I just raised my eyebrows at him, staring for a long minute.

"It seems rather pointless and selfish to me that you would want to make someone become attached to you, while you remain detached yourself," I told him quietly, raising my chin almost defiantly.

He never looked away from me as he spoke. His eyes were snapping with intensity as he caught my hand, pulling it to his chest. "You silly girl, I'm caught fast. I've been attached from the start. How can you doubt it?"

I pulled my hand away, skeptical and uncomfortable.

Is this some game to him? I wondered.

"I can doubt just about anything, Mr. Cavendish. I am, by nature, a skeptic."

He raised a hand to my cheek, stroking it with a featherlight touch. "How can someone so young and innocent also be so cynical?" he asked me.

"Life hasn't taught me to be anything else. Forgive me, but I wouldn't even begin to know how not to doubt someone I barely know."

He pushed me down onto my guest bed, it's surface recently cleared. He loomed over me.

"Then I will make sure that you know me, Bianca," he said, and kissed me with bruising intensity.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE.

Mr. Shameless I finally settled on the samples I wanted, and James had sent them off before I even knew that was his intention.

He gave me a wry smile. "It's not in my nature to procrastinate. I tend to get things done right when I think of them."

I shook off his whirlwind behavior, chalking it up to more rich people quirks.

He started making phone calls and working on his computer again, so I went out back to work on the painting I'd begun of him. He came out and sat in one of my cheap plastic chairs, still on his phone. He covered it briefly.

"Will I disturb you if I sit with you?" he asked.

I shook my head, still working. It helped, actually. Though he wasn't posing, it still helped to look at him frequently as I painted him.

I worked for several hours and he stayed where he was, working and watching me. I distantly noted that he ordered food, but I just kept working. I had no idea what time it was and didn't really care.

"Food is here," James said after awhile, getting up. He left and came back, carrying to-go bowls from my favorite tex-mex restaurant.

I smiled at him. "I love that place."

"Sit and eat," he told me, pointing at the chair across from him.

I did, taking one of the bowls from him. It wasn't what I normally ordered, but it was good, maybe even better than my usual.

I ate quickly, trying to be polite about it. My mind was still on the painting. I had eaten nearly the entire bowl before I realized it.

I went back to painting, not speaking. James went back to working and watching.

I was nearly finished with the painting when I quit. I always liked to finish a project with a fresh perspective.

I would step away from it for a few days, then come back and see it with new eyes.

James was on the phone and I started to clean up my supplies when I thought better of it. I started to prepare new watercolor paper.

"Would you pose nude for me?" I asked him when he ended a call.

He looked surprised.

"Out here?" he asked, glancing around my backyard.

I laughed. It was tiny, but the barrier was high, giving it a fair amount of privacy.

"On my bed?" I asked cautiously. I couldn't believe that he would do it, but I was starting to feel hopeful.

"Okay, but I need to make one more phone call."

I nodded, grinning, very happy at the prospect of such a painting.

"I'll be in my room, setting up."

He came in several minutes later. He was still in his boxers.

"Where do you want me?" he asked, eyeing up my small room.

"Just on the bed. On your side, I think, though I may experiment a little."

He slid out of his only piece of clothing and complied. He lounged on the bed, looking relaxed. Well, most of him anyway. His c.o.c.k was not relaxed, jutting huge and erect between his legs.

I licked my lips.

"Should I paint it like that?" I asked, pointing at him. "Or will it get soft?"

He laughed. "You might as well paint it like that. It won't be getting soft any time soon. It has a mind of it's own."

I licked my lips again. "Can I do anything for it? For you? Before I start painting. I could take you in my mouth."

His eye got a little gla.s.sy at the suggestion. "No. I need to prove to myself that I can abstain for a few days." But he stroked himself roughly with his hand.

I moved to him, but he waved me off, letting go of himself.

"No," he told me firmly. "It's important to me that I know I have control of what I do to you."

I swallowed, but respected his wishes. Whatever the reason.

I began to paint him without any of my normal prep work. It was a joy to work on him, and I lost myself in the process for the second time that day.

It was unusual for me to get so engrossed in two projects in one day, though it did feel like more of a continuation of one project.

"I love painting you," I told him.

He watched me tirelessly, his hard jaw propped against his fist. "That works out well, since I love watching you paint. You have such dreams in your eyes. It's mesmerizing."

I gave him a warm look, thinking that he could be almost unbelievably sweet.

"What are you going to do with this painting?" he asked after a long period of comfortable silence.

"Hang it right next to my other painting of you, as part of my spank bank," I told him, trying to make him laugh.

It worked. He clutched his stomach, falling onto his back as he laughed.

"What on earth do you know about a spank bank?" he asked me with an infectious grin.

