Chapter 14 #3
He grinned and I felt it all the way through my body. “That’s not what will destroy my manliness; the stick figure or bubble money sign that I draw next to your masterpiece will shame me and detract from your art.”
I snorted and rolled my eyes. “If you don’t want to draw anything, just say that. You don’t have to get weird. It’s a bear with a chef’s hat. Ten-year-olds can draw better.”
“Interesting,” he said, leaning back in his chair, examining me.
“What?” I asked defensively.
“Nothing, you’re just awful at taking compliments, that’s all.” His eyes were alive with a playful gleam that felt more dangerous than his stare.
I returned my eyes to the desk and finished up the words on the card. “Sorry, I don’t get a lot of compliments, so that’s probably true,” I said under my breath as I drew.
“Impossible, with the ability to draw bears like that,” he deadpanned. “You said at dinner you wished you could have gone to school for art. What made you choose plants over art?”
Needing to steer away from that line of questioning, I slid the card and blue marker over to him and shrugged.
I was trying to get into his family details, not give him mine.
I never spoke about my family to anyone; no one could understand what I went through with them—except what Jasper had gone through made him feel more like a teammate in the family-problem area.
I shrugged. “I didn’t really choose one.
Botany was the farthest I was able to get away from what my parents wanted while still doing what they wanted.
I’m thankful for it; it’s mostly just playing in dirt and looking at beautiful flowers.
I think even if I were to have been a painter, I would have done nature and landscapes, although I probably only think that because the only thing I’ve ever painted are plants in my botany journal,” I said with a laugh.
I felt like a child admitting that they wanted to be a marine biologist.
He looked at me for a long moment. “So why don’t you do it, then? Paint?”
I tried to school my exhausted features, but I felt overcome with frustration and discomfort. How had the subject turned to me?
“Because some of us weren’t born with an inheritance.
I have a degree and a career with people who depend on me, people that I like, and debt.
I have a lot of debt, and I’m still paying for that degree.
Only like 10 percent of artists are successful enough to make a living off it, and…
and it’s just the way things are,” I bit out, flustered.
I didn’t want to get on his bad side, but the last thing I could handle right now was hearing Jasper fucking Blackwood, heir to the Blackwood fortune, judging me for not pursuing my dreams. He had no idea what it was like not to have options.
From the minute he was born, he had been spoiled.
I was tired of walking on eggshells for fear of really angering him, but I wanted more information—and didn’t want to be let go from this project.
For some reason, of all the people in the whole world, this man brought out the wily, outspoken Eliza I had wished to be in a thousand other scenarios and been unable to.
He grabbed a marker and absently began doodling something on the folded paper.
I got the feeling he was only doing it so I wouldn’t leave.
He was perceptive enough to have picked up that I was uncomfortable and wanted to; he was always watching me, taking in details and things I’m sure I didn’t want him to see.
“Things change,” he said rather gruffly.
I shifted in my chair, feeling my hackles prickle. “Not for me.”
“Why not?”
Why was he asking me so many questions? “Because—” Frustrated, I struggled to find words that sounded better than the real reasons.
As always seemed to happen when I was speaking with him, the truth slid too easily from my tongue.
“Because I hate disappointing the people I love. I don’t like making them mad. ”
When he didn’t react or even bother to look up, I calmed a fraction.
“Would you be disappointed if someone you loved did something that made them happy?” he asked, still laser-focused on the doodle he was drawing.
I stilled. Only my chest rose and fell with my labored breath as my eyes danced over his profile, struggling to stay on one spot. “No, of course not,” I stammered. “But—”
Irritatingly calm, he continued. “An enemy is defined as a person who is actively opposed or hostile to another. Would you listen to an enemy if they told you what to do?” he questioned.
“No, but—” I wanted to leave the room. The manor. The world. My skin felt hot and tight. He had somehow managed to reach in and take the troublesome, uncomfortable thoughts that were too hard to address out of my head and turned them into a passive conversation.
He glanced up and locked his deep mahogany orbs with mine.
