Page 6 of Dirty Heirs

He glanced at me and winked. “What are you painting, Cinders?”

Like Cinderella?

I scoffed at his nickname. “Not very original, rich boy.”

His nostrils flared. “I’m not rich.”

“Okay, Wellington.” I laughed. “And I’m Santa.”

He shook his head, blowing out a deep breath through his nose. “You don’t know shit about me, Cinders.”

Was he insulting me because I was poor compared to his family? My father had tons of money. I never wanted anything other than friendship and love. I didn’t have things money could not buy.

Aiden didn’t look like he came from wealth. He acted like someone who understood the struggle. I couldn’t picture him dressed in a suit and attending a Devil’s Creek society dinner.

We didn’t speak another word. He kept his eyes on the canvas, dipping his brush into a deep shade of red paint. I enjoyed watching his hand move gracefully across the canvas, my eyes traveling over his tattooed bicep that flexed beneath the tight prep school jacket.

He was so gorgeous my fingers itched to paint him. I squinted to get a better look at his ink. A checkered square pattern was set between a deranged-looking clock with broken hands. Or were they whiskers? The strange landscape had a cat that appeared high, his eyes wide and smiling like a crazed lunatic.

Alice in Wonderland?

But this was not a children’s tale.

Whoever sketched his tattoos had a sick and twisted mind to create this darker take on Alice in Wonderland. I loved the book as a child. My mother read it to me, and it was one of my favorite books.

Leaning to my left, I grabbed a bottle of paint from beneath my bench and looked closely at his work.

“If you stare any harder, Cinders, you’re going to make a mess all over that bench by the time this class is over.”

“What?” I gasped at his dirty comment. “I wasn’t…”

Is he insinuating I got wet looking at him?

The nerve of this guy.

His icy blue eyes dropped to my nipples which were painfully erect and poking through the white Oxford. “Hmmm…”

Chapter Four

AIDEN

Cinders liked watching me. She didn’t think I was paying attention to her, but how could I not? With a body like that, she had my attention the second I walked through the door.

I glanced at those plump, glossy lips that begged me to notice. Whenever she was not sneaking looks at me, I stared at her thick thighs and that round ass as she straddled the easel bench. I wished she would come over here and ride me.

Fuck.

My cock was at half-mast as I looked at her big tits that were barely contained beneath the white Oxford. She had the first two buttons undone, giving me a nice view of her perfect tits.

She was too damn distracting.

I peeled my eyes away from Ella and focused on the canvas. With her beside me, I wouldn’t get anything done all semester. And I couldn’t afford to fuck up my grades. At least painting was an easy A for me. We were allowed to do a freestyle painting this week, so I chose an old favorite.

Greek mythology.

I loved sketching and painting familiar scenes from my favorite books. Today, I worked on the scene from The Iliad, where Achilles fought Hector. I only had the base paint layered for the story unfolding over the next few days of class, but I knew exactly how I wanted the final piece to look.

Ten minutes before the bell sounded, Mrs. Waters instructed us to clean our brushes and workspace to make room for the next class. So I headed to the sink to strip the paint from my brushes and add the unfinished canvas to the collection at the back of the room with the others.

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