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“It’s okay.” She flipped over a page in her sketchbook and sent him a bright smile. “Figure drawing sessions usually start off with thirty-second gestures. And you’re giving me almost twice that. It’s fine. Just don’t expect these to look finished. Or, um, human.”

He sat up straight. “Do I not look human?”

“You look amazing. It’s fine.” Her smile shifted, turned secretive. “It’ll be taken care of soon enough.”

That sounded ominous. Had she revived her plans to murder him? Was he not a passionate enough lover? But Rai doused his suspicion and settled back into the cushions. “I will try to remain still for longer.”

“ Two whole minutes would be great,” Poppy said. “Then I could at least get the contours down.”

He tried his best, waiting as long as he could bear before reaching for his water, willing his muscles to remain frozen in between, but when Poppy suggested a break and he came to glance over her shoulder at the sketch pad, he realized it was not good enough.

The sketches were mere hints at a figure, sweeps of line that he could barely interpret.

“Don’t worry. I’ll fill them out from memory before you have to choose.” She flipped back through several pages of similar sketches. “Though maybe I should just use my phone, let you choose from photos instead. It’s not the same as drawing from life, but it’s a valid tool.”

“I can do better,” Rai insisted, even as he went to drink more water, even as his whole body itched with the need to move.

“I can practice being still.” He did not understand why it was such a problem.

While he preferred being in motion, he had never been unable to come to rest. Yet tonight he was as restless as the tides.

It could not simply be the lack of humidity.

“Well, let’s not worry about it tonight.” She stretched her arms overhead. “You’re off for the whole weekend, right? So we have plenty of time to settle into this.”

Hot shame flushed Rai’s face, but oddly Poppy did not seem disappointed; that secretive smile was back on her face as she flipped the sketchbook closed and flung her arms around Rai’s neck.

“Mom’s expecting us in an hour or so for dinner.” She arched her warm body against him. “Think we can find something to do to fill that time?”

“Anything you wish.” Rai’s skin was itching again. He cast a fleeting glance toward his decoy water bottle. “Perhaps a shower?”

“Mmm. Get me all dirty first?” Poppy gave the knot of his tie a tug, loosening it. Her eyes were dark and her smile was full of promise and the thunder was surging inside him, the anticipation he’d forced back all the day.

Water could wait.

He took her in his arms and urged her toward the mounded cushions, spinning her into the soft nest. She giggled as they tumbled down, dragging his tie from around his neck and tossing it off to the side.

“Not gonna lie,” she said as she unbuttoned his shirt. “I was totally imagining you posing naked when I set this up.”

Rai filled his hands with her breasts. “Is that what you wish?”

“The painting’s not about what I want.” She ran her hands over his chest, his belly, down to caress him through his slacks. “But now that I’m off the clock…”

Her hands were hot and her mouth was hotter and Rai was drowning in her.

Her hair was soft and scented with musk and lavender, her skin tasting of the endless sea, her voice sweeter than birdsong as he sipped and caressed and explored her secrets.

He was shaking, quivering with need, dizzied from the reality of her beneath him as they wriggled and laughed their way to nakedness.

When they were all bare, Rai paused. “We do not have—”

“Yeah, we do.” Poppy grinned at him and rolled to the side, reaching behind the cushions.

“You don’t think I’d set up a naughty boudoir scenario like this and not be prepared for naughtiness?

I was a Girl Scout.” She rolled back toward him, dangling a condom package in her fingers. “I am so fucking prepared tonight.”

Rai shuddered as she rolled the condom along his length, need a tempest within him, and then she was pulling him atop her, and he surrendered to her tide, plunging deep inside her.

Her eyes were on his, whirlpools of desire, and he pressed his forehead to hers, unable to move, to speak, to do anything but soak in the sudden peace of their union.

It was only a moment, he knew it, but it felt like forever, like he was gazing into the infinite stars, floating in them, drifting in utter contentment.

It was inevitable, this moment, inexorable, ineffable, and he was caught in its grasp like a dragonfly in amber.

