I wanted to breathe.
God, just once.
At the bottom of the turn leading to my parent’s estate, I killed the engine to my little piece of garbage, and climbed onto the neatly paved road, the last shred of concrete before the narrow trail of dirt winding to the steps of Thornton Manor.
It was David’s way of preserving history.
His history.
“They didn’t have roads when the Thornton family built their first home right here out of wood they cut down from this very forest.”
I’d heard the story so many times I could practically recite it in my sleep.
With the change of season, as fall slowly slipped into winter, the sun slid behind the heavy trees. Its descent darkened my path much faster the deeper I descended. Day creatures scurried for cover as the predators emerged from their holes. I could hear them rustling around me, stirring. I tried not to shudder.
I’d never been a fan of the wilderness. Something about hunters and prey that always prickled my skin with goose bumps. The chilly winds didn’t help. Even with all the trees and layers I’d pulled on, the elements found ways to crawl beneath and graze exposed flesh.
I missed the security of my car.
I missed my apartment.
I missed being in bed with M.
The latter singed my cheeks with hot blood, but anything was better than wandering the wilderness alone at night, headed for a place I wouldn’t wish my worst enemy to visit.
I heard the roar of engine before lights pierced the gloom around me. Tires screamed as the car took a sharp curve behind me. I barely managed to dodge out of its path as it tore past at speeds no sane person should dare in the dark, down a narrow path that bent at random.
But the black beast missed me by mere inches. My heart clapped in my chest as I stood ankle deep in a puddle of dead leaves off the shoulder, watching the taillights blaze like dragon eyes.
Eric, I assumed.
But the car shrieked to a jolting stop that rattled the metal frame. Burnt rubber impregnated the air, evaporating the scent of pine and dirt. I gingerly climbed back onto the road and watched as the driver’s side door flew open and a figure stooped out.
“Gabby?”
Kieran.
He stalked towards me, seemingly filling up the entire path with the billowing of his coat around his ankles.
“What the devil are you doing walking around in the dark?”
He stopped inches from me. Always so close. Too close.
I hedged back a step.
“It’s a nice night,” I lied.
He jerked back. “A nice night? It’s freezing.”
Well, I couldn’t tell him I wasn’t allowed to bring my car up. I couldn’t tell anyone anything.
“It was nicer when I started,” I murmured.
“Well, get in.” He motioned towards his idling car. “I’ll drive you the rest of the way.”
“No!” I took a larger, more deliberate step away from him. “I’m fine. Really. Thank you.”
“It’s another fifteen minutes of walking,” he argued. “We’ll be there in two. Come on.”
I flinched when he reached for my elbow.
“Please ... don’t.”
I didn’t know how to tell him that being in that car could quite possibly be the last thing I ever did, especially if David or Cordelia ever saw me leaving it. God, the chaos it would cause, the madness. They would kill me, or worse.
“I’m not going to hurt you.”
The quiet murmur ripped through me with the efficiency of serrated claws. I could almost feel it cutting into my soul.
“I know,” I whispered. “I just can’t.”
He sighed. “I’m not letting you walk there alone, so either you get in the car or I walk with you.”
I wanted to ask why he was doing this, why he was always doing this, why he always cared. He needed to stop. It was hard enough seeing him, being near him without feeling like I would die if I didn’t have him. But I couldn’t say any of that. I couldn’t risk my meltdown getting to David. I couldn’t risk Cordelia having something on me, to use against me. I couldn’t stomach it if she knew how badly I wanted Kieran. It would be just one more thing for her to lord over me. She wouldn’t pass up the chance to rub her impending marriage to Kieran in my face.
“Gabby?”
I sucked in a breath. “Okay,” I rasped out. “We can drive.”
He followed me to the passenger’s door and held it for me while I got in. The rich, warm interior enveloped me in a comforting embrace of leather and him. The intoxicating scent gripped me in its velvet clutches. A loving caress of memories I couldn’t shake.
It was that scent that had comforted me the night before, the thing that had lulled me into M’s arms. Its familiarity to Kieran had been the push I needed to relax into the role I needed to play. It was part of the reason I hadn’t wanted the blindfold removed. Behind my closed eyelids, it was Kieran touching me, kissing me, doing those amazing things to my body. I got through it all without throwing up or breaking down, because he had smelled like Kieran.
“What is that cologne?” I asked when Kieran got in behind the wheel.
He glanced at me. The lights from the dashboard glinted in his eyes.
“I’m not wearing one.”
I didn’t push. I’d made it awkward enough without bringing up how his scent turned me on. But I did wonder what kind of shampoo, or soap he used. Whatever it was that made me want to nuzzle into his neck and drown in him.
God, I was pathetic.
Hopelessly sad.
He was about to become my brother in law, my sister’s husband, the father of her children.
The very idea of Cordelia in bed with him, creating life made my insides ache like an open wound. I wanted to grab at my chest until I could reach in and tear out my own heart to make it stop.
“You okay?”
I wasn’t. My future was an elephant using my chest as a trampoline.
I wished it would just crush me already.
“Gabby?”
