by Skye Warren
“How else does someone have them?”
He continues as if I didn’t speak, working it through with slow, pained deliberation. “And you think I shared those pictures with the world out of spite, out of revenge on a girl who’s done nothing wrong.”
Doubt flickers inside me. “Didn’t you?”
I expect him to admit it—he’s never shied away from what he’s done. If anything he seems to take perverse pleasure in threatening me, in using me, in pointing out all the ways he hurts me.
Or maybe he’ll deny it, after all. He’ll defend his honor with the same vigor and violence with which he went after my father. He’ll come after me, and when we clash, it will be so satisfying.
He does neither of those things. Instead he stalks to the window, large hands cradling the window frame, large body canting forward. Over his shoulder I can see the city’s skyline rising high and swerving sideways, like looking through a fun-house mirror.
“You have good reason to suspect me,” he says softly.
I take a step closer. “Don’t.”
“I’m sorry, Avery.” But it’s not the kind of apology that comes with an admission. It’s soft and thoughtful, the kind that would come from a man who gives a shit about me.
“Don’t pull this reverse psychology bullshit on me. I know what you did.”
A short laugh, without any humor. “And what are you going to do about it, little virgin? You’re powerless. No money. No one to help you. Living one step up from a cardboard box.”
It stings to hear him lay it out so plainly, but I have the feeling it hurts him too.
“I can fight back,” I warn him. I’m still pumped enough to do it, finally pushed beyond all sanity. I could hit him, kick him. Bite him. Even with the unspooling thread of doubt that he did this to me, I’d be able to hurt someone for the first time in my life.
“Like you did in the attic?” He turns to face me. “I won’t stop you this time.”
And I realize this is my own personal Rubicon, the line I’m going to cross. There will be two versions of Avery St. James, the one who was a victim and the one who’s a warrior. The one who refused to do harm and the one who slaps a man who won’t defend himself. I’m not sure which version of me is better, but I’m hurting enough to do it anyway. All I have to do is remember the grainy black-and-white pictures of me, taken when I didn’t know it. Shared to humiliate and shame me. All I have to do is remember Justin saying he forgives me for something I didn’t even do.
“Go ahead,” he murmurs. “I didn’t take those pictures, but I’m not going to pretend I’m innocent. If I hadn’t ruined your father, he wouldn’t have turned on his partners. They wouldn’t have attacked him. You’d have a protector in the world instead of being alone.”
My hands clench into fists. “Keep going.”
His eyes flash with something—maybe regret. Maybe relief. “And that business deal where your father cheated me? Even before that it wasn’t completely legal. He was desperate enough to sell his business for more than it was worth. Desperate enough to include you in the package.”
“No,” I whisper. What does that even mean—include you? Like I’m an object, a little yellow price tag stamped on my breast. “You’re lying.”
“One month.”
“He would never have asked me that.”
“Of course not. He would have arranged for you to find out about his debts. Maybe your credit card would get declined when you tried to buy notebooks and pencils. And then he’d break down and confess how dire the situation was, how horrible I am. If only there was something he could do to please me, something he could give me—”
“No.” My voice rises to a shout. “No. No.”
“I already bought your virginity, Avery. You’ve always been mine.”
Grief and rage collide in a toxic miasma, blurring my vision. A keening sound fills the air, and I realize it’s me. And then I’m doing it; I’m hitting him, again and again, his cheek red with the blows. I’m using all my strength and it barely moves him, the smack ugly and loud. It’s the sound of someone breaking—but not him. It’s me.
When he finally catches me in his arms, I’m sobbing, incoherent.
“Shh,” he says. “You have to stop. You’ll hurt yourself.”
When he says it, I realize that my hand is throbbing. That’s how strong he is, how impenetrable. Like beating myself against a brick wall. He’ll still be standing in a hundred years.
“No,” I say, voice thick with tears. “You’re lying. You’re lying.”
