by Tessa Bailey
Except it feels different. Harder. Cooler.
I look down to see him holding the pawn, pressing it against me. “Oh God,” I whisper.
“I love those ridiculous ruffles, but I need you to take that off now. Unless you want me to come all fucking over it.”
It’s hard to move, hard to breathe when he’s doing that with the chess piece against my clit. Clumsy arms manage to work their way out of the nightgown. I push it over my flushed face, not even minding the stark nakedness that follows, his hungry gaze on my breasts. It all feeds the intensity building between my legs, centered on that horrible little chess piece. The one he caressed. The one he licked.
My body responds to the hardness of the wood, the curve of the head, but I want something else. Heat. Velvet. His body, muscled and hair roughened. The pawn feels impersonal, demeaning, and God, even sexier because of it. There’s a darker seduction in knowing he’s once removed from me. The pawn is a tool, and so am I. My head drops back, eyes staring at nothing, hips rocking into the piece.
“That’s right,” he murmurs. “Come all over the pawn. Spill your sweet juice on it. I want to lick you up like that. I want you nice and wet for what happens next.”
What happens next, what happens next. The words bounce around in my head, meaningless. Until the sound of a zipper tears through the room. Then my gaze snaps to his pants, where he’s taken out his cock. He’s stroking it. And it’s big. Massive. A million times bigger than the pawn. How will it go inside me? Why wasn’t I satisfied with the small wooden head on my clit? He’s got a club in his fist.
“Wait,” I say, the word slurred with impending climax. “Wait, please.”
“Naughty, little virgin. There’s no waiting.” He makes the circles faster, tighter, pressing the pawn right where I need it. Then I’m crying out, sobbing, begging him to stop, give me, no, more, please.
The spasms continue long after he pulls the chess piece away. He doesn’t just lick me up. He puts the whole head of the pawn into his mouth, sucking me off the wood before tossing the pawn aside.
Then there’s something thick and blunt at my entrance.
“How?” I ask, almost frantic with the question. How will he fit? How did I come to this? How will I go on after this, knowing that I sold my soul to the devil?
He doesn’t give me an answer but pushes inside with one hard thrust.
The cry that escapes me is primal—grief at losing something. Pain at the violation. “Gabriel.”
“A little more,” he says, teeth gritted.
That’s when I realize he isn’t all the way inside. “Oh God. I can’t take more.”
“You knew it would hurt,” he murmurs, jaw tight, eyes shut as if he’s hanging on to control by a thread.
I shouldn’t care about him, shouldn’t love what he does to me. That’s how he’s broken me. So much worse than the ripping agony in my body. So much harder than knowing we’ll end when the clock stops ticking. “Do it,” I whisper.
He takes the invitation with a curt nod. There’s a slight tensing of his muscles. I feel it between my legs. That’s the only warning before he pushes forward, plunging deep inside me. I can feel him at my very center, filling me, hurting me. “How do people do this?”
His laugh is pained. “Only you could make me smile at a time like this.”
I wince. “Is it over?”
He reaches down and uses his thumb like he promised, rubbing it over my clit like the smooth head of the pawn. Around and around in endless, blissful circles. By degrees I can relax. It still feels too full. There’s a memory of the burn as he entered me. But my muscles ripple around in something almost like pleasure.
Then he pulls back and pushes in, hitting a spot inside me that makes my back arch, my head bend back, my teeth click together in audible shock.
“That’s right, little virgin,” he says, one syllable between every thrust.
I’m turning into some other creature, more and more every time he finds that place inside me. My whole body feels liquid, turned inside out. Something is building, like when he touches my clit but different too. “I’m not…a virgin…anymore.”
He’s inside me, so deep inside me.
One thrust and he’s all the way to the hilt. I can feel the coarse hairs of him pressing against my sensitive bare skin. He grinds there, and my eyes roll back.
“Did you really think this would end?” he mutters roughly. “Did you think I would fuck you and you’d stop being my little virgin?”
