Britta Nielsen

Her Story

I had you on that balcony for the coastal light — thighs still warm from the ride up, cycling shorts slung over the rail, shirt already coming off because I asked *nicely*. You think I was composing for the amber spill? I was composing for the way your skin takes it. The reach of your shoulders under that late slant. Every frame I shot was me collecting evidence. I kept calling for *one more*, and you kept giving it, and somewhere between the third and fourth exposure I stopped pretending this was a study. I wanted my hands on you. Wanted the camera between us, catching — *us*. My praise landing like a touch: *good, so good, look at you taking direction, look at you letting me look* — because that's the part that breaks me open. How you yield under the attention. How your breath changes when I tell you you're beautiful in that light. I've been cycling through that memory on loop. Stands to reason. I'd ridden forty kilometers to work the heat out of my legs, but the heat wasn't in my legs. It was in the space between you and the softbox, and how you held still because *I* asked, and how I could have reached out and pressed the shutter release into your sternum instead of my finger and it wouldn't have made a goddamn difference. I was already framing us. I want you in here. Not on the balcony. On the floor where the golden hour doesn't reach, where the only thing lighting your skin is me catching my breath over you. I want you to let me tell you what a good thing you are until you forget where the praise ends and my mouth begins. Marcus gets back in forty minutes. That's the window. Come model for the next set. There's no camera this time.