Page 155

My fingers slide along the throat, over the hollow of the sternum, the ribs barely emerging, the taut belly. A spot beneath the navel is worn smooth.

“Mon Dieu...”

Behind me, his breathing changes. He has stopped, but his body betrays him; a slight contraction of the jaw, nostrils flaring just so, lips parting without him noticing. And a color rises to his cheeks.

What is this reaction?

My smile stretches with a cruelty I do not even try to mask.

“Does it make you uncomfortable?”

My voice returns to a quiet tone.

“That I brush against your work with such indifference?”

I pass beside him, a fingernail grazing his forearm.

He holds his breath, his eyes unable to stay still. I position myself between him and the sculpture, the distance between us is a fiction, just one step, and it would be over.

I touch the bust again. Right there, where the marble is smoothest. His breath hitches, he does not look at my hand, he looks at me.

“What is happening to you, Lord Dorian?”

I lower my voice.

“Do you grow agitated because of this?”

The fabric of his trousers tightens unmistakably. He does not cover himself nor draw away.

“Do you feel no shame?” I insist. “Is it enough for you to see me touch that which resembles me to—”

I stop.

“No. It is worse. It is the idea that I am touching myself. In your way. Is it not?”

He swallows without answering. And my body... reacts. Without mercy. A low, deep, brutal pulse takes me again where it shouldn’t.

I close my eyes for an instant, trying to gather my composure, but a choked groan of his reaches my ear, threatening to tear away every remnant of control.

Yet, the acrid smell of cigars, the rustle of turning pages, and a taste far too sweet invade my memory.

Two black pits staring down at me.

I reopen my eyes.

My brow furrows, I find him motionless, hands clenched into fists at his sides, veins pulsing just beneath the skin.

“Do you wish to yield to your lust?”

There is no answer. Only the gaze, dense and slow, descending upon me like a palpable weight.

Those gray eyes consume me, fixed and penetrating.

The hands at his sides clench even tighter, his breath hitches, and every tremor of his body speaks more clearly than words ever could. I am surprised to recognize the echo within my own chest.

There is no need to add anything more.

I am reading his desire as if it were etched in scarlet letters upon his skin.