I don’t answer. I can’t. He’s rocking against my clit with his whole body, and it’s pushing me over some edge. I dig my heels into his back, desperate to hold on to the ledge.
“No, I bought your virginity. I took it. It’s mine, little virgin. Just like you, you’re mine.”
My mouth opens on an uneven breath. He pushes his hips against mine, a crude demand my body understands better than I do. The orgasm hits me, and I’m freefalling, dizzy with it, upside down, the wind against my face. I can see the high ledge that I’d stood on as I reach the ground and crash.
Gabriel grabs the back of my neck with one hand, my hip with the other. Leverage, I realize. My body and soul. One. Two. Three deep thrusts and then he’s coming, groaning like he’s in pain, muttering my name in rapid succession—Avery, Avery. Fuck, Avery.
He collapses on me, rolling to the side, pulling me with him.
And then one final “Fuck,” his voice broken.
“I didn’t know,” I whisper, and it feels like a grave injustice that it took until the ripe age of twenty to learn how this could feel. At the same time it’s the perfect discovery. “I didn’t know you could be so deep inside.”
There’s a strange emptiness when he pulls out of me, a dampness against my thigh. Then I’m draped over him, catching my breath against his broad chest, reeling from what just happened.
Chapter Thirty
I’m still breathing hard when he stands up.
He touches something on the sheet. Blood, bright and smeared across white sheets. It looks barbaric. That came from my body. From his rough claiming.
His hand curls into a fist.
“Gabriel?”
Without a word he goes into the bathroom. I’m half expecting him to draw a bath like he did for me before. Or maybe return with a damp towel. I can feel him between my legs.
It’s sore there. And bloody, apparently.
The sweat on my body cools, and I shiver in the bed. Alone.
I feel a little disoriented, as if I drank a whole bottle of that moonshine. What just happened? That was sex. I just had sex with Gabriel Miller. I lost my virginity to him.
My legs are unsteady as I stand, using the side table to hold myself up until my knees lock. Then I make my way over to the bathroom, where the door is slitted open. Gabriel is standing there naked, unselfconscious, his arms braced on the edge of the counter, his strange gold gaze trained on the mirror. He’s looking at himself. What does he see?
“Gabriel?”
He doesn’t move. “What do you want?”
The sharpness of his voice cuts me. “Are you coming back to bed?”
I liked the way he held me last time, curled around me protectively while I drifted off to sleep. I need him to do that again, especially with the strange, remote expression on his face.
“It’s my bed,” he says, voice brusque. “I belong there. Not you.”
I suck in a breath. “Why are you being like this?”
“Like what?”
“Like an ass!”
“I’m sorry if you were expecting something different, Ms. James. I bought you. I used you. Now I’m done.”
Stung, I take a step back. “So I’m supposed to go to my room and sit there until you want to use me again, is that it?”
He swings around to face me, taking a step closer. “No, I don’t want to use you anymore. Now that I’ve had you, I’m done. You can go.”
My mouth drops. “But…a month…”
His gaze flickers over my body, both admiring and cruel. “You’re beautiful, but there are lots of beautiful women in the city. The only thing that made you special was your virginity, and now that’s gone.”
Hurt feels like a concrete block in my chest, weighing me down, making it impossible to breathe. “You’re just saying that.”
“Why would I just say that?” he asks, mocking. “Do you really think that highly of yourself? One taste and I would have to keep fucking you for eternity? That’s a pretty magical cunt you must have.”
Rage feels so much better than the aching pain. “Fine. Pretend like there wasn’t a connection between us. Pretend like you didn’t enjoy the chess and the…the sex!”
Two steps and he’s right in front of me. Then his hand fists in my hair. He bends my head back so I’m looking up at him. “Let’s get this straight, Ms. James. I enjoyed the chess. I enjoyed the sex even more. But you were only a means to an end. A pawn.”
