Page 45 of Until She's Mine
“These are from before I met you.”
The sketches are a window into Lucian’s mind, a raw and unfiltered glimpse of the man he was before I entered his life. There are landscapes—dark, brooding forests and jagged mountain peaks that seem to echo the turmoil in his soul. There are portraits too, faces etched with pain, longing, and something darker, something I can’t quite name. Each piece is a fragment of his past, a story waiting to be told.
I step closer to one of the sketches, my fingers hovering over the paper as if afraid to touch it. It’s a self-portrait, but not like any I’ve ever seen. The lines are harsh, almost violent, and the eyes are filled with a haunting emptiness that makes my chest ache.
“This was after my grandmother died,” Lucian says quietly from behind me. “I didn’t know how to process it. So I drew.”
His grandmother—the only person who’d ever truly seen him before me, he’d told me once in a moment of rare openness. Champagne made him talkative that night, and he’d confessed how she used to sneak him art supplies when his father forbade them, calling them frivolous.
“She was the one who taught you to draw?”
He nods, moving to stand beside me. His fingers ghost over another sketch. This one is of a woman’s hands, weathered but elegant, holding a paintbrush. “Every Sunday, while my parents attended their society brunches and Tobias played with his toy soldiers, she’d take me to her studio. Said I had too muchdarkness in me for a child. That I needed to learn how to let it out before it consumed me.”
I study the sketches with a new understanding. The violence in the strokes isn’t anger, it’s grief. The darkness isn’t malevolence, it’s loneliness.
“Did it work?” I ask. “Did drawing help?”
“For a while. Until I realized that no amount of charcoal on paper could fill the void she left behind.” He turns to me then, his eyes holding that same intensity that both thrills and terrifies me. “Until you.”
“You’re obsessed with me.”
The corner of Lucian’s mouth twitches. “Obsessed? No, Evelyn. Obsession is fleeting. It’s a fire that burns hot and then consumes itself. What I feel for you...” His thumb tenderly brushes over my cheekbone. “It’s deeper than that. It’s not obsession—it’s devotion.”
“Devotion,” I echo. “That sounds even more dangerous.”
He chuckles darkly. “It is. Devotion isn’t something you can control or walk away from. It doesn’t fade with time or distance. It’s constant. Unyielding.” His hand slides from my cheek to the nape of my neck, tilting my head back to meet his gaze. “And it’s yours.”
I press my lips against his and murmur, “I want to see my sketches, once we are back in the city. Every single one of them.” My fingers tighten in his shirt as I pull him closer. “I want to see how you’ve seen me, how you’ve captured me when I wasn’t looking.”
Lucian’s hands slide down to grip my hips. “You might not like what you find.”
“I’m not afraid. I want all of it—the good, the bad, the raw. I want to see the parts of me I hide from everyone else.”
I’m afraid he can see how deep the bad parts of me go. I’m afraid he can feel how rotten I am.
“Then you’ll have them all,” he promises. “Every sketch, every drawing, every moment I’ve stolen with charcoal and paper when I couldn’t have you in the flesh. But first, let me sketch you here. Now. In this room where I’ve poured out years of wanting.”
The idea sends heat pooling low in my belly. To be his subject, to watch his hands move across paper while his eyes devour every inch of me—it’s intimate in a way that makes my breath catch.
“Here?” I glance around at the walls covered in his tortured artwork. “Among all of this?”
“Especially among this.” His lips graze my temple. “I want to capture you surrounded by what I was before you. The darkness that you’ve turned to light.”
I nod, my throat suddenly dry.
Lucian moves with purpose, gathering supplies from a desk I hadn’t noticed—charcoal, paper, a worn wooden board to lean against. His movements are efficient, practiced. When he turns back to me with the look of a man who knows exactly what he wants.
“Sit,” he says simply.
I settle onto the leather chair he indicates, its surface worn smooth by years of use. My hands flutter nervously in my lap, suddenly uncertain. Being sketched feels more exposing than being naked—at least in bed, I can close my eyes and lose myself in sensation. Here, I’m forced to hold still while he studies me with clinical precision.
“Relax.” Lucian positions himself across from me with the drawing board balanced on his knees. His fingers test the weight of the charcoal, rolling it between his thumb and forefinger. “You’re thinking too hard again.”
“I can’t help it. This feels...”
“Vulnerable?”
I nod, my breath catching as his eyes trace the line of my throat and the curve of my shoulder. There’s something almost reverent in his gaze, as if he’s seeing me for the first time all over again.
