Page 6 of Compulsion

Something ugly sours my stomach.

Jealousy?

I shake off the odd sensation. If I’m going to experience a shadow of true emotion—a rarity that I’ve only known since first setting eyes on Abigail—it won’t be jealousy over her platonic friend.

Franklin is a fool: he chooses to barely eke out a living as a primary school Art teacher.

He and Abigail both have stalls in the Charleston City Market on the weekends. He sells his mediocre sculptures while she shyly waits for people to notice her stunning impressionist landscapes.

I own dozens of them. Her worldview fills the void of my white bedroom walls, capturing the wild beauty of the Carolina coast in neat frames for me to admire at my leisure.

She charges a pittance for her masterpieces, but I pay handsomely for them—I watch her customers at the market and then track them down to collect my prizes later.

People never saynoor ask too many questions if you offer them enough money.

And I have plenty of it. Not from my family’s vast wealth, but a fortune I’ve earned for myself. I can’t imagine a better way to spend it than by acquiring Abigail’s art.

Until I can acquireher.

I lean back in the rickety garden chair, slipping deeper into shadows as I watch her through the thick foliage of my overgrown azalea bushes. I lower my binoculars for a moment so that I can take in a long draw of my Macallan whisky.

The sun set about half an hour ago, and a golden glow emanates from the cheap lamps in her apartment. Her ground-floor window is a yellow rectangle in the faded pastel green paint that’s flaking from the derelict building.

This is my favorite vantage point; she usually paints within view of this window, and her art fascinates me like nothing I’veever known. Throughout the day, she shifts her easel to catch the light at different angles, and I savor each of them. Even when I only have a side view of her canvas, I drink in her rapt expression as she loses herself in her art. Her alabaster brow furrows, and her rosebud lips part slightly in a state of breathless concentration that looks a little like ecstasy. Sometimes, she rolls the paintbrush absently between her fingers. It makes me think about that deft, featherlight touch on my cock.

Now, my arousal is totally absent. She’s not painting tonight.

She’s sitting on the cramped, worn couch with Franklin, facing away from me. They’re watching an insipid musical that they’ve seen more times than I can count. All I can see of her is the back of her brunette head and a little peek at the amethyst streak at her nape. She’s as far from her male friend as possible on the small couch, but she’s still closer to him than I would like.

She’s just across the street, tantalizingly out of reach.

I sip my whisky and narrow my eyes at her friend.

I definitely don’t like the sour feeling in my stomach, so I allow the alcohol to burn it away.

She should be sitting across frommeright now. I asked her to dinner, and she said no.

No woman has ever refused a date with me.

The only woman I’ve ever truly wanted is immune to the charms I’ve worked so hard to cultivate in order to mask my true nature. Usually, I find cruel enjoyment in controlling everyone around me, forcing them into neat little boxes—emotional cages of my own design. But Abigail is elusive in a way that irks me.

Does she see the monster beneath the carefully crafted façade?

I scowl around the next sip of whisky.

She did seem afraid this morning. She jerked away from me twice: first, when she spilled the coffee on me, and again when I escorted her outside.

But she willingly made contact with me when she tried to blot the coffee splatter on my shirt. Her hands had fluttered around my torso like frantic flaps of a caged bird’s wings. And when I captured her wrists, her pulse jumped at the contact. I’d indulged myself, maintaining the domineering hold for longer than appropriate.

And when her wide, aqua eyes met mine, they held for the first time ever. Her pupils were huge and dark, dilated from either fear or desire.

Maybe both.

Thinking about that makes my arousal rise, so I push the memory away and take another sip of my drink.

If Abigail is afraid of men, I’ll prove to her that I’m capable of protecting her. She has no idea the lengths I’ll go to in order to keep her safely with me.

She rejected me.

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