Chapter Thirteen #2
“What if I said I wasn’t afraid?” I asked.
“I’d say you were lying.”
“I don’t want to play games,” I said, voice hushed, though my body betrayed me, the pulse at my throat, the tremor in my breath, the tingling warmth spreading low in my belly.
He looked down at my mouth before finding my eyes again. “Neither do I,” he murmured. “But you keep showing up in my blind spots, Edwina. And I’m not sure whether that’s by accident or design.”
The space between us pulsed, heavy with breath and something unspoken.
He moved then, reaching for the brush resting in the jar beside me. His hand didn’t shake; his control was infuriating. “You’re thinking too hard,” he said, cleaning the bristles with measured movements. “You have to feel the color. Not control it.”
He stirred the paints with unhurried focus, each motion measured and quietly absorbing in its rhythm. Then he handed me the brush, fingers brushing mine for the briefest second.
The touch was small, barely contact, but it jolted through me, a current that started in my hand and spiraled downward until the ache settled deep in my core. My breath hitched.
He leaned closer, his words a whisper of heat against my ear. “Here. Try.”
I obeyed without thought. My hand moved, guided by the faint rhythm of his breathing.
When the brush touched the canvas, it no longer felt like painting but a response pulled from somewhere deeper, the space between us tightening, charged, alive with current.
He didn’t touch me again, but I felt him.
Every shift of his breath brushed against my neck, every pause filled with the sound of our shared silence.
My pulse throbbed beneath my skin, my body caught between restraint and hunger.
Each stroke of the brush seemed to pull something from me, something raw and trembling. The air felt charged, thick enough to taste, and with every breath, that tingling ache in my core deepened until I wasn’t sure if I wanted to step away, or closer.
The painting blurred in front of me. All I could feel was him.
When I faltered, he didn’t correct me with words.
He simply placed his hand over mine, his touch unhurried but commanding, the weight of it enough to guide me back into motion.
His palm fit over my knuckles with a heat that seemed to hum beneath my skin, his chest close enough behind me that I could feel the faint rhythm of his breath, deep and measured, brushing the space between us.
“Keep going,” he said, voice grazing just behind my ear, low enough that I could feel it more than hear it.
I trembled, the brush slipping slightly before finding its rhythm again. My body was trembling, caught somewhere between awareness and surrender.
When it was done, I didn’t pull away. Neither did he.
His hand stayed over mine, still guiding, still holding.
The quiet between us thickened until it felt almost visible, pressing against my ribs.
My eyes drifted downward to where our fingers rested together, his skin roughened, warm, veins shifting faintly with each pulse.
My hand looked smaller beneath his. We stayed like that, suspended.
He didn’t move, not even when I turned, slowly, until my shoulder brushed against him. He was already watching me. His eyes found mine, and for one fragile second, something inside me snapped its restraint. My cheek grazed his.
It wasn’t meant to happen. The movement was too small, too human, but the contact was fire. His skin was warm, the faint scrape of stubble catching against my own, and the shock of it made my breath stumble. Every thought in my head disintegrated.
Neither of us moved. Not right away. The stillness was its own confession, our cheeks pressed together, our breaths tangling in the small distance between our mouths.
I could feel the shape of his inhale, the slow drag of it, how close his lips were to mine.
The proximity was punishing, a kind of ache that burned through the calm I’d built around myself.
My heartbeat slammed against my ribs in uneven bursts, each pulse rough and frantic, driven by something dangerously close to need.
My body betrayed me, leaning into that heat, my pulse ricocheting through my chest. My thighs tightened, my stomach clenched, a slow ache blooming low inside me until it pulsed between my legs.
All I could imagine was the pure ecstasy I'd experience if those talented hands roamed my body, those deft fingers still entwined with mine.
The untold pleasures they could awaken if he so chose.
If only he'd abandon this charade and indulge in the passion between us, but he held back.
“I shouldn’t be here,” I whispered, my voice breaking under the weight of want. “You shouldn’t be this close.”
“I shouldn’t be here either,” he murmured, the sound rougher now, scraping the edge of restraint. “Not like this.”
“Then why are you?” My whisper trembled, a mix of defiance and need. The silence that followed was thick, alive, pulsing between us.
“I wanted distance, but I keep coming back to this.”
“To what?”
“To you.”
The word sank into me, heavy and certain, dissolving every wall I’d built.
He released a breath, measured and restrained, the sound weaving through the space between us, a thread drawn to its breaking point. “Go home, Edwina,” he said softly. “Before I forget where we are.”
I met his gaze. Held it until it hurt. But I was the one who broke. “Fine,” I said, though my voice was raw, the word trembling on my tongue. “But don’t think for a second you’re the only one struggling to stay on the right side of the line.”
He didn’t answer. When I stepped past him, careful not to touch, I felt the air shift, as if my body left a trace of heat against his. I was two steps from the door when his hand closed around my wrist.
His grip wasn’t cruel or forceful—it held just enough command to still the world around us, to make time hesitate between one heartbeat and the next.
