Page 42 of Married to My Sis’s Bratva Fiancé

She slipped into that zone, charcoal moving quick. She stepped back half a pace to check the whole thing, tilted her head to read the light. Those bright, damp hazel eyes looked like honey set on fire as they swept my chest, my waist, my thighs.

She looked too focused. Every time her eyes passed, my skin felt like she'd actually touched me. Desire woke up fast. I didn't need to look down to know how hard I'd gotten.

"A professional model wouldn't react to the artist," Elena said first.

"That is the artist's problem."

"I didn't do anything."

"You looked me over with those wet eyes from head to toe and expected me not to react?"

Her breathing stopped.

I wanted to haul her out from behind the easel, make her use her hands, make her feel what she'd done to me. The thought tightened my gut. But she dropped her eyes again.

Light caught in her hair and lashes, and that open, unprotected way she threw herself into the work made me hesitate. I pinned the want down and stayed still the way she needed me to.

Forty minutes later, Elena set the charcoal aside.

"Done?" I asked.

"Just a rough draft."

I stood, dressed, and walked to her side.

The man on the page was built from clean charcoal lines. The double-headed eagle tattoo on his chest and the old wounds looked heavier in shadow. The darkest strokes sat in the eyes—hot, aggressive, like the want on paper had reached straight through the page to the person behind the easel.

She used a bent knee and shadow to handle what was between my legs, hiding the most obvious part of my reaction inside the composition. The whole thing carried a sharp, undeniable sense of art.

"You hid my cock pretty well," I said.

The tips of her ears went red again. "That part didn't affect the composition."

I didn't push it. "You did good."

Elena looked like she wasn't sure she'd heard me right.

"Your composition, your light—there is more life in it than most things I've seen," I said. "People are going to love your work. People are going to pay for it. You have the skill."

She lowered her eyes and brushed extra charcoal dust off the edge of the paper. "My father never thought so. He thought my paintings embarrassed him. To him, art had two uses—flatter whoever needed flattering, or sell high at auction."

"Rich idiots pay top dollar for garbage every day. That doesn't make it good. Your work isn't judged by Seamus."

She looked up and held my gaze a long time.

I opened the sketchbook again. Portraits filled most of it—nothing like the simple drills I'd assumed.

"I don't know art training," I said, tapping a page with my finger. "I thought painters did the same plaster busts over and over. Or vases. Or landscapes. Why do you keep drawing people?"

"Because landscapes end up on postcards, and expensive statues always have someone to take care of them." Elena lifted the finished mother-and-child painting. "But a lot of people's lives don't leave anything behind."

Her fingertip brushed the fine lines at the mother's eye.

"I want to paint calluses. Wrinkles. The curve of someone's back when they bow their head to get through the day. I want to paint the split second when someone looks at someone else." Her voice stayed steady, but it carried something raw. "Those moments might not be pretty, and they might not sell for the highest price. But they prove someone lived for real. They existed. They loved—and they were loved."

My chest tightened, slow and hard.

That not-quite-perfect stew from tonight flashed through my mind. The light she'd left on, waiting for me to come home. Proof I'd been here. Proof I'd mattered. And the thought of losing it hit like a fist—I could already feel the ache of missing it.