The Seductive Pretty Chapter 110: No Disguise

Chapter 110: Chapter 110: No Disguise

Chapter 110: No Disguise

Without his glasses, Elias looked stripped of his last bit of cover.

There was nothing left to soften the impact of his face, nothing to dull the gaze fixed on Liora from too close a distance. He stood there as if he had never learned the use of caution in the first place, looking less like a boy who happened to be beautiful and more like something dangerous that had stepped into human skin without bothering to hide the seams.

Neither of them spoke.

The room stayed so quiet that the air conditioner seemed loud.

Elias did not need words. His eyes did enough on their own. The look in them shifted with every breath, shy for half a second, then teasing, then faintly dazed, then almost yielding, only to turn inviting before she could settle on any one reading. It was the kind of expression that said too much while pretending to say nothing. He stood there with his hands on her head and his mouth near her ear, and the silence between them grew heavier by the second.

Liora swallowed.

She had just parted her lips, ready to answer him, when a phone started vibrating on the nightstand.

The sound cut through the moment cleanly.

Elias turned his head, glanced toward it, and let go of her at once.

Then he pushed her back.

His bare feet sank into the wrinkled comforter as he walked across the bed toward the nightstand, one step at a time. The movement was light, almost gentle, but even that gentleness carried a thread of coldness through it. He had built the mood with his own hands, and he dismantled it just as easily.

By the time he reached the phone, nothing of the earlier heat remained. It felt as though the last few minutes had been wiped from the room.

Liora’s throat tightened again.

The pressure there was strange. It was like he had loosened one invisible leash only to pull another tighter.

Elias picked up the phone and checked the screen. His expression did not change. Whatever message he saw, he gave it nothing. A second later he locked the screen, set the phone back down, and returned to the edge of the bed.

He hopped off the mattress with an easy little jump.

"I have to get to campus," he said. "No time now. We’ll leave it for another day."

He said it the way someone might postpone lunch.

Not sex. Not the kind of invitation that could leave a woman standing there with her pulse still off-balance. He spoke as if he were pushing back something ordinary and forgettable.

Then again, maybe to Elias it was ordinary. Maybe it really was that small to him.

Liora smiled faintly. "Fine. Do whatever you want."

Her tone was just as casual as his had been, and if she had stopped there, she might have kept the upper hand.

Instead she added, "I wasn’t planning to do anything here anyway. This room is filthy."

Elias smiled.

Somebody was irritated, and he did not feel the need to say who.

He turned as if he could not be bothered to argue, started toward the bathroom, and spoke over his shoulder when he reached her.

"Pick out something for me to wear."

Liora looked at him. "Do you not have hands?"

Elias stopped and turned back.

He was still smiling. That was the worst part. His eyes rested on her with such open amusement that it felt less like he was hearing her words and more like he was watching the thoughts behind them walk past in plain view.

He almost told her to keep her mouth shut when she was off balance. People always slipped more when they were trying not to.

Right now she looked very much like a dog that had been made to sit there and watch someone else take the meat.

Annoyed enough to bare its teeth at the hand feeding it.

The thought pleased him.

Elias rose onto his toes, leaned in, and stole a quick kiss from her mouth. The touch lasted barely an instant.

"There," he said softly. "Now go get my clothes."

He did not wait for an answer. He turned and walked into the bathroom as if the matter had already been settled.

Only after the door shut behind him did Liora raise a hand to her lips.

She brushed her fingertips over the place he had kissed.

She knew exactly what he was trying to do. He was testing limits, rewarding compliance, building habits. Step by step, touch by touch, he was trying to tame her into responding the way he wanted.

She knew that.

And still, standing alone in the room he had just left, she could not come up with a reason to refuse.

By the time Elias came back out wrapped in a bath towel, the bedroom had changed completely.

The bed had been remade with fresh sheets. The damp, wrinkled set from earlier was gone. The comforter had been smoothed, the pillows reset, and a clean outfit had been laid out neatly at the foot of the bed.

He dragged the towel over his wet hair and let out a quiet laugh.

"You really do listen."

[...]

That earned a blink from him. He knew he had meant Liora, but somehow the silence from System Theta made it feel as though the remark had landed there too.

Elias dressed without hurry. Before leaving, he remembered the cash under the pillow and reached for it. When he pulled it out, there were ten more bills than before.

