Spring Romance: NINE Happily Ever Afters

by Tessa Bailey

  “Shall we make this game more interesting?” he asks.

  Stakes, he means. Betting. “What could I have that you want?”

  “You know, little virgin.”

  My face flames with embarrassment. “You already bought me, remember?”

  “I’m talking about a favorable exchange.”

  I glance at the board suspiciously. Have I left myself in danger? “My queen for your rook?”

  He smiles. “No, my queen for your rook.”

  That would put him in a worse position. “Why would you do that?”

  “Your house. It matters to you.”

  “It’s my house. My family’s house.”

  “It’s more than that. Tell me why.”

  “I grew up there. My father is comfortable there, and this might be his last few months.” Even that’s not the whole truth, and Gabriel knows it.

  “He can be comfortable somewhere else.”

  I stare at the board, trying to think how I can take his queen without answering. I can’t. My fists clench helplessly. This is what I didn’t want, to be sucked into a battle of wills with Gabriel Miller. To expose the soft flesh where he can hurt me the worst. But then that’s the entire point of the chess game.

  It’s the entire point of a virginity auction, too.

  “My mother killed herself.”

  He sucks in a breath. “I’m sorry.”

  “My dad told everyone it was an accident. Stormy night. Faulty brakes. No one questioned it. But I overheard the police chief talking to him that night. There was no sign of anything wrong with her brakes. And the tracks on the road—their forensics determined it was deliberate.”

  Your mind. Your soul. That’s your leverage.

  And I’m giving it up in exchange for the truth.

  “Avery.”

  “They kept it quiet because her family, my grandparents, they’re Catholic. They wanted her buried in the family crypt. They couldn’t have done that if—” If people knew she had killed herself.

  “Avery, I’m so sorry.”

  I’ve wondered and wondered why she died. Was she scared? Was she angry? I’m a grown woman now but there’s a part of me that will always be that broken little girl, wondering why her mother left her, thinking she wasn’t good enough to make her stay.

  “He built that house for my mother,” I say finally. “She conferred with the architect, who designed it for her. I don’t know… I don’t know why she wanted things that way. Or what it means, if anything. But it’s the only thing I have left from her.”

  “Her chessboard,” Gabriel says quietly, surprising me. He moves his queen into jeopardy.

  “Yes.” It’s from the beginning of her marriage with Daddy, when she was hopeful and in love. That was her opening move. And I already know how it ends. But that murky middle game, the place too wild for theoretical constructs. What happened to her then?

  I pick up my castle, holding it tight. The wood ridges press into my skin, a pain I find comforting. Then I push aside his queen, capturing her with his consent.

  We play the endgame to the sound of a crackling fire for a few minutes. The queen has given me an edge that I might be able to carry into checkmate. Though with his skill he can drag it out for some time, maybe even turn the tables. Unlikely.

  I find myself longing to even the score. The queen wasn’t a fair trade.

  “A favorable exchange,” I say.

  His eyebrows rise. “Your queen?”

  “For your rook. Why did you want my father’s business, if it was failing so bad?”

  His surprise fills the room, as loud as the fire, as the click of wood against wood. It’s a tangible thing, his shock. His reluctance to answer. But he wants my queen. “I saw you,” he says slowly. “At your graduation party.”

  My eyes widen. “You were there?”

  “Your father invited me. It would look less conspicuous if I arrived in a crowd. If I were seen dealing with him directly, people would assume we were working together.”

  I remember the cake shaped like a graduation hat, my elation after four years of preparatory academy uniforms, my excitement over going to college. So full of hope. I’d had no idea that two years later I’d be on the auction block.

  And I remember the man on the stairs. “I saw you.”

  “And I wanted you,” Gabriel says.

  My breath catches at the raw truth of him. He’s exposing himself. It’s worth so much more than my queen. “What did you do?”

  “I’m not a monster, despite what you think. I could have had you. Could have forced your hand even then. But I wanted you to come to me.”

