It’s a plan to give me more confidence in my own skin. To make me think that I can be sexy too.
Like all his girlfriends, or girls.
Who somehow are masters at smoky eyes and sultry make-up. Also all of them have dark, sexy hair, unlike my stupid blonde good-girl tresses.
No, don’t think about that, Callie. This is about female empowerment. This is about you, not him!
Anyway, I’m wearing one of Tempest’s dresses. A black mini-dress that also happens to be strapless, which hits me mid-thigh, along with her heels. On top of all this, she’s done my make-up and curled my blonde hair.
All in all, I do think that I look sexy.
After Tempest dresses me up like a doll, we venture out to go to the mall like this. I was happy to stay home and lounge around all dressed up but she says that if I want confidence, then I need to go out and get it myself.
And I do get it.
Because guys have been leering at me, at us, ever since we stepped out of the house. And it is great at first but as time passes, I start to get tired.
My feet start to kill me and after pulling down my dress a million times, I don’t think I like this all that much.
All this unwanted attention and guys staring at my butt so openly.
I tell Tempest that I want to go home and relax and so she calls for her driver to come pick us up.
It’s a good thing because I don’t think I can walk in these shoes anymore.
Only my happiness is short-lived because instead of a driver, her brother shows up in a white flash, his Mustang.
He takes one look at the both of us and his wolf eyes grow furious as he growls, “Get in.”
Which we do.
Tempest and I are in the back seat while Reed drives in a seething silence. When I catch Tempest’s eye in the darkened interior of the car, she winks at me happily and that’s how I know.
That’s how I know that she never called the driver. She called him.
That scheming… non-friend.
Because we’re not friends anymore. She lied to me.
Not only that, as soon as we reach their big, sprawling house, she jumps out of the car with a happy goodbye thrown at me.
Although her brother doesn’t let her go so easily.
“Straight to your room,” he growls again, the only words he’s spoken after his commanding get in. “Now. And put some fucking clothes on, we’re going to have a talk.”
Her shoulders droop and she mumbles something before turning to me, winking and running away, leaving me alone with him.
Oh my God.
Oh my God, I’m gonna kill her. I’m so gonna kill her right now.
Actually, I’m so gonna kill him.
For being so… authoritative and angry.
Only he also makes me want to rub my legs together in restlessness when he talks like that, in his deep commanding voice.
But whatever.
I throw open the door and jump out, totally charged up to go after Tempest and make her pay for this. But I don’t get too far. In fact, I don’t even get to take more than a few steps away from his Mustang because there’s something stopping me.
Or someone.
How he made it out of the car and over to my side so fast, I don’t know. All I know is that I can’t go anywhere as long as he stands before me.
Or rather, as long as he’s backing me up into his car.
As soon as my spine hits the cold metal, I shiver and words jar out of me. “Let me go.”
He doesn’t.
Frankly, I didn’t expect him to.
But then I also didn’t expect him to lean forward. I didn’t expect him to put his arm on the roof of his car, just by my side, effectively stopping me from leaving.
Although I should have. Expected it, I mean.
If he can lock me up in a closet so I don’t get to run from him, he can do anything.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
In response, he runs his eyes all over my body, slowly, methodically, as if making a point before raising them back to my face. “Looking at you.”
Again, I get the urge to rub my thighs together at his low, heated tone. “Why?”
“Because that’s what you want, don’t you? You want me to look at you.”
“I do not,” I lie.
When did I become such a liar?
I thought I was the good girl.
He knows I’m lying too because a smirk breaks out on his ruby-red, crescent-shaped mouth. Only it has a dangerous edge, a humorless quality. “Yeah, you do. Why else would you be wearing something like that? Something that…” He looks me up and down again, a cursory and yet lingering glance. “Leaves very little to my imagination.”
My imagination.
As if.
I put my sweaty palms on his Mustang so my balance doesn’t falter. “That’s extremely arrogant of you, don’t you think? To assume that. That I’d wear something just to get your attention.”
Never mind that I did. I mean, subconsciously.
Okay maybe a little consciously but whatever.
He dips his chin in a condescending manner. “It’s the truth though, isn’t it?”
In response, I raise mine, just to look defiant. “No, it’s not. And this is a perfectly normal dress.”
“Is it?”
“Yes.”
I’m not sure what’s happening tonight but everything that I’m saying is making him angrier and angrier.
And none of that is even remotely bothersome to me.
Not even when he leans further down, shaking the car at my back and bringing his wolf eyes, which I cannot look away from, even closer.
“Because I don’t think that a perfectly normal dress would highlight every fucking curve of your tight ballerina body,” he says with clenched teeth. “Would it? Or that when you walk in it, your perky tits would be dangerously close to jiggling out. And the whole world could see the cheeks of your juicy, tight ass.”
For a number of seconds after he’s finished talking, I’m unable to believe the things he’s said.
