Chapter Twenty-Four - Ivy
I hear him in the house. Down the hall. Downstairs. The beeping of something, like he’s arming the house alarm. Then silence. Just me, lying here naked, my wrists bound together by soft yellow rope.
He’s into something weird. Some bondage thing. He wants to tie me up and hit me with a riding crop. Put those clamp things on my nipples or… whatever. I’m not really sure what kinky guys do. And I haven’t read the books everyone has been talking about the past few years.
But Ivy Rockwell, you have to admit, you like it enough to be here.
Right.
A part of me might find it intriguing. In an academic kind of way. I mean, I have to wonder. Why the hell do people like this stuff? I certainly don’t feel sexual right now. Lying here on the bed, hands in front of me, chewing my lip as I wait for Nolan to decide to come back.
It’s the anticipation, I get it. He’s definitely got my mind spinning. But—
“Hey,” Nolan says from the bedroom doorway. “Zoning out or what?”
I didn’t even hear him come back. “No. I was just getting irritated, actually. For you taking so long.”
“Well, no one put you in a corner and called you bad, Ivy. You could’ve gotten up. Looked out the fucking window or something.”
“I know that,” I snap. But I… didn’t know that. Didn’t understand it at least. I just stayed here. Where he put me.
“I’m not dominating you, Ivy. I’m not going to ask you to lick piss up off the floor just to prove to me you’re interested. That’s not what I’m about.”
I wait for it, but he holds it in. He wants me to ask. That is what he’s about. Control. He’s not going to give anything away. I have to come get it. He is dominant. He does like submission. He just does it in a way I’ve never heard of before. He’s some kind of cutting-edge deviant. And I’m his new project. He’s going to use all his magic charms on me and see how far he can get before he has to throw me away and find someone new.
“What are you about?” I ask.
He grins a grin that sends a chill through my bare nipples. Like a breeze just passed over my body. He made me react.
“Pleasure, Ivy. I’m about pleasure.”
“You want to slap my face while you fuck me.”
“Wow.” He laughs. “Those are some dirty words coming from the preacher’s daughter’s mouth.”
“Is that what you want?”
“Why do you need to know?”
“Because I matter. You’ve got me—”
“Ivy,” he interrupts, his voice stern. “Relax. Enjoy.” And then I see what he’s holding in his hands.
“What’s that?”
“Paper. And charcoal pencils.”
Oh. I forgot. Jesus Christ. I take a deep breath and try to shake off my fear.
“You still want me to draw you?”
“Yes.” I have a million little justifications for this want. I don’t believe him. I think there’s more to it than what he’s saying. I think he’s sick, that he and his friends raped that girl, and then somehow, some way, the five of them got her killed.
At least I should think those things. Nothing Nolan Delaney has said to me is convincing. And I probably do think them. Do believe them, at least a little bit.
But that’s not why I want him to draw me.
I like the way he’s looking at me right now. No man has ever looked at me like this before. Nude. Stretched out on his bed. Pretending to be helpless, even though he just told me I’m not helpless.
“Then relax.” That grin again. It says a lot. It says he does have secrets. Deep ones. Dark ones. And he’s right. Once I know them, I can never unknow them. “I’m gonna pose you, OK?”
Nolan steps forward, kneeling on the bed, and sets the pad of paper and the charcoal pencils down as he crawls forward and wraps his hand around my ankle.
I nearly come undone. By a hand on my ankle. Has anyone ever touched my ankles before? Is it supposed to feel this way?
“Shhh,” he says when I jerk my foot away from his touch. “It’s not time to be afraid yet, Ivy.”
My eyes widen at his words. Yet?
“I just want your foot here.” He pushes my foot towards me, making it slide on the smooth cotton comforter, until my knee bends slightly. Then he angles it so that the knee is resting on the opposite thigh. His fingertips flitter up my shin, then slip around to the long muscle of my calf, caressing the soft skin behind my knee.
I gasp. I can’t help it.
“It feels nice, right?” His green eyes are bright and his smile is big. “Most men want to lick pussy and bite lips. But they forget about the little dent behind the knee.” He dips down to my leg, softly kissing before nipping the inside of my thigh.
I gasp again. But he doesn’t pay any attention to me. Just continues to kiss his way up my leg, skipping over my pussy, and resting his lips on my hip bone. “And the hips,” he breathes, his breathy words fluttering across my skin. “Defiance is defined as open resistance. But a seductive man knows how to turn resistance into reluctance into acceptance.”
I bite my lip as I let all these new feelings flood through me. “Is that what you’re doing? Turning my resistance into acceptance?”
He stops his soft touch and kissing to look up at me from beneath his unruly brown hair that falls over his eyes. “What do you think?”
“I think… I think I have no idea who you are, Nolan Delaney.”
“I’m Mr. Romantic, Ivy. Didn’t you want to meet him?”
I get another chill when he refers to himself in the third person. Is he sick? Is he as dangerous as Claudette said? Was she really just trying to protect me? Is Nolan Delaney some kind of psychopath?
“You should be scared,” he says, sitting up and backing away from me until he’s at the foot of the bed where he left his paper and pencils.
“Why?” My heart is fluttering now, and not in a good way. I think I’ve made a mistake. I think I need to get the hell out of here. I think Claudette was right.
“Because when this date is over you’re going to know things about me and wish you didn’t.”