  Oh, but he did force my hand. With patience, with cunning. He moved the chess pieces around, blocking me in from behind until there was only one path open to me.

  I move my rook out of safety. “That’s why you ruined my father,” I whisper.

  “I’m patient, when I need to be.” He captures my queen, turning this into a race to the end. “When your father’s business was struggling, he needed a buyer. It was his choice to cheat me.”

  “That doesn’t explain why he invited you to my graduation party in the first place. What were you working on with him? What didn’t he want people to know about?”

  Gabriel studies the board. “How much do you know about your father?”

  “I went to the trial.” Even though it had felt like a punch in the gut, every dark revelation about him, every former colleague that stood on the witness stand to testify against him. So many secrets. “I heard what he did.”

  “Not everything.”

  “Then what?”

  “Your bishop,” he says softly.

  I look down at the board, denial in my hands, my arms. Clenched in my chest. I can still win this. I know I can, and I think he knows it too. Except if I give him my bishop, I’ll be leaving my king exposed. Checkmate in two moves. I’ll lose. How much is this information worth to me?

  My heart beats a frantic rhythm as I reach the end.

  I move the bishop into jeopardy.

  “I’ve known your father for years. Who he is. But I hadn’t worked with him before. He invited me to your graduation party to see if I’d be willing to work with him, like my father did.”

  Dread is a cold fist around my heart. “What did your father do with him?”

  “He bought things. Sold things.” Gabriel uses his knight to take my queen. Only one move left and he’ll have my king. “Like most businessmen do.”

  Except that his father was a liar, which is why Gabriel hated him so much. “Drugs. Guns?”

  Golden eyes meet mine. “People.”

  I suck in a breath, horrified, disbelieving. “No.”

  He means that his father dealt in human trafficking. That my father had too.

  “Move,” Gabriel says softly.

  My fingers feel numb as I nudge a pawn forward. I ought to just knock over my king. I know what’s coming, but I need to hear him say it. I need to know the truth. Maybe I’m just like Gabriel Miller, after all. Myths can tell you about the people who make them, who believe them, but it’s the truth that matters.

  His rook crosses the board to the first row. Checkmate.

  The word comes from ancient Persian. Some say it means the King is dead, but the translation is a little less dire—depending on how you look at it. The King is helpless. The King is defeated. When there are no moves left, the only option is surrender.

  “I don’t deal in people,” he says. “I made that promise to myself when my father died. Never. Not ever. And then you were there, desperate and broke. God, you’d actually gotten thinner.”

  “You could have helped me!”

  “That’s not how this works.”

  The auction had been brutal. Being purchased like an object. The brief moments of kindness he gives me. “You bought me, but you haven’t fucked me.”

  “Is it killing you, the wait? Are you imagining the worst-case scenario with that beautiful strategic brai
n of yours? Would it be better if I came to your room tonight and broke you, little virgin?”

  Yes, God help me. I can’t manage words, and it comes out as a sob. My father was the monster in the Labyrinth all along. That’s who I put my virginity on the auction block for, someone who had bought and sold people. That’s what had paid for my tuition, my fancy dresses. I feel sick. Did my mother know about this? Was this why she killed herself?

  The last thing I see before I flee from the room is my king, fallen over on the board.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  I press my forehead against the cool glass, looking out at the dark woods. Justin braved those woods, and maybe actual wolves, to rescue me. It was actually pretty gallant, if not very well-thought-out. Gabriel would have gotten revenge on him in a manner both public and thorough.

  And I’d have given up a million dollars. Maybe it would have been worth it for love. But Justin had proven this wasn’t love when he broke up with me for what my father did.

  So I’m still here, still locked in the tower with my very own dragon.

  Gabriel is right when he said my mind can imagine the worst. A hundred strategies, a million possibilities. All the things he might do to me.

  Why do I wait for him to come to me?