Except he’s not. I know because he promised to tell me the truth. And he’s kept his word time and time again. It feels like losing a part of me, a limb torn off, to hear what Daddy did. How could he do it? Some truths you’d rather not hear.
His hands move over me, soothing, tender. “I know, sweetheart. I know.”
“She didn’t love him,” I say, voice still broken by tears.
“I know.”
I don’t ask how he does, but that’s true too. There are secrets in my family. Secrets so dark I’m beginning to wonder if they buried my mother deeper than the drunk driver ever did. There’s only been one constant. Gabriel Miller. That he’s wanted me. He’s taken me. You’ve always been mine.
His hands frame my face. I must look terrible with my eyes red from crying, grief staining my face, but the reverence in his gaze leaves no doubt what he sees. Someone beautiful.
“Listen to me,” he says softly. “Your mother lived in a time when women didn’t have many choices. She did the best she could for her family. She was strong—damn near invincible.”
I never doubted my mother. “Why are you telling me this?”
His thumbs sweep away my tears. “Because that’s what you did. That’s what you are.”
“I don’t live in her time.”
“Don’t you? Your father wanted to keep you his little girl. He would let you out of your room for parties to impress the other grownups with how smart you are. Justin wanted a trophy, something to parade around and lord over the other frat boys.”
“And you?”
“I’m the worst of them,” he says softly. “I want to own every inch of your skin, to be the only man who touches you, who tastes you. You think I wouldn’t bid on a woman? That I shouldn’t bid on you, of all people? I’ll spend every cent I have, break every goddamn law to keep you.”
A shiver runs through me. “You wanted the auction.”
“Wanted it? No. Those were the worst hours of my life, knowing that other men would see you. That they might touch you. I wanted to smash their faces in, every single one of them.”
“Then why did you suggest it?”
“Would you have sold yourself to me if I had suggested it at the Den?”
“No.”
“And what about if your father had come to you, told you to sleep with me in order to pay his debts?”
I swallow hard. “I don’t know.”
“Oh, I think you would have. I think you’d have done anything for your precious daddy, but he got cold feet. After the ink dried, when he went home and looked into your eyes, he didn’t want to go through with it.”
It’s hard to take comfort in that, knowing he agreed to the deal in the first place. “And no one backs out of a deal with you.”
“For that alone I would have ruined him, but I wanted you. He should have known I’d have you no matter what. Whether he agreed or not. Whether you wanted me or not.”
“Why are you telling me now?”
His lips twist in cold amusement. “I didn’t count on how well you could play the game.”
“I lost everything.”
“It wasn’t a fair trade,” he admits softly. “My black heart for everything you hold dear. Your only solace is that I’m ruined even worse. An empty shell.”
“What are you saying?” I whisper.
“Do you remember when I told you to kneel?”
My heart thuds. “I can’t forget.”
“Why did you do it?”
“Because I wanted the diary.” Except that’s not the whole truth. And doesn’t he deserve that? I wanted him broken, bleeding, and he’s doing that. This proud man admitting defeat. “And because I wanted you.”
His eyes burn like the sun, painful and bright. “Do you know what it did to me? God, I was so ready to take you. I would have taken you and taken you. Never giving anything back. Understand? I never thought for one second that you’d give yourself to me willingly.”
“You never came to me.”
“I never believed I could have you without buying you,” he says, his voice flat.
There’s nothing in his tone to reveal emotion, no hint of weakness. How long did it take him to perfect that facade? How much power does it require to maintain those walls? I know the truth about him—about Gabriel’s father and his moonshine. His whorehouse. What did Gabriel Miller see that made him think he wasn’t worthy of love?
“Kneel,” I say softly.
He stills. “Repeat that.”
It’s a dangerous game, making a lion bow in front of you. One I’m willing to play if it means winning. It’s not only my safety that’s at stake, but my heart. Not as black as Gabriel’s, but more fragile. “Kneel.”