His fingers brushed my cheek in its path to push back locks of my hair. The contact nearly sent me clean out of my seat. My head slammed into the window with my violent wrenching to get away. The collision blurred my vision, sending stars sparking. It would have hurt if I could think; the side he’d touched blazed as if he’d tortured me with a white, hot poker.
“Jesus!” Kieran made as if to reach for me again, but seemed to think better of it.
“I’m sorry,” I blurted, tears of mortification burning in my throat. “God, I’m so stupid. I shouldn’t be here.”
“Hey!” He caught my elbow before I could throw myself out of the car and run. “No, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have...” He released me quickly. “It’s my fault. Please. I won’t do it again.”
Breathing hard, I forced myself to return to my seat. Every muscle remained coiled for flight, but I sat.
Kieran pulled back to his side of the car without another word. We started moving, much slower than the corners he’d been taking to get to the house. I wondered what his hurry had been. Had he been anxious to see Cordelia? I couldn’t think of another reason, nor could I bear to ask and get that exact answer.
At the opening before the initial gates and the manor, I asked him to stop.
“We’re almost there,” he remarked.
I nodded, already undoing my belt and throwing open my door. “Thank you.”
I pitched myself out into the night and jogged the rest of the way to the door. I didn’t wait for Jameson to let me in when I threw myself against the doors and stumbled into the foyer. It was the first time in my life I let myself in like I actually had a right to.
Jameson appeared out of the shadows like some sinister being and regarded me with expected displeasure.
“Good evening, madam.”
I straightened. “Hello Jameson.”
“May I take your coat?”
I was still slight
ly out of breath when I undid the buttons and slipped out of the garment. Jameson took it with the tips of his fingers as if it were somehow filthy. I didn’t care. I needed to get away from the doors before...
The doors opened and Kieran walked in.
But unlike my intrusion, Jameson beamed in greeting. “Mr. Kincaid, a pleasure, sir. May I take your coat?”
I didn’t look at him. I stared at the small, unsteady hands dusting down the front of my skirt, giving it my whole focus as if I were dismantling a bomb.
My head lifted when clipped footsteps echoed off the walls. David entered the foyer. He looked from me to Kieran, and all the blood left my head.
“Kieran.” He stalked straight past me, hand extended. “You made it. Wonderful.” He drew back and his cold, dead eyes met mine again. “Did you arrive together?”
It was asked with a casualness that really should have meant nothing, but still managed to border on threatening.
“No!” I blurted. “I arrived first.”
It was technically true.
David looked me over and paused on the dirt coating my feet. “Did you walk here?”
I didn’t know what to say. He’d been the one to tell me to leave my car. How else did he think I would get there?
“Did you bring a spare pair?”
I hadn’t. I hadn’t even considered it. Despite the chill, the weather had been dry.
David sighed. “Well, hopefully you’ll remember better for next time. Remove your shoes.”
I dutifully slipped my flats off. The marble floor sent pinpricks of ice prickling up the bottoms of my feet, encasing them in ice. Jameson took them from me and left with them to some unknown location.
“Kieran.” David turned his focus to the silent figure behind me. “Let’s get you a drink.”
They left me standing there, with nowhere to go, except to follow like some lost puppy.
I claimed my window bench, comfortable being as far away as possible from the stunning wealth vomiting all over the room and the two men making idle chitchat over glasses of scotch. Neither one paid me any attention, leaving me free to melt into my own thoughts and the sweet memories of the previous night with M. I could feel myself growing warm the deeper I submerged and the more explicit the details became. My skin tingled in all the places his fingers had traced, all the places his lips had pressed. My core flexed with an anticipation I couldn’t deliver and rushed with a hot gush of something expelling from within in an amount that sent a jolt of panic through me.
It soaked into my panties, plastering the fabric to my mound, making me uncomfortably aware of how bare it was without the usual trimming of hair. I shifted, trying to dislodge, but it only rubbed harder against me.
Was it pee? Did I get my period? I’d been aroused before, but never had it leaked out of me as if I’d soiled myself.
It dawned on me slowly, like a wave on a lazy summer afternoon lapping at the shore.
Cum.
It was M’s cum.
The realization had me bolting to my feet, not entirely sure what the plan was from there, except the sticky moisture was no longer taunting me.
“Did you need something, Gabrielle?” David’s gaze found mine, annoyed at being interrupted.
I could only shake my head, my heart wedged in my throat.
“Would you like to have a seat?”
The taunt went completely over my head. All I could think was, I had a man’s release coming out of my body.
More hot liquid trickled free as if pleased by the thought and I nearly gasped as the amount slickened my inner thighs. I fought to contain the urge to press my knees together, to shift from foot to foot like a child who needed the washroom. More still, I resisted the temptation to glance at the other man in the room.
The heat quenched. I literally felt it plummet down the length of me to my feet. Its absence housed a chill that seized my lungs and paralyzed my heart. No amount of reasoning or explanation excused the reality of what I’d done. It made no difference that Kieran would marry my sister, or that I had absolutely no ties to him, no loyalties, no promises, I had been with another man. It was insanity, but the guilt nearly took me to my knees.