  He gave me white because I made the first move. That’s what I should do about sex. It’s an advantage—a small one, but I need any advantage I can get. In chess we’re well matched. I still lost, sacrificing the game to get information that broke my heart. But when it comes to sex, he’s the far superior player. I’m a novice. I’m nothing.

  But I will finish this game the way I started it—with courage.

  I know exactly which room to find him in. The only door that’s locked. Who keeps the bedroom locked in their own house? A person with something to hide.

  My footsteps are soundless on the oriental runner in the hallway. My knock echoes, incongruously loud. It sounds aggressive. That’s what he said about chess. Aggressive and mathematical. That’s how I feel right now, as if I’m making the devil’s bargain.

  He opens the door, his expression incredulous. “You.”

  His shirtsleeves are rolled up, his dress pants revealing black socks. That seems like suddenly intimate knowledge, those black socks. I’ve already seen so much more of his body—felt it, anyway, in the darkness of the spiral staircase—but the simple domesticity of his socked feet seems momentous.

  “Can I come in?”

  He laughs, leaving the door open as he strides back into the room. That’s when I realize that he’s drunk. There’s a bottle on the table by his fireplace. I recognize the fading ink, the clear liquid. Moonshine.

  I follow him inside and shut the door behind us.

  He lifts a half-empty glass in mock salute. “Want some?”

  “Maybe it’s best if one of us stays sober.”

  His throat moves as he takes a large swallow. “I’m not that drunk. Not too drunk to get it up, if that’s what you came here for.”

  I blink. It takes me one, two, three seconds to figure out what he means by it and up. It’s embarrassing that I didn’t know there is a too drunk for sex. “Good.”

  A rough laugh. “Oh, little virgin. You’re so delicious. Do you know that?”

  My cheeks heat, and I turn away. “Not for much longer.”

  There’s a soft clink that must be him setting down his glass. A stir of air as he comes close. The faintest brush of the back of his fingers against my cheek. “You’ll always be delicious.”

  I meet his gaze. “But not a virgin.”

  “No,” he says, considering. “I don’t think you’ll be one for very long. Did you come to make a trade? A favorable exchange?”

  “I don’t have anything left to bargain with.” He’s taken my body in every way but this. And he’s taken what I swore never to give him: my mind, my soul. The ball of string that would have shown me the way out. There’s nothing left.

  He pulls something from his pocket, examining it. The pale wood gleams in the firelight. A pawn. He must have brought it from downstairs. I remember the shape of it, the smooth surface beneath my fingertips.

  “So small,” he says, voice thick. “Why can’t I let you go?”

  He must be drunker than he thinks if he’s talking to a piece of carved wood. Unless he means me. “I’m right here.”

  His golden gaze focuses on me. “Yes, little virgin. Will you undress for me? Will you open your legs? Let me fuck you until you bleed like a goddamn martyr?”

  A tremble begins from deep in my chest, spreading outward to my limbs. “I know you can make it good for me.”

  “You don’t want good,” he says as if the word itself is filthy. “You want to be fucked. That’s why you came here. Say it.”

  My voice is a whisper. “I came here to be fucked.”

  He points to the bed. “Sit.”

  I sit on the edge of the bed, realizing only when my feet dangle that it’s so tall. I feel small and helpless, which was probably the point. On edge. Definitely the point.

  That’s when I realize what he’s doing. I made the first move. He could have matched me, but that would have been too easy. Instead he moves the game in a different direction, expands the circle of our battle. The Sicilian Defense. It’s what he did with the auction, and it’s what he’s doing now.

  He comes to stand in front of me, his large hand toying with the ruffles of my nightgown. “What is this?”

  I bite my lip, embarrassed. “My other pajamas have…well, pictures. Unicorns. Rainbows.” I’m not really that childlike, but they were funny. Playful. This nightgown is a pale cream with a small pink bow at the neck. Too modest to seduce anyone, but better than monkeys in sunglasses.

