Aiden took the open bench easel beside me, dropping his bag onto the floor at his feet. Students gave him looks that said, Are you fucking crazy?
I was an outcast.
A freak.
Run while you still can.
Aiden’s long legs hugged the wooden bench, and I wondered what it would feel like to have him between my legs. I was so out of my league. A guy like Aiden would never hook up with a girl like me.
“Hey,” he said, his voice a deep rumble that sent a shiver down my arms. “I’m Aiden.”
A grin split my mouth in half as I slipped my fingers between his. “Ella Doyle.”
I said my last name to see if he would flinch.
He remained expressionless.
“Nice to meet you, Ella Doyle.” He rested his forearm on his thigh and leaned closer, searing my skin with his eyes. “I know your secret.”
Which one?
My family had too many secrets.
More than I could count.
I narrowed my eyes at him. “No, you don’t.”
A crooked grin tugged at his full lips. “You don’t like people.”
I plucked a paintbrush from my set and tapped the end on the bench to steady my trembling hand. “That’s not much of a secret.”
I wanted to like the students at this school. But they hated me. The silence was deafening, louder than any words. Since my mother’s murder, they were even more afraid of me. It was like they thought death was contagious.
“But you like me,” Aiden said as if he could read my mind.
I snickered at his boldness. “I wouldn’t be so sure of that.”
Being this close to a man who looked like a damn movie star drove me wild. My skin was on fire, ready to burst into flames, as I caught the scent of cloves, charcoal, and clean linen on his clothing. I pictured him smoking clove cigarettes while he sketched with charcoal pencils.
Aiden was an artist through and through. He had white paint under his nails and black marks on the pads of his long fingers from using charcoal.
Everything about him screamed street artist, not the heir to a multi-billion dollar fortune. The Wellingtons were one of the wealthiest families in the world. They owned many companies but were most known for Wellington Pharmaceuticals.
Aiden rubbed the tips of the brushes on his left palm five times, then selected a rigor brush and slipped it behind his left ear for safekeeping.
He glanced at me and winked. “What are you painting, Cinders?”
Like Cinderella?
I scoffed at his nickname.
“Not very original, rich boy.”
His nostrils flared. “I’m not rich.”
“Okay, Wellington.” I laughed. “And I’m Santa.”
He shook his head, blowing out a deep breath through his nose. “You don’t know shit about me, Cinders.”
Aiden didn’t look like he came from wealth. He acted like someone who understood the struggle. I couldn’t picture him dressed in a suit and attending a Devil’s Creek society dinner.
We didn’t speak another word. He kept his eyes on the canvas, dipping his brush into a deep shade of red paint. I enjoyed watching his hand move gracefully across the canvas, my eyes traveling over his tattooed bicep that flexed beneath the tight prep school jacket.
He was so gorgeous my fingers itched to paint him. I squinted to get a better look at his ink. A checkered square pattern was set between a deranged-looking clock with broken hands. Or were they whiskers? The strange landscape had a cat that appeared high, his eyes wide and smiling like a crazed lunatic.
Leaning to my left, I grabbed a paint bottle from beneath my bench and looked closely at his work.
“If you stare any harder, Cinders, you’re going to make a mess all over that bench by the time this class is over.”
“What?” I gasped at his dirty comment. “I wasn’t…”
His icy blue eyes dropped to my nipples which were painfully erect and poking through the white Oxford. “Hmmm…”