For a number of seconds, I simply blink up at him.
I’ve never ever heard anyone talk about my body in such graphic, derogatory terms. Because it is all derogatory, isn’t it?
I should slap him in the face. I should.
I shouldn’t feel a rush in my chest that beads my nipples to achy points or shift on my feet just to rub my butt against his Mustang.
And the fact that he can make me feel and do all these inappropriate, less than respectable, bad things makes me say, “You’re an asshole.”
At my curse – which was so effortless for me, dangerously effortless when it comes to him – he flinches slightly before growing even more furious.
“I am. And in case your four older, overprotective brothers forgot to mention it to you, assholes like me don’t play by the rules. Assholes like me take whatever they want, whenever they want. And I’m probably the worst of them all.”
My breaths have gone haywire so my next words come out thin and breathless. “What does that mean?”
“It means…” He pauses to bring his other arm up as well, putting it on the roof of his Mustang and making a cage around me. “That I’m the kind of asshole that keeps your brothers up at night. I’m the reason girls like you have a curfew. I’m the reason your mommy sits you down in your room and warns you about boys. She tells you how rotten they can be, how corrupt. How they’ll lie and cheat and do anything to stick their hands under your dress. I’m the reason your daddy locks your door at night. And he puts you in a bedroom on the top floor so no one can climb in. He bars your windows. He stands guard outside of your door on the off chance that I somehow still find a way in. And I fucking do. You know how?”
“H-how?”
He shakes the car again, making me teeter on my heels, unbalancing my world. “Because I’m the kind of asshole who’d b
reak down any door. I’d climb a thousand stories. I’d climb a fucking tower. Just to be able to get into your room at night. Just to be able to see you. And I bet you wear those lacy white nighties, don’t you?”
“Yes, sometimes.”
“Yeah, I’d pull apart all the bars in your window. I’d fucking go to war with all four of your brothers just to be able to see you in one of those. Just to be able to get a peek of your creamy, dancer legs in something like that. Just to see if I can catch a glimpse of something else too, in your thin white nightie.” He leans in another inch as he continues, “You don’t want me to do that, do you? You don’t want me to force my way into your room at night, while your brothers are sleeping down the hall somewhere just so I could look at you, at your tight little body, in your white nightie.”
I do.
I so do.
I want him to force his way inside my room just so he can look at me.
And as soon as this thought flashes through my mind, I shake my head. “No.”
“Yeah. Because let’s face it, I get a peek of you in that thing and I won’t be able to stop myself from taking it too far.”
“Too far.”
His eyes are glowing now. “Yeah, I get a peek of you in your nightie, I’ll be doing everything that I can to fucking touch it. To somehow push the hem up your thighs or pull the straps down your shoulders, just so I can get my hands on your naked body. But again, you don’t want me to do that, do you, Fae?”
Oh God.
How is it that I feel both relieved and restless that he called me that? How is it that I’ve been waiting and waiting for him to call me by his name one more time?
It’s a wonder that I can still shake my head and say what he wants me to say when all I want to say is yes. Yes, yes, yes.
“No,” I whisper and arch my body, up and toward him as if offering him to touch it.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought. And why not?” he asks, the strings of his hoodie oscillating in front of me in a hypnotic rhythm. “Tell me why you don’t want me to touch you, to grope your fucking body like the villain that I am.”
I can’t remember.
I can’t remember anything right now.
But I guess all of this is so ingrained in my brain that I don’t even have to think about it, about the rivalry and soccer and hatred. My lips move on their own. “Because of my b-brothers.”
Satisfaction bursts over his features even as his jaw tightens for a second. “You wouldn’t want to betray them now, would you?”
“No.”
How many times have I said no now, I wonder?
And how many times have I wanted to say yes?
I’m a fool.
A fool, a fool, a fool.
But he makes it so easy. He makes it so easy to be stupid and reckless and thoughtless.
He makes it so easy to be foolish.
“Good.” He approves with a short nod. “So you’re going to be careful now, aren’t you? You’re going to wear your daisy fresh dresses and your ballet flats. You’re going to braid your hair like a good girl and you’re going to stop begging for my attention. You’re going to stop making me look at you.”
His words, almost snarled from his mouth and dripping in condescension, penetrate my drugged-up mind and make me frown. They make me stand a little taller in my stupid heels when he moves away from me.
And I tell him with as much authority as I can muster right now, “Then you have to stop watching me.”
Reed was in the process of taking another step back and dismissing me. But my words stop him. They make him frown. “What?”
Good.
I’m glad.
If he can give me ultimatums, then I can issue them too.
I raise my trembling chin and say, “You have to stop coming to my practice every day.”
Because that’s what he does.
He comes to my after-hours practice and he watches me dance.
Every day after school, when I practice in the auditorium because I still haven’t nailed down my routine, he comes in.