“I need the washroom,” I stammered, my voice tight even to my own ears.
Kieran rose to his feet as if I’d made some kind of request. He fastened the button on his blazer and faced David.
“I just remembered I have a call that I need to make. Can I borrow your office?”
David motioned him to go on, but kept me in my place with those icicle eyes.
Kieran strode out, leaving me alone with a man who relished in my torment.
“Are you not part of this family, Gabrielle?” he asked over the rim of his scotch. “I don’t understand why you always feel the need to put yourself in some corner while the rest of us are here, joining in on the conversation.”
I realized he wasn’t going to allow me to go. My need for the washroom would be used against me, twisted into a game he could use to bend me to his will.
This was normal.
This I could handle.
So long as he stayed where he was.
“I don’t want to get in the way,” I murmured.
David chuckled bitterly before a swallow. “A little too late for that, isn’t it?”
I said nothing, because there was nothing to say. Denial would only get me punished. Acceptance would get me punished. All I could do was stand there and pray someone walked in and distracted him before he worked himself out of resentment and into anger. There was no running from that.
Behind me, my purse jingled. A subtle ting of an arriving message. It was hardly loud enough for me to hear. David shouldn’t have heard it at all, but his eyes narrowed. His knuckles bled white around his glass.
“Do you have somewhere more important to be?”
I shook my head. “No.”
He rose and my spine stiffened. All the warmth of my blood pumping through my veins dissipated to an arctic blanket. Terror lodged in my chest, and he knew it. I could see the sick pleasure my fears gave him. I saw the dark glint of hunger in his eyes, the twisted glee as it moved over me, slower, with a deliberateness that made me sick to my stomach.
He started towards me, cutting miles of room into shreds with every stride. I wanted to back up, to run, but he was a wolf and he got off on the chase. He loved catching me. He loved twisting his hands into my hair and dragging me to my knees. Just the memory had my joints panging, had my scalp prickling.
“Aren’t you going to check?” he taunted, strolling past me with only a brush of his shoulder against mine.
His expensive cologne swirled around me, disturbing the air and making me choke on its oily richness. It reminded me of inhaling wax. It greased my throat and tongue until I couldn’t even swallow without tasting him.
“Let’s see who it is, shall we?”
It made no difference to me when he yanked open my purse and dug past the hairbrush, wallet, novel, keys, and loose change for my phone. I had no friends. I had no one who would text me, unless they had the wrong number or wanted money. Reading my messages would serve no purpose. In a small way, I would have smirked at his arrogant show of dominance, but then he opened the message and read it out loud.
“Hello, this is M, from last night.”
My world swirled in a blistering gale. My heart dropped into the pit of my stomach with a resounding splash that drenched the rest of me in icy waves. I had never wanted to snatch anything away more in my life. I wanted to rip the device from his cold, dirty fingers and hug it to my chest.
No! I wanted to snarl at him. You won’t take this from me. He’s mine.
“Who’s M and what happened last night, hmm?” David smirked at me as if reading my mind. “Are you fucking him?”
Heat swirled up into my face at the sound of that word on his tongue. Everything about it felt violating and wrong. I wanted to shower.
“Is this how you’re going to mak
e your rent this month?” he pressed on, his voice a disgusting purr he only used when we were alone, when no one else could hear it and know just how revolting he really was. “Is he paying to get between your legs, to ram himself inside you?” His smirk twisted into rage laced revulsion. “How many others have there been?” Sharp, manicured nails bit into my jaw and yanked my face to his. The violent tear of flesh made me wince more than the wrenching of my neck. “Did you forget about our agreement, Gabrielle? Did you forget what you promised me? What did I tell you I would do to you if you ever fucked another man?” His fingers tightened until I cried out. “Did you fuck him? Did you let him spread you open and fill you with his cock over and over again?”
His hot, rancid breath melted the skin on my cheek. It racked over my lips, making me too aware of how close his were. The inch separating us wasn’t enough.
“No,” I gasped, struggling not to struggle. “He’s in my study group. We were studying last night.”
The lie was too fluid, too seamless. I’d never tried to lie to David before. I knew I could never get away with it, and the punishment was never worth the risk. But I couldn’t tell him the truth, especially not that I’d slept with M. He would lose his mind.
“Let’s hope you’re not lying to me.” His lips mashed together with the sucking of his teeth. “I will know. I will find out, and when I do...” If possible, his grip grew even tighter, crushing my jaw. I tasted blood where my teeth were being shoved inward. I grabbed at his wrists, not to stop him, never to stop him, but gripping him to keep from being pulled completely against him. “I will have you taken from your bed and sold to my friends, and I have many, many friends, Gabrielle. All of whom love young, hot flesh and a tight cunt. They will use you until there is nothing left, but a great, big, saggy, bloody hole. And I can, because you agreed to it. You consented.” His leer broadened with my shaky inhale. “So, be a good girl, just like Daddy wants, hmm?”
I nodded quickly, needing air, needing space away from him, needing a toilet.
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