No Love For The Villain - Chapter 39
“What are you planning to draw that’s so special you’re making such a fuss?”
As Eli extended his arm, his wrist became visible between the leather glove and his sleeve. The sharply defined wrist, unlike the leather glove, appeared fragile.
This man, too, had vulnerable aspects like anyone else. She had glimpsed a crack hidden by his sturdy suit. Staring at the secretly revealed fair skin, Sierra once again found Eli and the nude drawing overlapping in her mind.
At that moment, Eli met her gaze. The face of a man provoking dark thoughts invaded her eyes.
“Are you going to draw a naked man?”
“I’m not drawing anything like that.”
“Says the one looking with those eyes.”
Sierra tried to avert her gaze, but Eli tilted his head and caught her eyes anyway. His amused eyes held a trace of boyish mischief. The hint of innocence surfacing on a face that stirred desire felt discordant.
“Looking with eyes that seem dying to draw.”
Eli brushed the corner of Sierra’s eye with his knuckle.
“A person’s eyes are more honest than words.”
After exposing her hidden thoughts, Eli leaned back loosely against the headboard. He grabbed the knot of the necktie fastened around his own neck. With a tugging motion, the tie came undone. Moving his hands as smoothly as when he had unwrapped the nude drawing, he began to undress.
Startled, Sierra fluttered her eyelids and asked,
“What are you doing?”
“Can’t you see? I’m taking it off.”
Eli replied indifferently, then unhesitatingly undid his buttons. The opening of his shirt split into a deep V.
The shirt that had been drawn tight across his body loosened, revealing what lay beneath.
Shoulders flowing in a smooth line from a straight neck, even collarbones and a hollow dip—Sierra’s drifting gaze wandered across his chest.
She felt dizzy.
The pulse throbbing beneath his neck struck against her skin, telling her he was alive.
Like when she ran through the night streets, like those moments when, feeling close to death, she realized she was still alive.
“You need a model if you’re going to draw, don’t you?”
Faced with a man volunteering to pose as a nude model, Sierra’s eyes wavered. The memory she had forced down rose again.
The drawing of a naked man overlapped with his face.
Sierra shut her eyes.
“Open them.”
At the short command, Sierra barely opened her eyes to a thin slit. Jet-black pupils, a gaze that pierced straight through her intentions, were right in front of her.
“I don’t want to draw, I don’t want to show, and I don’t want to look.”
His low voice picked apart, one by one, the things Sierra had said.
“That you hope I never come again, and that you want to hear my voice.”
Contradictory lies and truths lay side by side.
Eli studied Sierra, whose lips were pressed tightly together.
“This time, it’s hard.”
The man who always found whatever was hidden with ease narrowed his eyes before the difficult puzzle.
“I don’t really know how to deal with good kids. I’m not a good adult either. So…”
At a distance where he could have touched her at any moment, his breath brushed her lips, mingled with his words.
“Tell me what you want. I’ll give you everything.”
He spoke as if he could place anything she desired into her hands—
paint, a speeding car, a milkshake, a nude painting, a pencil, a man to use to fill her loneliness…
Maybe she should be telling him to kill her now.
But as Sierra looked at him, the old longing faded faintly.
What she wanted—only one thing circled inside her mouth.
“Eli…”
When she called his name, Eli waited for the words that would follow.
“What do you want me to do for you?”
But that was all Sierra said. Nothing more was added.
Her wandering gaze came to rest on Eli’s lips.
Thinking he understood what that gaze wanted, the man offered her a kiss.
A brief touch—just brushing and parting—then he withdrew.
Sierra reached toward Eli’s lips as they moved away from her.
Her fingertips pressed gently against the soft curve of them.
Eli parted his lips for her.
He allowed her, without restraint, to come to him as she wished.
Her fingers slipped between his lips, brushing the tender inside of his cheek.
When his tongue softly touched her fingertips, Sierra flinched and drew her hand back.
She clenched the hand that still held the dizzying sensation.
Rigid and frozen, Sierra met the eyes of the man who waited, letting her do whatever she wanted.
When she looked into those black pupils, her sense of reality faded.
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