Chapter 17 Amelia
AMELIA
My brush moves with fervor I’ve never known before. Crimson bleeds into midnight blue, creating the shadowed hollows of a throat—my throat—arched in surrender. I step back from the canvas, wiping sweat from my brow with the back of my wrist.
The studio around me has transformed. Gone are the cosmic cityscapes that earned me gallery space. In their place, canvases line the walls—raw, visceral confessions of what happens when Gabe closes his office door. What happens when the mask comes out. What happens when I say green.
I dip my brush again, adding highlight to the leather collar around the painted throat.
“You’ve never painted like this before,” I whisper to myself, voice hoarse from disuse. How long have I been working? The light has changed three times. Coffee cups litter every surface.
On the largest canvas, I’ve captured myself kneeling on hardwood, back arched, head pulled back by Gabe’s fist tangled in my hair.
His face remains in shadow, but his hand—God, I’ve spent hours on that hand, getting every tendon, every vein perfect.
The power in those fingers. The control. The way they claim.
I mix a pearlescent white, adding gleam to the metal ring on the collar. The geometry of the pose fascinates me—the triangle formed by arched back and bent knees, the curves of flesh yielding to straight lines of restraint.
In the corner, half-finished, another canvas shows reddened skin beneath rope marks, the pattern beautiful. The body—my body—is faceless, identity subsumed by the perfect arrangement of hemp against flesh. I’ve painted it from memory; from the marks I traced with my fingertips the morning after.
My gallery pieces have always been composed and intellectual. These are anything but. These paintings breathe. They sweat. They moan.
I set down my brush and stretch my cramped fingers. A glance at my phone shows messages from Maya I’ve been ignoring. Three days since I’ve responded. I should care more about that, but all I can think about is capturing the exact shade of bruised flesh beneath rope burn.
The knock startles me from my trance.
“Amelia?” Maya’s voice. “Your door was unlocked. I’ve been texting—”
She stops mid-sentence, frozen in the doorway. Her eyes widen as they travel across the studio, taking in canvas after canvas of arched backs and shadowed figures.
“I’ve been working,” I say unnecessarily, considering there’s dried paint on my hands, in my hair, splashed across my clothes.
Maya moves slowly through the space, her gaze lingering on each image. She stops before the largest piece—me on my knees, Gabe’s hand controlling everything.
“This isn’t your Urban Cosmos work,” she whispers.
“No.” Pride swells in my chest. “It’s better.”
Her fingers hover near the canvas without touching, tracing the line of the collar around the painted throat. “This is... intimate.”
“It’s honest.”
Maya turns to me, her expression a complicated mix of emotions.
“You’re painting what you’re becoming,” she says. “Not what you are.”
The observation hits something raw. I dip my brush back into crimson, adding another layer to the rope marks on the nearest canvas.
“Isn’t that the point of art? To transform?”
Maya steps closer, examining the rope patterns.
“Sometimes transformation is beautiful.” Her voice drops. “Sometimes it’s dangerous.”
I set my brush down. “Like Adrian’s chocolates? The ones that tasted like a void?”
Her eyes dart up, caught. “Yes. Like that.” She runs her fingers over the edge of a canvas. “Does Gabe know you’re painting this?”
“Not yet. I want to surprise him.”
“We’re both in deep, aren’t we?” Maya says softly. “These men—there’s something about them that pulls you in past the point of reason.”
I think about the spiked mask, about Gabe’s voice commanding me to beg.
“Adrian looks at me like he’s solving a puzzle,” Maya continues. “Like I’m the first person who’s ever seen him clearly.”
“Gabe sees layers in me I didn’t know existed.” I trace the line of a bruise on the painted skin. “He finds them. Brings them to the surface.”
Maya seems to be weighing her words carefully, her fingers tracing the outline of a particularly explicit canvas where Gabe’s shadowed form dominates mine. I can see the struggle behind her eyes—something trying to escape but being forced back down.
“Just... be careful,” she finally says. “Some doors, once you open them, you can’t close again.”
The concern in her voice catches on the edges of my attention, but I’m already mentally mixing colors for the next piece—deeper burgundy for the bruises, a translucent glaze for sweat-slicked skin.
