“Yes, you did. You described yourself the way you learned to see yourself through another’s eyes,” she says, and a shudder runs down my spine, as another wave of discomfort rolls through me. “Someone who didn’t value you because their eyes were tainted. Their image of you has nothing to do with reality.”
I am not properly processing her words.
“What I think about you couldn’t be any further from what you just described,” she says and takes the paper.
“Miss Phillips, I see this beautiful diamond,” she reads from the paper and heat surges through my entire body. “Raw and wild on the inside, tamed and silent on the outside. I imagine myself touching her, uncovering her, guiding her, showing her the preciousness of existence. I cannot help but think of how good she’d look kneeling for me, undressed, liberated, in trust, as herself.”
I am rendered completely speechless. My mouth drops open because while it was unbelievably sensually written and I heard the words, I am unable to process them properly. I know what she said, but I can’t process the emotional impact it has on me.
I have never been in a situation that went in any sexual direction. I also feel extremely vulnerable right now, unable to cope with the fact that Victoria Fitzroy somehow desires me from the sound of it.
“I—I am not desirable,” I stammer, “I am just—Mia. Just Mia. Boring. A nobody?—”
“Just Mia,” she says with a huff. She carefully places the paper onto the table before she stands up with a graciousness I have not seen anywhere before. She is tall for a woman, maybe 6 feet, even barefoot, and compared to me, with my 5’5, I feel so small.
She takes a step closer to me, and my eyes shoot down as her legs touch mine. I stare at my hands in my lap, wrestling with sensations I am not familiar with.
She is so close now. I can sense her, scent her prepossessing perfume washing over me.
My chest heaves up and down, whether I want it or not; I can’t control it.
“Look at me,” she says and pulls up my chin. I let her, reluctantly. My entire body is so tense.
“Whoever made you believe you are something less, I will ruinthem without so much as a second of hesitation,” she says, and I melt into her touch.
She is impressive as she is, but the way she talks, the clarity, the way she draws me in—those eyes.
The strength.
The confidence.
She pulls me up by the chin. Goosebumps spread over my arms, and something deep within me flutters. I lose myself in the moment, and I close my eyes for an infinite moment, where I only feel.
My mind is turned off entirely.
There is only her touch.
The sensation it causes me.
I don’t have to think right now.
I am only existing.
Being.
She slightly pushes my head to the side, and I feel her lips against my neck. I shrug as a shiver runs down my spine from it. Her warm breath caresses my skin like a summer breeze, and yet the hair on my arms stands up.
“You are something so special,” she whispers in my ear, “Something I cannot stay away from, even though I should.”
Her hand wanders over my chest, over my collarbone, up to my throat, to my neck, until she grasps my face on the side. Never have I felt anything like this before. My entire body is covered in goosebumps by now.
She pushes my head back into its vertical position. I am simply a marionette. My chest is heaving up and down like after a run up the stairs as I flash my eyes open.
I gaze into her eyes, lost in whatever limbo of space-time this is happening in. My eyes wander ever so slowly down to her lips. The lips that just caressed over my skin. They look so soft, so?—
My eyes flash back into hers.
Please show me you feel that, too,I beg in my mind.