Poppy let out a soft moan, her eyes drifting closed, and the moment was broken—or not broken, but set alight, flying, everything moving again like all the waters of the earth even as that glimpse of eternity stayed with him, its afterimage burned into his mind.

He thrust and caressed, bending his will to her pleasure until she was spasming beneath him in torrid release, her lovely eyes unfocused and incredulous, and he kissed her warm cheeks, her mouth, all the places where pink had bloomed, and when his own ecstasy took him, he let it drag him under, the peace and comfort and perfection of their shared bliss all he could have ever desired.

He surfaced countless moments later, languid and calm, and shifted until Poppy’s head was pillowed on his chest and he could stare at the stucco ceiling above.

His water bottle was just out of reach, and he had been too long without a drink, yet he could not bring himself to move, to disturb the perfect clarity of their bliss.

He did not need to move. His skin no longer itched, impatience no longer needling him into action.

And when they had lain there for a time, it suddenly occurred to him to be confused. To ask why.

Why could he now be still?

And the confusion stayed with him, even as he and Poppy began again to move. Through the shower that rejuvenated him in the guise of cleansing, the convivial meal with her mother, even as they tumbled again into Poppy’s bed in renewed passion.

It was almost painful to extricate himself from her embrace when she had succumbed to slumber, stealthily returning to her studio to refill his cache of empty bottles from the filtered tap.

He had gone through more of them than he’d expected, though the rain had finally deigned to return and his desperate need had faded.

He could only hope that his shortsightedness would not cost Poppy more of her limited funds, that her water bill—part of him shuddered again at the very idea that water should cost money—would not exceed the value of his painting commission.

Rai did not want to hurt Poppy. Not ever again. And again his brain swirled with confusion, with a lingering current of wrongness.

Except no, it did not feel wrong. Just…unexpected. Different.

He had first approached her to torment her.

To laugh at her misery in the storm. How had he come to this moment?

To subterfuge, lies, trickery, not in service of havoc and chaos, but in tender support?

Why did he think back on their first meeting with disgust and self-loathing, distaste for his own frivolous mockery?

He replaced his filled bottles in his hoard and returned to Poppy’s bedroom, eyes tracing her curves, the soft froth of her tousled hair, the sweep of her eyelashes, the way she pulsed with her breath and her heartbeat and her sweet humanity.

The way even her sleeping form somehow exuded her bravery, the way her faint smile was a reflection of her waking humor, the way her fingers on the pillow made him think of them in motion, drawing, gesturing, caressing.

He eased back into her embrace, pressing faint kisses to her forehead, her ear. He held her close and closed his eyes and listened to the sounds of her living and sank once again into perfect stillness.

Distant thunder rumbled.

He felt no urge to chase it.

Why not?

The question sent out ripples, smoothly expanding through his thoughts, spreading wider and wider, each ripple a hint of an answer. Contentment. Poppy. Bliss. Poppy. Peace. Poppy. Joy. Poppy. Love. Poppy. Poppy, Poppy…

His eyes flew wide.

Ah. There it was.

He had lied to Ofelia—or perhaps not lied. Merely been a fool. Merely not seen what the itch of his skin and the thunder in his breast and the whirlpool of his heart foreboded.

He was in love with Poppy.

It was as clear as the night sky above the clouds…

and as murky as the deepest depths of the sea.

He knew love well enough—had seen it in the shine of his parents’ eyes, in the celebrations of the communities he visited—but it was different, to feel it inside.

To think his own eyes might hold that same shine, however new and raw.

To wonder how it might gr ow and bloom as he learned her secrets.

She had been open and kind, joyful and honest, and… and he had given her nothing but lies.

However she felt, if it was affection or enchantment or even a love as new and fresh as his own, it was not for him.

You should tell her , came Ofelia’s voice in his head.

He should.

He gazed at her, the curve of her cheek limned by moonlight. The innocent trust she had, to allow him into her home, her life.

Not tonight.