“Is this a date?” I ask. I want to get up. I want him to untie my hands. I want to put clothes on, and get my carry-on case, and walk out of this house.
“It is in my mind.” And then all the seductiveness about his actions recede when he picks up the pad of paper, opens it up, and reaches for a pencil.
“Hold still,” Nolan says, beginning to sketch before I even understand we’ve moved on. “Not perfectly still,” he says, looking at me briefly over the top of his paper. “I’ll tell you when I need that. I’m going to do your legs first.”
It takes a long time for me to get a hold of the fear he caused. And he never talks again as he draws. Every once in a while he moves my legs or positions my arms. He makes me tilt my head way back on the pillow at one point. And he rips off paper after paper after paper. Like he’s making mistakes and starting again.
Why? Why did I agree to this? What kind of magic does this man possess that he can talk me, Ivy Rockwell, pastor’s daughter and newly deflowered virgin, into posing nude for him?
“Getting tired of sitting still?” Nolan asks when I shift my bottom.
“Yes,” I say, my voice hoarse from the long silence.
He rips off another sheet of paper, throwing it down on the floor behind him so I can’t see it. His pencil is moving the moment the new sheet appears. “I’m almost done.”
“Why do you keep starting over?”
He stops drawing and looks at me, his wild green eyes glazed and zoned. “What?”
“Starting over?” I ask. “Isn’t what you’re doing?” I swallow hard, uncomfortable with his attention. Even though he’s been staring at my naked body for what seems like hours, I don’t like the way he looks at me.
“I’m not starting over, Ivy.” He chuckles, like that was the most ridiculous thing he’s ever heard. “I’m drawing a story.”
“What kind of story?” My mouth is dry. I need a drink of water. And even though I am not tied down, I feel like he’s holding me captive.
“If I told you then I’d never see that surprised look on your face when I show you.”
I sit up, swinging my legs over the side of the bed. “Maybe I don’t want to see your story?”
He stops drawing and watches me. “You’re leaving now? After all this?” His hand pans behind him. To the discarded drawings on the floor.
“All what, Nolan? I’m tired, I’m thirsty. I’m cold. I want clothes and I want you to untie my hands.” He keeps perfectly still. “Now,” I say. “Untie me now.”
He sighs, gets to his feet, and walks towards me. “OK. But…”
“But what?” I can’t take it anymore. I need to leave.
“But you’re gonna miss it.”
“Miss what?”
“Everything that comes after.”
His cock is hard. It hasn’t been hard most of this time we’ve been here. And even though his soft touches in the beginning were very erotic, he hasn’t touched me in hours. I’m not turned on. At all.
I’m scared. He scares me.
“After I scare you with these drawings, Ivy Rockwell, I’m going to tell you something no one else knows and make it all better.”
“I don’t think so, Nolan. I really need to go.”
“Stop,” he says, taking a firm grip on my arm. “Just sit the fuck back and relax. I have five minutes left. Five minutes and I’ll be done.”
I don’t know if I should force my way out of this situation or just give in and wait him out. Not to see if he’s not crazy. This man is definitely crazy. I am convinced Claudette is right.
His kiss on my neck is what makes me wait. His soft lips and words. “Just please,” he says. “I’ve never come this close to spilling my secret before. I’ve never told anyone what happened that night. And you said you wanted to know. You can’t walk out in the middle of the story. It’s not fair.”
“Life’s not fair, Nolan. You’re the one who said it.”
“I know,” he says. Still soft, more erotic, very insistent. “I know that. But this could turn into something good. Just… let me finish.”
I give in. He could force me to stay and I don’t want to push him. I’ll leave as soon as he unties me. I’ll make a break for the bathroom, get my phone, call Nora, tell her where I’m at, and then have her call me back saying I’m needed at home. There’s an emergency. Something, anything to get the hell out of this man’s house.
“I don’t think your nickname should be Mr. Romantic.”
He laughs. Like a great, big, ceiling-echoing laugh. “You got that right.”
“What? What do you mean? You said it wasn’t ironic.”
“It’s not, I promise.” He takes my bound wrists in his hands and laughs again. “I swear. Just let me finish. No one ever fucking lets me finish. They see what they want to see and then they walk out. Don’t walk out, Ivy. I’ve got something to show you.”
I sigh, realize I’m not getting out of here, and give in. “OK, fine. Just hurry up, Nolan. I’m hungry. I want to eat. I want a drink of water. I’m uncomfortable—”
“I’m sorry. It’s just this story is longer than most. This is the last drawing, I promise. And then I’ll show you. And tell you. And then you can leave if you want.”
“You promise?” I ask.
“I promise. But you won’t want to leave, Ivy. You won’t. If you do, you’ll miss it.”
“What will I miss?”
“Mr. Romantic, of course.” He smiles and points to the bed. “Get back in position. This is the one where I really need to concentrate. It’s the most important one.”
“Five minutes,” I say, scooting back up to the headboard and putting my bound wrists above my head.
“Turn to the side. And close your eyes. Like you’re sleeping.”
Or dead.
He moves quickly back to his paper and pencil, looking at me, then down at his drawing. His hand making long sweeps on the pad. One hundred percent of his concentration on the image he’s creating.
And before I can even count out five minutes in my head, he says, “Done.” He rips the final piece of paper off the pad and then bends down to pick up the rest of them, arranging them and sorting them into something only he is aware of.
“You’re going to freak out, I already know that. But I just need you to let me tell it from beginning to end before you do that.”