Page 264 of These Tears

Mirrors panelling the ceiling.

This is not some careless fantasy thrown together in a locked room.

He has considered every angle, every reflection.

Every way I might want to see him – and every way he wants to see me.

Elias’ arm stiffens instinctively around my waist, but he doesn’t push me or pull me back out. He remains still, leaving the decision suspended between us.

Behind me, he makes no move to come further into the room. He waits while I absorb it all.

Perhaps he expects horror.

Perhaps I should feel it.

But the discomfort has already changed shape, sliding low and hot as my gaze travels from one black lens to the next before settling on the bed beneath their silent attention.

The room breathes with the intimacy only we understand – a place where every touch and tremor, every moment of restraint or surrender could be captured and replayed. Over and over again.

This is a private darkness built around the parts of us that only bloom when we’re alone.

And now that I stand at its threshold with his scent drowning my thoughts, I’m surprised I don’t want to back away. I want to step deeper inside.

A small remote rests beside the recorder as I abandon his embrace and approach the shelf. I pick it up, turning it once between my fingers until the power symbol catches the low light.

As I lift my eyes to his and recognise the heat and uncertainty once again swirling in the glacial blue, I realise…

I want to know what he would look like through every one of those lenses.

45

‘Say something,’ Elias whispers.

He stays in the doorway. One hand rests against the frame, but he makes no move to come further in.

I curl my fingers tighter around the remote.

‘Tell me about this,’ I say quietly.

He shifts his weight. His attention moves over the camera and the bed, then up the amber-lit walls, then returns to my face.

One hand flexes briefly at his side.

‘This room once contained one demon. Now it’s remade for two to roam free,’ he says darkly.

I observe the beautiful creature framed by the doorway. Pale skin. Shadowed lashes. Strength wrapped around the wound I’ve spent months circling without understanding what my hands were making.

I had imagined healing him as a kind of unfastening: chains falling away, violence softened into a gentler thing. But he has not asked me to remove the darkness. He has built boundaries, switches and doors for it – and placed the power button within my reach.

I press it.

The projector comes to life with a soft whirr, casting a shifting light across the wall above the headrest. A second later, colour spills onto the screen.

It’s us.

Captured from one of the lower angles – the more unforgiving ones. His mouth is pressed to my neck, teeth buried in skin, my body arched beneath him, lips parted in a cry I remember down to the echo in my bones as we move in a decadent rhythm. His hand is barely visible in the frame, his fingers splayed over my breast.

I don’t need the whole frame. One image is enough to pull the moment back intact – every sensation from that time, every surrender, every wicked promise remade.