Page 86 of The Drama King
Real vulnerability. With Dorian. While my life crumbled around me and I had no defenses left.
"Let's start with the transition from the wedding chaos. Vespera, you're devastated by what's happened to Hero, furious at the injustice, barely holding yourself intact. Dorian, you're seeing her pain and feeling protective in a way that surprises you."
We took our positions. The scene began with Beatrice weeping over Hero's public humiliation, and I found I didn't have to reach far to access those emotions. The raw betrayal, the sense of being abandoned by everyone who should have protected her, the desperate fury at a system designed to destroy women like us.
"Lady Beatrice, have you wept all this while?" Dorian's voice was gentle, concerned, nothing like his usual predatory tone.
The contrast was jarring. This was Benedick speaking, not Dorian, and for a moment I almost forgot who I was really talking to. Almost let myself believe the tenderness was real.
"Yea, and I will weep a while longer," I replied, the words coming out raw with genuine emotion.
"I will not desire that."
"You have no reason. I do freely tell you, I was about to protest I loved you."
The line hung in the air between us, and I saw something flicker in Dorian's eyes: not calculation, not predatorysatisfaction, but something that looked almost like hunger. As if the words had affected him more than he'd expected, stirred something deeper than professional interest.
"And do it with all thy heart," he said, his voice dropping to something intimate, almost possessive.
"I love you with so much of my heart that none is left to protest."
Wells watched us work through the scene, occasionally calling for adjustments, pushing us to go deeper, to find more authentic emotion. And despite everything—despite knowing exactly who Dorian was and what he wanted—I found myself getting lost in the material.
More dangerously, I was getting lost in him.
The way he moved closer as the scene progressed, invading my space with calculated intimacy that made my pulse stutter. How his scent seemed to wrap around me, something warm and spiced that my hindbrain recognized as Alpha even as my conscious mind recoiled. The heat in his eyes when he looked at me, like he was seeing through Beatrice's words straight to something vulnerable in me.
"Stop," Wells called. "Dorian, you're holding back. This is the moment Benedick stops fighting his attraction. I need you to let yourself want her."
Want her.The words made something clench low in my belly, a response I couldn't control and didn't want to examine.
"From the top of 'I do freely tell you,'" Wells directed. "And Dorian: physical blocking this time. You're drawn to her pain, her vulnerability. Show me that."
We reset our positions, but this time when I delivered Beatrice's confession of love, Dorian moved. Stepped closer, close enough that I could feel the heat radiating from his body, close enough that his scent made my head spin.
"And do it with all thy heart," he said again, but this time his hand came up to cup my face, thumb brushing across my cheekbone with devastating gentleness.
The touch sent electricity through my nervous system, made my traitorous body lean into his palm before I could stop myself. His pupils dilated as he caught my involuntary response, nostrils flaring as he scented my body's betrayal.
"I love you with so much of my heart that none is left to protest," I whispered, and the words felt dangerous, too real, like I was confessing something that had nothing to do with Shakespeare.
Wells continued the scene, calling for more touching, more intimacy, and I found myself trapped in a web of professional requirements and biological responses I couldn't control. When the blocking called for Benedick to pull Beatrice against him, Dorian's arm around my waist felt like a brand. When I had to press my face against his chest in simulated despair, his heartbeat thundered against my cheek and I caught myself breathing him in.
"Kill Claudio," I said, the words carrying all my rage at a world that protected predators and punished their victims.
But when Dorian's arms tightened around me, when he looked down with eyes that burned with something that wasn't entirely acting, I felt my body respond with shameful heat. The way his hands spanned my ribcage, the solid strength of him, the predatory satisfaction that leaked through his professional mask—it should have terrified me.
Instead, it made something deep in my belly clench with unwanted need.
"Ha! Not for the wide world," he said, but his shock seemed genuine, as if my vehemence had only stoked whatever fire was burning in his eyes.
"You kill me to deny it. Farewell."
I moved to leave, putting real desperation into Beatrice's exit, but when Dorian's hand closed around my wrist, the contact sent heat shooting up my arm. His grip was firm but not painful, possessive in a way that made my hindbrain purr with dangerous approval.
"Tarry, sweet Beatrice."
The endearment, delivered in his low voice while his thumb rubbed circles on the sensitive skin of my wrist, made me shiver. And from the way his eyes darkened, he'd felt it.