“You’re gone.” He stroked her nipple under his thumb. “You’ve been gone for days, Veda. Talk to me. Is it work?”
Veda’s eyes searched his master bedroom, the subtle grays and whites that made it so calming but did nothing to calm her right then. Lifting her eyes past the tall gray headboard and up to the recessed ceiling, she let the brightness of the sunken lights burn her irises, moving her hands from his thighs and stroking them through the hairs on his forearms. An explosion from the Netflix movie she’d stopped watching ages ago left the flat-screen’s speakers and filled the room. Veda could hardly tell if the explosion was from the TV or her heart.
A shot of panic raced through her because it was back. The darkness. Even cuddled in Gage’s arms, with his heated touch on her nipples, his heavy arm around her promising protection, and his scent filling her nostrils, it wasn’t enough. Her one source of light and sanity was losing power, and there was no way for her to recharge.
Even worse, her second source of sanity, the beautiful release of exacting revenge, was in danger as well. It terrified her just how far she was now hanging over a cliff with a thousand-foot drop, holding on by just the tips of her fingers, one moment of weakness away from falling to her death.
Had this been inevitable all along? Had her thirst for revenge always been bound to ruin her life, and that fact was now playing out in real time? Moving faster than a speeding bullet, fatally wounding everyone she cared about as it went?
Did she have no choice but to stop?
And even if she did stop, would Jax go ahead and release those photos anyway, just for the fun of it?
The loss of control sent her chest heaving, and she slammed her eyes closed when tears stung them. The awful truth pummeled her from inside out.
He was still in control. Ten years before, Jax had taken control of her body in the worst way. Veda had promised herself she’d never let another person take control of her like that again. But there he was, ten years later, in her house, on her time, bringing her quest for vengeance to a grinding halt.
Veda couldn’t help but wonder if she’d ever really reclaimed her control, her body, her life.
Maybe she hadn’t.
Maybe her obsession with revenge was just another way those animals still controlled her.
The thought made her blood run cold.
“Baby!” Gage covered her entire breast and squeezed.
Veda giggled, cuddling deeper. “I’m here, I’m here. What did you say?”
“I asked if you need me to take care of Dr. Britler. I may not work at the hospital anymore, but I still have enough pull to have him taken care of.”
“No, baby.” Veda pulled his arm tighter around her body, desperate for it to help her escape her mind. It didn’t. “Don’t do that. Dr. Britler is the absolute worst, and I hate him more than menstrual cramps, but he doesn’t deserve to lose his job.”
“Is he the reason you’re off in another world all the time?”
“No. He’ll never have that kind of power over me.” Apparently that power still belongs to the ten monsters who raped me. Veda drew in a breath and tried to focus, shaking his arm from where she still held it. “Tell me about you. I haven’t even asked how your first day at the foundation went.”
“Don’t worry about me. I’m worried about you.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Should I be worried about you? Did you not have a good time?”
Silence.
“Oh baby,” she purred. “You were so excited about it at dinner the other night.”
He breathed in so deeply it caused her entire body to rise and fall with his heaving chest. “Let’s just say I wasn’t exactly welcomed with open arms. Tolerated would be a better word.”
“I don’t understand. A non-profit should be happy to see anyone who supports their cause.”
“Anyone but a Blackwater. The woman I was assigned to trail for the day? You should’ve seen how fast her smile fell the moment she saw me. She was completely and utterly disgusted that she was so much as sharing air with a Blackwater… until she found out you were my girlfriend. Then she eased up a little.”
Her eyebrows shot up. “Me?”
“She said she knew you in high school. Got really excited.”
Veda’s heartbeat tripled. “What was her name?”
He gave an embarrassed chuckle. “I can’t remember. I met so many people today. I’ll take a picture of her next time I’m there, if her hatred of Blackwaters hasn’t rebounded by then.” He squeezed her. “I might have to drop your name again, just in case she decides she still hates me on sight.”
Veda knew exactly why an organization dedicated to finding missing children on that island would be so disgusted at the sight of a Blackwater.
She found herself wondering just how blind Gage must be to his family’s reputation that he didn’t know. Did he really have no idea the things they were capable of? It always helped her sleep at night, believing Gage was different from them. But was he? Was he really that oblivious to the rich of Shadow Rock and their questionable ways? Or was he just willfully ignorant?
Was his silence in the face of wrongdoing just as bad as the wrongdoing itself?
Was he just as crooked as they were and just happened to be damn good at hiding it?
Veda’s heart sped up because it recognized the path her mind wanted to take.
Gage is not your number ten.
She breathed in deep as he moved his gentle touch from one breast to the other.
“I’m not giving up.” He sucked her earlobe between his lips, his breath becoming gritty. “I’ll be back there first thing tomorrow morning, whether they like it or not. I really believe in the cause.”
The cause that represents everything your peers despise?
Veda bit her bottom lip when his hardness rose and pressed against her back, his breathing moved to moans, and his kisses went from her ear to her neck. The gentle stroke on her nipple moved to a full cupping of her breast, his other hand sneaking under her shirt to join the other so he could squeeze them both.
