The studio lights were a dying sun, their heat a tangible weight on Helena's skin. Four hours of holding impossible poses had left her muscles humming, but the final clicks of the photographer's camera signaled her freedom. A quick check of her phone revealed five missed calls, all from the same name: Ilay. A smile touched her lips. Two months was far too long to go without seeing her oldest friend.
The drive to his suburban house was quiet. Night had fallen, and his place was a shadow against the darker sky, every window pitch black. No warm glow from the living room, no flicker of a television. An odd chill, one that had nothing to do with the evening air, traced her spine. He must be buried in some new code, she thought, pushing the unlocked front door open. The silence inside was absolute, a thick blanket that smothered sound.
"Ilay?" Her voice, usually a bright instrument, seemed small and foolish here.
No answer. She moved on instinct, her model's grace making her steps silent on the carpeted stairs. The only light came from a sliver under his bedroom door. As she drew closer, a new sound pricked the quiet—a low, rhythmic rustle, a strained, masculine gasp. A whimper.
Her hand was on the cool brass knob before her brain could fully assemble the meaning of the sounds. The door swung inward without a sound.
Ilay was frozen at his desk, his chair swiveled away from the bank of glowing monitors. His face, usually so carefully composed into neutrality, was a breathtaking mask of shock and mortification. His hazel eyes, wide and terrified, locked onto hers. One of his long-fingered hands was shoved into the pocket of his loose sweatpants, his entire arm rigid. The other gripped the edge of his desk, knuckles bone-white.
Helena's own breath snagged in her throat. The frantic movement beneath the grey fabric, the desperate set of his jaw, the unmistakable, thick scent in the air—it painted a picture so intimate, so violently private, that her mind reeled. This was the quiet, shy man who barely spoke in group settings.
He scrambled, yanking his hand from his pocket as if burned, fumbling to adjust himself. "Helena—I—the door was—I didn't hear—" The words tumbled out, fractured and panicked. He tried to stand, to turn away, but seemed pinned to the chair by the sheer force of his embarrassment.
"Ilay," she said, and her voice was softer than she intended. She didn't move, didn't retreat. A strange, hot curiosity held her rooted to the spot. This was a crack in his impeccable, reserved facade, and she found herself staring into the depths.
He ran a trembling hand through his dark hair; his gaze fixed on the floor. "I'm sorry. You shouldn't have... God." He let out a shaky breath that was almost a laugh. "You must think I'm some kind of..."
"I think you're a man," she replied, taking a single step into the room. The air crackled between them. "A very frustrated one, by the looks of it."
His eyes flicked up to hers, and the shame in them began to shift, to burn with something else. A raw, unvarnished honesty. "Frustrated doesn't begin to cover it," he murmured, his voice dropping an octave, losing its stammer. It was a voice she'd never heard from him, rich and dark, like velvet over stone. "Thirty years of... nothing. Of watching. Of wanting. It builds up. You have no idea the things that go on in here." He tapped a finger to his temple, his gaze intense, daring her to look away.
She didn't. "So, tell me."
The challenge hung in the air. He stared at her, at her confident posture, her violet-green eyes that saw right through him. The shy man evaporated, leaving only the yearning, hungry core.
"I think about what it would be like to have someone on their knees for me," he said, the words quiet but clear, each one a deliberate stone dropped into the silence. "Not just... there. But wanting to be there. Listening to them crawl across the floor just to get to my cock. To feel their hands, shake when they try to touch me."
Helena's pulse hammered in her wrists, a frantic drumbeat against her skin. She could see it. Him. The towering, lanky figure, no longer trying to disappear but to dominate his space. The thought was electrifying.
A slow, teasing smirk touched his lips, a foreign expression that transformed his sharp features from vulnerable to dangerously alluring. "Trembling already, little bunny?"
The nickname, delivered in that new, mocking tone, sent a direct and shocking jolt of heat straight to her core. She felt her cheeks flush.
He saw it. His eyes darkened with triumph. He rose from his chair slowly, unfolding to his full, imposing height, seeming to fill the small room. He didn't touch her, just looked down at her, his hungry gaze tracing the line of her throat, the rapid rise and fall of her chest.
"I'd want to see every reaction," he continued, his voice a low hum that vibrated in the space between them. "Every shiver. I'd want to tease until you couldn't think straight. Until you were begging." He took half a step closer. The scent of him—clean skin and that undeniable, musky hint of arousal—wrapped around her. "A sharp little slap on your perfect tits to see them jolt, to see your pretty eyes go wide..."
He reached out then, not touching her, but his long fingers came to hover just beside her face. "Ah, no no no... now that I have you, I'm not letting you go, pumpkin."
The second nickname, so at odds with the first, so unexpectedly tender and possessive, unraveled her completely. Her professional poise, her bubbly confidence, it all melted under the heat of his confessed deviance. This was Ilay. Her Ilay. A man she never knew existed.
Her lips parted. She could feel the magnetic pull drawing her forward, an inch, another. His hovering hand didn't move, a silent question.
His eyes burned with that indescribable thirst, fixed on her mouth. "All those cameras on you today... all those people looking. But you came here. To me. Did you think about this?"
He finally closed the minute distance, the calloused pad of his thumb brushing, once, with unbearable softness, against her lower lip. The contact was a lightning strike. A promise. A beginning.
Helena's breath escaped in a soft, shuddering sigh. She leaned into the touch, her own hand coming up to rest tentatively on his chest. She could feel the frantic, galloping rhythm of his heart beneath the soft cotton of his shirt, a wild counterpoint to his controlled exterior. It was the most honest thing she'd ever felt from him.
His other hand came up to cradle her jaw, his thumb still tracing the impossible softness of her lip. His gaze was intense, a silent storm of want and fearful anticipation. The space between their bodies, once a chasm of shock and embarrassment, had become a charged field of potential. Every nerve in Helena's body was alive, singing with the need to close that final, breathless distance.
His voice dropped to a whisper, a raw, husky sound that seemed to vibrate deep within her. "Tell me to stop."
