Naked Canvas (An Alpha Billionaire Romance) (12 page)

“That’s it,” he said, still swirling the paint on his palette.

“What do I have to talk about?”

“I’m going to ask you some questions. Your answers will determine how I paint.”

“Umm, okay, I guess.”

His lack of specificity worried me. His true intentions seemed hidden behind his vague words.

“Relax,” he said. “Just think of yourself as my muse for the next few hours. Your words will be my inspiration.”

“Alright.”

“Just one bit of advice, though. Be honest with me. Be honest and good things will happen.”

“What happens if I’m not?”

He shook his head. “It’ll affect the outcome of the painting.”

“God, always so cryptic. Fine, whatever.”

“Great. First question. We’ll start simple. What’s your name?”

“Are you serious?”

“I need a baseline reading,” he said in a matter-of-fact voice.

“What are you, a human lie detector?”

“I’ve figured out how to tell when people are lying to me. It’s a very useful skill, in both my former life and my current one.”

It was easy to forget who he used to be. He seemed so different than the hardened criminal he had hinted at. Still, flashes of that cold determination flickered through his sensitive demeanor every so often. Times like right now.

“Okay, fine. My name is Angela Cooper.”

He studied my eyes as I spoke. His blue eyes glimmered knowingly in the candlelight.

“No middle name?”

Fuck.

“Oh, yeah. It’s Margaret.”

He lifted an eyebrow at me.

A cold wetness touched my stomach, causing me to jump. He had touched the brush to my abdomen. I lifted my head to watch him paint my skin. He traced red lines across my belly that looked like blood. The shapes looked almost like Russian letters.

“What’s that?” I asked, looking him in the eyes.

He shook his head sadly and gestured upwards with the tip of the paint brush.

I looked up into the mirror above me. Emblazoned in big red letters across my abdomen was the word “LIAR.” He had written it backwards on my skin so that I could only read it in the mirror.

I sighed. The painted word upset me much more than it should have. It felt like a brand or a great big scarlet letter on my stomach. I hated being called a liar. I hated even more that he was right.

“What’s your middle name?” he asked again. He continued to doodle with the paint on my skin. He underlined the word in twirling flourishes, then sketched a little frowning face beside it.

“Fine,” I said. “It’s Hilda, okay?”

I expected him to laugh. Instead, he nodded and his face remained neutral. He grabbed a different brush and dabbed some blue paint on the end of this one.

“That name embarrasses you?” he asked. He brushed a long blue rectangle beneath the word “LIAR,” just above my hips.

“Of course it does,” I said angrily.

“Why?” He didn’t look at me as he spoke this time. His eyes remained focused on the blue expanse as he darkened the rectangle.

“I think it’s an ugly name. It’s ugly and I hate it.”

“You think an ugly name is a reflection on you?” he asked.

“What? No.”

He brushed at the blue rectangle in little swoops, adding texture to it. The flat blue began to take the shape of waves. “You think it’s an ugly name for an ugly woman?”

“What the hell? Are you calling me ugly?” I strained against my bonds to sit up as much as I could to face him.

He didn’t bother to look at me. “No. You’re calling yourself ugly. With your words and with your attitude. It’s something that you fear. That people don’t think you’re pretty.”

I leaned back onto the mattress. “Well, yeah, but I mean, doesn’t everyone worry about that? At least a little bit?”

“Not everybody,” he said. The sea had gotten stormy under his skilled hands. The paleness of my skin peeked through at places, looking like white-tipped waves in a tumultuous sea.

“Well, we all can’t be beautiful billionaires,” I said with a sigh.

He continued to shape his watery landscape.

“Does money have something to do with beauty? Am I more attractive to you because I’m rich?”

I thought about it for a second. “No, actually. It’s kind of intimidating to tell the truth.”

He paused his painting and looked hard into my eyes. “You are telling the truth.” He seemed surprised. “In my experience, it’s the opposite.”

I shrugged as best as I could considering my limbs were bound. “When I met you, I didn’t know you were rich. I still liked you.”

“But you don’t like me anymore?” He continued to paint his stormy sea. The slick strokes of the paint brush were having an uncomfortable effect on me.

“You’re an interesting guy. I’ll give you that. But I don’t want to date you, no.”

His lips quirked into a smile, but he didn’t say anything. Did he think I was lying?
Was
I lying, even to myself? Surely, if I had any sense, I would forgive him for that one bad night. He was gorgeous and creative and he could buy a small country with his wealth. He was every girl’s dream. So what was holding me back?

His voice brought me out of my musings.

“How old were you when you lost your virginity?” he asked.

I let out an exasperated sigh. “Does it always come back to sex with you?”

He smiled. “Trust me, there’s a point to all of this. Our deepest feelings, the ones we hide from the world and from ourselves, are often linked to our feelings regarding sexuality.”

“I don’t understand,” I said.