In the heartbeats that follow, he could storm from the room. He could push me down on the floor and have his way with me. There are a million outcomes besides what he does. One knee on the floor. Then the other. With his height and breadth, he still comes to my chest.
This is the part where he tucked my head against his thigh, where he absolved me in a wordless balm. Where I could feel his arousal, already hard and throbbing.
His hands go to my jeans, careful and sure.
It’s like a fever, an intense burn that makes my skin warm and pink, that makes me shudder. His fingers are blunt as they stroke down my stomach, into the slick crest between my legs.
“Fuck,” he breathes.
And then he fuses his lips to my clit, making me buck in surprise. I knew what he wanted from me, but the slide of his tongue is still a shock. I cry out, and he groans his approval.
He pulls back to meet my eyes. “That’s right. Let them hear you. They’ll never get to taste you like this. Never get to feel your clit against their lips, will they?”
“Oh God,” I gasp. “No, no.”
Male satisfaction makes his eyes glow. “This pretty little cunt has always been mine. Say it.”
Those words. My cheeks flush. “This pretty—”
Two fingers nudge at my opening, pressing inside with a possessive force. My flesh molds around him, clenching and clenching, trying to pull him deeper. “Finish.”
“This pretty little—”
He leans forward to work a slow lick from his fingers to my clit, the extended contact a blissful agony. My hips rock against him, begging, desperate.
I know what he wants. “This pretty little cunt has always…”
When he sucks my clit, I lose all sense of time and space. I’m floating in a sea of sunlight and pleasure, only his mouth and his fingers and the rough sound of his encouragement.
He holds me on the brink until tears leak down my cheeks. It hurts, and I whimper. He’s merciless, teasing me with gentle licks and twists of his fingers.
“Always yours,” I manage to gasp. “I’ve always been yours.”
His fingers curl inside me, and I rise up on my toes. The pleasure radiates from my core, blooming over my breasts, my lips, all the way down to my toes. My mouth opens on a silent cry. His teeth graze my clit, and then I scream. They all hear me—those men downstairs. The dangerous ones, the powerful ones. They know who owns me now. And I know too.
Chapter Twenty-Five
After the orgasm hits, my legs crumple beneath me. Gabriel catches me in his lap, cradling me as pleasure renders me helpless. The tidal wave of pleasure recedes, but the water remains, lapping at my skin in remembered relief.
Gabriel doesn’t hold anything back, murmuring soft words while he strokes my hair. This is a side of him I haven’t seen before, but one I always knew existed—the natural counterpoint to his strictly enforced stoicism. He was so careful never to be kind, so deliberate in his remoteness. And God maybe that was for the best, because his tenderness hits me harder than the orgasm. A few seconds and I’m already addicted. You were always mine.
He moves before I’m ready, fixing my clothes and leading me downstairs.
Damon Scott waits for us, wearing a forbidding expression.
Through the link of our hands, I feel Gabriel tense. “We’re leaving.”
“Don’t you think you’ve done enough?” Damon asks.
The temperature drops by twenty degrees. “Clearly I don’t, since I’m taking her home with me. Since when are you the police around here?”
“Since I found out I failed her.”
The question strikes a chord in me—curiosity mingled with expectation. Something is happening, pieces moving into place around me. Not quite understanding the choices of my opponent but trusting that they have meaning. Which means the final blow is coming.
Exhaustion weighs down my limbs, my eyelids. The shock of my father’s involvement in my downfall, the blissful respite that Gabriel’s mouth offered. They lay a blanket over me, shielding me from the world.
“You have nothing to do with this,” Gabriel says, voice tight.
“I think I do. I’m the one who sold her to you. My—”
“No, Damon. She’s mine. And I don’t think you want to get between me and what’s mine. You aren’t suicidal.”
