it cuts more than any weapon I've ever faced.
"Why do you look through me like I'm not even here?"
Fuck. My cock strains against my jeans, and I shift my weight, jaw tight. Her sharp tone only makes it worse.
A pause. Her grip tightens on my forearm, paint still wet between her fingers. Then harder:
"Why won't you fucking touch me?"
Jesus, woman. The word fuck in her mouth does something to me I can't afford. My cock jumps, and I have to look away from her face to keep from closing the distance between us. I want to bury myself inside her pussy until neither of us can think straight. I want to make her say it again.
Another pause. Her breath is hot against my shoulder when she asks the last one, quieter now, almost to herself:
"What is so wrong with you that you can't take what I'm offering?"
My free hand finds the doorframe. I grip it hard enough to feel the wood grain press into my palm. If only she knew. But once I take her, I'll never let her go.
She isn't pleading. Just demanding answers. These are questions she's been holding for days, and now they're out, hanging between us like smoke.
The words choke me, but I force them out anyway—anything to drown out the frantic pounding in my jeans.
"I was dishonorably discharged from the Army nine years ago."
She doesn't flinch. Her fingers dig into my arm, skin slick with sweat, and I hear her inhale sharp. "The discharge cited unprofessional conduct."
Still holding me. Still listening. Her thumb traces tiny spirals on my forearm, and the friction sends shivers straight down to my cock.
Her voice goes dry. "I've never met anyone more professional."
I let out a humorless laugh, stepping closer so her thigh brushes mine. "I'm exactly the man they said I was."
Not for the reasons they thought—yet the verdict feels the same. The same hands that executed countless men for the Delgados hang useless at my sides, trembling with need.
I brace for her recoil, like I've seen a thousand times before. My arm trapped in her grip, my chest ready to cave if she screams or backs away.
Except she doesn't.
Instead, she whispers, "You're not a monster."
That breaks me. My restraint snaps with a violent crack, and I spin her around, pressing her slick, naked back into the rough wood of the apartment door.
The world narrows to the curve of her spine, the slope of her ass, the curve of her pussy pressed against my thigh.
She is fucking beautiful, and I ache to bury my cock inside her warm, wet heat.
"A monster takes what he wants," I growl, voice low as sin.
I slam my palm hard against her right breast—hard enough to bruise, to make her gasp.
Her nipple hardens to a pebble beneath my touch, and I cup, squeeze, fighting the urge to tear it with my teeth.
My cock throbs, desperate to ride the slick path between her thighs.
Yet she doesn't pull away. Instead, her grip around my wrist tightens, thumb brushing the coarse scars on my knuckles. She leans in, thigh pressing harder against the pulsing length of my cock, and a low, guttural moan rumbles free from my chest.
Finally, I lift my eyes to her face: no fear, no revulsion—only smoldering intent.
Slowly, she withdraws her painted hand from my forearm.
Then, deliberate, she presses her palm flat against my chest—left of center, right over my heart—through the thin cotton of my shirt.
Fresh bougainvillea pigment still gleams, wet at the edges, and her hand leaves a smeared print: pink and green handwriting on white fabric.
The heat of her palm scorches through the cloth, straight into my chest. My heart hammers so hard I'm sure she feels it, her palm pulsing against each beat. My breathing goes ragged—no woman has ever chosen to touch me here, unless I'd paid her for it.
She steps back a foot—just enough to keep me dangling between control and chaos.
My hand remains on her breast; her hand remains over my heart.
Her breath ghosts across my throat as she tilts her head, lips parted, eyes dark with demand.
I smell the sharp tang of acrylic paint, the sweetness of her skin, and all at once I want to fuck her senseless against this door, to fill her pussy with my cock until she cries out my name.
We hold that suspended second while the city hums beyond these walls.
Then I turn and walk out the door, slamming it behind me.
She still doesn't understand the beast I carry inside.