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“I’m tired of having this conversation from a distance. Decide, Daphne.”
She looks at the open floor between us. Looks back into my eyes. Her first step forward is reluctant. The second one even more so. But then her chin dips and she comes to me, stopping about a foot away. Her entire body trembles. I catch her peeking up at me from under her lashes.
I reach for her wrist.
Slowly.
Very fucking carefully.
Daphne doesn’t pull away. She lets out a tearful breath when I finally touch her, running my thumb along the inside of her wrist. I count to ten. I count to twenty. And then I move up to her elbow and start the count over. Her upper arm. Her shoulder. By the time I put my hand on the side of her neck and tip her face toward mine, she’s stopped shaking.
“I hate you,” she breathes. “I hate you for using that against me. You did that in the art gallery.”
“You liked it then, too.” And I don’t think she means what she’s saying.
Her pulse is quick but not panicked under my palm. “You have no idea what I like.”
“Perhaps not. But that’s not why I wanted you to come closer.”
A tremor moves through her. “Why, then?”
“I need you to be able to hear me.”
“I could hear you before.”
“There is no cage.” I’ve never seen dark eyes as multifaceted as Daphne’s. Not in any painting. Not on any person. I’m surprised she hasn’t been sought after as a model by every motherfucker on the planet. Her lips part as she takes in the words. “There are no chains. And for the love of Christ, little painter, I will never lock you—” A wave of something cold, something ancient, washes up and chokes me, if only briefly. “I will never lock you in the closet.”
I regret asking her to come closer. Now the art is watching me back.
Curiosity comes back into my little painter’s eyes. A gleam across the depths. Light tracing the outline of a closed door. You know what that means, a voice whispers. A threat.
“So you’re just going to keep me in here, then? Tied to the bed?”
“Do you want to be tied to the bed, little painter?”
“No,” she says, too quickly. Daphne’s cheeks flush. Her terror isn’t enough to hide her desires. Not from me. “I don’t want—please. I don’t want that.”
Under other circumstances, she might. I can see that in her eyes, too. The dark thoughts she’s had. The ones she tries to hide on the canvas.
“It won’t be like that.”
“What, my captivity?” Another laugh, this one raw, nervous. “There’s nothing you can say that will make this better.”
I run the pad of my thumb over her cheekbone.
Daphne leans toward it.
She realizes what she’s doing at the last moment and jerks her head back.
“Just get it over with,” she demands. “Do whatever it is you’re going to do to me.”
“All right.” I drop my hand and turn away. Stride toward the art studio. When I turn back, she’s frozen in the center of my bedroom, one hand in her collar. “This way, Daphne.”
The smallest shake of her head.
She didn’t believe me when I said there was no cage. No chains. No closet, for fuck’s sake. Her breath comes quicker. My little painter is spiraling again, and it’s far too late for that. It’s late in this encounter, late at night, and it will only make things harder in the morning.
There’s nothing you can say to make this better.
