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Aurnia
The sight of Conor shirtless and awaiting just before me was almost more than I could bear.
I had been bold. Perhaps too bold.
Who was I kidding? I was far too bold. Far, far too bold. But I hadn’t been able to stop myself. There was something I wanted and I was going to get it. It seemed Conor hadn’t been able to stop himself either.
I had seen the struggle in his darkened eyes. I had felt the quivering restraint in his muscles. The muscles of his lower abdomen. The muscles along the length of his arms. The fingers that wrapped like a vice around my wrist. I had felt it. I had seen it. His desire to stop me. His need to stop me. His absolute certainty that it was the right thing, the only right thing: to stop me.
I had also seen a helplessness in him. A weakness in those bulging muscles. A fading of the light in his eyes. Because there was something inside of him that was stronger than his restraint, stronger than his resolve, stronger than any idea of right and wrong. I had seen that, too: desire, lust, a longing to just let go, to just give in.
To me.
To me.
To me.
So there I was. Trying to keep my knees from buckling no more than six feet away from him. Struggling not to let my breath escape my chapped lips in desperate little gasps. Fighting with everything I had to keep the pencil gripped between my fingers from shaking.I had told Conor that he was hiding, but was I not doing just the same? I used the shadows of the room to mask my fear, the cover of the broken and bent blinds to conceal the unsteadiness of my feet, the distance, short as it may be, between us to hide the raggedness of my every breath.
I’d forced Conor out into the open, but I could not do the same to myself. I couldn’t let him see how much he affected me by simply sitting there, watching me. I couldn’t let him know that this moment, in the dark, alone with him, a pencil in hand, ready to claim him on paper, felt like a defining moment in my life. I couldn’t reveal that I wanted more than him just on paper.
I wanted him on my body. I wanted him tattooed on my inner thighs, on my waist, on the hollow between my throat and my shoulder. I wanted him on my heart, on my soul. I wanted him everywhere.
It had been a battle to get him on paper. If Conor knew I expected this to only be the start, he would send the easel crashing through the window. He would drag me by scruff of my neck to the room. He would lock me in and I was certain I would never see him again. Diarmuid would be the one to release me. He would find me a new place to serve my probation. Dublin Ink would be boarded up. Conor gone like the wind.
And so I hid. I swallowed every unsteady breath till my lungs burned. I dug the pencil into the thick paper set up on the easel to keep myself from pitching forward, from fainting, from waking up from this beautiful dream.
At first, I focused simply on the sound of the pencil scraping against the page. Any glance toward Conor sent my body into a flush and made me lightheaded so I grounded myself with stroke, stroke, steady stroke. Graphite on pulp, pencil on paper. Occasionally a car would pass on the street outside, its tires crunching, its headlights casting into the room. But otherwise it was silent. Otherwise it was nearly dark, just the fading light of the sun beneath low, heavy clouds.
When the street lamps finally flickered on, sending bars of light across us through the cracked blinds, it was practically blinding. When Conor finally spoke, his words were nearly deafening.
“Now I can see you, too.”
I kept my eyes on the page, busying myself with the pencil, hardly aware of what I was doing.All I knew was that I could not look up in that moment. To see his eyes on me would be to show him everything. To look at him right then would be to look at him for the very last time.
My entire body was tense with electricity. I thought that if I moved my feet even just a little on the carpet, it would shock both of us. It made my hand cramp, my jaw tighten to the point of pain. I wondered if I was visibly shaking.
“Can you close your eyes for a minute?” I asked Conor, my voice almost hoarse.
“Why?” he asked.
Because if you see into me, you’ll see how I need you. I couldn’t say this, of course. But this was the truth.
“It’s easier to see the shape of your eyes with them closed,” I lied.
I paused a moment to straighten the pad of paper on the easel. I dragged a hand through my hair and found it sticky with sweat. Maybe this was a bad idea. Maybe I wasn’t ready. But maybe I would never be ready.
I practiced a few deep breaths, trying to still keep them as silent as possible even as my chest wrenched. And then, like plunging into an icy pool, I lifted my gaze to Conor.
He sat on the chair with his eyes softly closed. The light from between the blinds cast bars across his naked chest, across the contours of his sharp cheekbone, across his precariously closed eyelids.
This was the first time I had been allowed to admire him without restriction. Before it had always been out of the corner of my eye, a glance here, a glance there. Adding up the glimpses to try to create a full picture. Before he always caught me looking. Always scowling. Always pushing me away. Always making sure I got no more of him.
My eyes moved over his face. My pencil moved almost as if on its own as I studied the way his hair fell from his bun. A quick, determined stroke for his sharp nose. Sketching in his beard was like little pricks of rain before a downpour. I could almost feel them against my skin, could almost feel them rough against my fingertips.
I gripped the pencil a little tighter when I moved on to Conor’s chest. His broad shoulders threatened not to fit onto the page. I felt I was overdrawing the muscles of his arms, but they really were that big. He was that strong. I blushed—thankful his eyes were closed—as I outlined his well-defined pecs, as I continued on to count out his abs as they trailed down and disappeared beneath the waistline of his jeans. Where the hair of his beard looked like barbs, the hair above his groin looked like down: soft as grasses in the wind. My pencil etched each and every one down, down, down.
“Can I open my eyes?” Conor asked, startling me.