I blink, but there’s no fighting these tears. They fill my eyes and fall in shameful drops down my cheeks. He lets go of my hair with a rough sound.
“We got too close,” I say, my voice uneven. “You’re scared, because—”
“Make excuses for me. Because Daddy kept a whorehouse, I never learned how to love, is that it? Tell me, little virgin. Did you imagine you could fix me? Did you think if you beat me at chess, I’d learn my lesson? But I won the game, didn’t I? You lost.”
Through the tears I see the beige pawn lying on the carpet. Discarded. Its usefulness over. That’s what I am here—my father’s daughter, bought to send a message. Fucked to drive that message home. He’s nothing if not thorough. And now my usefulness? It’s over.
I stare at his back as he walks into the bedroom, dismissing me.
He picks up the half-empty bottle of moonshine from the table.
How could I have cared about him? But it doesn’t matter. I still care about him, even now that I know he’s every bit the monster I feared. The heart is the cruelest enemy of all.
With my heart in my throat, I move to leave. I’m standing with my hand on the knob, trying to make sense of it. I spent so long thinking about defeating the Minotaur that I didn’t consider he might just let me go.
I didn’t consider that I would have liked to stay.
Part of me wants to go to him, to demand that he explain why he’s kicking me out, to make him see we have something deeper. Except I barely know that myself. It’s a shock to realize I’ve come to care for him, this man of precious metal and revenge, of carved wood and heartache.
I’m supposed to hate him.
From across the room comes a terrible crash, making me jump. I turn to see the thick moonshine bottle in shards against the iron grate in the fireplace, a ship against jagged rocks, embattled by the storm.
Gabriel destroyed it, that last memento from his father.
How had I forgotten his violence? Why had I been so sure he wouldn’t use it against me? Fear runs through my veins, cold and thin. I may not hate Gabriel Miller, but I’m still afraid of him. Then I’m running through the halls, trying to remember my way back, trying to find the way out.
Chapter Thirty-One
I’d like to slink away in silent disgrace, but I don’t have a car. I also don’t have the address to call a cab. I consider using my phone’s location to request an Uber, but I’m pretty sure there’s a fence around the property. I don’t need another confrontation like the one with Justin.
So in a humiliating walk of shame, I head downstairs.
The kitchen is empty, but I find Mrs. Burchett in a room off to the side, reading a book. She stands as soon as she sees me. “Oh, hello, dear. Are you hungry? I can heat up…” Then her shrewd eyes take in my expression. She makes a tsk sound. “What do you need, dear?”
“I think…a cab.” I flush, ashamed because surely my hair and rumpled clothes give away what I’ve just done. I probably even smell like sex. “He said I should go.”
She shakes her head as if admonishing Gabriel. “I’ll call a car around.”
“No, just a cab—”
Her lips purse together. “He’ll want to make sure you’re safe.”
“I wouldn’t count on that,” I mutter.
She types something into her phone, clearly as proficient with an iPhone as she is with a rolling pin. “I know he can be a bear, but he does care about you.”
I flinch. He’s just made it abundantly clear that he doesn’t, but I have no desire to spell it out for Mrs. Burchett. That’s a pretty magical cunt you must have. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Oh, but it does,” she insists. “He made sure your father was taken care of. It damn near killed him to wait until that night to send someone to help you.”
“He had to. The auction—”
“Gabriel Miller doesn’t have to do anything. He set the terms because he knew you needed help. That’s why he sent someone to watch over you, once he heard there was someone watching you.” She casts a worried glance into the dark night. “Imagine he’ll do the same now that you’re going back.”
“You’re wrong. That guard was from Damon, protecting his investment.”
She clearly doesn’t believe me. “Well, you be careful regardless. The world is full of dangerous people, Ms. James.”
Headlights flash from the drive.
That’s the story of how I end up in a limo two hours after I lost my virginity.