The touch went straight through me, cutting through sleeve and fabric, searing into skin.
My breath caught. Slowly, I turned to face him, my pulse drumming against his palm.
And for one throbbing, breathless moment, I allowed my most carnal fantasies to run wild, envisioning those same adept fingers traveling lower, teasing the contour of my ribs, the hollow of my waist, scorching forbidden territory where no other man had dared venture.
The exquisite rapture that would consume me if he threw caution to the wind and succumbed to temptation.
If I ceased my virtuous act and begged him to unleash the passion we both craved.
The raw, primal need pulsing between us, a smoldering ember threatening to ignite into an all-consuming inferno of lust and desire.
He stood too close, so close that the air between us felt alive, a taut thread stretched thin enough to snap.
Any sane person would have stepped back, drawn a line, remembered where they were.
But he wasn’t sane where I was concerned. And God help me, neither was I.
“Don’t go,” he said, his voice roughened, drawn from somewhere deeper than his chest. It wasn’t a command, it was a confession torn open and left bleeding.
I swallowed, pulse leaping against my throat. “Professor—”
“Don’t call me that.” The word shattered in his mouth, jagged and desperate. “Not right now.”
His hand didn’t leave my wrist. It slid upward in a slow ascent, the pads of his fingers tracing the inner seam of my arm as though mapping something sacred, learning what should never be touched.
Each brush of his skin set off a pulse beneath mine, a current that crawled upward and bloomed hot in the space between my ribs.
“You have no idea what you do to me,” he murmured.
His voice carried through me, rough around the edges, uneven in its control, threading into my veins and refusing to leave.
When I met his eyes, the mask was gone. What I saw instead was something unguarded, stripped bare, raw enough to hurt.
It felt as if I’d reached into him and torn down the wall he’d spent his life building.
Neither of us spoke. The silence between us swelled, thick with heat and hesitation, heavy with all the things that would ruin us if we said them aloud.
His thumb brushed over the inside of my wrist, a faint stroke that sent shivers spiraling through me.
“I shouldn’t,” he said, voice scraping low, roughened by restraint. “But you make it… damn near impossible not to.”
I didn’t know whether he meant this, his touch, or the wanting, or the weeks of tension simmering between every breath we’d shared since the semester began. Maybe all of it. Maybe more.
The edge of his suit jacket brushed my arm, the fabric whispering against my skin. His nearness was unbearable; heat rolled off him, sinking through my clothes until it pooled low in my stomach. When I looked up, his eyes had locked onto mine with the gravity of a collision.
His hand lifted slowly, hovering near my jaw but not quite daring to touch. The space between us turned molten. My skin burned where his gaze lingered. It didn’t matter that his hand hadn’t yet found me, my body was already responding to the ghost of it, the promise.
“I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing anymore,” he said, voice rough, cracking open at the edges. “You… you make me forget the rules.”
Our mouths hovered apart by a breath, no distance worth naming.
The air was electric, trembling, charged with everything that wanted to happen and couldn’t.
One movement forward and I would’ve felt him, the rasp of stubble, the weight of his lips, the taste that would have destroyed every last defense I had left.
I could almost feel it, heavy and inevitable, the kind of kiss that claimed instead of asked.
His breath caught, unsteady, and mine followed, each inhalation feeding the next until we were both drowning in it.
And then—
Rrrring.
The shrill sound tore through the quiet, slicing the moment in half. He flinched, shoulders tightening, the spell fracturing between us. I blinked hard, the sound of his phone clawing reality back into the room.
A muscle tightened along his jaw before his hand dropped, and as the distance opened between us, the rush of air that filled the space felt sharp, intrusive, nothing compared to the heat he left behind.
Every inch of me felt raw, my body still thrumming with the ghost of his touch.
The phone continued to ring, its sharp tone drilling through the silence, cruel in its timing.
“Fuck,” he muttered, the word dragging rough through his throat. His hand rose, fingers threading through his hair, tugging until the motion looked almost punishing.
I didn’t move. Just watched him, my body still humming from what almost happened.
He reached for the phone, hesitating before turning it over.
The screen lit up, and I saw the change hit him like a blow, his expression hardened, cooling from fire to iron in seconds.
Whatever name or number glowed there rewired something in him.
The heat between us dissolved, replaced by a hollow stretch of distance that settled where his touch had been.
He lifted his gaze to me, meeting it for a moment that stretched too long, then looked away.
I gathered my things without a word. My body moved through the motions, but my mind was splintering, replaying every second, every breath, every almost-touch that would haunt me later. My throat ached from holding back what I wanted to say.
I didn’t ask who it was. Didn’t ask why his voice had changed, or why I suddenly felt like a secret.
I just turned and walked, each step scraping through the echo of what we’d nearly done.
My pulse thundered in my ears, my chest tight, breath shallow, control slipping through my fingers like ash.
Behind me, the studio stayed quiet. The air still smelled of paint and something warmer, something human.
He stayed quiet, made no move to follow, and it was that silence, more than his absence, that carved the deepest ache.