19
His feet pad across the room towards the wardrobe.
My curiosity pulls at me. Tilting my head just enough, I catch the furniture in the sliver of space between my arm and my ribs.
Fabric rustles. He’s wrapped a towel low on his hips, exposing the dimples at his lower back. What I saw in the glass is now painfully clear.
When he lifts a tube of cream from the shelf, he smears it over the skin where the protective tattoo film had been. He’s peeled it off.
The tattoo. I’m burning to see it. The stark black against the alabaster.
I had mine done years ago on my hip, and I remember the film stays on for up to five days.
My attention catches on the tube in his hand, then flits to the black lines on his forearms.
He must have had it done after he was released from prison because it wasn’t there last time I’d seen him.
That pocket of time between then and the airport raises a question in my mind. But then the news report about the death of his half-brother and his wife resurfaces unbidden, and suddenly I don’t want to know what he’d been doing. Where he’d been.
Why he hadn’t made contact.
Dragging an old long-sleeved T-shirt over his head, he takes the almost-memory of his naked torso away from me. The fabric clings in some parts, sags in others. A black symbol sprawls across the back – something like a pentagram bent into the shape of a heart.
I squint. It looks familiar.
Does it mean something to him?
And then he snaps off the towel.
There they are – the damning angles and perfect hollows at the top of his thighs. The firelight clings to them ravenously, outlining him in a way that feels unholy.
I can’t fucking turn away. Such a thorough view of his backside was the last thing I needed.
Surely that was deliberate.
When did I get like this? How?
Maybe it’s this place.
Maybe fear and want have simply been trapped in the same room too long.
Angling my body further at the waist, my gaze flicks again to the camera as though it’s calling my name. My fingers twitch.
Air catches between my teeth when he drags the pyjama bottoms up – without bothering with boxers or—
I wrench my face back towards the fire, as if pretending not to look will erase the image that’s already burned itself into my skull.
He’s not safe. He’s unstable. He took me.
The mantra repeats inside my head like a prayer whispered beneath a blanket to my own demons.
I don’t even feel the mattress dipping behind me until it’s too late.
Warmth spills over my back. The duvet shifts a few times.
‘You’re not asleep. Turn around,’ he commands.
Mortified that he might have noticed me gawking like I’ve never seen skin before, I start turning slowly onto my back, then settle on my other hip. I avoid his gaze, keeping to the other end of the bed as far as I can without toppling over.
When I’m nestled against the pillow, our eyes meet.
My tongue presses hard against my teeth.
I hold my breath. Will my pulse into steadiness.
Because the sight before me belongs to a fantasy from when he was still contained; when wanting him cost me nothing.
He lies on the soft, white pillow, one strong arm bent beneath it to keep his head angled towards me. The ink on his skin brings out the black of his lashes and the dark of his curls still damp at the temples.
In that first blink of an eye, the old version of him overlaps with the real one – Elias behind chains, Elias in the steam, Elias as a beautiful danger I could once leave behind when visiting hours ended.
My mind tries to reach for that illusion, desperate to make him into art again instead of consequence. But the reality of him breathes beside me. His warmth bleeds towards me, carrying the terrifying calm as he watches me with a softness I nearly… nearly believe is real.
His gaze doesn’t drop from mine. The gentleness remains there. Even as he says, quietly, ‘Tell me what you looked at when you thought I couldn’t see you.’
The words knock me straight out of my skin. Heat claws up the back of my neck, but my toes turn cold until I’m forced to wiggle them just to make sure they’re still attached.
He knew I was looking. Of course he did – he notices everything.
I’d wager he even sees the lie forming behind my eyes right now.
I almost turn away. And I hate how guilty that makes me feel.
‘Why are you doing this?’ I ask instead.
‘You saw skin,’ he says as though I hadn’t said anything. ‘Muscle. Shape. Did you forget what’s underneath it because the body pleased you?’
The flush drains from my face. A chill that has nothing to do with the season takes over.
‘Was I a man when you looked? Or was I just something you wanted to take a piece of?’
I open my mouth. But I keep the guilty, ugly truth behind the walls of my teeth. Because there’s that missing piece of the puzzle aching with absence again.
‘I’m curious,’ he clarifies.
What I know about intimacy is… corrupted, his words by the fire.
They slip between us like an edge laid flat against the sheets.
I search his face for the usual – cruelty, hunger, that gleam that usually comes before he turns things around.
