When he undid the final button, he glanced up. As he held her gaze, his warm hands slid purposefully beneath the blue fabric and over her skin, along her collarbone, pushing the dress slowly off her shoulders until it fell down to the floor.
When she stood naked before him, Hawthorne’s gaze didn’t drop. Didn’t greedily take her in. Instead, he kept his eyes on her face as he held out his hand. She took it.
His palm was warm and strong and steady against hers as he led her towards the fire. But she could feel the ragged pulse beating beneath his skin.
“What do you want me to do?” she asked when he let go, digging her bare toes into the fluffy white carpet.
“Try … lying down?”
Nodding, she lowered herself into the softness and warmth of the carpet.
They tried several poses. Hawthorne stood at a distance, looking for the best angle, making suggestions. Emeline shifted, crooking her knee, bending her elbow beneath her head. But she was too tense and stiff.
“I could strip off my clothes and stand here naked too,” he said, sensing her nervousness. “If it would help.”
Emeline laughed, certain it would do the opposite, and glanced at him.
“There.” His eyes darkened as his attention swept over her. “That’s perfect.”
She felt vulnerable suddenly, stretched out over the white carpet, with the firelight flickering over her pale skin and dark hair, laying her bare. But she felt powerful, too, watching him take her in.
He drew her over and over, from several angles, his charcoal whispering as it moved across the page. When she started to fidget, he lulled her back to stillness with poetry he’ d memorized. Lines from Mary Oliver and Sylvia Plath, Pablo Neruda and Alfred, Lord Tennyson.
They did it again the next week. And the week after that.
Every week, he helped her out of her clothes, his hands lingering longer and longer each time, his expression growing hungrier and hungrier by the end of each session. As Emeline posed, his charcoal scratched in the silence. When she grew restless or itchy or bored, Hawthorne recited more poetry. When he ran out of poems, he recounted stories from the books on his shelves. Tales of Beowulf and Antigone and the Lady of Shalott.
He was an endless font of stories, bewitching her into stillness.
She was growing addicted to the sound of his sketching, and to that moment when she slid off her dress or sweater or jeans and his jaw clenched with restraint. She was growing addicted to his voice soothing her in the firelight. To his ravenous gaze running down her spine and over her hips when she turned her back to pull on her clothes.
It was her favorite secret, these nights.
She never wanted them to end.
On the last day of winter break, they sat side by side before the fire, their hands cupped around mugs of hot cocoa after a drawing session. Emeline, who hadn’t dressed yet, was wrapped in a soft quilt from his bed.
“I’ve been thinking.” Hawthorne stared intently into the flames. “Maybe we should stop.”
Emeline turned sharply to look at him. “What do you mean?”
He tilted his face to his mug. “You have three singing gigs a week now, not to mention school, and a part-time job. You don’t need to keep doing this for me.”
She shook her head. This was the best part of her week.
And she didn’t do it for him.
“My drawing classes are starting again soon, anyway.”
Oh.
This was the real reason, then. He was bored with her. He wanted other people to draw.
That jealous, gnawing feeling was back, sinking its teeth in.
Don’t be silly,she chided. Of course he wanted different bodies to draw. The human form came in every shape and size and he wanted to learn them all. He wanted to get better. It was just like studying different kinds of music.
But the thought of Hawthorne watching someone else undress made her stomach constrict. A cold sweat dampened her skin.
