"To touch someone is to leave a fingerprint of your desire. To be touched is to let it settle in."
— Lidia Yuknavitch
~~~~~~
It had been two weeks since Zaya last saw Cael.
Fourteen days since his hands touched her chest through that thin dress. Since his lips claimed hers with quiet, consuming precision. Since he pulled away and asked if that answered her question.
Since then, Cael had left town for work. A new project, he said. A house outside the city, somewhere remote, something that would demand his attention from the ground up. He didn't offer many details, and she didn't push. What he did tell her was that it would take time, and that he didn't want to disappear. He'd check in, he promised. And he had. He sent her steady and simple messages. Never too much. Never too little.
Zaya dropped her keys on the kitchen counter, her bag sliding off her shoulder and landing against the floor with a soft thump.
The apartment smelled like jasmine and charcoal pencil. It was familiar and safe. Outside, the evening light was fading, casting long golden shadows across her walls.
She slipped off her sneakers, padded across the hardwood floor and sank onto the couch. Her body ached, not painfully, but in that deep, pulsing way that came from long hours and too much stillness inside her own head. She'd been working non-stop the past week: commissions, revisions, a freelance cover illustration for a lit mag that wanted "something bold but intimate."
She stood, crossed the room, and turned on the dim lamp by her drafting table. Then she changed into what she always wore when she worked from home: a cotton bralette and boyshorts, with an old oversized tee draped over her shoulders. Her locs were already wrapped in a scarf, twisted neatly above her crown. She poured herself a glass of water and settled back at her desk.
The sketchbook was already open to the drawing. It had started as a memory, but now it was becoming something more permanent. A moment translated into line.
His body was only partially shown: a shoulder, the strong angle of his jaw, the edge of a forearm raised. There was no face. Just implication. She'd drawn his hand cradling her chest, fingers splayed slightly through the fabric of her dress. There was tension in the way her body arched toward him, one hand clutching the front of his shirt. The other, her own hand grasping nothing, suspended in the air like a breath not yet exhaled. She had shaded the lips last.
It wasn't an erotic piece in the traditional sense. It was deeper than that. Intimate. Introspective. It held sensation in the creases and curves, something private, something she wouldn't display but couldn't not draw.
Every night since he left, she had worked on it in pieces. Every night, she returned to the same feeling: his presence lingering beneath her skin.
She remembered how his tongue moved with hers slowly, like it was reading her language, not writing over it. He didn't take, he waited. That stayed with her.
She added one more stroke along the arch of her back in the drawing. The spine curved just slightly. A mirror of the way her body had reacted, not from pressure, but from precision.
She set the pencil down and leaned back in her chair, stretching one arm across the table. Her chest rose under the fabric of her tee, her nipples tightening automatically as if her body still remembered what it felt like to be touched that way. Touched like she was something rare.
Her phone buzzed gently on the corner of the desk. Her breath caught before she reached for it.
It was a message. She didn't need to guess who it was.
🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹
🥀 💥 ❤️🔥 🥀
v𝖊𝘭v𝖊𝘵 𝚙𝔯𝖊𝓼𝓼𝗎𝔯𝖊
🥀 💥 ❤️🔥 🥀
🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹
She picked up her phone, the screen lighting softly in the dim room. Her thumb swiped across without hesitation.
~ Cael: "Just wrapped for the night. Still thinking about that sketch you haven't shown me yet."
Her lips curled into the beginning of a smile. She leaned forward, elbows on the table, chin in her hand.
She typed back, slow and thoughtful.
~ Zaya: "Still unfinished. Like some people I know." she said referring to herself.
His reply came a moment later.
~ Cael: "I didn't see this coming....So what's missing?"
She glanced down at her sketchpad. Her fingers traced the edge of the page.
~ Zaya: "Nothing visual. Just the sound of breath. The way it felt in the quiet."
He didn't reply immediately. She imagined him somewhere half-lit and minimal, probably barefoot, sprawled on a clean couch with blueprints fanned out beside him and a drink sweating slowly on the table. She wondered if he ever looked messy, if his hair ever stuck up in the morning or if his voice cracked when he first woke up.
Her phone buzzed again.
~ Cael: "Next time you see me, I want you to bring it. That sketch."
~ Zaya: _You sure? It's not polite."
~ Cael: "Neither are you."
She laughed and brought her legs up into the chair, folding herself into the moment. The light from the lamp gave her skin a soft bronze glow, her bare legs pulled close, one hand resting absentmindedly on her thigh.
She switched gears.
~ Zaya: "I'm wondering what's your favorite color?"
~ Cael: "Black."
~ Zaya: "Of course it is. Clean, controlled, classic. Predictable."
~ Cael: "You sound disappointed."
~ Zaya: "Not disappointed. Just not surprised."
He responded quickly.
~ Cael: "And yours?"
~ Zaya: "Red."
~ Cael: That tracks. Passionate. Sharp. Bold. Dangerous.
She felt her stomach twist with the echo of his voice as she imagined it saying the same words.
~ Zaya: "Beautiful. Sensual. Like breath caught behind a kiss."
~ Cael: "Now you're just showing off."
~ Zaya: "You started it."
She set the phone down for a second, brushing the pad of her finger across her own shoulder. She hadn't realized how warm she felt. The conversation always did that to her, not just what they said, but how it felt. The rhythm of their words. The way it always danced on the edge of suggestion, never tipping into cliché. Never begging.
A new message lit up.
~ Cael: "What do you eat when you're working?"
~ Zaya: "Depends. If I'm really locked in, whatever I can eat with one hand: tacos, dumplings. Things that drip."
~ Cael: "So… chaos."
~ Zaya: "Delicious chaos!"
~ Cael: "I cook simple and clean. Sometimes with heat, garlic and fresh thyme. Lemon, maybe."
She rolled her eyes.
~ Zaya: "So you're one of those men who thinks lemon counts as seasoning."
~ Cael: "Only when I'm saving room for dessert."
That one hit differently.
She waited, then asked:
~ Zaya: "Are you flirting? Or confessing?"
~ Cael: "Can't I be doing both?"
Zaya drew in a breath. Her thighs pressed a little tighter together beneath the table. There was nothing explicit in the message, but it carried a charge. A warmth that threaded between her ribs and sparked beneath her skin.
~ Cael: "What do you listen to when you draw?"
She reached for her glass of water, took a slow sip, and answered.
~ Zaya: "Mostly pop. Rhythm helps my hand stay steady. Something with build. Something with bass."
~ Cael: "I lean toward jazz. Piano. Saxophone. Space between notes."
She didn't even need to think.
~ Zaya: "That explains everything about how you kiss."
This time, his response took longer.
She imagined him reading it, thumb paused mid-scroll, tongue touching the edge of his teeth the way it had that night before he kissed her for real.
She didn't press him. She left the message there, open.
Sometimes desire lived best in the space between replies.
She turned back to her sketch. Her hand moved to the page, resting over the figure she'd drawn.
The paper was cool beneath her fingers. Her skin wasn't.