But there is no dark satisfaction at having cornered me. His eyes are on mine, unblinking; then they dip to my mouth when I swallow. No smirk. Just micromovements as though he’s filing away every reaction I fail to hide.
And now I’m certain: this is a study.
‘Do you want me to look at the body, Elias, or the man trapped inside it?’ I ask warily. Because, more often than not, a question from him is intent hidden in layers to distract me.
He breathes slowly, utterly still. But one corner of his mouth pulls taut before it smooths out again.
‘I want your demon to feed mine.’
I blink.
‘The one that lets you look without touching,’ he whispers.
I close my mouth slowly as I turn it over in my head. My mind takes all the wrong ideas and mashes them into a single bundle of decadence. Just as my cheeks begin to heat—
‘The camera,’ he says.
I stare at him for too long and try to dissect the moment with the remnants of my composure because nothing about Elias Crane is what it first appears to be.
He doesn’t want to be touched.
He doesn’t know what to do with desire.
But he doesn’t mind being seen.
No—
I hold my breath.
He wants to control how he is seen.
Realisation seeps in slowly, then floods through me: this is what gets him close to intimacy. Or, at least, what he thinks intimacy is.
Shifting back, he leaves me room to climb out of bed.
As I walk towards my camera, my own truth begins to unsettle me more than his intent. When I aim the lens, I can turn fear into angles, longing into light. My own demons take over.
But now Elias is watching me.
One wrong frame, and I might show him exactly what he expects to see.
My fingers feel too clumsy before they even reach the settings. When I’m ready, I check the shutter speed, then the rest, and lift it.
He’s seated at the edge, looking at the lens as if it were the barrel of a gun.
‘Tell me what you need,’ he whispers.
What I need?
He waits. No further instruction follows.
The camera begins to feel heavier in my hands.
Is he actually leaving this to me?
‘Whatever you give me,’ I answer, my voice breaking.
His eyes narrow. A muscle moves once beside his mouth. He’s unhappy with me bouncing it all back to him.
When he stands, it’s slow and almost damning. His shadow streaks the floor, flickering along with the flames of the hearth beyond him.
‘Whatever I give you…’ he reiterates, low and rough.
I can’t see his face. The darkness makes him seem larger somehow.
Every muscle on me locks as I glance at the ink barely visible beneath the long sleeves of his top.
‘Talking helps with the mood. Tell me about the chains,’ I say hurriedly.
His chin lowers as he lifts one of his hands, then the other, studying the lines peering out.
In one breath he stands dauntingly still. In the next, he’s pulling the top over his head.
Startled, I hide my shame behind the lens and watch him.
‘“I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams,”’ he says.
I take three shots as he speaks. The fire gilds the outline of his shoulders as he leaves the garment on the bed.
‘Where’s that from?’ I ask, moving to the side slightly, bending at the knees as he spreads his arms a little.
That makes me stop.
I look over the camera at him.
With his arms like that and the chains exposed, the frame catches two versions of him at once: the threat and whatever survived it; a darkness my lens knows how to hold.
I’m afraid of his size. Afraid of his calm, because I know the violence he holds trapped in it.
But the lens makes me lean closer anyway.
He is offering me the boundaries of himself – where the violence begins, where it stops, and where the bad dreams still keep him bound.
‘Hamlet,’ he says and takes a step forward.
I press the shutter again and sidestep him, keeping the camera between us. ‘What’s the connection to the chains?’
He moves further. One slow step, then another, the amber halo spreading behind him until it eats the edges of his body and leaves only a towering dark shape coming towards me.
My breath labours through my throat, but my camera knows what to do with this sensation.
I sink to my knees with the viewfinder pressed to my face, chasing the angle as if my long-awaited reckoning has grown legs and is crossing the room to meet me.
‘The chains keep me from going too far,’ he murmurs.
Click. Click. Click.
‘They have range. They keep promises the mind can’t.’
My throat works around nothing as he stops in front of me and I angle the camera low to capture the length of the ink winding across his arm.
‘And what do they do to the heart?’ I ask, glancing up where the tattooed links plunge into his chest.
He starts humming without answering me. So low it seems tuneless almost. The song crawls into the gaps where fear lives, slipping between the crackle of fire and my frantic pulse until the room bends around it.
Every hair along my arms rises.
I lower the camera.
When I look up, my breath cuts short.