The Mercy of Thin Air by Ronlyn Domingue

Author:Ronlyn Domingue
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atria Books

HE IS SOMEWHERE with that camera. He says every photograph is practice for the ones he’ll take during his travels around the world. Lately, he takes the camera wherever he goes, in case he sees something to capture. Most of the photos don’t satisfy him—the light was wrong or the subject left a blur or his focus was poor—but he keeps the ones that he likes in a little box. What possesses him, I have no idea, because he spares nothing the lens. Inside that box, I’ve seen a hodgepodge of what turned his eye—a sunset on drowsing morning glories, Emmaline’s hands around a bone china teacup, men chatting outside the Pickwick Club, a freshly painted Creole cottage. I love them all. Andrew takes the commonplace and recasts it as incredible.

I roll on the grass and snuggle my chin into the blades. One meets the edge of my lip, and I bite. As I chew, I rest my ear on the ground. The grass struggles to straighten itself under my weight. I hear it groan.

“You haven’t dressed?”

“Why bother? No one out here but me, you, the birds, and the bees.”

Andrew holds the camera at his hip. “Exhibitionist.”

“Voyeur.” I lie on my side and curl my knees into my belly. Grass fringes every curve. Slowly, he raises the camera up to his face. He steps aside, back, aside again. He’s behind me. “Put that down. What if it goes off accidentally?”

“It won’t.”

“Andrew.”

“Let me.”

“You’ve been in the sun too long.”

“No one else will see them. You know I develop my own.”

I turn only my face to look at him. That glint isn’t there, not the same one I know anyway. “Okay, I’ll make you a deal. You tell me your middle name, and I’ll let you.”

“Too easy. I’ll give you three guesses. If you miss, I get to take your photograph. If you’re right—well, what do you want?”

“You have to trace me with a feather until I beg you to stop, and you don’t.”

There—there’s the libidinous spark I expected. “I accept the terms.”

“Now, now. It’s so obvious. You were a fool to suggest the game, Mr. O’Connell. Your middle name is your father’s. Patrick.”

“No. Don’t move.”

“Percy. A popular name in these parts.”

“No. Stay still. The way the light touches your back—”

“Pierce. A name with some history.”

His hand strokes along my spine and pushes my rear further into the tuck, a sweet blind path of desire humming through my skin. “Better luck next time. Don’t move.” The shutter snaps once, twice, three times. Andrew kneels down at my side but doesn’t touch me. I lie flat on my back.

“Beautiful,” he says distantly.

I place my hand on his chest and feel the center of the maze, the point where his vessels begin and end. What I want—soon, now—we are not prepared for me to ask.

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