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He sighs.
“I will see you out.”
Without turning, Richard and Isobel follow him down the corridor. Their steps retreat, the sound of their feet growing fainter until it dissolves. Left alone, the atelier seems too vast, too filled with his absence.
I go out. The corridor is long, but not narrow. I lean for a moment against the door, decided to await his return, when I notice a sliver of light further ahead.
A door ajar, a room I don’t remember seeing upon entering. I approach without a sound; from the opening, I glimpse a bench, thin tools, files, spatulas... his instruments. Not the hall of finished works, but the place where he creates them.
His true boundary.
His territory.
I should turn back. Instead, my hand grazes the door, a slight pressure is enough, and the room opens.
My breath hitches, a contraction ripples through my chest as my gaze falls upon the objects scattered across the table. Things he touches every day. Things he grasps.
I advance slowly. A chisel, left askew on the bench, catches a dull reflection. I run a finger along its metallic spine, beside it lies a leather glove. I know that I should not touch it, yet I lift it anyway, squeezing it between my fingers. I draw closer still, the table grazing my hip; the scent of leather is all over me.
I feel him everywhere, his contained strength, his precision, that elegant violence that belongs to him even when he is silent.
The room is so quiet I can hear my own heartbeat: irregular, almost feverish. And for an instant, though I know it is impossible, I have the impression he is standing right behind me.
Watching.
Knowing.
The skin of my hands burns. A moan escapes through my clenched teeth, a choked sound that should not exist in any civilized place.
Before my eyes, an image materializes, his hands... seizing me from behind, thrusting me against the bench, deciding for me.
Modeling, molding, and remolding again.
And again.
And again.
Until what was there before no longer exists.
The sense of shame arrives, raw, but not strong enough to cancel the heat in my cheeks or the swelling between my thighs.
A sharp noise snaps me back to reality. I spin around.
He is there on the threshold, watching me without blinking, a look that does not belong to a man, but to something assessing the distance before it leaps.
His eyes drop to my hands. One open on the bench. The other still on the chisel, fingers rigid, caught as if in a theft. An unpardonable sin.
“Does it excite you to touch what obeys me, Viscount?”
“I was not aware it was forbidden.”
He advances. A slow step, then another. He stops before me, close enough that I feel his breath cutting into mine.
“Or perhaps... it offers you a sanctuary.”
His eyes slide from mine to my hands.
“Better to touch the objects than me, is that it?”
