Chapter Twenty-Nine
I press my forehead against the cool glass, looking out at the dark woods. Justin braved those woods, and maybe actual wolves, to rescue me. It was actually pretty gallant, if not very well-thought-out. Gabriel would have gotten revenge on him in a manner both public and thorough.
And I’d have given up a million dollars. Maybe it would have been worth it for love. But Justin had proven this wasn’t love when he broke up with me for what my father did.
So I’m still here, still locked in the tower with my very own dragon.
Gabriel is right when he said my mind can imagine the worst. A hundred strategies, a million possibilities. All the things he might do to me.
Why do I wait for him to come to me?
He gave me white because I made the first move. That’s what I should do about sex. It’s an advantage—a small one, but I need any advantage I can get. In chess we’re well matched. I still lost, sacrificing the game to get information that broke my heart. But when it comes to sex, he’s the far superior player. I’m a novice. I’m nothing.
But I will finish this game the way I started it—with courage.
I know exactly which room to find him in. The only door that’s locked. Who keeps the bedroom locked in their own house? A person with something to hide.
My footsteps are soundless on the oriental runner in the hallway. My knock echoes, incongruously loud. It sounds aggressive. That’s what he said about chess. Aggressive and mathematical. That’s how I feel right now, as if I’m making the devil’s bargain.
He opens the door, his expression incredulous. “You.”
His shirtsleeves are rolled up, his dress pants revealing black socks. That seems like suddenly intimate knowledge, those black socks. I’ve already seen so much more of his body—felt it, anyway, in the darkness of the spiral staircase—but the simple domesticity of his socked feet seems momentous.
“Can I come in?”
He laughs, leaving the door open as he strides back into the room. That’s when I realize that he’s drunk. There’s a bottle on the table by his fireplace. I recognize the fading ink, the clear liquid. Moonshine.
I follow him inside and shut the door behind us.
He lifts a half-empty glass in mock salute. “Want some?”
“Maybe it’s best if one of us stays sober.”
His throat moves as he takes a large swallow. “I’m not that drunk. Not too drunk to get it up, if that’s what you came here for.”
I blink. It takes me one, two, three seconds to figure out what he means by it and up. It’s embarrassing that I didn’t know there is a too drunk for sex. “Good.”
A rough laugh. “Oh, little virgin. You’re so delicious. Do you know that?”
My cheeks heat, and I turn away. “Not for much longer.”
There’s a soft clink that must be him setting down his glass. A stir of air as he comes close. The faintest brush of the back of his fingers against my cheek. “You’ll always be delicious.”
I meet his gaze. “But not a virgin.”
“No,” he says, considering. “I don’t think you’ll be one for very long. Did you come to make a trade? A favorable exchange?”
“I don’t have anything left to bargain with.” He’s taken my body in every way but this. And he’s taken what I swore never to give him: my mind, my soul. The ball of string that would have shown me the way out. There’s nothing left.
He pulls something from his pocket, examining it. The pale wood gleams in the firelight. A pawn. He must have brought it from downstairs. I remember the shape of it, the smooth surface beneath my fingertips.
“So small,” he says, voice thick. “Why can’t I let you go?”
He must be drunker than he thinks if he’s talking to a piece of carved wood. Unless he means me. “I’m right here.”
His golden gaze focuses on me. “Yes, little virgin. Will you undress for me? Will you open your legs? Let me fuck you until you bleed like a goddamn martyr?”
A tremble begins from deep in my chest, spreading outward to my limbs. “I know you can make it good for me.”
“You don’t want good,” he says as if the word itself is filthy. “You want to be fucked. That’s why you came here. Say it.”
My voice is a whisper. “I came here to be fucked.”
He points to the bed. “Sit.”
I sit on the edge of the bed, realizing only when my feet dangle that it’s so tall. I feel small and helpless, which was probably the point. On edge. Definitely the point.
That’s when I realize what he’s doing. I made the first move. He could have matched me, but that would have been too easy. Instead he moves the game in a different direction, expands the circle of our battle. The Sicilian Defense. It’s what he did with the auction, and it’s what he’s doing now.
He comes to stand in front of me, his large hand toying with the ruffles of my nightgown. “What is this?”
