Traditional Sunday lunch followed Sunday morning delights.

Hasmita and I were invited over to Leah and Christopher's house for a meal later that day. It was my job to bring dessert so I went straight from Danny's to the local supermarket to buy ingredients, then headed back home to bake an apple crumble. I didn't bake through choice, but I always made an effort when it came to Leah, and she was always polite about my cooking. This led to a never-ending cycle of me having to cook and everyone else having to endure it.

"How was the barbecue?" Hasmita asked as she poured the wine. She had chosen an unusual outfit for the occasion: a bottle green trouser suit but with what appeared to be nothing but a bra underneath the jacket that cinched in at her waist.

"Eventful," I admitted, drawing my eyes away from her attire.

Leah had read my lips and raised an eyebrow at me. "Don't tell me—you hooked up with someone?"

I followed her through to the living room. "Perhaps." I bit back the 'don't judge me' preface to my answer.

Hasmita followed close behind. "Did you say yes?"

"I said perhaps." I took the wine.

"She said yes," Leah corrected me.

Christopher left us to check on dinner, but not before an obvious eye-roll.

"Don't judge me, but it was Danny," I confessed.

"Shit," Hasmita said on an out-breath. "I thought we were done with him."

I shrugged. "He's loosened up ... a little."

Leah and Hasmita had matching looks of disappointment: raised eyebrows, pouting lips, folded arms. Years of living together had done that to them. Leah, however, sported jogging bottoms and a Jurassic Park t-shirt. Had I missed the memo about the crazy dress-code? Or was this our clothes matching our relationship statuses? What did my jeans and orange blouse say about mine?

I snapped back to our conversation, realising I needed to defend myself. "I don't know why you have such an issue with him. He plays piano," I added pathetically as if that explained it. I laughed at myself.

Hasmita moved closer to me, her hand still on her hip. "Don't you remember? You hated being with him. He drove you mad. He messed with your head. What did he ever do for you?" She turned from me. "Leah, tell her."

Our friend just shook her head, not wanting to get involved; pretending that as we weren't signing, she couldn't follow what we were saying.

I made sure to sign my response. "He only messed with my head because I let him. He did nothing wrong. He just wanted sex—never pretended he didn't."

"You're letting him use you. You're better than that," Hasmita cut in with a shrug.

"It will be different this time. He was more... open yesterday. Maybe whatever was going on with him has passed. And anyway, I won't take it this time. I'm going to find out who he is, and what - or who - he's running from."

"And what if you don't like what you find?" Leah pointed out.

Our argument continued as we moved from the living room to the dining table and over dinner until finally Christopher had enough of my love-life and forced a change of subject. I really wanted to like him; he was making Leah happy. But he didn't like Hasmita and me. Mostly Hasmita given I'd been out of action with my bastard cancer. As soon as was acceptable, Christopher got Leah out of their flat and in with him. He found us loud and rude and bad influences. We drank too much, wore inappropriate clothing for women our age (today's odd choice no exception) and didn't take life seriously enough. I realised with a jolt that was fairly close to Danny's assessment of me. Why was it alright for Danny to think that but not Christopher? Well, Christopher was dull. It was lucky Leah couldn't hear him all the time; his anecdotes could put you to sleep. He worked for the local council and many of his stories involved sewage or illegal parking.

And his head. He had an abnormally large, square head that was just asking to be punched. I hoped for Leah's sake they never decided to have children. Ouch.

He did, however, have a nice house in his favour and, despite my complaints, I liked being invited over for dinner as it meant I could snoop around and get ideas for my own place. He had interesting artwork and random things he'd picked up from antique stores and car boot sales. On a previous visit, I'd seen and fallen in love with a unique set of small decorative plates all the way from Japan with beautiful ink designs. It took a lot of willpower not to slip them in my handbag. He had so much stuff—he wouldn't notice.

We got through dinner that night and my friends' reaction to Danny gave me new motivation to uncover his secrets. I swore that before I next saw him, I would have discovered something new about him. No matter what it was.

