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“I don’t care if you want me to paint. I don’t care if you want to watch.”
“I do want it, little painter. But you want it more.”
“No, I don’t.”
“I can tell you do.”
I know Daphne wants to paint the same way I know she wants to fuck. It’s similar for her, I think. She wants the battle and the surrender. The skin-to-skin intimacy that hurts like a bitch. If she didn’t respond so well to being owned and restrained, I might think she was a sadist. Of course, she’s too sweet for pain, and pain is too easy. That’s evident even in her paintings. The movement of the sea is never simple, even when it looks that way.
I know Daphne wants to paint because I can feel it in the air. I can see all the small tensions in her hands and in her body. We’re not so different, Daphne and I. The world comes to us through art. It’s just that hers is a tactile expression. Mine is only tactile in that way when I’m touching her.
“You want it,” I insist, keeping my voice even. “You need it.”
“Go to hell, Emerson.”
I could say more. I could say that the naked hope in her eyes can’t be hidden. I could point out the way she leans toward me whenever I enter a room. Even when she tells me to go to hell. She might be a hummingbird about to take flight, but she’d fly right into my arms. Daphne can’t resist the pull between us. It must feel much like the pull toward her paints.
“Someday, I’m sure.” If there is such thing as hell, the way Daphne’s family believes, I’m certain I’ll end up there. Eternal torment. She probably pictures fire and brimstone. I imagine the open dome of the sky. Clear ground stretching out to the horizon. No walls. No closed doors sketched out of darkness by thin cuts of light. My house, burned to the ground.
I turn away before the urge to touch her overrides all other instincts. She’s hungry. Forcing her to eat with my own two hands would be hot, but probably unproductive.
I’m halfway down the stairs when she calls after me.
“Where are you going?”
“Back to the kitchen.”
A defiant sigh. “I won’t eat.”
I pause on the middle step and look back into her eyes. Emotions flare. She’s angry at her captivity, disappointed by Sin, and hungry. We didn’t eat last night. It’s been hours upon hours. A little painter like Daphne still requires food to survive.
“You will.”
“You’ll make me?”
For someone so enamored with freedom, Daphne can’t stop asking to be dominated. Another negotiation, then. Hidden behind insolent questions to cover it like a layer of paint.
“If you refuse to eat, I’ll tie you to a frame on my wall and fuck your throat until you beg for food.”
The little gasp she gives is exactly why I need her here. A split second of delighted, mortified shock. “I’d rather starve.”
I know, I know. She’s trying her very best to be serious. Summoning all her Morelli disdain. At heart, however, Daphne is that laughing girl in the press photo. Too sweet to suffer long. She would not starve. She’d take me down her throat as long as I wanted. Until she was crying and gagging. Until her thighs were streaked with desire. She can’t, or won’t, admit what she wants out loud. A pattern with her. Daphne was more open, more transparent, when she thought she was going to go home at the end of the evening. She’s no less transparent now. She only believes she is.
It brings a smile to my face.
“I mean it.” Her hand comes up and clutches the collar of her sweater.
“I mean it, too, little painter. It wouldn’t be a hardship to catch you and bind you. It would be…” I fucked her twice last night, but I could fuck her three times over right now. On the stairs. On the carpet. On the front porch, for all I care. “It would be lovely.”
She scowls. “I hate you.”
“Don’t ever stop,” I tell her, then leave her there, all alone. Untouched and unbound.
For now.
