Page 62 of Worth Every Penny
“I can’t leave. Mum would never forgive me.”
“You’d stay for her, even after how she spoke to you?”
I blow out a long-suffering sigh. “It’s not new. I’ve had much worse from her. It’s just how she is.”
“It’s how you let her be.”
I frown, not wanting to think too deeply about the point he’s making. “This party is the most important event of the year for her. I don’t want to ruin it.”
His slight nod is dismissive enough to make me feel like I’ve let him down somehow.
I stand quickly, but a sudden head rush renders me unsteady and I grab the side of the desk to keep myself up. My fingers glance against a tottering pile of my sketchbooks, which clatter to the ground. The top one falls open, spilling sheets of charcoal sketches to the floor.
“Oh, God,” I cry, seeing the face that stares back at me. Nico. Over and over again. At twenty-five, twenty-six, twenty-seven. The beautiful features of his face in profile, three-quarter turn, looking up, looking away, looking straight out of the page.
Nico stares at the papers strewn around us. “Is that… me?”
I kneel, scrabbling to gather them. There are too many. I can’t hide them fast enough. I grab a few more, but in doing so expose the worst one.
Nico. Idealised. Perfect.And absolutely bollock-naked.
My body heats like a furnace.Shit.I went all in on the detail on this one. Really let loose with the imagination.
Nico clears his throat, but there’s laughter in the sound. “Wow. I don’t remember posing for that.”
I want to die. I let out a little squeak and shove the offending image into the pile, continuing my frantic attempts to conceal the lot.
Nico crouches beside me and grips my arm. “Stop.”
I wrench free of his hold. “God, no, this is… it’s…fuck.” I raise a sheet to my face, sheltering behind it. “Don’t say anything, please.”
He teases my hand away, forcing me to meet his eye. “I had no idea," he says, his voice gentle.
“I was a teenager,” I confess, as if that excuses what was clearly an unhealthy obsession. “Long time ago. Long, long time. Very long.”
I stand, but my legs are shaking. This is a nightmare come to life.
Nico rises to his feet too. “And now?” he asks, taking the sheet of paper out of my hand. He’s so close, he must be able to hear the gallop of my heartbeat. “What do you want right now?”
He’s staring at me as though his very existence depends on my answer; I can’t think straight.
“Now? Now, I hate you,” I mutter, but the phrase lacks any conviction.
“You do?” he confirms, leaning so close that his mouth grazes my ear, his breath sending a ripple of desire all the way down my body.
What the fuck is going on right now?
“Yup,” I choke out.
“That’s a real shame, Kate.” His voice is so low that the words are little more than a vibration against my skin. “Just when we were starting to get along.”
One of his hands rests on my hip as his lips hover at my neck. He presses them gently, but deliberately, against my skin. I jerk like I’ve touched a live wire.
Did he just…kissme?
Nico huffs a laugh against my throat and his lips continue to press up and down the side of my neck, trailing fire across my skin.Yup.Definite kissing happening.A pleasurable shiver scatters goosebumps down my arms; my body aches for more.
His hand slides around to the small of my back. Each movement drags a new swathe of desire through my body. A whimper escapes me, the sound unmistakably sexual.