  He studies the ruffles as if he’s never seen them before. They may as well be a new move in chess theory for how much they take his concentration—the little flurry of fabric, the inch of thigh underneath. “You hurt me, you know.”

  “What?”

  “Whenever I think about you, I hurt.” He puts a hand to his chest. “Here.”

  For a second I think he might be mocking me, like the men in the auction did. It’s a cold splash of water on arousal that shouldn’t be there. But he looks deadly serious.

  And he always tells the truth.

  “That’s the moonshine talking,” I say, pressing my knees together.

  He draws a line down my legs, where they touch. “This is the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen.”

  Not my breasts or my ass. It’s the seam of my legs, the line that keeps him out.

  He wants a chess game. That’s why he bought me. That’s why he waited to take my virginity. I don’t know whether the other men wanted my body or my soul, but this man—he wants the challenge.

  I look away because it’s scarier to play the game. Don’t fight him, oppose him. Make him desperate for more. That’s what Candy told me. I remember the knowing look in her eyes, the challenge. She knew how much harder this would be, to participate instead of fighting. To try to win knowing I’ll most likely lose.

  I want to be the martyr, like he said. I need that, because it’s the only way I can hate him. Make me bleed. Make me cry. I’d despise him in pure righteous fury.

  It’s the kindness I can’t trust.

  His thumb turns my chin to face him. “Little virgin.”

  “Gabriel.”

  “Spread your legs.”

  My heart pounds. “Make me.”

  There’s that pawn again. He rubs his finger over it in a way that shouldn’t be sensual but is. Again and again, until the smooth curved head seems like a place on my body. Until every stroke of his thumb makes me clench. “Don’t you want this?” he murmurs.

  It would be easy for him to push his hand between my legs, to spread them for me. I couldn’t stop him. I wouldn’t try. He wants me to give in, though. He wants to line up his pieces, prepared to strike. And then he wants me to move my queen into jeopardy, because he asks.

  “
No.”

  He laughs softly, considering the rounded head of the pawn. “Such a small thing. But powerful. Don’t you think?”

  His tongue swipes his thumb, which he uses on the pawn again. It glistens with his saliva. Then he does something obscene, something shocking—he puts the curved pawn against his lips. A kiss. The hint of a lick. “Open.”

  My legs are trembling with the force of staying together. My inner thigh muscles are clenching and unclenching, spasming as I watch him suck the little head of the piece.

  My breath catches. “I can’t—”

  Every cell in my body is screaming for me to open my thighs, but it’s not just his thumb that will touch me. Not just his lips or his tongue. He’ll fuck me tonight. The promise is burning bright in his gaze.

  “You have to, little virgin. It’s the only way you’ll feel better. Just give in.”

  Move into jeopardy. Be captured. So simple and yet so hard to do. Surrender.

  My fists clench in the sheets behind me. Slowly, centimeter by centimeter, I open my legs to him. Two of his fingers lift the frill at the bottom of my nightgown, studying me with humiliating frankness.

  “Such a beautiful pussy. Is it beautiful because no one has fucked it yet? Or is it fuckable because it’s so beautiful?”

  I have to laugh. “Now that’s definitely the moonshine talking.”

  His grin is dark and playful. Seductive. “The moonshine is a nice excuse to say what I’m thinking. God, little virgin. If you knew what I thought about, watching you in that gold dress, seeing you in those godforsaken yoga pants. Prancing around the house like you feel safe. I want to bring you down like a fucking gazelle in the Serengeti.”

  My eyes feel wide, my breath faster. My legs spread a little farther apart.

  “Keep your hands in the sheets,” he says softly.

  “Okay,” I gasp.

  “Yes, sir.”

  There’s a fight inside me. The string, hold onto the string! But I want so badly to surrender. I need to. My eyes close on a sigh. “Yes, sir.”

  Blunt fingers push my thigh to the side even farther. I’m so exposed like this. Vulnerable. Then he touches my clit, like I wanted him to. My body shudders against the caress.