If he could read secrets from my eyes before, he’d just gotten a whole library full in one look.
“Sometimes our saviors are simply enemies cloaked in white robes,” he stated, leaning back from the desk.
“You cannot depend on anyone but yourself in this world. You must carve your own path or else someone will cut into your flesh, slicing through every part of your soul and leaving nothing behind. You need to have boundaries, or else everyone, including the saintly clad enemies, get in.”
His words struck so sharp against the tender parts of me that I wanted to cry. And yell. And hit something. Lash out. So I did.
“I would much rather have no boundaries and allow others in than to have fortress walls so high no one can ever get inside, so I’m all alone like you,” I snapped.
He seemed completely unbothered as he looked at me, the most passive expression on his lightly stubbled face, but a soft flare in his intelligent eyes suggested he wasn’t as calm as he projected.
A tingle of fear tickled at the base of my neck. What would he do when I angered him? Would he hurt me? I inhaled and the scent of masculine power and leather filled my head, tightening my stomach.
“Socrates says sometimes people put up walls, not to keep others out but to see who cares enough to break them down. What’s in your necklace?” he asked, leaning into my space to get a better look.
My smart retort fell into the ether when I noticed he was so suddenly in my personal space.
I could make out every one of the faint vertical lines decorating his soft pink lips when he was this close, the tan skin of his face including the taut indent where his skin had been torn open and forcibly reshaped in a jagged, angular way.
The scar was bold and asymmetrical, like an unfinished sketch or the markings of a road map, cutting through the smoothness of skin.
On anyone else, the scar would have been everyone’s first impression, but on Jasper, it was hidden in the shadows of his dark confidence.
It only added to his face, balancing his almost too strikingly beautiful looks with a hint of male barbarism and danger.
My hand twitched to reach out and touch that scar.
I pulled my hands into fists and pushed them between my thighs to keep from touching him.
His minty-toothpaste breath tickled across my lips and chin.
He must have been feeling my own breath on his mouth.
He was so close, I could almost taste the flavor of his soapy skin.
Suddenly, it occurred to me what he’d asked about: the locket.
I hadn’t realized it was outside of my shirt. It had stopped dripping green before I threw it on this morning…had it not? It felt dangerous to have him inspecting it this closely, like a panther deciding if he wanted to strike out at you or not.
“P-pictures,” I stuttered. I’d been afraid a lot in my life, and it had never once turned me on, but the alluring flavor of excitement and danger that Jasper emitted had my thighs clenching together. I was so close to his mouth right now that one small move from him and our lips would touch.
I bet he knew how to kiss in a way that made it feel like he was already inside of me—full and commanding. God, I wanted him to dominate me… No.
He was hovering to see how much he rattled me—that was all.
My teeth sank into my lower lip with sharp pressure.
He could tell what he was doing to me. I was sure of it.
I couldn’t hide it like he could. There was an element of excitement and lust that poured from him straight into me.
I was afraid of him only slightly less than I was attracted to him—in an achy, uncomfortably overwhelming way.
I knew he wanted me too; I could see it in his face—not in his stoic, unbothered expression, but in the dark restraint glimmering in his brown eyes as they looked at my lips. My eyes. My chest.
His large hand reached out and coiled around the locket, lifting it from where it sat at the top of my cleavage.
His fingers brushed the fabric separating our skin.
His hand remained, feeling the weight of the locket.
The soft thud of hammering echoed through my head, and I wasn’t sure if it was the men outside working or my heart pounding with such ferocity.
Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. He must not recognize it yet. Oh god, what’s he going to do once he realizes it’s his mother’s?
His thumb moved over the seam to open it, and god only knew what was going to fly out at him this time. If Hester wanted to communicate anything to her son, now was her time.
I closed my eyes and braced myself as the locket clicked open in his hand, my chest brushing against the knuckles of his hand with every inhale.
“Love heals everything,” he read. “Who gave you this, a sister or something?” He continued examining it.
I let out the breath I had been holding long enough to look down and see the cursive inscription inside the locket. Thank fuck she didn’t do something wild.
Love heals everything.