I smiled back, still painting. "My best friend is a guy. I've heard the term often enough, though I never really related to it before."

He moved back into his pose, an irrepressible smile still on his face.

"I'm surprised you can sit still for so long. I wouldn't have guessed you had it in you. You seem like a constantly on the move type of guy," I told him.

"It is unusual for me. I like your house. It's a peaceful, happy place."

I couldn't help it. I beamed at him. "I'm pleased you like it. I like it, too."

"I hope I'm invited back often."

I just smiled, working on the painting intently.

We'll see, I thought.

He let me paint him for hours before I finally quit, needing a break.

He had taken to reading a Manga from my bedside table. It was a Shojo Manga, and I blushed a little when he found it, embarra.s.sed for him to see that I was interested in something so romantic and silly.

He was smiling at something as he turned a page. It was a library copy, the only kind I could afford. I hadn't read it yet, but it was #15 in a series I'd been following for years. I'd been on the library's waiting list for it for almost six months.

"Don't give anything away," I warned him. "I haven't had a chance to read it yet."

He looked up with a toothy grin. "You're that into this? I have to say, that almost gives me hope. It's so sweet and romantic."

I gave him my little shrug. "I don't know what it is, but I'm totally infatuated with manga and anime. It's all very funny to me. And I love the characters."

He wiggled his brows at me as I finished putting my supplies away, coming back into the room, where he was still reading the manga.

"So let's watch some anime. You watch it on your computer?" he asked.

I nodded. It was the only place I watched anything at my house, since I didn't have a television.

"I want to see your favorite," he told me.

My old computer was set up in a small nook in my living room. James pulled my love seat close to the computer, and I set up an episode of a vampire anime that I had watched several times. I loaded the first episode.

I couldn't imagine that James would enjoy it. It was kind of screwed up, and I thought that the target audience for it must be girls. But it was the first anime I had thought of when he'd asked me to play my favorite.

We watched it for hours. James cuddled me against his chest, but seemed glued to the screen, transfixed by the anime. I had always found it fascinating, as well. I got caught up in it again.

"So we're voting for her to choose the silver-haired guy, right?" James asked me as we finished a cliff-hanger episode.

I scoffed at him. "No. The dark-haired one. She totally adores him. She's been in love with him forever."

He threw up his hands, laughing at me. "We just found out that that one's her brother!"

I glared at him, feeling defensive about my beloved characters. "He was just raised as her brother. He was reincarnated, or whatever." It had a convoluted plot, which seemed to happen a lot in the animes I loved.

He laughed harder. "So that makes him her great-great-great-great grandfather? And that's somehow better?"

I poked him in the ribs with my elbow, but couldn't help but laugh as well.

He nuzzled against my ear, then pinned me down beneath him, holding my wrists above my head.

"You're a perverted girl, aren't you? I bet you like hentai," he teased me, referring to the X-rated version of anime.

He began to tickle me. I slapped at his hands, giggling helplessly.

"Say it," he laughingly insisted. "Say, I like hentai, you naughty girl."

I said it, and he kissed me, but it was a quick kiss, since we were both still laughing.

"You can call me Grandpa, if that does it for you," he teased.

I laughed, tugging on his hair.

I'd never had so much fun watching anime, especially since I usually only ever watched them by myself. Stephan didn't care for anime. He said they never had happy endings. He thought even the silly, funny ones were a little sad. Whereas, I thought even the saddest ones were a little silly and funny.

I made a quick trip to the bathroom, but froze when I saw what James was looking at on my computer when I re-emerged. I blushed harder than I'd ever blushed in my entire life.

I didn't look up p.o.r.n often. Hardly ever, in fact. But I had felt a strange urge to look up some sites with very specific BDSM content the night I'd come home after meeting James for the first time on a flight.

I had always had an unwilling fascination with BDSM, and even with the small interaction James and I had had on that flight, that fascination had been triggered, to the point that I'd come home and looked up the things that I fantasized him doing to me.

I still didn't know why, even with my inexperience, I had known so certainly what he wanted to do to me. There had just been something in his eyes, a hint of the dominant in him so clear to me that I couldn't deny it.

He was watching one of the videos I'd found that night. A bound and gagged woman was being flogged rather vigorously by a huge man who stood behind her. She was wearing a black leather corset that still left her b.r.e.a.s.t.s bare. Her lips were b.l.o.o.d.y red, her hair raven black.

The man was dark-haired and burly, with coa.r.s.e hair matting his barrel chest. He was a crude beast of a man, especially compared to James. It had simply been the closest thing I could find to the things I pictured James doing to me, the things I had imagined he craved to do to me. I had turned out to be very right about him. In fact, my fantasies never could have done him justice.