Page 61 of Mr. Romantic (Mister 2)

“Hey,” Nolan says from the bedroom doorway. “Zoning out or what?”

I didn’t even hear him come back. “No. I was just getting irritated, actually. For you taking so long.”

“Well, no one put you in a corner and called you bad, Ivy. You could’ve gotten up. Looked out the fucking window or something.”

“I know that,” I snap. But I… didn’t know that. Didn’t understand it at least. I just stayed here. Where he put me.

“I’m not dominating you, Ivy. I’m not going to ask you to lick piss up off the floor just to prove to me you’re interested. That’s not what I’m about.”

I wait for it, but he holds it in. He wants me to ask. That is what he’s about. Control. He’s not going to give anything away. I have to come get it. He is dominant. He does like submission. He just does it in a way I’ve never heard of before. He’s some kind of cutting-edge deviant. And I’m his new project. He’s going to use all his magic charms on me and see how far he can get before he has to throw me away and find someone new.

“What are you about?” I ask.

He grins a grin that sends a chill through my bare nipples. Like a breeze just passed over my body. He made me react.

“Pleasure, Ivy. I’m about pleasure.”

“You want to slap my face while you fuck me.”

“Wow.” He laughs. “Those are some dirty words coming from the preacher’s daughter’s mouth.”

“Is that what you want?”

“Why do you need to know?”

“Because I matter. You’ve got me—”

“Ivy,” he interrupts, his voice stern. “Relax. Enjoy.” And then I see what he’s holding in his hands.

“What’s that?”

“Paper. And charcoal pencils.”

Oh. I forgot. Jesus Christ. I take a deep breath and try to shake off my fear.

“You still want me to draw you?”

“Yes.” I have a million little justifications for this want. I don’t believe him. I think there’s more to it than what he’s saying. I think he’s sick, that he and his friends raped that girl, and then somehow, some way, the five of them got her killed.

At least I should think those things. Nothing Nolan Delaney has said to me is convincing. And I probably do think them. Do believe them, at least a little bit.

But that’s not why I want him to draw me.

I like the way he’s looking at me right now. No man has ever looked at me like this before. Nude. Stretched out on his bed. Pretending to be helpless, even though he just told me I’m not helpless.

“Then relax.” That grin again. It says a lot. It says he does have secrets. Deep ones. Dark ones. And he’s right. Once I know them, I can never unknow them. “I’m gonna pose you, OK?”

Nolan steps forward, kneeling on the bed, and sets the pad of paper and the charcoal pencils down as he crawls forward and wraps his hand around my ankle.

I nearly come undone. By a hand on my ankle. Has anyone ever touched my ankles before? Is it supposed to feel this way?

“Shhh,” he says when I jerk my foot away from his touch. “It’s not time to be afraid yet, Ivy.”

My eyes widen at his words. Yet?

“I just want your foot here.” He pushes my foot towards me, making it slide on the smooth cotton comforter, until my knee bends slightly. Then he angles it so that the knee is resting on the opposite thigh. His fingertips flitter up my shin, then slip around to the long muscle of my calf, caressing the soft skin behind my knee.

I gasp. I can’t help it.