I stand in her bedroom one more moment, duffel bag in hand, sketchbook returned to its hiding place. My cock's been half-hard since I opened that box, and now it's straining against my zipper with an urgency I haven't felt since I was a teenager.
She did this. Her drawings. Her notes. Her dirty little mind imagining me in positions that would make a prostitute blush.
When I get back to the penthouse, I'm going to let her feel how hard she makes me. Going to watch her face when she realizes what she does to me. See if those green eyes go wide with fear or desire.
Probably both.
I can’t fucking wait.
6
LILA
The smell of coffee pulls me halfway into consciousness. Another scent slips through—soft, sweet, heartbreakingly familiar.
Coconut shampoo.
Mycoconut shampoo.
I sit up too fast, and the world tilts as Ivan's penthouse takes shape. Right. I’m in a luxury cage of his making: the guest room, complete with silk sheets and a skyline view.
The smell is coming from the main living area.
I rush to find my jeans from yesterday and pull them on under Ivan's shirt.
Time feels weird here, like I've fallen into some alternate dimension where normal rules don't apply. It feels like no time and all the time in the world have passed.
The moment I step into the main room, I know something's wrong.
Ivan sits at the breakfast bar. My entire life sits spread across the marble surface.
My books. The ones from under my bed, where I hid themaway, because even I knew they were too much, too revealing, too honest about the things I wanted.
And worse—so much worse—my sketchbook. The private one I kept hidden like pornography because that's essentially what it is.
He's holding a book:Enslaved by the Bratva. The most explicit one in my collection. The one with the most notes in the margins.
"Good morning," he says without looking up.
My throat closes. I can't think, let alone breathe. All I can do is stare at the evidence of every fantasy I've ever had laid out like exhibits in a trial.
"You went to my apartment."
"I told you I would."
"You went through my things."
"I packed what you'd need." He turns a page. "Found some… interesting reading material."
Heat floods my face. Not the pleasant warmth of a blush but the searing burn of complete humiliation. "Those are private."
"Nothing's private anymore, little dove." He finally looks at me, and those blue eyes are molten. "Not between us."
Little dove. The endearment sounds like ownership.
"You had no right?—"
"I had every right. You're under my protection. That means I need to know everything about you." He picks up the sketchbook and flips it open to a page I can't see from here. "Including this."
