Page 18 of A Touch of Dark
“Then what?” He’s still sketching when I turn around, his posture angled toward the drawing, conveying complete disinterest in me. “What could the daughter of Heyworth Thorne want from me?” he wonders.
My answer escapes in a rush. “I…I want you to paint me.”
Do I? The veracity of the answering pinch in my stomach surprises me. Yes.
“Paint you?” He sounds too soft. Like I suggested he stick a brush up his ass rather than use one.
I’m flashed back to last night. What was that word he used? Insult.
“If you even can,” I add, returning to the table one halting step at a time. “For all I know, it could be a ruse, just like your so-called blindness. Dad—Judge Thorne told me that you really use them to—”
“I’m sure he told you plenty of things about me,” he says dismissively. “I could tell you more about him.”
The implied threat has the effect of shutting me up.
“So the woman who calls my art terrible wants me to paint her. Would this piece hang in your father’s office, I wonder? A gift for when he runs again for mayor?”
“How did you know that?” The second I reply, I recognize his statement for the bait it was.
“Only a man as conceited as your father would demand more power rather than reflect on his past misuse of it,” he smugly retorts. “And only his daughter would desire what she considers terrible.”
I attempt to shrug off the venom in his tone but wind up flinching. His accent can cut like a whip when he wants it to. “There are worse things to be called than that.”
“Oh?”
“Yes.”
Like perfect.
The drawing he’s working on now is anything but. It’s goddamn terrible. Beautiful lines. Cruel, honest mortality.
“Por qué?” He drops the stick of charcoal and it makes a stray line in the wrong place, marring the woman’s detailed torso. Then it rolls off the table and hits the floor, continuing toward me. “And how should I paint you?”
I can imagine the answer he expects: prettily.
“Like them,” I say instead—and there is no need to elaborate. I want him to paint me naked. Dead. Honest.
This time, Damien doesn’t reply. His fingers fan out in front of him, trapping the sketch beneath them. Then they curl, crumpling the drawing into a ball, which he tosses onto the floor.
“Explain,” he says, invoking that harsh, commanding tone.
My lips part, words spilling out on cue. “How do you see them?” I’m closer to the table before I realize it, bending to snatch the discarded sketch. Despite how protective he seems to be of his art, he doesn’t warn me away. “How do you pose them?”
Another question goes unanswered as I unfurl the drawing and observe it up close.
“Come here.”
My eyes cut to him sharply.No,every nerve in my body warns. He’s got them on red alert, humming with nervous energy. “W-why?”
He raises his hand and crooks one beckoning finger. “Come.”
“No,” I say.Liar.I’m already inching closer to the opposite end of the table.
A blur of motion is all I register before my chin is in his grip. Startlingly warm fingertips tilt it expertly while five more come to graze the side of my jaw.
I suck in a breath. He has the softest hands I’ve ever felt. Like velvet. Hands that must wear gloves to perform any menial tasks. Hands that could only commit the most sterile of murders.
Dangerous, sinful hands.
