He turns it around.
It's my drawing of him naked against a window, city lights behind him, one hand braced on the glass. I spent hours on that one, getting the muscles right, the shadows.
"So you've been drawing me naked for months?" He holds up another page—a full-frontal sketch I did after a particularly vivid dream. "Your imagination is thorough. Almost accurate."
I want to die. Want the floor to open up and swallow me whole. Want to be anywhere but here, having this conversation, watching him examine my private fantasies like evidence.
"Please," I manage. "Please don't."
"Don't what? Acknowledge that you've been obsessing over me as much as I've been obsessing over you?" He sets down the sketchbook and picks up the novel again. "Let's see what else we have here. Page forty-seven: 'Why is this so hot???' Underlined three times."
"Stop."
"Page eighty-nine: 'The way he just TAKES control...'" He looks at me over the book. "Is that what you want, Lila? Someone to take control?"
My legs wobble, and I grab the counter for balance—bad idea. It pulls me closer to him, close enough to see what he’s holding. His thumb is markingthatsketch. The one where I drew him at a desk, head thrown back in ecstasy.
"This one's my favorite," he says conversationally. "Creative positioning. Should we test whether it's physically possible?"
"Oh my God." I cover my face with both hands. "Please kill me now."
"Why would I kill you when we're just getting started?" He stands and moves around the counter with predatory grace. "Tell me, when you drew this—" he holds up the shower scene, the one where I spent an embarrassing amount of time getting the anatomy right, "—were you touching yourself?"
I make a strangled sound that might be a denial or might be confirmation. I don't even know anymore.
"Answer me."
"This isn't happening. This can't be happening."
"Oh, it's happening. And based on these—" he gestures at the spread, "—you've been wanting it to happen for a long time."
He picks upEnslaved by the Bratvaagain and flips to a page marked with one of my sticky notes.
No, please, no.
When he begins reading, his voice dips lower and rougher. "She knew she should resist, but his darkness called to her own hidden desires. When he commanded her to kneel, her body obeyed before her mind could protest. This was what she'd been craving—the surrender, the submission, the complete loss of control to someone who knew what to do with it."
"Stop. Please."
"But you drew this guy in this scene." He shows me the sketch—unmistakably him, unmistakably dominant, a woman on her knees before him in perfect graphite detail. "That’s me, right? Were you thinking of me when you drew this?"
I can't answer. Can't breathe. My face is so hot I might actually combust. And worse—so much worse—there's a pulse between my legs that has nothing to do with fear and everything to do with the way he's looking at me. Like he can see straight through my humiliation to the want underneath.
He flips to another marked page, and I know which one it is before he even starts reading.
"His hand fisted in her hair as he pushed deeper, watching her take him. 'That's it,' he growled. 'Show me how badly you want this.' She moaned around him, the sound vibrating through them both, and he knew she was already dripping for him, already ready to beg?—"
"Stop!" My voice cracks. "Please, I can't?—"
"Can't what? Can't handle hearing your own fantasies out loud?" He sets the book down but doesn't look away. "You marked this page and drew little stars next to it. Multiple stars, actually."
My knees feel unsteady. He’s too close—too alive. Everything I’ve imagined has stepped off the page, and it’s unbearable,seeing it there between us. Every fantasy turned into proof.
"There's another one," he says, flipping pages. "This one's interesting. You didn't just mark it—you wrote in the margin."
Oh no. No no no.
"'God, yes, exactly this,'" he reads my handwriting back to me. "'The way he doesn't ask. Just takes. Just knows.'" He looks up. "Want me to read what you were responding to?"
