I stand there for a long time, letting the weight of it settle into my bones. The man who cannot choose between three shirts spent weeks choosing exactly how to frame every version of me he could catch through the glass. And now he has given me the key to his heart with a bond that’ll never die.
And now I’ve just seen the most intimate part of the man I love.
I wipe my eyes with the back of my hand and take a shaky breath. The clothes for Sai are still clutched in my other hand. I turn away from the wall slowly, carefully, like it might disappear if I move too fast.
A small grunt tears my attention to the doorway, Sai standing there looking sheepish, his eyes darting to the wall and then back to me. No doubt he’s waiting for me to be mad and if I were anyone else, I might be.
However, knowing how my Alpha sees me is everything.
“Show me,” I say, voice thick. “Tell me what you see. Why me?” I step back against the wall, patting the one where I’m eating cereal, cross-legged on my bed.
Sai slowly crosses the room, stepping up against me before turning me to face the wall again. He steps in behind me, chest pressed to my back, arms sliding around my waist so I am held against him while the photographs surround us on every side.
His mouth finds my ear, tending to my bite for a few seconds before explaining everything. “This one.” He reaches past me and touches a photograph near eye level. It’s me laughing at my phone, afternoon light cutting across my jaw. “You were laughing at something on the screen and the light hit your jawline exactly right. I couldn’t breathe. I took six shots in a row. This was the one. The others weren’t right because in this one your eyes are half-closed and you look like you forgot anyonemight be watching. That is the most beautiful thing about you. When you forget to perform.”
Sai’s hand moves to the next photograph without breaking contact. Me at the easel, brush in hand, head tilted, frowning at the canvas. “This one. You were frustrated with something on the painting. You kept stepping back and forward, trying to see it from different distances. I watched you for twenty minutes straight. The way your body moves when you work is different from how you move on camera. Less controlled. More honest. I have never shot anything more real than this.”
His body presses me closer to the wall. The photographs are all around us now, my own face staring back from every angle while Sai’s chest stays warm and solid against my back. His mouth brushes the shell of my ear again.
“And this one.” His fingers find the blush lingerie shot, the one that seems more worn than the others. “This is the one I kept in the drawer. The one I held against my chest at night. You are looking at something I cannot see and whatever it is made you soft. Not the softness you perform for the camera. The real kind. The kind you hide from everyone else.”
I close my eyes for a second and feel the words sink into me. Each description is specific, the language of a man who has studied me the way other people study masterpieces. He’s not telling me I am beautiful. He’s showing me the moments I thought no one ever noticed and telling me they were the ones worth framing.
Tears slip down my cheeks as Sai keeps talking, each new photograph bringing another layer of me into focus. Every ordinary second, every quiet moment, he saw it all and decided it mattered.
Sai’s arms tighten around my waist. His mouth stays at my ear and his voice drops even softer, almost a whisper now. “You are the only thing I have ever wanted to keep,” he says. “Not theversion you show everyone else. This one. The real one. That is the one I cannot stop photographing.”
I turn in his arms just enough to face him. My hands come up to cup his face and I kiss him slowly, tasting the salt of my own tears on his lips. When I pull back I rest my forehead against his. “You see me, Sai. All of me. And I have never let anyone do that before. Why me?”
Sai lifts his head and meets my eyes. “Because you are the only thing I have ever seen that I couldn’t capture. Every photograph I took is beautiful, but they are not you. They are light on paper. You are everything the light touches.”
I press my face into his chest so he can’t see my expression. If he sees it right now the power dynamic will never recover. My eyes burn and my throat feels too tight as I hold onto him like he is the only solid thing left in the world.
I am his.
Completely.