“Sex is a defining factor of our identities. It’s intrinsically bound with our fears and insecurities. The way we feel about sex has a great deal to do with how we feel about ourselves.”

“I think that’s too simplistic,” I replied. “People are much more complicated than that.”

“People are incredibly complicated, true. But this is an aspect of the human experience that I find fascinating, and I choose to explore that aspect when given the chance.”

“Do you get the chance often?”

“No, almost never. And you’ve avoided the question for long enough. How old were you the first time you had sex?”

I paused. “Sixteen.”

He put the brush down on the palette beside him. His eyes looked into mine. I stared back, trying not to let him see the fear I was feeling. Yes, I had lied to him, but he could never know that. Not unless I reacted.

He lifted a blue candle from the table and held it in front of him. It cast hard shadows on his face. The effect was intimidating, but he would have to do better than that to get me to tell him the truth. “Are you sure?” he asked.

“Yep.”

He extended his arm so that the candle hovered above my stomach. Almost in slow motion, he turned the candle sideways and poured a burning line of wax across my skin. The hot band of fire bloomed on my belly and I hissed in pain.

“Jesus!” I exclaimed.

The moment the words were out of my mouth, the wax was already cooling, but the memory of fire remained. I twisted in my bonds to stretch my skin, trying to feel if there was any permanent damage. I felt nothing other than the tight feeling of wax sealing my skin.

“You could have warned me first,” I said.

“I did. I told you not to lie to me.”

I looked into the mirror at the line of splattered blue that now served as the northern border of my southern sea. It matched the color of the paint.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“I don’t want apologies. I want the truth. How old were you?”

“Nineteen,” I said with a sigh.

He placed the candle back on the table and picked up another paint brush.

“Why did you lie about it?” he asked.

“It’s embarrassing, I guess.”

“Why?”

He began to sketch the outlines of a ship around the word “LIAR.” The letters became the sails, although it was still easily readable in the mirror.

“I was sort of a late bloomer. Boys didn’t really notice me until after high school.” Unpleasant memories surfaced within me. Adolescence wasn’t my favorite part of growing up.

“And you’re ashamed of that? You’re ashamed of something that you had no control over?”

“Well, ashamed is a strong word. I don’t know, it just makes me feel like…”

“Say it,” he said sternly.

“It makes me feel like there’s something wrong with me, okay?”

Unbidden tears stung my eyes with the admission. It was something I had never fully articulated in my mind. Admitting it to Dominic, hell, admitting it to myself, was painful. It left me feeling shaken and vulnerable.

I watched in the mirror as he painted an angry gray storm cloud over my heart.

“You still feel that way?” he asked.

“No. I don’t know. Maybe.”

“You feel like you don’t deserve to be loved?”

The question hit me like a sucker punch to the soul. A host of insecurities arose within me, taunting me, mocking me. I knew then that the answer to his question was yes. I wasn’t pretty enough. I wasn’t cool enough. I just wasn’t good enough. How could anyone love a woman like me?

“Please,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady. “Can we talk about something else?”

He nodded. “Let’s go back a bit. Who did you lose your virginity to?”

The question was intrusive, although after the last one, it didn’t seem nearly so bad. Still, the subject of my first time was not something I wanted to discuss so I tried to play it off.

“Oh, just a guy,” I said.

Before I could react, Dominic snatched a candle from the table. He splashed a circle of yellow wax on my shoulder, causing a hot sun to blaze on my skin. I hissed and watched myself squirm in the mirror above me. I was painted in fantastic kaleidoscope colors from the candles, but the paint and the wax stood out clearly.

Pain contorted my face, but it almost looked like I was smiling. It was disconcerting to see my own reactions. It was not something I was used to.

Nor was I used to seeing myself lying naked and bound while a handsome man interrogated me. The whole thing felt like a crazy dream. That dreamlike quality gave me the courage to be honest, with both Dominic and with myself, because none of this seemed real.

This whole day felt like a moment outside of time. A moment that was not actually a part of my life. The clock would tick down to zero, I would put on my old clothes, and I would never see Dominic again. I wondered if I would look back on this day fondly. Probably more fondly than when I lost my virginity.

Fingers snapped in front of my face. “Hey, where did you go?”

“What?”

“Your eyes went far away. I need you present for this. And I need you to answer fully.”

“What do you mean?”

“I asked you who you lost your virginity to. Tell me about him. Don’t say ‘just a guy.’ That’s the same as lying.”

“Look, I really don’t want to talk about that, alright?”

“Was it,” he stopped. “A traumatic experience?”

I knew what he was asking but was too afraid to say. For a second I considered lying and saying yes, just to sidestep the question, but there were some things you just don’t lie about.

“No, it’s just not a fun memory.”

“If it’s too painful to talk about, I understand. I’m not trying to torture you.”

“No, it’s fine. Just embarrassing and stupid.”

“I suspect you have that in common with almost everyone else in the world. First times tend to be less than graceful affairs.”

“That’s putting it mildly.”