Adom turned his back on the rattling sound of the door knob being turned rapidly from right to left and finding no way around. His shoulders tensed as she knocked. Not a stiff tap-tap like a lady of her station. The knock was a pounding as though she were desperate to gain access. For a second Adom faltered, wondering if she were in real danger out there.
He’d locked the door immediately after sending Emet out this morning. He’d gone down to work on his paintings. But the colors and lines weren’t working, and he’d come back upstairs and unlocked the door. After lunch Emet phoned to tell him he’d need to stay late to prepare his case for the Insemination Bill. Engrossed in his own work, Adom had missed the call and so Emet left a message. His voice sounded strained on the recording, as though there was more he wanted to say, but he either couldn’t or wouldn’t over the phone.
After listening to the message, Adom put down the receiver and locked the store front door once more. That was an hour ago. Now she stood on the other side of his shop. Her bright face sank down as she realized she would not gain entry.
Adom’s feet carried him to the door. His hand hesitated. He caught her eyes through the window pane, watched them brighten like the dawn. Watched the relief flood her like night falling. He turned the lock.
She stepped up to the threshold, but Adom blocked her passage. He leaned his elbow against the door frame. There was no way he could do this. Let her into the home he shared with his bondmate as she battled Emet in the chambers. Insemination meant little to Adom. He had no desire for children. He would never bond with a woman. His proclivities assured him of that. No woman would ever want him to touch her because he’d always feel the need to run a rope over her skin and then tighten it.
“I wore it to Chambers today.” Lady Alyss slid her hands down his dress.
Adom felt a tightening in his pants. He watched the slight up and down movements her fingers made as they alternately hit a flat plane of the dress and the peek of a knot. His mouth watered, his fingers itched. He braced his other hand against the opposite side of the door frame, effectively barring her entrance.
“They all couldn’t keep their eyes off me,” she continued.
The sun back lit her, bouncing off the spirals of her hair and claiming them as its own rays. Lady Alyss raised her hands to remove a light wrap around her shoulders. Her hands stretched up to the sky as though she were bathing in its rays; as though she were the one awakening the sun and not the other way around.
“Don’t move,” Adom whispered.
He backed into the store, never taking his eyes off her. He had to capture it all, starting with her hair. There were sparkling bursts of sunlight tiptoeing on each curl. Adom ached to pull one straight, give it a tug so that it would relax for him, even if only momentarily. He reached out his hands to the counter for a pencil.
Lady Alyss watched him quizzically, her hands slowly coming down to her sides.
Adom put up his hands, trying to arrest her movements.
“I’m not going to stand outside like this.” She came in and closed the door behind her. Then she turned around and turned the lock. “If you’re going to draw me, you’ll do it inside, in a proper studio.”
The command didn’t rankle Adom. There was something familiar about the look in her eyes. So many nights Emet came home, skin bunched around his eyes, hands clenched into fists, the cords showing in his neck. When Adom would look into his bondmate’s eyes, he always noted they were a darker shade than his natural hazel.
“I know you have one.” Lady’s Alyss’ golden eyes were nearly a solid, dark brown. “Take me there.”
She hadn’t just asked him to take her to his studio. Her words were a plea. She asked him to take away the pressure. Both she and Emet had had trying days at their work. They each stood on opposite sides of this issue, adding stress to their lives. Adom stood at a different plane seeing a way to relieve them both. And so he led her down into his studio. Once inside the doorway, her steps faltered, and she gasped.
Adom’s heart beat wildly in his chest. In the wall mirror, he saw his face go ashen. His leg muscles tightened, ready to flee. But his knees locked.
What was he thinking bringing her down here where his suspension rig was on full display. Her eyes stretched wide, her hand fluttered to her chest, her mouth constricted into a perfect O shape.
He moved out of her way so she could run from the doorway, from him, from his sickness.
But she didn’t run. She walked forward.
Lady Alyss knelt down to the three canvases lining the side wall of his studio, not once glancing at the rig. But, of course she wouldn’t. She was a proper lady. An unbonded lady. She had no knowledge of sexual perversions such as Shibari and bondage.