***

Throughout the following week, I pretended I was indifferent to Danny's texts requesting my presence while I did my research. I knew I needed to resist. This was bad for me; my friends were right. Instead, I directed my efforts at my pointless hunt for information. I now knew he had some connection to Trinny and Harry. Perhaps he worked with Harry. I investigated the company Harry worked for, using my work resources and random innocent-sounding questions to Trinny, to obtain a list of every employee, past and present. Nothing. I could only conclude that 'Danny Skarsgård' didn't exist.

To my dismay, I found myself pulling up at his house Saturday evening, a bottle of wine and some sexy lingerie in tow. And even after devoting a large portion of my working week to it, I hadn't found out even a slither of information on him.

"I knew you'd come," he said, pulling me inside.

My instinct was to kiss him, but I forced myself not to. Instead, I followed him through to the kitchen so we could put the wine away to cool.

"How did you know?" I asked with a pout as he poured us a glass of wine each from an already chilled bottle he had in his fridge.

"You can't resist me," he said, clinking his glass against mine.

"I can. I just want to collect your talents."

"Come on then."

No time for small-talk it would seem.

Taking my free hand, he led me back up to the top floor where the piano was. I looked around the sparse room but what I hadn't paid much attention to the week before were large sheets covering, perhaps, some boxes along the back wall. It seemed this was the clue to what was coming next. Nervousness engulfed me.

"Take your clothes off," Danny instructed with authority.

"Sex isn't a talent," I countered, eyes still on the concealed boxes.

"I don't want to have sex with you. Not right now at least. Now take your clothes off and sit on the sofa if you want to see my talent."

His voice left no room for argument so I put my wineglass down and started to strip. His eyes never left me and I blushed. I left my underwear on. Although he'd now seen me, that had been in the heat of the moment; I wasn't about to fully expose myself to him again. His eyes on me always had the power to make me question what he saw. Especially now I had very visible imperfections.

I sat down on the sofa and waited expectantly, my stomach fluttering.

Danny didn't insist I go any further and instead turned to the back of the room and began to pull the sheets away, revealing first an easel and then some large canvases.

My eyes widened. "You're going to paint ... me?" I didn't like the sound of that.

"Yup. I've already made a start using my imagination, but it would help to have a live model."

I swallowed. Danny spread one of the sheets over the floor and positioned the easel on top.

"Can I see?" I asked, narrowing my eyes.

"When it's done," he assured me, glancing between me and whatever was on the canvas.

I fidgeted, not sure where to put my hands, settling on holding my arm across my chest. "How should I pose?"

Danny approached and knelt in front of me.

"I want you to open your legs a little. Put your feet on the floor but then raise onto your toes. You're right-handed, yes?"

I nodded.

He took my right hand and placed it between my legs. "Touch yourself. Tip your head back a bit as if you're enjoying it. You can actually enjoy it if you want - make it more realistic."

I slowly began to move my fingers.

"Good. Imagine I'm sat behind you - you're sat between my legs - and I'm helping you."

I closed my eyes and I could feel him get up and stride across the room. When I opened them again, he was stood behind the easel, his gaze once more switching between me and the canvas. He dipped his brush into a new colour.

"I'd be much more turned on if the artist was wearing fewer clothes," I suggested, breaking the momentary silence.

Danny put his brush down and took his polo shirt off, dropping it to the floor. My eyes traced each muscle as I followed them down his torso.

We fell silent again as I got myself off in front of him. Every now and then he would throw me words of encouragement, tell me it was his fingers not mine, but mostly he was concentrating. So many questions ran through my mind but I bit my tongue, not wanting to distract him.

Any self-consciousness evaporated as I inched closer to the point of no return.

"Tell me when, Ariel," he whispered.

"Yes," I breathed.

I squeezed my eyes shut so I didn't have to see him watching me and within moments I was a quivering mess. I composed myself quickly and brought my legs together, feeling suddenly embarrassed.

Danny raised an eyebrow at me across the room and I smiled back shyly.

"I'm pretty much done." He put his brush down. "You want to see?"

Of course, I did. I got up and was about to get dressed when Danny approached me with one of the sheets. "No clothes just yet." He wrapped the cloth around my near-naked body.

He led me around his side of the easel. I was nervous; expecting something crude and dirty. I wasn't sure I was keen on seeing an image of me pleasuring myself. I screwed up my eyes as I turned to look.