He ground his hardness into her back.
Veda slammed her eyes closed, thinking back on what Jake had said in the cafeteria that afternoon. She gasped as one of Gage’s hands left her shirt, lighting fire to every inch of skin he touched as he moved his splayed fingers down her heaving stomach. His searing touch disappeared into the waistband of her panties and he submerged his fingers into the slick lips of her pussy.
Gage is not your number ten.
How could she be so wet for him even as those six words flew through her mind like wildfire? Six words that directly supported Jake’s accusations at lunch that day.
Was Jake right?
Was she in denial?
No, her mind cried.
Gage found her clit and stroked it just the way she liked, sending another surge of warmth shooting through her pulsing pussy and making it even more slippery under his skilled fingers.
You are not in denial.
Veda frowned into the distance as a zap of pleasure flashed across her skin.
Are you?
With a gasp, she took hold of Gage’s wrist and removed his hand from her panties. His fingers glimmered with her juices, shining under the bedroom lights.
She sat up and faced him, curled into a ball between his legs while tucking her hair behind her ears. At the expression on his face, her lips pressed together. He didn’t just look confused, but also frustrated.
“Veda, what is it?” His voice finally rose.
Both her shoulders lifted. It was the first time in their entire relationship that she’d ever denied him sexual relief.
His reaction wasn’t ideal.
She searched his eyes, feeling her own shrinking with emotion.
“When did you lose your virginity?” she asked.
He frowned at her. Then a smile broke through, but it wasn’t genuine. She’d been dating him for long enough to recognize when the highly coached, highly sk
illed, highly trained actor in him was rearing its ugly head, and there he was, center stage, smiling at her.
He ran his hand through his hair, the hand that wasn’t still shining with her arousal. “Why?”
She shrugged, sitting Indian style between his legs while cradling her hands on his splayed thighs. “I’m just curious.”
His hands collapsed into his lap. “I was sixteen.”
And Veda realized why she’d avoided asking him that question until that moment. Why she’d hesitated to ask. Why she’d been almost afraid to ask. The answer shook her conscious mind to the core, and it hit her for the first time what a beautiful job her unconscious mind had done, steering her away from the line of questioning she was on right then.
She hadn’t asked because she hadn’t wanted to know.
She still didn’t want to know.
But now, there it was. The terrible answer. She’d reached a point where avoidance was no longer an option.
“Sixteen,” she whispered. The age you were the night I was attacked.
She took a deep breath.
That doesn’t make him your number ten.
She tried to smile at him, but felt it shaking.
He must’ve seen it shaking, because the line between his eyes deepened.
“Was it your first girlfriend?” she asked, her tone one hitch away from begging, her shoulders now close to touching her ears, the tips of her nails digging into his legs. “Someone you cared about?”
Gage ran a hand down his face and paused.
Veda held her breath. She saw that Academy Award-winning actor trying to come out in full force.
She saw the moment he contemplated lying to her.
“I didn’t know her,” he said.
She should’ve been relieved that he hadn’t lied. She could tell he was being truthful because she’d come to know him well enough to recognize it. But this time, the truth wasn’t what she wanted to hear.
She wanted to be wrong. Her voice lowered. “You didn’t know her?”
“She was just some random girl at a party.”
Veda slammed her eyes shut. It felt like African drums had relocated to her ears and were pounding away, so powerful she barely heard the rest of his words, so muffled they were in her ears.
“I’m not proud of it, baby, but I was a kid. A sixteen-year-old virgin. I wanted to wait for the right girl, but at five foot two, three hundred pounds, they weren’t exactly banging down my door. I couldn’t take the abuse from my friends anymore.”
Her eyes fluttered open. “Your friends?”
“Yeah.” He hissed. “You know how they are. Todd—”
Number one.
“Eugene—”
Number two.
“Matt, Brock, Liam—”
Numbers yet to be reached.
Her soul died a little more with each name that spilled from his lips. Most of them belonging to the men who’d taken her against her will.
People he called his friends.
His peers.
She slammed her eyes closed again.
“They were always giving me grief. Telling me what a loser I was for still being a virgin. What a pussy I was for wanting to wait for love. I was a kid, and I couldn’t take it anymore. So I slept with some girl at a party. I didn’t even know her name.”
“What did she look like?” she asked.
He frowned. “Why does it matter?”
Veda couldn’t. She couldn’t do anymore, couldn’t hear anymore, and she certainly couldn’t ask anymore. “It doesn’t.”
It doesn’t matter, because he’s not your number ten.
He can’t be.
Sensing her retreat, Gage seemed to panic. “Baby, I was drunk. Honestly, I don’t remember. I don’t remember anything about her.”
Sucking in a breath, Veda tried to leave the bed but he seized her arm and pulled her back, forcing her to plant her hand on the soft bedding to stop herself from tumbling forward. Her eyes fell to the death grip he had on her arm, and then the tent still present in his boxers, before slowly lifting her eyes back up to his.
