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.
“It feels nice, right?” His green eyes are bright and his smile is big. “Most men want to lick pussy and bite lips. But they forget about the little dent behind the knee.” He dips down to my leg, softly kissing before nipping the inside of my thigh.
I gasp again. But he doesn’t pay any attention to me. Just continues to kiss his way up my leg, skipping over my pussy, and resting his lips on my hip bone. “And the hips,” he breathes, his breathy words fluttering across my skin. “Defiance is defined as open resistance. But a seductive man knows how to turn resistance into reluctance into acceptance.”
I bite my lip as I let all these new feelings flood through me. “Is that what you’re doing? Turning my resistance into acceptance?”
He stops his soft touch and kissing to look up at me from beneath his unruly brown hair that falls over his eyes. “What do you think?”
“I think… I think I have no idea who you are, Nolan Delaney.”
“I’m Mr. Romantic, Ivy. Didn’t you want to meet him?”
I get another chill when he refers to himself in the third person. Is he sick? Is he as dangerous as Claudette said? Was she really just trying to protect me? Is Nolan Delaney some kind of psychopath?
“You should be scared,” he says, sitting up and backing away from me until he’s at the foot of the bed where he left his paper and pencils.
“Why?” My heart is fluttering now, and not in a good way. I think I’ve made a mistake. I think I need to get the hell out of here. I think Claudette was right.
“Because when this date is over you’re going to know things about me and wish you didn’t.”
“Is this a date?” I ask. I want to get up. I want him to untie my hands. I want to put clothes on, and get my carry-on case, and walk out of this house.
“It is in my mind.” And then all the seductiveness about his actions recede when he picks up the pad of paper, opens it up, and reaches for a pencil.
“Hold still,” Nolan says, beginning to sketch before I even understand we’ve moved on. “Not perfectly still,” he says, looking at me briefly over the top of his paper. “I’ll tell you when I need that. I’m going to do your legs first.”
It takes a long time for me to get a hold of the fear he caused. And he never talks again as he draws. Every once in a while he moves my legs or positions my arms. He makes me tilt my head way back on the pillow at one point. And he rips off paper after paper after paper. Like he’s making mistakes and starting again.
Why? Why did I agree to this? What kind of magic does this man possess that he can talk me, Ivy Rockwell, pastor’s daughter and newly deflowered virgin, into posing nude for him?
“Getting tired of sitting still?” Nolan asks when I shift my bottom.
“Yes,” I say, my voice hoarse from the long silence.
He rips off another sheet of paper, throwing it down on the floor behind him so I can’t see it. His pencil is moving the moment the new sheet appears. “I’m almost done.”
“Why do you keep starting over?”
He stops drawing and looks at me, his wild green eyes glazed and zoned. “What?”
“Starting over?” I ask. “Isn’t what you’re doing?” I swallow hard, uncomfortable with his attention. Even though he’s been staring at my naked body for what seems like hours, I don’t like the way he looks at me.
“I’m not starting over, Ivy.” He chuckles, like that was the most ridiculous thing he’s ever heard. “I’m drawing a story.”
“What kind of story?” My mouth is dry. I need a drink of water. And even though I am not tied down, I feel like he’s holding me captive.
“If I told you then I’d never see that surprised look on your face when I show you.”
I sit up, swinging my legs over the side of the bed. “Maybe I don’t want to see your story?”
He stops drawing and watches me. “You’re leaving now? After all this?” His hand pans behind him. To the discarded drawings on the floor.
“All what, Nolan? I’m tired, I’m thirsty. I’m cold. I want clothes and I want you to untie my hands.” He keeps perfectly still. “Now,” I say. “Untie me now.”
He sighs, gets to his feet, and walks towards me. “OK. But…”
“But what?” I can’t take it anymore. I need to leave.
“But you’re gonna miss it.”
“Miss what?”
“Everything that comes after.”
His cock is hard. It hasn’t been hard most of this time we’ve been here. And even though his soft touches in the beginning were very erotic, he hasn’t touched me in hours. I’m not turned on. At all.
I’m scared. He scares me.
“After I scare you with these drawings, Ivy Rockwell, I’m going to tell you something no one else knows and make it all better.”
“I don’t think so, Nolan. I really need to go.”
“Stop,” he says, taking a firm grip on my arm. “Just sit the fuck back and relax. I have five minutes left. Five minutes and I’ll be done.”
I don’t know if I should force my way out of this situation or just give in and wait him out. Not to see if he’s not crazy. This man is definitely crazy. I am convinced Claudette is right.
His kiss on my neck is what makes me wait. His soft lips and words. “Just please,” he says. “I’ve never come this close to spilling my secret before. I’ve never told anyone what happened that night. And you said you wanted to know. You can’t walk out in the middle of the story. It’s not fair.”