in the head. My therapist in Oxford had earned quite a bit of money after it had released. Plus, I had paid for the long-distance calls to her while I’d been living in Amsterdam. But they could never take away the simple fact that I had had the balls to put my brainchild out there.
Nevertheless, my readers enjoyed the sick, twisted inner workings of my mind. Apparently, Ollie was now one of them, too. A part of me wanted to rub it in his face. He was hanging out with someone he thought was mad.
“You all right?” he asked, pushing his sunglasses up his forehead.
I raised my watery gaze to his and nodded. Then, I washed more coffee down my throat. “I’m good.”
We started walking down the street again, and I was disappointed that our hands were no longer clasped.
Ollie
Today, Xanthe was sweet and tempting, hesitant to flirt. When she had tucked her hand in mine, I’d thought it was fantastic how she’d radiated ten shades of red. I had to wonder if she didn’t date much.
More than anything, I wanted to take her hand again. I liked her hands. Her fingers were long, dry, and callous. She kept her nails pared short and unpainted. But, more than wanting to touch her, I wanted to let it sink in for her that I liked touching her. I had the feeling that she wasn’t used to that, and I liked that feeling, too.
When we went through the north entrance of Central Park, I couldn’t take it anymore. Reaching out, I took her hand in mine. She lightly clasped my hand in return.
I wanted to fill up my camera with shots of Xanthe in the North Woods. With the bright sunlight filtering through the dense vegetation, it was the perfect fairy-tale setting for a woman with the name of a goddess—even if she were wearing black-rimmed hipster glasses.
“Will you take your hair down for me?” I asked as we went off on a smaller pathway.
She reached up and tugged out her knot, her thick curls catching streaks of sunlight. It shone with a dark inner fire.
Earthy and natural, Xanthe was breathtaking. She was slowly revealing something incredible to me. Perhaps that was the enchantment.
The desire to see all of her was overwhelming. I wouldn’t be satisfied until she was standing before me in all her glory. I sensed that she had the power to surprise me indefinitely, and I wanted to explore this, her, all of it.
My camera was out of the case and in my hands, and I felt that thrill I always got whenever I held the weight of it. I was ready to capture the world and clutch it in my grasp.
This wasn’t a digital camera. Xanthe deserved the time it would take for me to sit in my dark room with the film and watch each photograph develop, revealing their secrets as she did. After attaching the scope, I raised it to my gaze and saw her through my beloved lens about ten feet ahead of me. I snapped a few shots before she turned her attention on me.
“Are you photographing me?”
I smiled. “I am.”
“I thought you wanted Central Park.”
“I want you …in Central Park.”
Yes! I loved her blushing.
Unsure of herself, she didn’t know where to look or what to do with her body, and I found it refreshing. I wanted her as she was, showing me what was going on in that head of hers.
“What should I do?”
“Just be yourself,” I replied.
She looked off into the distance. “In this very minute, I’m not sure of who I am.”
I lowered my camera. “What do you mean?”
She faced me, and I felt her gaze like a swift kick to the gut. There was rawness in her expression. She was exposed, vulnerable, and… dark —not in an evil sense, but…something inside her was maybe more than mysterious, like a brutality, a protective viciousness that set her apart from the norm. The hair raised on my neck and arms.
“Take your shot,” she said softly.
I certainly didn’t want her uneasy with me, but the humanity in her expression was far too compelling. Raising my camera, I took a few more photos.
“What’s going through
John O'Riley
Jill Gregory
Celya Bowers
Aria Cunningham
Stephen Lloyd Jones
Christopher George
Learning to Kill: Stories
Brenda Sinclair
Karl Iagnemma
C. J. Cherryh