The threat is delivered with cold certainty, between two men who are friends. I don’t want to get between them. My family’s secrets are a dark vine, winding its way through the city, thorns leaving marks everywhere it goes.
“Please,” I whisper. “Don’t fight.”
The ticking of the grandfather clock marks the tension in inexorable evenness.
Damon studies me, dark gaze impersonal but thorough as it takes in my weariness. “There’s a week left of the thirty days, but I don’t give a fuck about that. Not anymore. Do you want to go with him?”
Gabriel’s hand tightens on mine. Clearly he’s willing to fight his way through, fight his friend. My heart has been cracked and battered ever since the auction, but the final blow is this—realizing that Gabriel still thinks I’ll say no. That he has to buy me, to force me, that I could never want him on my own.
“I want to go,” I say, my voice clear.
Damon’s expression reveals he still doubts the truth of it, but he doesn’t stand in our way. I don’t know what change of heart made him auction me, as emotionless as if I were a Persian rug, and then suddenly decide to help me. But I don’t need his help. Not about this.
Without another word Gabriel leads me past Damon, down the hallway and out the front door. A black limo waits in the damp air, raindrops glittering on the glossy tinted windows. Then we’re pulling away from the Den, heading toward Gabriel’s home, side by side in the deep shadowy interior.
A shiver works through me, and Gabriel changes the settings to warm me. I feel hot air blowing on me, but it can’t touch the coldness inside me. Only Gabriel’s hands do that, his body as he curves around me, his lips as he murmurs against my temple.
“Thank you,” he says.
“It’s coming apart,” I whisper.
“What is?”
The carefully constructed tangle of lies my father has built. And I’m afraid to see what thread appears next. Afraid to find out the rest of my mother’s story. “Did he really sell me?”
“I’m sorry, Avery.”
Pain can’t touch me now. Grief. Fear. “Keep me,” I say softly. “The rest of the thirty days. Don’t send me away again.”
His arms tighten around me. “I won’t.”
“The pictures.”
“I’ll find out who took them. Who vandalized the house.” Gabriel’s voice is grim. “He’ll wish he hadn�
��t.”
My eyes close against the possibilities. “I don’t understand. Why now?”
“I had security on the house. When you came to get your photos taken, you mentioned someone had been at your house at night.”
Old terror tightens my chest. “I convinced myself I had imagined that.”
“That would have been the best-case scenario, but I put security on the house anyway. Even after you were with me.”
“Because Daddy was still there.” And I realize that part of the weariness I saw in his eyes was from my father’s injuries. “And you didn’t pay for his care just because of me.”
“Some people think the point of chess is to kill the king. You know the truth.”
“Checkmate. It comes from the Persian verb for to remain. It means he’s helpless. Trapped.” My lashes lower. “Is that what you wanted to do to my father?”
“It’s the ultimate victory. Not that he should die, be made a martyr, mourned by a daughter he doesn’t deserve. I want him trapped in every sense of the word, unable to make another move, but alive and fully aware of his loss.”
“That’s disturbing.”
“That’s chess.”
Realization dawns. “And you stopped security after the auction, after I lost the house and you were no longer responsible for it.”
“Yes.”
“And that’s when someone vandalized it.” Someone who had pictures of me naked. Possibly the same person who had tried to break into my house while I was home. “But why didn’t they come after me directly?”
“They probably figured you’d find out what happened at the house.”
“But the motel would have been so much easier to break into.” I draw in a sharp breath. “You had security there too, didn’t you?”
“Not as much as I wanted, but some. And I made it known that you were under my protection. No one would have gotten into your room, that was for damn sure.”
It clicks, then. “Will. You put him there.”
“We had an understanding.”
Questions flood my mind. Did Will tell him everything that had happened, including Justin spending part of the night? Did he call Gabriel the night we got high? Is that why he came to check on me? Maybe another girl would have found that kind of watchfulness unnerving, but right now I find comfort in it. In a world where men would control me, Gabriel protects me.