His usually soft and kind brown orbs were hard as a rock. “Am I being punished for being a stupid, horny teenager?”
Veda licked her lips, chest heaving, searching his eyes. She didn’t answer because she was afraid of what she might say.
What she might ask.
Even more than that, she was afraid of the answer.
“Am I being punished for not being the pillar of perfection? From the one person on Earth I believed would never ask me to be?”
Veda tried to swallow the lump in her throat, but it wouldn’t move. She tried to reclaim her arm, but that only made him tighten his grip more.
“Am I being punished for being honest?” he begged, sighing in defeat. “I hate the way you’re looking at me right now.”
Veda clenched her teeth when they began to chatter.
His eyebrows rose. “Next time, I’ll lie. Is that what you’d like? Is that what’ll stop you from looking at me like some sort of animal?”
Gage is not your number ten.
“Some sort of criminal?”
He can’t be.
“Don’t grab me.” She spoke through clenched teeth.
It was the second time she’d had to tell him how much she hated being grabbed.
That fact seemed to zoom through his mind as well, because he released her arm in a flash. He took her hand instead, stroking her palm with the pad of his thumb.
Veda’s eyes fell and watched him do it, amazed at how relaxing it felt in the midst of the madness filling her head.
“I haven’t always been a good man,” he whispered. “I haven’t always done the right things. I haven’t always made the right choices. But I will always strive to be a better man for you, Veda. I’ll always do everything I can to make the right decisions, to do the right things, and to be a better person. The man you and our future children can be proud of, every single day.”
Veda’s tear-filled eyes searched his face, hating the war her body had gotten itself into.
Gage became emotional as well.
And she saw it. Her contagion. Perhaps Dr. Britler had been right. Maybe she was infectious. Destined to pull everyone around her into her tornado of madness. One minute they’d been watching Netflix with his hand under her shirt, and the next they were both nearing explosion, on the verge of emotion that neither of them could fully understand.
“I love you more than anything,” Gage promised, walking his gentle touch up her arm and back down to her hand, over and over, stroking her. His voice lowered more. “I need to be inside you, baby.” The words seemed to send a blast of fire shooting out of him because he’d closed the space between them in seconds, pulling her in while scooting forward, cupping her jaw and covering her lips in a gasping kiss.
Veda gasped, as well, amazed that even as her body responded, skin tingling, pussy pulsing, and tongue meeting his between their lips, her mind was in another place.
“I was sixteen.”
“Just some random girl at a party.”
“I’m not proud of myself.”
She pulled her lips from his with a gasp, but he took the back of her head and held her forehead to his, all while grabbing her other hand and guiding her fingers past the waistband of his boxers, his hips involuntarily thrusting for any stroke.
Any touch.
“Please don’t deny me, baby. I can’t sleep until I come, and I know you can’t either.” He begged, eyes falling closed, his trembling fingers trailing a hesitant path to her panties. “I won’t make it through another day at that foundation without having you. I’d have a nervous breakdown before the day was out.”
“Pussy so tight a man could have a nervous breakdown. No wonder that trust fund baby gave it all up for you.”
Veda yanked her hand from his boxers the moment Jax’s words flashed through her mind, stunned that Gage had almost repeated him word for word.
&
nbsp; A gasped “no” flew from her stunned lips before she could stop it, and again. “No.” Her voice trembled.
Gage pulled back, teeth bared, taking her jaw in both hands again and meeting her gaze.
Veda held his fiery eyes until they fell closed with his frustration. She studied his grinding teeth, not missing the way his hold on her face grew tighter. His biceps flexed over and over, displaying his great strength. A strength that could make her do whatever he pleased.
If he chose.
His eyes fluttered open.
Before that night, she’d never refused him.
That night, she’d done it twice.
And she’d never seen a look on his face like the one she saw right then.
Thankfully he turned away before she had any more time to drown in what she saw in his eyes—the confused mixture of sadness, fury, and something else. Something she didn’t recognize, but knew she never wanted to see again.
He scooted back, avoiding her eyes while lifting his leg so he could get around her body. “Fine, Veda.”
He left the bed and crossed the room, his stomps shaking the floors before he disappeared into the bathroom and slammed the door shut.
Veda watched that door, each breath coming stronger than the last, her nails digging into her thighs.
She waited until she heard the shower come on, until the steam seeped under the door and entered the bedroom.
Then she left the bed and hurried across the room, snatching her work bag up from a wing-backed chair in the breakfast nook, nestled next to the bay windows in the corner.
The yellow moon shone into those windows as she ripped open the zippered pocket inside her bag and came up with a photo. The photo she’d stolen from Todd Lockwood’s mantle the night she’d removed his balls from his body. The photo that had been taken the night of the party that had crushed her soul, with nine of the monsters who’d raped her smiling into the camera, surrounded by all their friends.
The photo where a sixteen-year-old Gage Blackwater peered into the party from the top of the staircase in the background. Isolated, with a strange desperation shining in his eyes from behind the stair rails.
But desperation for what?
To join the party?
To join the team that smiled for the photo?
Purr (Revenge Book 3) Page 10