Thanking her again, I leave, swallowing my disappointment past the lump in my throat.
When I get home, there’s a message from my father that he and Darius are still at dinner with Patrick and won’t be back until after ten. I eat a sandwich and watch TV, trying to distract myself from my persistent restlessness.
I pass Darius’s bedroom on the way to my attic. His door is half open, his camera bag sitting on a chair. Though I feel like I’m doing something I shouldn’t, I unzip the bag and peer at the big, professional Nikon. Compared to the ones we use in class, his camera is both complex and weathered, the casing scarred from use. It must nestle in his palms, yield to his commands, become part of him.
I touch it lightly, imagining him pressing the shutter button and adjusting the focus. He doesn’t just take pictures with his eyes—he takes pictures with his hands, his instincts, his body. With everything.
After zipping the bag back up, I go to my room. I try to work on an essay about Crime and Punishment, but I can’t concentrate. Instead I set up my little student camera on a tripod, adjust the lights, and take off my shirt and jeans. I press the self-timer button, then sit on the bed in my bra and underwear.
I don’t need to develop the photos to know exactly what I look like—my breasts covered by the plain beige cups, the elastic of my panties tight around my waist, my hair hanging in its usual lifeless, heavy mass over my shoulders and across my face.
The only unique thing about me—the evidence of Nell—are the scars emblazoned on my thigh.
But that can’t be all there is. There has to be more. There is more. I’ve been feeling it for weeks now, like a riptide building beneath the ocean’s surface, this sense of wanting to move, to change. To steer the ship, or at least have a sense of direction, rather than let the wind and water carry me along.
I unhook my bra and pull off my underwear, dropping both to the floor. I set the self-timer button again and shoot pictures of me sitting naked on the bed. No posing, no lifting my hair, no arched back or sultry looks. It’s just my body, my hair, my scars.
After I’ve taken half a dozen nudes, I lie down on the bed and spread my legs. I’m already wet, as if the cold unblinking camera lens were actually the hot gaze of a lover.
A man hungry and thirsty for me. A man who opens me like a pleated fan and runs his finger gently across the creases of my soul. A man who whispers into my skin and holds my secrets in a quiet place under his heart.
Beneath me, a door click echoes through the floorboards as Darius enters his bedroom.
I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve imagined Darius out in the world. I’ve pictured him running into violent, frenzied mobs, dodging sniper fire in burned-out cities, escaping the destruction of an exploding bomb.
He’s sweaty, dirty, bleeding, charged with both adrenaline and the burning need to survive. In my mind, he never lets go of his camera, whether he’s cradling it close to his chest or pointing it toward a shot.
I’ve pictured him in captivity too. My imagination has gone to all horrific scenarios—he’s tied up, beaten and tortured. He’s curled on the dirt floor of a prison cell, bloody and hurt. He’s sprinting away from his captors.
But my movie-reel thoughts about Darius have never included sex…until now. It’s not sudden lust either. I’ve been aware of him since I saw him standing outside our house, so this tipping into the erotic isn’t a surprise.
The surprise is how vividly I can imagine him in bed writhing around with a woman. I see the sweat glistening on his skin, the shift of his muscles under his taut skin, the tension coiling through his body. I can see her, too, whoever she is—maybe a curvy blonde with skin like peaches who pushes up against him in a wordless plea for more.
I no longer have any private inhibitions about touching myself with him in the room right below mine. It takes almost no time at all to slip my finger into my body and work myself to an orgasm that breaks over me like a sunrise.
I’m at the crest, hovering in midflight, when a new image fires into my mind.
I’m the naked woman twisting and arching against Darius as he grips my wrists and covers my mouth with his to stifle my screams.
CHAPTER 19
Darius
“It was great seeing you, man.” Patrick gives me a combination backslap and embrace before picking up his travel bag. “I’ll be in San Francisco for a while, if you can come down for a visit.”
“When does the assignment start?” He’d told us at dinner last night that he’d taken an assignment with National Geographic for a photo essay about coastal California marine life and conservation science.
“Not until December.” He tosses the bag in the trunk of his rental car. “Since the book tour’s over, I’m going to take some time to travel along the coast, maybe go up to Oregon. I can swing by here again, too. Do another class Q and A or lecture or…you know. Whatever.”
His casual shrug almost makes me smile. “Whatever as in Hannah Meadows?”
He shoots me a grin and closes the trunk. “Not going to lie that I’d much rather look at her than you. Hey, you want me to proofread any chapters of your book? You know I’ve got publishing experience now.”
“I’d say yes except I don’t even have a complete chapter yet.” I rest my shoulder against the side of the car. “I don’t know if I can write a whole book.”
He lifts his eyebrows. “Or do you not want to?”
“Both.” I shrug. “I’m starting to realize it puts a spotlight on my captors. And you know how shitty the People’s Liberation Front is. The atrocities they’re capable of. Taking a photographer hostage is the least of them. Why should I give terrorists any publicity?”
“You’re doing it for the hostage foundation, not them.”
“Yeah, but I’d do better actively working against the PLF. They’re a designated terrorist organization now. I could find ways to stop them, cut off their funding, take them down for good.”
“They were defeated…what, five years ago?”
“No.” I shake my head. “I mean, they lost the civil war, but they weren’t defeated. They went underground. I swear they’re looking for ways to reorganize and rearm.”
Patrick blinks in surprise. “You think they’re gearing up for another attack?”
“I don’t know.” I push away from the car. “But maybe I should find out. That would make more of a difference than writing a book.”
He studies me, as if he knows there’s more to this sudden urge than “making a difference.” There’s vengeance to it—I’ve never made a secret of the fact that I want to see the PLF crushed—but also a determination to stop them and other terrorist groups from crimes of murder and genocide. If they’re throttled at the source, there would be less need for things like hostage recovery and refugee foundations.
“Whatever you decide to do, I’m on your side.” Patrick clamps a hand on my shoulder. “And you know where to find me if you need any help.”
“Yeah. Thanks. You going back to New York soon?”