With one eye still closed I took a peak. It wasn't just me in the painting. Danny was sat behind me, his legs either side of mine, my back against his chest, and it was his hand between my legs, not mine, his other hand covering my breasts so nothing was on show. There were no outlines. It was possible to make out our figures but the lines between us and the background, and each other, were undefined. The features weren't possible to make out precisely, but it was clear they were us. No background, other than an explosion of deep, dark colours, contrasting with our pink bodies. It was raw and tender all at once. As I allowed my senses to take it all in, goosebumps trailed down my arms.

Finally, I spoke. "Wow. I don't know what I was expecting, but not this. It's beautiful."

"I'm glad you like it," Danny said, putting an arm around my shoulder.

I still couldn't draw my eyes away. It was a strangely emotional picture despite the subject matter. Maybe it was the colours, giving the illusion of a soft glow on our bodies. Some feelings I couldn't quite pinpoint were flowing through me. The pinks and reds of our skin were perfect but reminded me of my red scar.

"You have more like this?" I asked after a while, gesturing to the wall that still had objects covered by sheets.

"I do."

"Can I see?"

Danny nodded and helped me uncover some. Many canvases of all shapes and sizes sat behind the sheets. All a similar subject matter - sometimes a man and woman, sometimes just a woman, one of two women. The images were all of a sex act or post-coital, but each one had something beautiful about it.

"Do you sell any of these?" I asked in wonder.

"Sometimes. I mean, I used to when I could market myself."

I turned back to the easel. "Can I buy my one?"

Danny laughed. "You don't have to buy it; you can have it. It's yours. Just promise me you'll put it up somewhere."

"Of course, I will. Probably my bedroom rather than my dining room - don't want to put off the guests."

"Good idea."

"You're very talented," I added, turning back to the other paintings.

"I've always been creative. I'm not smart, like you."

"How do you know I'm smart?" I said with a grin.

"I can tell."

"Hmm. OK. Anyway, tell me more about your paintings. Did you have live models for all these?"

"Some of them," he admitted.

"This woman," I said, pointing to a blonde who was on all fours. "She appears a lot."

"Yeah, she was my girlfriend," he said.

"Oh, right." I was taken aback by his sudden openness about something.

"Don't sound so surprised. I used to be a normal human being. We were together a while," he explained.

"What happened?" I asked, testing my luck.

"Nothing bad," he said. "Time, I suppose."

There seemed to be no emotion in his voice and I guessed she must be ancient history, but it still left a weird jealous knot inside of me. He had once been in a relationship where he must have shared himself. This blonde woman knew him once, loved him, was loved back.

"You're sharing a lot with me today," I observed with a cheeky smile. "You should be careful; I might actually learn something about you."

"How do you know anything I say is real?" he challenged, but he was smiling too. "She could be a prostitute for all you know."

I took a deep breath. I knew he was teasing me, but he was sort of right. The nuggets of information he shared with me could all be lies. All I knew for sure was that he could play piano and paint. He couldn't fake those two things. Unless the painting had already been done and he pretended to paint it! My mind was running away with me. I rolled my eyes at myself.

"What's wrong?" Danny asked, putting his hands on my shoulders, his bare chest level with my eyes.

I raised them. "You make me nervous."

He sighed. "I know. You told me that once before. I'm sorry. But look me in the eye and tell me the truth."

"About what?" I asked.

"If you knew everything about me—if our relationship was normal—we'd be done already. You only keep coming back because I intrigue you. Tell me that's not true."

I opened my mouth to argue but wasn't sure what to say. Was he right? And if so, how did he read me so easily when I never told him anything?

"Well?" Danny asked, his blue eyes darting between mine. He seemed sincerely interested in my answer.

"I do like that you're mysterious," I agreed as I traced my fingers down his stomach. "But that doesn't mean I wouldn't stick around if I knew everything about you."

He laughed, but without humour. "Trust me, the day you know everything about me you'll be out of that door so fast you'll be a blur. Anyway, it's also better for you if you don't. I've been protecting you."

"How good of you!" I shot at him. "So why should I keep seeing you then?"

"Because I want you to."

I nodded, not sure how to argue. I pulled away from him and went to look at my painting again, pleased to see that the paint was still wet.