Adom released his breath. Along with the exhale, his limbs went liquid.
“These are all me?”
He didn’t question how she knew. There was not much to reveal her person in any of the paintings. The hair color was different in each one. The eyes were different shapes, different shades. But her skin tone and her bone structure were the same. If it wasn’t clear to him before, it was clear now. Lady Alyss had an eye for artistic detail.
“These are mounted,” she said. “You’re going to show these?”
“They’ve been accepted into the Jayne Austere gallery.”
Her mouth fell open. Her fingers touched her parted lips on a gasp. Another beat of panic burst from Adom’s heart. With a word she could halt his show, have him arrested for using her likeness.
But a reverent smile spread across her face. Her fingers left her lips and reached out. They fell just short of touching the canvas. “You used the purple.”
Adom let out a bark of laughter. This woman continued to surprise him. He’d depicted her in a series of sensual artworks without her permission, but what caught and held her attention was his color choice.
He looked at the purple on the third canvas. She’d suggested it would go well with her skin tone. “You were right.”
She stood and walked to the blank canvas near the center of the room. “How do you want me for this painting?”
Adom’s throat went dry. “You have no objection to me showing the work?”
She shook her head. Adom watched the darkness evaporate from her eyes in real time. He swallowed as the gold rose to dawn.
“No one will recognize you, I promise.”
The light in her eyes dimmed for a moment, or he could’ve imagined it. She stood erect, her hands on her hips. “Tell me how you want me to pose,” she said.
“Its a series on the Goddess. First she was asleep.” He pointed to the first painting with Alyss’ likeness lying on the blood red ground. “She awakens in the next depiction and then treads the earth in the third.”
He watched Alyss’ eyes roam once more to the second painting and then onto the third.
“For the fourth…,” he hesitated, running his words in his head. He filtered them through carefully, trying to clean up the vision he’d just had of her with her hands bound above her head. “When I saw you standing in the sun with your hands stretched up, I realized I’d missed a step. The Goddess giving birth to the sun.”
“So you want me to stand with my hands stretched upwards?” She mimicked the pose from the doorstep.
Adom grabbed his pencil. “Yes, exactly.”
He began his outline of her body. “Don’t have your arms too straight. Bend them a bit.”
She did as instructed.
“Now, relax your fingers.”
She followed his cues, posing perfectly.
There was no sound in the room save the scratch of the pencil on canvas and both of their breaths. He didn’t imagine it. He heard the tempo of her breaths change in time with his pencil strokes. Not only did she like the idea of her likeness being captured, it looked as though the sound of it being transcribed was erotic for her.
She was a perfect model. A dream. But after a few minutes of holding her in the position, he saw her tire. Adom’s pencil halted in the light of her discomfort.
Her eyes flashed open a second after the last pencil scratch. “Why did you stop? Am I holding the pose wrong?”
Adom rose. He approached her tentatively. “I can’t ask you to hold the pose for over long.”
“I’m fine,” she insisted. Her arms trembled the truth.
Adom shook his head. “You look uncomfortable and that’s what my pencil will capture.”
She brought her hands down. She looked at them with disappointment. “What can be done?”
Adom’s eyes flicked to the rig. Alyss’ eyes followed him. No recognition for the purpose of the apparatus shown on her face.
“I could pose you using ropes. It won’t hurt, I promise. The ropes will take away the pressure.”
He wanted to tell her it would take away all of her pressure, not just the pressure of posing. But he was certain she would soon feel that if she agreed to allow him to bind her.
Alyss stepped up to the rig. “How does this work?”
“I’ll bind your hands with rope and then suspend you from the rig with a clamp.”
“Do you do this with your other models?”
“Only one.”
“She allows it?”
“He. He allows it. I’ve never had a woman model for me in the flesh. I typically draw from memory or my imagination. I won’t hurt you.” Adom needed to repeat those words, especially after his last encounter with a woman.
She frowned. “Of course you wouldn’t harm me. You’re a man.”
And then she offered him her wrists.