Page 2 of A Virgo’s Muse (BLP Signs of Love #12)

“Then let’s create.”

I watched the way her throat moved when she swallowed. She didn’t say anything, didn’t need to. Her body already did. It was in the way she shifted when I stepped closer, the way her fingers twitched like they wanted something to hold but didn’t know what.

I pulled my hoodie over my head and tossed it to the side, not caring where it landed.

Her eyes flickered down for half a second.

It was just long enough for me to catch it.

I didn’t say a word. I didn’t smile either.

She was playing hard to get, but I got time.

Her lips could lie all they wanted. Her body didn’t.

I moved toward the back of the studio where the clay was kept. The air back here felt thicker somehow, heavier. Maybe it was the quiet hum of the wheel. Maybe it was her.

“You ever work with clay?” I asked, even though I already knew the answer.

She leaned against the table like she was in control, arms folded across her chest, one brow cocked like she was unimpressed. “Maybe once in college. Didn’t like the way it stuck under my nails.”

I stepped past her and turned on the wheel. The soft whir of motion filled the silence.

“Then you weren’t doing it right.”

I pulled the stool closer and patted the seat in front of it. “Come here.”

She stayed still for a moment like she was debating. Then she pushed off the table and walked over, slow and steady, like she was not giving in, just humoring me. But I saw the curiosity in her eyes. She sat, crossed her legs, and leaned back just a little too casually.

I pulled a chair behind her real close and sat down so my chest brushed her back. I didn’t touch her yet. I just let the tension bloom between us.

She was warm.

Up close like this, I could smell the remnants of vanilla and paint. Her skin looked like it held stories. Her hair was tied up high, leaving her neck exposed, and I had to resist the urge to press my lips to the dip behind her ear.

Focus, I coached myself in my head.

I reached forward and dipped my hands in the water bowl, letting the cool slide over my fingers. Then I reached for her hands and wrapped mine around them.

She stiffened just a little. I said nothing, just moved with her.

“This is how it starts,” I murmured, guiding her fingers to the clay. “You don’t force it. You don’t rush it. You feel it.”

Her breathing became rigid underneath me. My hands moved with hers, molding the wet clay as the wheel spun slowly beneath us. I pressed her palms downward, anchoring her fingers around the shape we were forming.

“You don’t try to control it. You let it speak.”

Her head dipped forward slightly. Her shoulders were no longer tense. She was letting me in, even if she was still trying to pretend she was not.

“It’s messy,” I said. “It sticks to places you don’t expect. But if you let yourself sink into it, you might make something worth remembering.”

The clay began to take shape, soft ridges, a faint curve. Not perfect, but raw… real.

I leaned in closer. My breath grazed the shell of her ear. “That’s what I see in you.”

She turned her head slightly, not enough to look at me, just enough for me to see the flicker of surprise in her lashes.

“I see a fight in you,” I said, my voice low. “A fire that ain’t learned how to rest yet.”

Her fingers slowed down, but I guided them again, dipping them into the water, smoothing a rough edge in the clay.

“You ever look at your own work?” I asked. “Not just to admire it. To understand it?”

She didn’t answer, but I kept going.

“Some of your brushstrokes, they’re angry… jagged. Like you were mad at the canvas for not being able to carry what you felt. But others…” I let my lips hover just over her shoulder. “They trail off. Soft, like you got tired in the middle of a memory and didn’t want to finish it.”

Her body stilled underneath me. I pulled back just a little, giving her space to breathe again.

“I ain’t trying to fix you,” I said. “I’m just saying… there’s a whole lot of truth in the way you create. And I wanna see more of it.”

The clay between our hands now looked like something alive, twisted but delicate. A curve taking shape like the start of a spine. I didn’t even know what we were making, but I knew it mattered.

She finally spoke, her voice quiet. “You always talk like this when you show up in women’s lives uninvited?”

“No.” I glanced down at our hands, still sculpting. “Only when I think they need reminding that they’re still artists, not just women trying to survive.”

She didn’t pull away. And neither did I.

The wheel slowed to a stop, but our hands didn’t.

They stayed there, wet, caked with clay and something else, something electric.

I didn’t move. Neither did she. Her breathing was unsteady, and mine wasn’t much better.

The silence in the room was loud, the kind that pressed against your ribs and demanded your full attention.

