Free Gilded Lily by Pauline Allan Page B

reached out his hand.
    She stared at it. The pale white scars were such a contrast to the tanned skin around them. Scars like my welts.
    “Um, sorry,” he said and took back his hand to hold out his other one.
    Lily examined it. No pale streaks of tortured flesh. She stood. The curious look he gave her made her legs tremble.
    “Come on,” he said. “I won’t bite.”
    Lily shrugged off his smooth hand. She liked the other one much better. Reaching out, she slipped her palm against the rough skin. The feel of his fingers entwined with hers made her feel safe. Cherished and delicate. When she looked up, Adam was staring down at her. No, he was staring at their hands.
    “People don’t usually like to touch my hand.”
    “I do,” she said and gave him a gentle squeeze. He was willing to touch her after seeing her marks. She was more than willing to touch him after seeing his.
    Nicholas and Tony were the only two men who had ever seen the full extent of her marks. Tony relished them while Nicholas had tolerated them.
    Lily followed Adam hand in hand up the stairs to the loft. The movement of his tight backside beneath the faded jeans threw a ball of cotton into her throat, instantly making her drool. The stealth of his movements was like a slinky cat. Albeit a very tall and muscular slinky cat.
    Shaking her head, she recalled the last time she’d been up in the loft. Nicholas had invited a friend from New York to stay for a couple of days. David had been a business associate of Nicholas’s who came down once a month.
    Lily always enjoyed watching them fuck until the early-morning hours. On her last trip up these stairs, Lily remembered falling asleep on her pile of blankets in the corner. The sound of David’s lustful moans and pleas for more had lulled her to sleep.
    Adam didn’t let her hand go as they crossed the cozy space, but Lily tugged away from him when she looked across the king-size bed. The five paintings propped against the wall were indeed portraits of Lily. All in varying shades of blue, from the brightest cerulean to the deepest cobalt.
    Lily clasped her chest, trying to take in a breath. They walked in silence as she followed him around the end of the bed.
    “See?” He pointed to the one on the far left. “That’s you.”
    The painting depicted Lily relaxing in her outdoor bathtub. The renditions were lifelike and stunning. Lily sighed. The one with her bound to the large oak in the backyard made her stomach flutter. Did she really look like that? The rational part of her brain told her to run. The irrational part of her heart told her to cry.
    “You can’t deny it,” he said. “These are you.”
    She walked past Adam to kneel before the paintings. The sound of Adam sitting down on the bed behind her made her startle. “I never knew. Where were they?”
    “I found them in the back. They were packed up in a storage crate.”
    She turned around. “Why are they out here?”
    Adam bowed his head, then quickly looked back up. “I want to see them,” he said. “They’re beautiful. I think he had crated them to send to his gallery in New York. Yeah, well…that’s how they usually arrive.”
    Lily pressed her fingertips against her lips. She was going to laugh or cry; either way the nervousness was going to take over her body. “Oh, God, not these. Not me. No, no, not like this.” She walked over to the one where she was sitting on her heels with her hands tied behind her back. “Adam, please put them back in the crate. You don’t need to see these. Please, don’t ever let anyone see these.”
    Lily stared down at her hands. Suddenly Adam was there, standing in front of her. He wrapped his big hands around her wrists. A gentle pull, and she was resting against his chest, wrapped in his arms. “Why do you want them hidden?”
    She tried to pull away but instead gripped his T-shirt in her fists. The harder she tugged, the tighter he held her. She pushed on his hard body, really wanting to