SEVENTEEN
The anxiety of that morning lessened over the days that came after it. For almost eight weeks, Devon’s life bloomed on its new path, becoming something altogether too wonderful. She’d gone from abject depravity, living with almost nothing, to existing in the lap of luxury with a man who had the power to give her anything in the world her heart desired. And he frequently did.
Sitting at the end of her bed, Devon’s hands covered Zave’s that were curled over the footboard. “I don’t know how I’ll feel in this house without you,” she said.
He was crouched on the other side of the footboard, with his forearms resting along it. Devon slid her fingers between his and squeezed before brushing her palms up his bare forearms and back down again.
“You survive in this house without me every day,” he said.
She still slept in her own room, and it was certainly more hers now than it had been when she first slept here. Filled with the possessions Zave provided her, he made sure her every craving was fulfilled. Either the Knight Corp CEO made items for her personally, or he got Thad to bring them back during his frequent commutes.
Having access to most of the rooms and all of the island, there was plenty for Devon to explore. Following Zave’s example, Devon had tried the running thing but found that she preferred to walk so she could absorb the beauty of her surroundings.
Zave would lap her on his runs, but she’d come to enjoy their brief encounters. As he passed, he would touch her, sometimes on the arm or hand, other times he tugged her hair. Emboldened by their nights together, she often gave his ass a smack as he ran by.
For a time, she’d try to keep up with him, but she loved staring into the wild landscape too much. Her walks were interrupted by her need to stop and sketch when inspiration struck, and Zave had, of course, provided her an artist’s satchel for all her supplies after he saw her struggling to carry everything in her arms.
Devon could sit for hours on the rocks or on the beach. Bess and Thad had been sure that Zave would veto the idea of her skinny-dipping in the ocean, and they’d been right. But she’d since discovered that the island was much larger than she’d assumed it would be, and it held some wonderful secrets.
Four miles long by almost two wide, Devon hadn’t begun to cover all of the land. One of her greatest discoveries was of an enclosed lagoon, hidden by overhanging rocks and trees. Although the water was cold, it was sheltered from the wind and gave her an escape when she wanted to get out of the house.
But it was their after-hours fun that added the true thrill to her life. Zave came to her almost every night these days. On the few occasions he didn’t, she tossed and turned, tormenting herself with notions of where he was and why he wasn’t with her.
Zave brought all sorts of gadgets to tease every inch of her body. All of them were activated and controlled by him using remotes that she never saw. Each toy contorted her pleasure, and Zave had made bringing her to climax without ever laying a hand on her body into an art form.
Her lord didn’t knock anymore and she was used to being exposed for him, she enjoyed it, anticipated it. Their rules hadn’t changed, and while she loved what his toys did for her, she wished he’d spend the night. She wished he would let himself take from her instead of doing nothing but give.
“Can I ask you something?” she asked, leaning forward enough that her breasts touched the footboard. Except he anticipated that and lowered his forearms to ensure that part of her body never made contact with him.
“You may,” he said.
She was getting used to asking permission during their illicit encounters in the dark, and it was becoming habit whenever he was near. “Do you ever…?” He’d made it obvious that he didn’t want to touch her, and he didn’t allow her to throw herself on him and kiss him as she had done on their first night. But he didn’t shy away or flinch anymore when she touched him with her hands. So Devon let a fingertip move to his temple. “Do you ever think about me?” she asked. “When you leave here? When you’re alone?”
“I think about you all the time,” he said. “Some of your toys take time to figure out.”
“Not that.” Sensing that he was being deliberately obtuse, she smiled. “When you’re alone, you know? How many times have you seen me come now? It’s been two months since you first came into my bedroom. You came in here and watched me… I just want to know how you do it, how you keep your hands off.”
“It’s not easy, if that’s what you’re asking,” he said, taking her hand from his temple to enclose it in both of his.
“Sometimes I feel like an experiment,” she said. “Like you’re observing me to keep note of the results.”
“It’s nothing like that,” he said, his voice full of offense. “You told me you wanted me in the room with you. If you want me to leave—”
“No,” she said, that would be a punishment, a torture more than she’d be able to endure. Twining her fingers between his, she wouldn’t let go. “I just… what I feel…” With the hand he hadn’t captured, Devon brushed her palm over his cheek. The solid wood of the footboard acted as a barrier between them, just the way he liked it. “I feel so selfish. You get nothing from this.”
“I get more than you think,” he said. “It’s not conventional.”
She laughed and bowed lower to let her cheek rest on her arm. “A billionaire living in exile on his own private island who rescues the girl from the evil sex slave merchants, I wouldn’t have expected conventional.”
Devon had enjoyed his toys, their games, and the words he used, as well as the questions he asked her in the night. During the days, she helped Bess and did her chores then went about her exercise and her sketching. All the while Devon thought about the man and why their relationship was the way it was. It didn’t take long for her to reach an honest conclusion: Zave was still punishing himself. He wasn’t ready to let himself be happy with her, with anyone.
