So I picked a new chapter and spent hours tweaking and rearranging it until it was as close to perfect as I could get it. It still has a long way to go though, and I’m seriously fighting the urge to just turn and run while I still can.
I stop in a bathroom before heading to his room and look myself over. I’m wearing gray leggings and a long, loose t-shirt with an equal length cardigan. I tried to make it look like I wasn’t dressing to impress him, but I also didn’t want to look like a slob. I spend a few minutes second guessing my success before heading to his room.
I find him propped up, looking out the window with that distant, pained expression I’ve seen on his face a few times before. I still can’t believe he blames himself for what happened with the woman before me. I did feel a little uneasy hearing how he explained his relationship with her because, well, it sounds a lot like me. I guess I was just being naïve for not considering how many times he has probably gone through more or less this exact same routine before. After all, he’s in his mid-thirties and looks like a movie star. Of course he has been with tons of women.
It’s just harder to swallow that reality when he tells me I’m special and calls me things like princess. It makes me start to think I really am special to him and unique. I can live with being just the latest woman in his long list of conquests, though. The part I have trouble coping with is how it sounded like it was easy for him to cut things off with Karen. He didn’t say why he ended it. He just said he broke things off early.
I can’t even imagine how terrible I would feel if I put myself out there by signing his crazy contract, entering into the BDSM scene with him only to be cut loose. I can’t think about that. It’s selfish and pointless. I know I feel something between us. And every time I see the pain in his eyes it draws me closer, making me want to soothe it away.
Despite all my good intentions, there’s still the distant hope that being with Jackson will break me from the writing paralysis. I already got a taste of it when he came to my dorm and I was able to turn it into part of my story. The writer in me is so hungry for more that I can’t quite tell where that part ends and where the rest begins. I briefly consider coming clean and telling him about it all, but he already has so much on his plate, and I’m also terrified he will cut me loose like Karen if he knows the full truth.
“Are you feeling any stronger today?” I ask.
He turns his head toward me. His dark and gorgeous features are even more stunning with the sunlight streaming from the window across his face. Even battered from the accident, his body is still a statement of power. Broad shoulders, chiseled arms, and lean, muscular legs. He’s stronger than any man I’ve ever seen, and not just physically. I remember the way his voice had the power of a whip to compel me. His command was iron. It was steel. Unbreakable and unapologetic. And obeying him gave me a thrill I don’t fully understand. All I know is I want more.
“Good girl,” he says, ignoring my question. “You brought the story.”
I nod, clutching the pages tightly to my chest.
“Bring them here,” he commands.
It’s that tone again. My feet are moving before I even decided to obey. My chest tingles with warmth. There’s an excitement in obeying him that I can’t describe. I hand him the papers and swallow hard, waiting.
He smirks up at me and starts to read.
“Wait. You’re not going to read it right now are you?”
The look he gives me stops me short. There’s fire in his cold blue eyes. Without saying a word, he silences me. I sit in the chair at his bedside and wait, feeling the reality of what kind of man he is start to settle around me like a dark haze. Am I really ready for this? Maybe he was just playing nice to get past my defenses, to get his foot in the door, and now he’s going to take the gloves off and see if I have what it takes to be his… I don’t even know what signing his contract would make me. His slave? His pet?
After a moment, he looks up and the hardness in his features softens. “Don’t worry, Princess. I can already tell from the first few sentences your writing isn’t forgettable. Not by a fucking long shot.”
I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding, slumping forward slightly with relief. Maybe he’s just being kind because he can see how nervous I am, but I don’t know. Jackson Pierce doesn’t strike me as the type of man to sugarcoat things. I think he might really tell me to my face that my writing was garbage if he believed it.
I wait for ten minutes as he reads the chapter, enjoying the opportunity to study his perfection. The longer I look at him, the better he looks. I remember in my freshman year of college, we had to visit an art museum for art history class. When I looked at paintings by some of the masters, the first glance took my breath away, but the longer I studied the details, I was continually more impressed. I was able to understand the perfection by smaller degrees and break it down detail by detail.
Jackson is no different.
From the thickness of his eyelashes to the powerful lines of his profile, he is perfection, and studying him only makes me wonder more and more how in the world I ended up involved with him. I’m practically just a girl compared to him. If this thing between us progresses to where he seems to want… he’ll have to teach me everything. There will be nothing I can do to surprise him or that he hasn’t already seen.
I’m about to descend full-force into a whirlwind of self-doubt when he puts the pages down and raises his eyebrows at me. “It’s good. Really good. If I was your publisher, there would be some details I’d want to work with you on to make this more on target with the market, but fuck. Your descriptions are incredible. The way you can describe the smell of the trash can and juxtapose that with the trouble in the relationship a few lines later was masterful. Seriously.”
I rush over to the bed and hug him tight. He sucks in a sharp breath and I realize I’m hurting him and pull back.
“I didn’t say to stop,” he chuckles.
I smile, blushing. “Sorry. I just… thank you. My parents always… they just never--” I put a hand to my forehead, shaking my head. “I’m not making any sense.”
“Your parents don’t like your writing?”
“No,” I say. “It’s not that. My mom works for minimum wage at a grocery store and my dad unloads trucks in a factory. I am the first one to go to college in my family, and I guess they just thought I’d go on to get a degree in engineering or something. You know? They thought because I had the grades to get in, I could do anything and get a career and make a life better than theirs.
“They’ve always been supportive, so I feel like a brat for even saying anything. I just knew they were disappointed when I said I was going to be a writer. They saw all the potential they never had an opportunity to reach for and they think I’m squandering it I guess. I know you’re not saying you’d publish me or anything. It’s just good to hear something positive about my writing for once.
“To tell the truth, I’m running out of time to declare a major. If I can’t prove to myself I can finish a book, I don’t see how I can let myself major in creative writing. I guess I’d have to go after something like, I don’t know, statistics,” I say.