Lía woke to light like bruises—blue, deep violet—bleeding through the slats of the loft's high windows.
For a moment, she couldn't remember where she was.
And then her body reminded her.
Her thighs ached in that sharp, intimate way. Her lips were swollen, her wrists tender where his hands had held her—not hard, but like he didn't know his own strength.
She sat up slowly.
The room had changed. Or maybe she had. What last night shimmered with danger now felt curated. Deliberate. Like the setting of a play that only pretended to be real.
Marco was in the kitchen. Shirtless. Making coffee. Calm, practiced, barefoot on the cold floor like he'd done it a thousand mornings.
Like this was routine.
"Morning," he said without turning.
Lía pulled the sheet tighter around her chest. "You always make coffee for strangers?"
"You're not a stranger."
She tilted her head. "We barely spoke."
He turned then. Mug in hand. That same infuriating stillness in his eyes.
"We spoke more than most people do in years," he said.
"That's not intimacy. That's adrenaline."
He smiled faintly. "Does it matter, if it felt good?"
She didn't answer. He set the mug on the table beside her.
She watched him.
He had the kind of body sculptors wept for—shoulders built for burden, lines of muscle like strokes of violence and grace. But there was something underneath it all. Something wound too tight. Like he'd built himself to distract from what was inside.
Lía sipped the coffee. It was perfect. Too perfect.
"You planned this," she said.
"Of course."
"You knew I'd come."
"I hoped."
That word made her flinch. Hoped. Hope was messy. Vulnerable. Real.
Lía stood and dressed without shame, letting the sheet fall, feeling his eyes on her body as she moved. She wanted to test him. See if the stillness cracked.
It didn't.
She faced him once she was clothed.
"This was a good story," she said. "But I don't repeat stories."
Marco stepped forward. Not to touch her. Just to be close.
"What if this isn't a story?" he asked.
"Then it's a mistake."
He didn't move. "What are you afraid of, Lía?"
She laughed, dry and low. "That you think I'm afraid of you."
"I think you're afraid that this isn't just lust."
That stopped her.
He leaned closer, voice like velvet over razors.
"Because I saw the way you looked at me before you kissed me. And that wasn't about sex. That was hunger. That was need."
She met his gaze, steady.
"No," she said. "That was projection. That was you hoping I'm broken the same way you are."
And before he could answer, she turned and left—heels echoing down the hallway, out the door, back into the morning.
But her hands were still shaking.
And she didn't stop walking until the city swallowed her whole.
Mirrors and Warnings....
The studio smelled like turpentine, oranges, and charcoal dust—the scents of memory and creation. It was Lía's sanctuary. Her camera lay on the table like a sleeping animal; canvases leaned half-finished against every wall.
Clara Gómez sat on the couch cross-legged, eating a pomegranate with a silver spoon.
She was the only person in Lía's life who never asked for masks. And that made her dangerous.
"I know that look," Clara said, tilting her spoon. "You slept with someone you're pretending not to like."
Lía smirked, leaning against the window. "Who says I didn't like it?"
"I said 'like him,' not 'like it.' Big difference."
They had been friends for eight years—met during a photography seminar where Lía had been arrogant and silent, and Clara had refused to be ignored. Over time, Clara had learned to read Lía like one of her therapy case files—layer by layer, wound by wound.
"He's…" Lía trailed off, searching. "Unsettling."
Clara snorted. "You say that like it's a compliment."
"Maybe it is."
Clara set the pomegranate aside. "You've got that heat in your eyes again. The kind you get when you confuse chemistry for fate."
"I'm not confused."
"No," Clara said gently. "You're intoxicated. And that's always when you stop seeing clearly."
Lía turned away.
---
Marco, Three Years Earlier
Venice. Autumn. Rain on the cobblestones like the city was crying and didn't want to talk about it.
Marco was twenty-nine and wearing a suit he'd stolen from his father's closet. He stood over the grave of a woman named Elena Corti—the fiancée he never married, the one who fell off a balcony after a fight that no one ever officially called a suicide.
People whispered. They always did.
He'd once been a dancer in Milan—classical, raw, talented. But he'd traded movement for money, grace for guilt. After Elena died, he stopped dancing. He moved to Barcelona. Buried her memory in investment deals and champagne and women who didn't ask questions.
But the hunger remained.
He wanted something he couldn't name. Something to fill the silence Elena left behind.
And then, years later, he saw Lía Navarro's exhibit—lovers blurred in shadow and smoke, faces turned away, bodies mid-reach. Not sex. Not love. Need.
And he felt it again.
That ache.
That possibility.
---
Back in the Present
"Maybe I need to feel something dangerous," Lía said. "Is that so wrong?"
Clara's eyes softened. "No. But be honest with yourself. Is this desire? Or is this damage dressed in leather?"
Lía laughed, but her throat was tight.
Clara stood, walked over, and touched her shoulder.
"You don't have to bleed every time you want to feel something real, Lía."
Lía didn't answer.
Because the truth was already pressing against her ribs.
Marco had stirred something in her. Something sharp. Something unmanageable.
And whether it was lust or love or self-destruction—
She didn't want to walk away.
The Pattern Beneath the Fire
For three days, Lía didn't return Marco's messages.
He didn't bombard her, didn't beg. Just short, quiet texts—"Thinking of you." A photo of her own artwork at a gallery, captioned "Your shadows follow me." His restraint was worse than pressure; it left her room to want.
But Lía kept her distance.
Because Clara's words echoed. Because she recognized the pattern now.
This wasn't the first time she'd been drawn to someone like Marco—consuming, intense, unreadable. It was the same story with her mother, Ana Navarro, years ago: a string of passionate affairs, each man more dangerous than the last, until one day she disappeared. Not vanished—left.
Lía was fifteen when she found the note: "Passion burns. You either feed it or run from it. I couldn't do both."
Her mother chose the fire.
And now, Lía stood at the edge of one, wondering if she'd inherited the same thirst.
---
Marco, meanwhile, felt her absence like a missing limb.
It wasn't love, he told himself