Bess had expressed admiration for how much more engaged he was in company business and how he spent more time with the executives at Knight Corp to ensure the CI merger was supervised by him. No project had been so closely monitored by a Knight since before his father had died.
Bess complimented Devon on how she’d drawn him out in a way they could never have done without her. Although, Devon didn’t think she was responsible for his awakening. He had to have been on the verge of it before he came to the auction where she’d been sold to him.
Devon and Zave kept their after-hours activities to themselves, but it was obvious to Bess and Thad that something was going on between them. They were never overt in their affection, and Zave did his best to hold her at arms’ length. But there was no doubting that something was thriving between them.
Devon imagined it was only a matter of time before he made it real and joined her in her sheets. “You never touch me,” she said. “Yet, no guy has ever satisfied me so thoroughly. I guess I just want to know if you get any satisfaction from me when you’re… alone…” There was her word again and he must have heard the smile in her voice.
“Like in the shower?”
“Yes,” she answered. “That’s exactly what I mean.”
Picking up their joined hands, she rubbed the back of his against her cheek. “I try not to,” he said. “But, yeah, I might have slipped a couple of times.”
She guessed that he was being modest in underestimating what went on when she wasn’t around. Despite not being present during these slips, it boosted her confidence to know that she was in his thoughts when he was being intimate with himself.
“You should get some sleep,” he said.
Devon whined because the saddest part of her day was when he slipped out of her room at night. “You’re going to leave me with that thought? Haven’t we got time for another round?”
“That would be your third tonight,” he said.
Lowering her own tone, she murmured her words on his knuckles. “We’ve done three before.”
“And I would stay for a four, five, and six, but you know I have to fly before sunrise.”
The call had come. The auction was on. His reminder made her let him go, and it cooled her desire. Folding her forearms on the footboard, she laid her head on them, because she was back to her original point of how she would feel about being in this house without him.
“What will I do? How will I sleep?” she asked. “I always sleep after our visits, when you command me to close my eyes. I won’t without your instruction, I never do.”
He picked her hair from her face and tucked it over her shoulder, managing to touch only her hair and avoid all contact with her skin. “I command you to sleep well now. I command you to stay here, to sleep well, and not to worry for a second.”
An impossible request. But he was trying to reassure her. “How can I not worry?” she whispered. “I know where you’re going and what those people are capable of. If they found out—”
“They never will,” he said. “How could they? I’m looking at the last girl we saved. They could never know that you are still here. Even if they did, they’d never assume that you were happy here… you are, happy here, aren’t you?”
“Happier than I’ve ever been,” she said.
The gang would assume that she was being subjected to his deviant pleasures when in truth it was her own gratification that was his sole priority.
“This is a different group anyway.”
The message had come through earlier that night. He and Thad had scrambled to make plans. But Zave had stolen this time to be with her, this was an intermission from planning and resting. He shouldn’t be here. He didn’t have time and this wasn’t part of his tried and tested routine. Usually they got the word and followed a strict procedure. But, this was the first time they’d gotten this call since she’d come into his life, and he’d come to her room because he’d known she needed him to.
“I’ll worry every minute,” she said. “And what if I need something? What if I need you?”
She’d never be so selfish as to ask him to stay. What he did out there was important, it was his job, his mission. But Devon wanted to make it clear to him how much he meant to her without putting too much pressure on him or their relationship.
“Write me a list,” he said. “Anything you need. I promise I’ll get it to you as soon as I get back.”
“I have a feeling there will be only one thing on that list,” she said, opening her arms to stretch them out to rest them on his shoulders.
Despite the hours that he spent in the gym making his body hard and fit, it couldn’t be comfortable for him to remain crouched for so long. Though inviting him into the bed would be met with opposition. This was as close as he allowed them to get. The thick plank of the footboard reassured him that there was no way for their bodies, or rather their hips, to come into contact with each other.
“What will that be?” he asked.
“You.”
Bending her elbows, Devon tried to hold him, to pull herself closer, but he resisted. “Shy,” he warned.
Whenever he left her to go to his room, she was disappointed. This time was different, he was going to his room now, sure, but in a few hours, he’d be leaving the island, and she’d never been here without him. “Please,” she whispered. “You can’t leave without…”
There was no wiggle room in his certainty that he wanted to stay out of her bed, and he was losing patience with her constant requests. “Without what?” he said. “Every night you ask me to spend the night, and every time I say the same thing.”
No. She didn’t need to be reminded of that. “I won’t ask you to sleep here when I know you need your rest.”
“So what are you asking?”
Something much simpler. “For a kiss,” she said. “And a promise.”
“Of what?”
“That you’ll come back to me. That you won’t leave me here without you for a minute longer than you have to.”
“You’ve been encouraging me to spend less time locked up alone,” he said. “Isn’t leaving the island a positive step?”