He sits in the third row, not too far away from the stage and not too close. I don’t know why. And he watches me spin and turn and leap around the stage with my wings on my back.
He watches me like he did the first night at the party.
All eager and intense and at the edge of his seat.
And I dance for him in the same way as well. All restless and excited.
After the pact I was afraid that he’d stop. I was afraid that he wouldn’t watch me dance anymore. But he didn’t and thank God for that.
Because somehow, I’ve gotten addicted to dancing for him.
Somehow, I’ve become addicted to the way he looks at me. Addicted to the way his shoulders seem to loosen up the longer I dance. How he sits back and sprawls out on the seat as if this is the best part of his day, me dancing for him.
So sometimes I dance for him just because he wants me to.
I abandon my practice, pick a song that I love and spin for him like the ballerina I am.
His ballerina.
But it’s stupid, isn’t it? And dangerous.
He’s right.
He’s the worst asshole of all, the biggest villain that my brothers have warned me about.
And I can’t betray my brothers – Ledger – no matter what my heart keeps telling me.
So this is the best course of action, staying away like we always have.
“And why’s that?” he challenges.
I press my hands harder on the Mustang. “Because you’re right. This is stupid. I never should’ve worn this stupid dress.”
Yeah, everything happened because of this stupid freaking dress.
If I wasn’t wearing this, then I’d be safely tucked away inside Tempest’s room, watching something silly on her laptop instead of standing out here in these torturous heels under his torturous scrutiny.
“Why did you then?”
“Because I wanted to see what it felt like…” I trail off when I realize what I was going to say.
Of course, he hones in on that and his features grow alert. “Felt like what?”
Well, I was stupid enough to bring it up, wasn’t I?
I can be stupid, stupid, stupid enough to finish it too.
What do I have to lose anyway?
I fist the dress and stand tall in my heels. “I wanted to see what it felt like to be sexy. To be tempting for a day. To feel like all the girls at school. All the girls you hang out with.”
There. I said it.
It’s over. My humiliation is complete.
Can I just go home now and never ever come back here, to his house?
“You wanted to feel like the girls I hang out with.”
Oh, so it’s not complete yet. My humiliation.
Fine.
Whatever. I can deal with this.
“Yes.” I sigh. “I wanted to feel sexy and confident and, I don’t know, just not like a good girl all the time. But I am a good girl, aren’t I? Because I hate this dress. And I hate these heels and I hate you too. So from now on, I’m not going to dance for you and you can’t come watch me like it’s your right or something. I’m not for your personal entertainment, okay?”
Then I throw my hands in the air and snap, “In fact from now on, you should ask one of your girlfriends to dance for you. I’m sure they’d be happy to accommodate your every whim like they always are. So, is there anything else you need to say to me, because I’d like to leave now.”
He stares at me and stares at me with an inscrutable expression until I start to feel like a freak show for going off like that.
But he deserved it, didn’t he?
He…
“They’re not my girlfriends,” he murmurs after a bit.
Something about his casual answer irritates me even further and I snap, “Yeah, do they know that?”
“They do, yes.” He
shrugs then but there’s this wild, wild intensity on his face, in his body too, looking all tight and strung up. “With me, they always know. I don’t do girlfriends.”
“And why? Why are you so special that you don’t do girlfriends?”
“Because I don’t. It’s not my style. I don’t believe in love and shit.”
Of course.
A typical guy. I have four brothers and two of whom are complete players like him; I know.
They’re the same.
Wild and untamable.
And I don’t know why he’s watching me like he’s performing some kind of experiment. “Well then, as I said, you should ask your other girls to dance for you and leave me alone.”
His scrutiny isn’t over yet.
Not for another five or six seconds, and then, “You sound like you’re jealous, Fae.”
I gasp. Almost.
How dare he?
How freaking dare he?
I shift on my stupid heels again.
“You’d know, wouldn’t you?” I raise my eyebrows. “Because you sounded like you were jealous when you thought that the world was looking at my juicy, tight ass, Roman.”
It’s his turn to blink.
Not that it makes him look intimidated by me or something like that.
In fact, I’m the one who loses all the air in her lungs because I’ve been dying, dying, to call him that. And to say it like that, blurting it out, makes me stumble on my heels.
He’s just taken aback, I think.
Not by what I said, but what he says next, almost to himself, as if he’s surprised by it. “I was.”
“You were?”
He looks into my wide, shocked eyes. “Yeah. And I don’t like that.”
“Being jealous?”
“Yes.”
His frown is so… adorable. It’s such a tame word for a guy like him who’s made of all sharp and dangerous edges.
But that’s what I feel right now.
That he’s so vulnerable and adorable in this moment with his honesty and so I have to be honest too. “M-me neither.”
He opens and closes his fists as if he can’t decide what he wants to do with his fingers. He can’t decide what he wants to do in a situation like this and I can’t wait to see what he does do.
A Gorgeous Villain Page 8