Page 85 of Loving the Liar

“Ugh, everything just bends to your will, doesn’t it?”

“It does. Put your arms around my neck.” She does so without questioning me because everything bends to my will. Even her.

Not wanting her to wiggle and fall out of my arms while I go up the stairs, I hold her tighter as I walk up each step.

“Which one is your—” I stop as I spot a door with a dancer painted on it. It’s beautiful, almost abstract, yet you can easily recognize the shape of a ballerina.

Ella is a gorgeous ballerina. Breathtaking. She’s as good as a professional in many types of dances, but in ballet? She’s flawless. She used to attend Ms. Barry Dance School in Stoneview. It’s practically impossible to get in, but she did. Because she’s perfect and deserved it. I watched every single one of her performances. Sometimes with Luke because he would invite me. Sometimes from the back so it wouldn’t look strange to her brother that I showed up at every show.

“Who painted your door?” I ask, the satisfying obsession simmering in my veins.

“This”—she slams her hand on the door as we walk past it and into her room—“is something that probably costs tens of thousands.”

I set her delicately on the bed, and she lies down, her legs dangling off by the knees. She looks up at the ceiling like there’s something on there she can’t quite see, but I think she’s just lost in her thoughts.

Standing between her legs, I place a flat hand on her cheek. “Who painted it?” I insist, trying to stay patient.

“Xi. We wanted to put a personal touch to our doors and Alex asked him to paint for us.”

At least I don’t have to worry about another man being near her. Xi is too taken by Alexandra to even notice her friends.

“He’s so fucking good, isn’t he?” she insists.

“Language, Sweets,” I tell her calmly, my other hand playing with the hem of her silk skirt. It’s a light blue that resembles her eyes. I love it. And the mere fact that she wore it because I told her to makes me painfully hard.

She’s mastered how to look perfect to the outside eye and forgot that everything that makes her so perfect is the little things she never thinks of. The ones she does subconsciously. People don’t notice them; they’re too taken by the general appearance and confidence of the popular girl. But I notice. I’ve always noticed.

The way her pale eyes blink repeatedly when she’s processing something. When I manage to get her out of her own head, she giggles so beautifully and carelessly. And when someone says something she dislikes but she doesn’t want to contradict them, she scrunches nose in the cutest way imaginable.

Then, there’s the secret shame from her dad instilling in her that she was stupid. She blushes when she has to do math, and curses under her breath when she’s trying to focus.

There’s only one thing she trusts herself with. Dance. She bites her inner lip when she can’t get a move correctly. Everything she eats and every minute exercising are to keep her body trim for ballet. But people don’t know because they’re too focused on the image she forces on them rather than who she really is.

And I only care about who she really is. Mine. Because the main thing Ella has always done subconsciously is love me. It came naturally, even when she shouldn’t have, and even when she doesn’t want to. It’s always there, and I know it because I feel it. Even when she promises she hates me.

She doesn’t fight me as I move my hand to her shirt and drag it up in the slightest. I just want to feel her smooth skin against mine. She’s too lost talking to herself about Xi’s talent to notice.

“I’m telling you,” she keeps going. “I could undo this door and sell it for a lot of money. His exhibitions always sell out.”

I rub circles with my thumb across her hip. “Lift your arms,” I order softly.

She throws them above her head, hitting the mattress dramatically. I want to praise her for listening so well, the need to do it making my blood rush to my dick. But I don’t, because then she might stop.

I pull her shirt above her head, ridding her of the material stopping me from enjoying her, and throw it across the room.

Suddenly, she slams a hand on the bed. “I know!” She shoots into a sitting position, making me retreat back to standing tall between her legs.

“I’m going to sell my bedroom door so I can pay for college.”

She could not have sounded more like a Stoneview kid who never had to worry about money than she just did.

I run a hand across my mouth, trying to keep myself from laughing.

“What?” she snaps. “You don’t think I can do it?”

“I’m already paying your fees. Why are you worrying about that?”

Narrowing her eyes at me, she ignores the fact that I’m now unzipping her skirt at the side.

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