Chapter 5
The air in the studio was electric, thick with unspoken tension. The whiskey had created a strange kind of bridge between them, a fragile truce in the psychological war Julian had been waging. He took the empty glass from her hand, his fingers brushing against hers, a brief, fleeting touch that sent a jolt through her. He placed the glasses on a nearby table, the clink of glass on wood echoing in the silence.
"You should go," he said, his back to her, his voice low and final.
But Elara didn't move. The question, the one she hadn't dared to ask aloud, still hung in the air. "Who are you, Julian?" she whispered, her voice barely audible.
He turned slowly, his face shrouded in shadow. "I am your teacher," he replied, the words cold and definitive, a wall slamming down between them. "Nothing more."
The lie was so transparent it was almost an insult. She could see the lie in the set of his jaw, in the guarded look in his eyes. She took a step closer to him, the gap between them closing. "That's not true," she said, her voice stronger now, fueled by the whiskey and a reckless new courage. "What is this? What are you doing to me?"
His gaze dropped to her mouth, and the air crackled with a dangerous energy. He took a step toward her, his body language shifting from guarded to predatory. "I'm doing exactly what you want me to do," he murmured, his voice a low, gravelly whisper. "I'm pushing you. I'm breaking you open. You want this, Elara. Don't lie to me."
The use of her first name, the raw intimacy of it, stole her breath. He was so close she could feel the heat radiating from his body, smell the whiskey and charcoal on his skin. Her heart pounded, a frantic drum against her ribs. She should run. She should turn and flee and never come back. But she was rooted to the spot, a moth drawn to the flame, a part of her aching for the heat, for the burn.
He reached out, his hand gently cupping her face. His thumb brushed over her cheekbone, a tender, possessive touch. "Your fear is a work of art," he said, his voice now a mesmerizing thrum. "And you, Elara, are my masterpiece."
He leaned in, and his lips, hard and demanding, crashed against hers. It wasn't a gentle kiss. It was an act of possession, a claiming. He tasted of whiskey and fire and a loneliness so profound it ached. His hand moved from her face to the back of her head, his fingers tangling in her hair, pulling her closer, deepening the kiss. Elara's mind screamed, a panicked siren blare, but her body responded with a will of its own, a desperate, answering hunger. She kissed him back, her hands coming up to grip his shirt, holding on for dear life as if she were drowning.
He broke the kiss as abruptly as he'd started it, pulling back just enough for their foreheads to touch. They were both breathing hard, the silence now thrumming with a shared, desperate need. His dark eyes, now filled with a dark fire, looked straight into hers.
"Now you know," he said, the words barely a whisper. "Now we both know."
He released her, and the sudden loss of his touch left her reeling. He stepped back, putting distance between them, and the wall was back up, higher and thicker than before. He was her professor again, distant and unreadable. The intoxicating intimacy of the kiss was now a dangerous, terrifying secret that belonged only to them. Elara stood there, her body still humming with the aftershocks of his touch, realizing with a cold certainty that she had just stepped across a line from which there was no return.