Eventually, she pulled back, slow and cautious, like getting too close to me might undo something inside her. She grabbed a towel and wiped her palms then tossed another my way. I caught it without blinking. My eyes were still trained on her.

We didn’t say much while we cleaned. It was quiet but not uncomfortable.

There was a rhythm to how we moved around each other.

I rinsed the water bowls, and she realigned the jars of brushes.

She wiped the counter, and I rolled up the tarp on the floor.

We moved in sync. I liked that. I liked her space too.

It smelled like linseed oil, incense, and a hint of vanilla. It felt like her—warm but guarded.

When everything was back in place, I leaned against the counter, pulling my hoodie back on. She watched me like she was trying to read something I hadn’t said yet.

“Why’d you really come here tonight?” she asked, her voice soft but direct. A Virgo’s question measured, intentional.

I looked her dead in the eyes. “Felt like you needed reminding.”

“Of what?”

“That you’re still alive.”

Her arms folded across her chest, but her expression softened just slightly. She didn’t answer me with words, but I could feel her thinking. That was the thing about Desire. She didn’t just hear; she absorbed. She dissected every syllable.

I pushed away from the counter and walked toward the door. My hand lingered on the handle. I turned my head, looking back at her over my shoulder, catching the way the light played against her cheekbone, that stubborn look still carved into her face.

“I’ll see you again, Desire.”

She didn’t say goodbye, but she didn’t tell me not to come back either. That was all I needed.

Hours Later

It was close to 2:00 a.m. when I finally slid into the black SUV I stashed near Walnut and Fifth. No keys, push to start, no ID—just muscle memory and a clean print on the ignition button.

Desire’s scent still lingered on my hoodie. I shouldn’t have noticed, but I did. I drove with the windows down, letting the night air erase the feel of her hands on mine. It didn’t work. It never did.

The world I returned to after her wasn’t anything like the one she lived in. Her world had color, chaos, and creativity. Mine? Mine had grayscale, precision, silence, and scars. I didn’t get to paint feelings. I cleaned up the aftermath of them.

The Heights—2:23 a.m.

I parked a block away from the estate.

Rich man, clean shoes, dirty hands—the kind of client who never called twice. He knew better. My work didn’t come with invoices or receipts. You get one fix, one night, one ghost to handle your business.

The guard dogs were gone. Cameras looped.

Entry granted. I entered through the east corridor, the one that led past the wine cellar and up into the study.

The house was dark except for a desk lamp in the far corner of the room where he was waiting.

Mr. Whitmore, hair combed, robe pressed, but his fingers trembled around the rim of a whiskey glass.

“He’s in the panic room,” Whitmore said without looking at me. “The broker.”

“What’s the issue?”

“He downloaded the offshore account files. Threatened to leak them if I didn’t triple his fee.”

My jaw tightened.

“You want him gone?”

“I want the files back. And I want him reminded that blackmail only works if you make it out alive.”

I nodded once. I knew that was the only signal he needed.

I moved through the house like I lived here. I didn’t speak, didn’t rush. I opened the back hall panel, keyed in the code I was given, and unlocked the panic room. The broker inside didn’t even have time to scream.

He was on the floor five minutes later, alive but out cold. The thumb drive was snug in my pocket, his phone destroyed, and laptop scrubbed.

By the time I left, I’d erased the breach, the threat, and every trace of his betrayal. The only thing I left behind was fear.

The Safe House—3:11 a.m.

Back at the warehouse loft, I peeled off my gloves and tossed them into the burn bin. No trophies. No evidence. Just quiet.

I sat down at the table with the broker’s flash drive and began spinning it between my fingers. I wasn’t even going to open it. My job was retrieval, not curiosity. Curiosity got you killed in my line of work.

But somewhere between the rhythm of the spinning drive and the silence in this loft, my mind drifted again to her. To that damn wheel, to her hands shaking beneath mine but never pulling away, and to the way her paintings looked like they’d been argued with, cursed at, and cried over.

Rough brush strokes that end mid-thought, colors that shouldn’t go together but did, beauty that didn’t beg for your approval, it dares you to understand it—that’s what I saw in her. I also saw fire and fight, softness buried under barbed wire.

She didn’t know what I really did. She didn’t know what I’d done to survive. But she made me feel human again, and for a second, I could be free. And that? That was dangerous. Because I’d burned cities for less than that feeling.

And if I went back to her…

I didn’t know if I’d ever leave again.