I bite my lip, embarrassed. “My other pajamas have…well, pictures. Unicorns. Rainbows.” I’m not really that childlike, but they were funny. Playful. This nightgown is a pale cream with a small pink bow at the neck. Too modest to seduce anyone, but better than monkeys in sunglasses.
He studies the ruffles as if he’s never seen them before. They may as well be a new move in chess theory for how much they take his concentration—the little flurry of fabric, the inch of thigh underneath. “You hurt me, you know.”
“What?”
“Whenever I think about you, I hurt.” He puts a hand to his chest. “Here.”
For a second I think he might be mocking me, like the men in the auction did. It’s a cold splash of water on arousal that shouldn’t be there. But he looks deadly serious.
And he always tells the truth.
“That’s the moonshine talking,” I say, pressing my knees together.
He draws a line down my legs, where they touch. “This is the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen.”
Not my breasts or my ass. It’s the seam of my legs, the line that keeps him out.
He wants a chess game. That’s why he bought me. That’s why he waited to take my virginity. I don’t know whether the other men wanted my body or my soul, but this man—he wants the challenge.
I look away because it’s scarier to play the game. Don’t fight him, oppose him. Make him desperate for more. That’s what Candy told me. I remember the knowing look in her eyes, the challenge. She knew how much harder this would be, to participate instead of fighting. To try to win knowing I’ll most likely lose.
I want to be the martyr, like he said. I need that, because it’s the only way I can hate him. Make me bleed. Make me cry. I’d despise him in pure righteous fury.
It’s the kindness I can’t trust.
His thumb turns my chin to face him. “Little virgin.”
“Gabriel.”
“Spread your legs.”
My heart pounds. “Make me.”
There’s that pawn again. He rubs his finger over it in a way that shouldn’t be sensual but is. Again and again, until the smooth curved head seems like a place on my body. Until every stroke of his thumb makes me clench. “Don’t you want this?” he murmurs.
It would be easy for him to push his hand between my legs, to spread them for me. I couldn’t stop him. I wouldn’t try. He wants me to give in, though. He wants to line up his pieces, prepared to strike. And then he wants me to move my queen into jeopardy, because he asks.
“No.”
He laughs softly, considering the rounded head of the pawn. “Such a small thing. But powerful. Don’t you think?”
His tongue swipes his thumb, which he uses on the pawn again. It glistens with his saliva. Then he does something obscene, something shocking—he puts the curved pawn against his lips. A kiss. The hint of a lick. “Open.”
My legs are trembling with the force of staying together. My inner thigh muscles are clenching and unclenching, spasming as I watch him suck the little head of the piece.
My breath catches. “I can’t—”
Every cell in my body is screaming for me to open my thighs, but it’s not just his thumb that will touch me. Not just his lips or his tongue. He’ll fuck me tonight. The promise is burning bright in his gaze.
“You have to, little virgin. It’s the only way you’ll feel better. Just give in.”
Move into jeopardy. Be captured. So simple and yet so hard to do. Surrender.
My fists clench in the sheets behind me. Slowly, centimeter by centimeter, I open my legs to him. Two of his fingers lift the frill at the bottom of my nightgown, studying me with humiliating frankness.
“Such a beautiful pussy. Is it beautiful because no one has fucked it yet? Or is it fuckable because it’s so beautiful?”
I have to laugh. “Now that’s definitely the moonshine talking.”
His grin is dark and playful. Seductive. “The moonshine is a nice excuse to say what I’m thinking. God, little virgin. If you knew what I thought about, watching you in that gold dress, seeing you in those godforsaken yoga pants. Prancing around the house like you feel safe. I want to bring you down like a fucking gazelle in the Serengeti.”
My eyes feel wide, my breath faster. My legs spread a little farther apart.
“Keep your hands in the sheets,” he says softly.
“Okay,” I gasp.
“Yes, sir.”
There’s a fight inside me. The string, hold onto the string! But I want so badly to surrender. I need to. My eyes close on a sigh. “Yes, sir.”
Blunt fingers push my thigh to the side even farther. I’m so exposed like this. Vulnerable. Then he touches my clit, like I wanted him to. My body shudders against the caress.
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.