whisper. “I’m comfortable with feeling it. No pressure, Camilla. I’m okay.”
I nod, air moving through my lungs as my chest loosens. “Was your motive payback then?” I ask playfully.
“Nope. I’m just very bad with time.” He pauses for my chuckle. As though he expected one. As though I give them easily. Only with him. “To be honest, I got here much too early, so early the door wasn’t unlocked yet. Then, when I saw you approaching, I suddenly worried I was being too presumptuous or too, I don’t know. Eager. So I slipped off to take some pics for a while. Got caught up in that and forgot to watch when to come back.”
I’ve been there. Many a time. The inner world of the artist is awfully large. It’s easy to get lost in it.
But that’s not the part of what he’s said that requires commentary. “You came early?”
He nods, a shy grin forming. “I couldn’t wait to see you.”
“I couldn’t wait to see you either.”
I’m not sure if the words feel better in or out at first, but after they hang for a few seconds, crackling the air around us, I decide I like them there. I like him knowing. I want to share that happy sprout with him instead of keeping it hidden.
A shuffle in the background as the student posing switches off with one in line draws my attention back to our surroundings. My skin feels itchy all of a sudden. “You’re a student,” I say, forcing my eyes back to his camera. “I keep wondering if this is inappropriate.”
“Do I need to point out that nothing inappropriate has happened?”
“The kinds of thoughts I keep having feel very different.” There I am again being candid.
“Well.” He moves a step closer, and the closure of the distance between us combined with the throatiness of that single syllable has my thighs clenching. “Considering that all of your students are adults and that this isn’t the type of school where you give a grade or wield power in another way over us, I think you could probably fuck each and every one of them and no one would bat an eye.”
“Fuck the lot of them then?” My cheeks feel warm, and I’m very near giggling. I hardly recognize who I am with him.
He’s abruptly serious when he answers. “Please don’t do that.”
“Not any of them?”
“Maybe just one.”
I’m so risk aversive that I’d all but forgotten the sweet misery in being dangerous, in saying dangerous things.
And these are dangerous words. Because there’s still a bit of the forbidden, no matter what he says, but mostly because there’s an underlying challenge to this exchange. An admission that we’ve been thinking about each other in the naughtiest of ways. An invitation to make those naughty ways come to life.
I want him. I do. I’ve never stopped wanting him.
But the suggestion reminds me of the last time, of how I moved naked against him in the dark. Pursuing this with him will mean more of the same, good and bad. What are the chances that his flat has blackout curtains as well?
Instinctively, I tug at the cuff of my sleeve while my stomach ties itself in knots. “There might not be grades given, but there was money put forth. I should at least appear to be giving you all equal attention.”
With that, I turn my head back to the camera screen and try to nudge my focus to the images before me and away from the gnawing tension in my gut. It’s impossible, of course. How did I end up here, standing on the edge of this precipice? I’ve been so drawn by the view that I forgot how sharp the cliff was.
The photos pass in a blur as I scroll through. Vaguely I’m aware of the scenery changing, of the series moving from the living statues competition to another familiar setting—the walkway outside the school. I freeze on the image of someone that I know entirely too well, one that I have argued with and gone to war with. One I have tried to reason with, tried to love, tried to hate just as much.
It’s exquisitely composed. The proportion is spot on, my body filling exactly as much of the image as it should to be compelling. The angle is remarkable and unique, the lighting superb the way it hits my face as I lift my chin to the sky. The story is quite clear—a woman who has found the sun before it