I pick up the first one and flip through it. Small, penciled notes dot the margins and get messier as the pages progress.
Page 43:Why is this so hot???Underlined three times.
Page 87:The way he just TAKES control...
Page 139:Would die if someone said this to me.
More books. More notes. On one particularly worn paperback, she's sketched in the margins—a man's hand gripping a woman's throat. The detail is precise. The intimacy of it clear.
There's a sticky note on another book marking a specific scene. The man has the girl pinned against a wall, one hand fisted in her hair, telling her exactly what he's going to do to her. Lila's written in the margin:God, yes!
Blood rushes south so fast I go lightheaded.
This is what she reads. What she thinks about. Dangerous men who take what they want. Who don't ask permission. Who claim and possess and keep.
Men like me.
But there's more. The stack of books rests on something, creating a false bottom. I move them aside and find a sketchbook, larger than the ones she carries. Hidden like contraband.
I should close the box. Should respect this boundary at least.
I open the sketchbook instead.
The first page steals my breath.
A naked man. Tattooed, scarred, built like someone who knows violence intimately. He's drawn from behind. The attention to detail is stunning. She's talented—I knew that from watching her sketch at the diner—but this is different.
I turn the page.
Another man, lying on his back with one arm thrown over his face, cock half-hard against his thigh. She's captured everything—the shadows, the texture, the weight of it.
Flipping through the pages, there are more bodies. Warriors and killers rendered in graphite and want.
Then I see myself standing at a window, city lights in the background. I'm naked except for shadows, one hand braced against the glass, head tilted back. She's drawn me like a study in power and isolation.
My hands tense as I turn to the next page.
It’s me again, sitting at a desk, head tilted back, face caught in pleasure. The perspective is from below, suggesting someone on their knees between my legs, implied rather than shown in the act, but the intent is clear.
Another page. Me in a shower, water streaming down my chest and abdomen, hand wrapped around my cock, face tight with need.
I keep flipping. She's drawn me fighting. Killing. Fucking.
She's imagined me in every scenario her mind could create and drawn it all with the kind of detail that comes from thinking about it constantly. From wanting it.
The final drawing hits different. It's intimate in a way the others aren't. Me asleep, face relaxed, vulnerable. She's captured a quality in this one—not the danger, not the violence, but a softness I didn't know I was capable of showing.
I sit on her bed, sketchbook open in my lap, and feel the last of my careful control dissolve.
She wants this.
She fantasizes about men like me. About being taken by men like me. About submitting to the power I have.
I'm giving her what she wants.
Good. I want this too. The math is simple when you strip away all the pretense about protection and responsibility.
I finish packing her bag with hands that aren't quite steady. Add the clothes, the toiletries, and a framed photo of her with an older woman who might be her mother. Leave the box as I found it—secrets intact, fantasies preserved.