The driver doesn’t ask any questions, for which I’m grateful. I cross my arms in front of me, holding tight as if I can keep myself from breaking into a thousand different pieces.
I’m not sure what I thought I’d be returning to when I left for the auction. Some chance at a normal life? College? Marriage? It all feels so far removed. Impossible words. I’ve lost the ball of string somewhere along the way. I might be going home, but I’m still in the maze.
All I have with me is my purse. Mrs. Burchett assured me that my clothes and things would be delivered tomorrow. He’ll want to make sure you have everything right away. Or maybe he’d just throw it all into the fire like his father’s moonshine.
I pull out my phone, trying to pretend I’m not looking for his name. I want him to call me, to tell me he’s sorry. But he doesn’t. There are lots of missed calls. None from him.
Almost unthinking I press the last name. Harper.
“Where have you been?” she demands.
“I—” My voice breaks, because I don’t know how to explain. I don’t even understand it myself. Almost every myth references love, betrayal. Heartbreak. Universal truths that I’ve read a thousand times but still can’t comprehend. No story can explain this pain that feels too big for my body.
“Justin is missing.”
Awareness rises like the tide, slow but ineffable. “What do you mean?”
“I mean he never went back to Yale. I know a couple guys over there. One who’s on the sailing team with him. He went AWOL.”
“He came to see me, but…”
Gabriel swore he wouldn’t hurt him. Or did he? I can’t be sure I got the promise from him. Where would Justin have gone if not back to school? He might have stayed at his parents’ house in Tanglewood, but he would have at least texted his teammates. Even with winter creeping up, they continued to sail.
I drop the phone onto the seat. It slides onto the floor as the limo stops.
When the car stops at the gate, I already have the door open.
Lights are on in the house when my father’s evening routine should be finished. No one should be here. A man in a suit emerges from the front door. I run toward the house, my heart pounding with a new fear.
“Ms. James?” he asks.
“That’s me. What’s going on?” I try to push past him, but he’s blocking my path. “Where’s my father?”
“I’m Mr. Stewart. We spoke on the phone.”
That catches my attention. Pushing past the panic, I focus on him—on the solemn expression in his eyes. He l
ooks as kind as he sounded on the phone. And worried.
“Oh God. No.”
“Your father suffered a coronary incident this evening. He’s been taken to Tanglewood Hospital. I don’t have the details yet, but our emergency staff is interfacing with the doctors there to make sure he has the best care.”
He’s been standing in front of the door, and as I turn my head, I see something yellow affixed to the thick wood. It pulls me closer, almost as if I’m hypnotized. Mr. Stewart is still talking, something about complications and interventions, but he’s just background noise.
In bold letters the yellow paper says NOTICE OF CRIMINAL FORFEITURE.
“How is that possible?” I whisper.
The house is owned by my trust, which is owned by me. Uncle Landon said it would be safe. From the very beginning, he told me that. Protected from my father’s crimes. The auction would have covered the real estate taxes, the maintenance—except it’s too late.
Somehow I’m too late.
The expression of sympathy on Mr. Stewart’s face is the worst thing I’ve ever seen. Worse than the cruel look on Gabriel’s face when he said the words magic cunt. “We received a call yesterday that Mr. James would be required to vacate the premises.”
“Did Daddy know?” My voice cracks. “Did he know we’d lost the house?”
A grim pause. “He knew.”
There’s only one question. “Who?”
Did Uncle Landon find a way to break through the trust, his revenge for choosing the auction over his proposal? It hurts to think about, but maybe that’s not the answer. Maybe it’s much more obvious—and much more painful. Did Gabriel Miller figure out a way to circumvent the trust and take ownership of the house?
I look down at the yellow sheet of paper, already crushed in my fists. I smooth it open as if it’s an ancient scroll, the secrets of lost treasure written on parchment. There’s legalese about vacating the premises—that’s what my mother’s legacy has been reduced to, premises.
And then I see it, the holding company with a corporate address.