Yes, it might be in another situation, if he wasn’t going away to put his life on the line to save other people. If he went down there and got into trouble, said the wrong word to the wrong person, or got caught in someone else’s crossfire, she might never know what had gone on.
“Will you promise me that you’ll do whatever it takes to be away from me for as little time as possible?”
“I can promise that if something happens to us out there, you’ll be bequeathed all of your toys.”
“But I’ll have lost my lord.” Without her puppet master, they would remain inert and would never mean the same without him pushing their buttons to stimulate hers. “Zave,” she murmured, pulling herself higher to hang over the end of the bed, getting as close to him as she could.
“Yes, shy?”
“Promise me,” she exhaled the words so quietly but was dazed by her proximity to his lips, and he wasn’t withdrawing.
In fact, it was him who closed the hair’s breadth of space between them. The press of his kiss was so thorough that she tasted her promise, and she let herself be swept into it with the movement of his tongue as it comforted hers. He soothed her worries and assured her there would be a tomorrow and a time for more games and intimacy. That this wasn’t finished. That this wouldn’t be the last kiss.
Except it didn’t last long enough. Before she could get too excited or try to build the pace, he pulled back. “This was never meant to happen,” he said, and when he stroked the hair that was loose over her face, she caught a ragged breath.
He so rarely allowed himself to touch her. If his kiss was a gift, then his touch was a blessing. “What wasn’t?” she asked.
“I was supposed to live the rest of my life in celibate isolation,” he said.
“Isolation works for me.”
Having spent her life chasing her next paycheck to pay bills, she’d never been able to submerge herself in her inner passion for art so thoroughly. Not only did Zave provide all the supplies she needed, but he had some wonderful pieces in his own collection that she’d discovered while investigating the rooms and halls of this house. Each new space was a treat, and she never got bored of learning the new corners she came across.
“But not the other part,” he asked.
The celibacy. “If it was a choice and not a punishment, I’d support it,” she said. “But you don’t abstain because you want to. You do it because you believe you don’t deserve pleasure and happiness.”
“I had those things in abundance in my youth. Enough to last me a lifetime.”
Zave wasn’t the only one who struggled to hold onto his patience at times. “Maybe you had an abundance of sex and drugs and fun, but you weren’t happy then. You underestimate how much of my happiness will come from yours.”
“Will come? Future tense? I don’t make you happy?”
“I’m happy every minute I spend with you. But I’d like to be able to lie in your arms, to wake up and see your face. I can’t feel relaxed and secure here until I know that this is real, as real for you as it is for me.”
“It’s real,” he said. “I wanted to refuse to let it be and tried to deny to myself that it was… I should’ve put a stop to this long ago. But it’s real, shy. I don’t need to stick my dick in you to know that.”
“Maybe it’s something I need,” she said, trying to nuzzle his lips. “You do make me happy, Xavier. But until you can share your bed with me, you can never share your heart. I guess your dick is like a symbol of completing our relationship. Until you can give it up, I’ll never be able to look you in the eye and tell you how I feel.”
“I’ve been avoiding this conversation,” he said. “Those bastards brought us together and because they’re tearing us apart, they’re forcing us to confront what this is.”
Devon wasn’t comfortable giving the cartels credit for anything positive. But his point was valid. “We don�
�t need to work it all out. I just need you to swear you won’t stay away.”
He tasted her, and when the tip of his tongue ran the width of her lip, she almost fell right off the end of the bed. “I swear. I won’t be gone a minute longer than is necessary. I will come back to you, shy. You’re my sun, the light that I revolve around now. A star that exudes energy and life, scorching me with your fever, sustaining me with your radiance. You give me an anchoring orbit to a sure and certain path I never want to waver from now that I’ve found it.”
He was romantic. She had no idea that he could charm her like this. “Zave,” she exhaled.
“Leaving you is a new kind of cruel punishment, worse than any I’ve endured before. I won’t survive away from you for long. I won’t stop thinking about you.”
“Lord,” she murmured. “My heart won’t beat until it’s near to yours again. Hurry home to me.”
“That you can count on.”
He had to go and do his job and she had to let him, but she’d worry every minute they were apart. She’d think of him, wonder where he was, crave his safety. Already she anticipated the joy she’d experience when he came home safe. But the time between now and then would be torture for her, as well as him.
EIGHTEEN
“I’ll let you fold his laundry, if it will make you feel better,” Bess said, having just brought a hamper into the kitchen from one of the back rooms. Putting it on the opposite side of the island where Devon sat, she opened it.
Devon smiled and rolled her eyes away from the woman, whose offer hadn’t been serious. After tapping her pencil on her lip, she carried on writing.
“You’ve been scribbling in that since the minute he left,” Bess said. “What’s so important for you to get down on paper?” If she’d been close enough, she would’ve given Devon a nudge because her lips curled in a saucy smirk. “Or are you writing raunchy love letters?”
“Not love letters,” Devon said, considering how Zave would react if she did write to him that way. “I’m trying to get it all down.”
Falcon (Kindred #5) Page 19