His brows lifted.

She really thinks I’m for sale? Honestly...

[Outrageous.]

Elias nodded to himself as if the judgment had been perfectly reasonable.

Exactly. Outrageous. As if I’d ever go that cheap. One kiss from me is worth at least twenty-five grand.

[...]

He left the room in an excellent mood.

A car was already waiting outside the Blackwood residence.

The driver had changed again. That seemed to happen often. The only thing that never changed was how ordinary they looked. The woman behind the wheel had the kind of face that slipped straight out of memory the second you stopped looking at it.

Elias gave her one glance before looking away. The rearview mirror gave him a better use for his attention. He studied his own reflection instead, tipping his head slightly as he looked at his hair.

The blond had been dyed back when the original Elias was still running around clubs and nightspots, picking up whatever habits stuck to him hardest. The job had not been done well to begin with, and now the dark roots had grown in enough to make the whole thing look streaked black and gold. It did not ruin his face, but it looked messy in a way he no longer liked.

"Take me to a salon first," he said. "Best one near campus."

"Of course."

The salon was busy when he arrived. Every chair was full, and there were still people waiting.

Elias did not mind.

He found an empty seat, crossed one leg over the other, and let the tip of his shoe rock idly while he read the price board on the wall.

A trim and color ran close to three hundred dollars.

He sat up straight.

The movement was so quick it almost made him laugh at himself.

After a short pause, he reached up and took off his glasses.

[?]

The response from System Theta came fast enough to make the meaning obvious. Elias had said more than once that he did not want unnecessary trouble. Taking off the glasses in public seemed like the opposite of that.

He ignored it.

It took less than a minute for people in the salon to start noticing him properly.

The hair alone would have drawn eyes. A slim blond college boy waiting alone in a salon already had enough visual pull to invite attention, and without the glasses there was nothing left to blunt the effect. Women who might have kept their distance from someone else started inventing reasons to glance his way.

One of them finally stood up from her seat and smiled at him. "Are you getting a perm or just touching up the color?"

Elias looked at her and, to her credit, did not find her hard to look at. A woman had to have some confidence to make the first move this openly.

"Just cutting it a little shorter," he said with a polite smile, "and dyeing the blond back to black."

"Back to black?" She sounded genuinely disappointed. "I actually think the blond suits you."

They kept talking after that.

Mostly she talked. Elias listened, answered when he felt like it, and let the conversation move at her pace. Other women in the salon could only watch from a distance, some curious, some openly annoyed that she had gotten there first.

After a while, one of the stylists called for the next client. The woman beside him smiled and tipped her hand toward the chair in invitation.

"Go on. A woman can wait; men should always come first."

Elias widened his eyes slightly, putting just enough surprise into it to make the reaction feel unplanned. Then he stuck out the tip of his tongue, playful and bright.

"Then I won’t argue. Thanks, big sis."

The effect was immediate.

Her hand flew to her chest as though the words had landed physically.

Several dozen minutes later, Elias walked back out of the salon wearing his glasses again and carrying himself with the quiet satisfaction of a man who had not paid for his own haircut.

His phone buzzed on the way out.

A follower request had come through on Instagram.

He ignored it without hesitation.

[You’re not accepting it?]

I agreed to let her send me a follower request, he replied. I never agreed to accept her.

[But she paid for your haircut.]

Elias blinked with such precise innocence that, if anyone had been watching, they might have believed it.

Did I ask her to? Did I even hint at it?

System Theta fell quiet for a moment.

Elias smiled as he stepped back onto the sidewalk. Don’t make it sound like she got cheated. She spent a couple hundred dollars, got to sit there talking to me for that long, and heard me call her big sis. She came out ahead.

Then his smile changed a little, not warmer and not colder, just truer.

Besides, not catching my interest is the luckiest thing that could’ve happened to her. Isn’t it?

[...]

System Theta had no real answer for that.

Because it was true.

If Elias had actually taken an interest in the woman, she would not have walked away from the experience with nothing worse than a lighter wallet and an ignored request.

The free haircut left him in such a good mood that he almost forgot the time. He started toward campus on foot, planning to cut through the next block, when a black car rolled up and stopped directly in front of him.

Elias did not hesitate.

He reached for the handle and got in.

Then he looked up and paused.

Victoria Frost was already inside.