Page 8 of Sinfully His

But this man, this stranger, he wouldn’t leave me bored. I was inspired. I wanted to capture the shadows and how they seem to dance with the candlelight on his skin, in charcoal, and then the depth of the golden glow of his skin, with oil paints.

I wanted to know if it was possible to convey his intense glare, his dominating presence, and his sinful arrogance in a portrait. When he disappeared through the doorway for a moment, I took advantage of the second of privacy and buried my nose in the collar of his shirt.

His cologne smelled of bergamot, dark spices, rum, and some other essence on the shirt, something uniquely him. The combination smelled like decadence and dark desires.

I bit my lip, trying to memorize every note of this incredible smell, until he walked back into the room and caught me sniffing his shirt like some weirdo.

“I promise you, it smells far better than your clothes do right now.”

My mouth went dry, and my cheeks burned. All I could do was stare at the floor, not knowing what to do or what to say. I wished I was like my sister, Amelia. She always knew what to say in any situation. She didn’t mumble. I was positive her cheeks didn’t feel like they caught fire if she was attracted to someone, and she didn’t feel the need to stare at the ground because she wasn’t brave enough to look them in the eye.

She knew how to stand up for herself. She broke away from Mother and her demands. I hadn’t been able to do that, not entirely.

My hand went to my hair, my fingers twisting in the brown locks while I tried to work up the courage to ask him… something. Anything.

“Come here,” he demanded, and my feet obeyed before I knew what I was doing.

“Good girl,” he muttered, and my heart raced.

I shouldn’t have liked that, being told I was a good girl like I was a dog, but my God, did I want to earn his praise.

He put his large hands on my waist, his thumbs nearly touching, and lifted me from the floor to place me on a wooden desk.

“What are you doing?” I shrieked. I hated being picked up, but his hands were warm, and they made me feel small in a way that didn’t make me feel childish. Instead, I felt delicate. I liked it far more than I should have.

“You’re injured,” he said, his hands on my bare knees. “I need to inspect the wound and clean it.”

“Okay,” I said, and he yanked my legs apart then knelt between them.

I wanted to protest, but my heart was hammering too loud in my ears for me to hear myself think beyond all sorts of dirty thoughts racing through my head. Thoughts of him acting out some things I read on my phone late at night, when no one could catch me.

Then I saw the gash on my inner thigh.

Another wave of heat rushed through me. This time, it wasn’t some misplaced lust. It was anger. I knew exactly when that had happened. When they first attacked me, one man grabbed me, throwing me to the ground. He had a blade in his hand, and he tried to climb on top of me, but the others stopped him, no doubt wanting to do whatever horrible thing they were going to do somewhere more private.

When he was dragged off of me, his knife had cut through my leggings and into my flesh. It hurt a lot, and that was when I screamed again, before one of the other men pulled me up by the hair and slapped his hand over my face.

After that, everything got so much worse that a cut on my thigh hardly seemed to matter. Now that I had looked at it again, I could feel the sharp pain and the blood trickling down my leg.

“Does this hurt?” he asked, touching just above it.

“Yes,” I said, watching his fingers touch my inner thigh.

His hands were so warm and gentle on the delicate skin, his dark golden tan made that much darker against my pale thigh.

A wave of something washed over my body when his skin touched mine, moving from my cheeks and meeting in my core. I could even feel my panties dampening between my legs, and I prayed he couldn’t see it.

There was embarrassing, and then there was mortifying.

He made some low growling noise in the back of his throat, and I swear the vibration went through my legs straight to my clit. My core clenched, and I did my best to not let the want and embarrassment warring in my body show on my face.

It’s just hormones,I told myself. It was the adrenaline of the entire situation, and not because this stranger was shirtless and so close, and he smelled so good, and my fingers ached to trace his abs so I could memorize the lines to recreate on canvas later.

“I will clean this up, and it may sting a little. If you are good for me, I will reward you. Do you understand?”

I nodded, my teeth sinking into my bottom lip as he looked up at me. It was still dark, the shadows playing around his features, but I could clearly see his eyes were the most remarkable color. It was like a deep mocha with flecks of gold and copper that caught the light and looked like embers burning. I had never seen something so breathtakingly beautiful.

Then, my awe was disturbed by a searing, stinging pain as he poured rubbing alcohol on my wound.

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