The studio smelled of paint and turpentine. Shadows clung to corners where the lamplight didn't reach, and the canvases leaned against the walls like silent witnesses.
He stood near a massive blank canvas, tall, dark, still. The way he looked at me made the air between us tremble. Not curious, not flirtatious—he looked at me like he had been waiting his entire life for this moment, like he had memorized my face in dreams and finally found it in flesh and bone.
I wanted to look away. I wanted to tell myself it was absurd. A stranger, a painter, claiming he could see me in ways no one else had. But I couldn't. I was frozen, each heartbeat a drum in my chest.
"You are taller than I imagined," he said, his voice low, calm, but somehow carrying a weight that made it impossible to ignore.
"Are you always this… observant?" I asked, trying to mask my racing pulse with casual amusement.
He tilted his head slightly. "I observe what matters."
And in that one glance, I understood. Everything about me mattered to him. The subtle quiver of my hand as I crossed my arms. The way my eyes traced the light falling unevenly across the floor. The quiet tension in my shoulders.
"I am ready," I said, almost whispering, though I wasn't sure if I meant the painting or the look in his eyes.
He smiled—barely, just a hint, as if revealing a secret too dangerous to voice. He gestured to a stool near the canvas. "Sit. Let me see you as you are. Not what you think you should be."
I obeyed. My dress shifted as I lowered myself onto the stool, damp from the rain, the fabric clinging to curves he would soon capture in color and shadow. He circled me slowly, like a predator studying prey, or an artist tasting the air before a stroke.
When he stopped in front of me, our eyes met. The intensity of his gaze pinned me to the room. I could feel it in my bones: every nuance of me, every hidden corner, was being cataloged in his mind. My chest rose unevenly, my breath shallow. I wanted to speak, to say something witty or clever, but my voice had abandoned me.
Instead, I let him look.
And he did.
Every fraction of a second stretched, drawn taut like string. I felt simultaneously exposed and treasured. My insecurities, my doubts, my unspoken thoughts—he absorbed them all without judgment.
"You are not afraid," he said, almost as an observation, not a question.
"I am," I whispered.
"Good," he replied. "Fear is honest. It reveals more than comfort ever could."
The brush he held trembled slightly—not with unsteadiness, but anticipation. He had not touched the canvas yet. He had not yet painted. But the air seemed thick with color, with tension, with something that tasted like inevitability.
I realized then that this was the moment obsession begins—not with touch, not with words, but with the way someone sees you. And the way he looked at me was no longer just observation. It was ownership.
And I wanted to let him have it.