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Alina flushed. “Oh, you noticed? I struggled to capture you right. It’s why there are so many of you.” It wasn’t a complete lie. She’d never been satisfied at how her drawings of him had turned out. “I’m not very good, and it was frustrating. I mean, I was going by memory, but it was pretty dark when you were around.” Even in shadow, the differences between him and her drawings were more than clear. His face was much thinner than the one she’d captured. His eyes were closer together and not as wide. She’d kept thinking he’d looked almost warm, which had confused her. “Oh, but I can fix that now!”
She kicked the comforter off of the bed in her lunge for the nearby lamp. Excitement thrummed through her at the idea of drawing someone who was actually present, and she grabbed what was left of her pencils.
Alina waited for Luka to protest. Instead, he looked away from her, his gazed fixed on the comforter that had fallen to the ground next to him.
Her own words failed her as she began to draw. Her heartbeat had sped up, making her chest hurt again. She ignored the ache as her pencil flew over an unused section of the wall. The tingles along her arms confused her. They were the ones she got when he focused on her; she didn’t understand why she felt them now when he didn’t even glance her way.
The opportunity was too good to be distracted. His crouched position was difficult to capture; it made it difficult to get the angles just right. She kept the marks loose, focusing more on his face. It was thinner than she’d been drawing. His chin was a little less pointed. His ears pressed closer against his head. The shaved top had a bit of stubble that day that was more subtle than she had expected. She’d thought his hair would be the dark brown of the men who had attacked her. The more she drew, the more she realized he didn’t look like one of the Bratva at all.
His nose was sleeker, more pointed, but his lips were fuller. The tingling was back as she focused on the shape of his lips, but the sensation had moved to her stomach. His mouth wasn’t curved into a smile or a frown. It also wasn’t pressed together. Out of everything, his mouth looked the softest.
And his eyes were smaller than she’d first drawn. The light peridot color had made her think they were wider. It was difficult to capture them when they were turned away from her like that.
“Can you look this way for a moment?” she asked.
He turned only his eyes, but when they focused on her, the tingles from before flared. Her cheeks flushed as heat filled her, bursting out from her stomach. It made her feel the opposite of numb, but her drawing hand had stopped moving. She frowned at it, realizing then how tightly she clutched the pencil.
“That’s enough.” She forced herself to breathe deep again as her hand finally loosened.
He’d quickly looked away. She watched his Adam’s apple bob when he swallowed and reciprocated the gesture. Something about the way it moved made her remember how firm his hand had been beneath her grip.
She was able to keep drawing, but the warmth never faded completely as she lost herself to her favorite activity. Perhaps the heat was what happiness felt like.
Chapter 11
Sensation crawled all over Luka’s body, and he struggled to hold himself still. It was almost as if Alina was touching him, but it also felt nothing like that. There was none of the pain he was accustomed to. That had been most of his experience—either pain or numbness. His family hadn’t even hugged him much, not that he remembered, because they’d known he didn’t like to be touched.
Alina wasn’t touching him, but each time she glanced at him, the sensation started all over again. A tingling along his scalp, then the back of his neck. It skittered under his clothes even though almost all of his skin was covered.
It wasn’t the first time he had felt it. Then it was from just the knowledge that she had drawn him. He didn’t want it to stop, not exactly. The shudder the sensation sent through him was controlled easily enough, which was a good thing. She was focusing on him too closely. She would notice any movement he made.
The way her gaze made him feel was uncomfortable, but not unpleasant. The contradiction made it difficult to concentrate on anything besides her.
When he’d focused on her in turn, he hadn’t recognized her expression. He’d been tempted to continue to study it even when she said that he should look away.
Over the past couple of days, he’d had his eyes on her more than he had on anyone else in his past. It had become easier, and he must have gotten carried away for her to have noticed. When he’d arrived at the house, her breathing hadn’t followed the usual rhythm she fell into when she slept. He’d known she was awake.
Staying anyway had made him into the fool Ivankov often called him.
The reminder of the man made Luka realize how much time he had been wasting. Enough that Ivankov would have noticed.
Luka resolved to leave once the sun was up. He knew Alina probably needed her sleep, but he didn’t voice the suggestion. Instead, he hunched his shoulders and endured the strange elation that had come over his body, trying to commit the anomaly to memory.
When her hand finally stopped moving, he realized she’d finished. She hadn’t just made one new drawing. She’d made two. One matched how he saw himself, crouched and looking away with an attentiveness that kept him alive.
The other was with his eyes facing forward; it looked nothing like him. The mouth was too soft, and the eyes… They weren’t his at all. He’d never looked at anything in quite that way. Except maybe Giovanni, but she couldn’t have ever seen that.
Alina leaned her shoulder against the unused dresser as she opened and closed her hands. “I know. Not perfect, but closer.” Her eyes closed, and then he saw it again. Her lips tilted up in the smallest of smiles.
The unease inside him faded with how content she looked. More so than when she’d blathered on about the diner she kept returning to.
Her eyes remained shut, and he realized that while she was happy, she was also tired. So tired that she looked like she would remain resting just like that for the last few hours before the sun rose.
Luka crossed to her silently, prepared for the flare of pain that would happen when he lifted her in his arms. Even through the gloves and his shirt, even with no skin-on-skin contact, there was still pain.
Alina’s eyes flew open. She didn’t touch him. He set her on the bed and backed away.
Her smile was gone. She frowned instead as she searched his face. “That hurt you.”