“I don’t want to close this door,” I say, my fingers twitching with the need to get back to painting. “You don’t understand, Maya. These feelings, these sensations—they’re like finding patterns I’ve been searching for my whole life without knowing.”
My eyes dart to three different canvases at once, seeing connections between them that probably only make sense in my brain. The geometry of submission. The mathematics of desire.
“Why do you keep warning me about Gabe?” I step closer, focused on her face. “What do you know that you’re not telling me?”
Maya’s eyes shift away. “I get a bad feeling around him. The same emptiness I tasted in Adrian’s chocolates—” She stops herself. “People aren’t always what they seem, that’s all.”
My mind latches onto the inconsistency immediately. “But you’re with Adrian. You’ve been defending him for weeks.”
“That’s different,” Maya says too quickly. “Adrian understands me.”
She doesn’t believe her own words. I can see it in the tight line of her mouth, hear it in the hitch in her voice. Maya, my best friend, is hiding something.
“What aren’t you telling me?” I press, my attention fully on her now.
Maya says nothing for a long moment, her fingers fidgeting with the edge of one canvas. When she finally meets my eyes, there’s genuine concern etched in the lines around her mouth.
“I know Gabe enjoys certain dark pursuits. I don’t want you getting hurt, especially when you’re diving in headfirst like this.” She gestures at the explicit paintings surrounding us. “These aren’t casual explorations, Amelia.”
I cross my arms, feeling defensive of both Gabe and my art. “Maybe I enjoy dark pursuits too. Maybe I’ve been waiting my whole life to find them.” I run my fingers over still-wet paint. “Not everyone needs to be protected, Maya.”
The tension hangs between us before my best friend’s shoulders relax slightly. She recognizes the boundary I’ve drawn.
“Fair enough,” she says, the concern not entirely gone from her eyes but tempered now with resignation. “Your mind has always worked differently. Maybe you see something in him the rest of us don’t.”
“Like you with Adrian?” I counter, unable to resist.
Maya rolls her eyes but smiles. “Touché. We’re quite the pair, aren’t we?”
“Always have been.” I grab a rag to wipe paint from my hands. “Remember when Professor Winters caught us smuggling wine into figure drawing class?”
“God, yes.” Maya laughs. “And you convinced him it was essential to your creative process.”
“My best bullshit to date.”
Maya glances at her watch and sighs. “I’ve got to run. Meeting with the paper’s editor.” She moves toward the door but pauses. “Just... text me back occasionally? So, I know you’re alive and not consumed by whatever this is?”
“I promise.”
“That’s all I ask.” She gives me one last look. “Call me when you come up for air.”
After Maya leaves, I stand in my studio surrounded by evidence of my transformation. These canvases tell the story of what I’m becoming. Who I’m becoming. With Gabe.
I check my phone. Three hours until I see him again. Three hours to shower away the paint, choose something that will please him, prepare my body and mind for whatever he has planned tonight.
My skin tingles with anticipation as I imagine his hands on me again. The way he touches—like he’s mapping coordinates on my body, finding pressure points that unlock parts of me I never knew existed.
Maya’s warnings echo in my head, but they’re growing fainter.
Yes, there’s something dangerous about Gabe.
The way his eyes change when he puts on that mask.
The carefully controlled violence in his fingers when they tighten around my throat.
But danger is another word for the edge I’ve been searching for my whole life.
I’ve always seen layers of the world that others miss—constellations hidden in streetlights. But Gabe sees the hidden geometries of my desire and traces them with rope burns and bruises that I can’t stop painting.
I run my fingers over the dried paint on my arms. In a few hours, these marks will be replaced by his. The thought makes my breath catch.
What will he show me tonight? What new doors will he open? The mask, the rope, the clamps—each revelation feels like finding a new color I never knew existed. Each surrender peels away another layer between the person I pretended to be and the person emerging underneath.
I should be terrified by how quickly this is happening.
How completely I’ve surrendered control.
Instead, I find myself counting the minutes, arranging and rearranging myself like elements in a composition.
Anticipating the moment when his eyes will take in what I’ve become—a canvas eager for his touch, a sculpture yearning to be shaped by his hands.