Devotion (Central Cities #1)

Chapter 18

18

A month later, my 208th day as Gabriel’s partner, he’s got me folded in half beneath him as he fucks me hard.

He went down for his morning swim like usual, but he came back early and didn’t even take his shower before he was grabbing me and swinging me over onto his bed. Now my heels are on his shoulders and my body is bent in a helpless, undignified position, and the muscles in my butt and at the back of my thighs are straining. My pussy is aching from the vigorous motion of his cock, and it’s so wet I can feel the moisture leaking onto the sheet beneath me.

I’ve already come once, and I’m almost there again. I’m clutching the headboard with one hand and his hard biceps with the other. He’s really enjoying the way I’m responding. I can see it in his eyes. Hear it in his thick voice.

“That’s right, baby. You’re almost there again. You’re liking it like this, aren’t you?”

His words always get me going as much as the friction of his cock moving inside me. I writhe, digging my fingernails into his arm and pushing against the headboard as I process the intensity of the sensations. I make a few uneven humming sounds but can’t form a complete word.

He’s exerting a lot of effort to sustain the fast thrusting. I can see it in his uneven breathing and the twisting of his features. “You’re doing so good. I love to see you let go like this. Come one more time for me.”

My mind is whirling so wildly I wouldn’t think I could focus enough to reach another climax, but it overtakes me anyway. I cry out again as the pleasure consumes me, shaking and gasping with a few random tears streaming down the sides of my face.

Gabriel loses it too. With a choked sound, he freezes and then falls into clumsy, primitive jerks as he comes. He comes inside me, rolling his hips through the last of his release with a deep, satisfied moan.

My period started yesterday, so the chances of my getting pregnant are minimal, but there’s still something so intimate, so innate about the feel of his semen inside me. I wouldn’t have expected to feel this way, but I do.

He catches himself before he falls on top of me and helps me unfold my body and stretch out my legs before he collapses beside me, smiling in my direction.

He never used to smile this much. I know I’m not imagining or exaggerating the difference. He was one thing when he first arrived at the palace, and he’s something different now.

Or maybe he’s finally willing to let the real man out of the guarded shell.

“You feel okay?” he asks, his blue eyes scanning me from top to bottom. There’s a faint hint of concern and a lot of satisfied possessiveness in the look.

I beam at him. “I feel exhausted. And a little messy. But otherwise incredibly good.”

“Good.” He groans, staring up at the ceiling. “I’ve got a meeting with the president first thing. He wants an update.”

“Well, you’ve got it almost done, and you still have a month before the deadline even after he took four months away from you. It’s brilliant and clearly laid out and backed up with more numbers and research than I can wrap my head around.” I reach over to rub his slightly soft belly. “It’s good, Gabriel. It’s incredibly good.”

“Thank you.” That’s all he says, but there’s a lot more than that in his expression.

I might melt into a puddle of pure sentiment if it wasn’t for the discomfort between my legs. I haul myself to a sitting position and slide off the bed, grabbing the towel I spread out beneath me so his sheets wouldn’t get spotted with blood from my period. “I’m going to clean up. You have thirty more minutes before you need to shower and dress, so you just rest. Looking over your plan for the twenty-thousandth time won’t do you any good at this point.”

He chuckles at my exhortation and watches me as I limp toward the bathroom, leaning over to grab my nightgown from the floor on the way. “You sure you’re okay?” he asks in a different tone.

“A little sore,” I admit. “But not enough to bother me. And not enough to make what we just did less good.”

“Okay.” He’s smiling again as I step into the bathroom and close the door.

His meeting with the president lasts for two hours, and he’s changed when he returns.

He tells me everything went fine. President Vincent wants a few revisions but nothing major. Overall, he’s pleased with Gabriel’s work.

I don’t believe him. I can see very clearly that something isn’t right. But continued questioning yields no further information and eventually annoys Gabriel. He finally snaps at me, telling me he needs to work rather than repeating the same answers endlessly.

His stern tone halts me, as it always does. I huddle in my alcove, pretending to read but covertly studying Gabriel’s face and posture as he pulls out his notebook and starts to write in it, pausing often to think.

Something is definitely wrong.

Very, very wrong.

Maybe the president didn’t like his plan. Gabriel is proud, and he’s worked so hard on this project. He might be reluctant to admit it wasn’t as successful as he’d hoped.

But why lie to me about it?

He knows I’ll support him through anything.

Maybe he needs more time. He was closed off when I first met him, but he’s opened up to me over the past months. He’ll tell me what’s going on soon. He always does.

I do my best to ball up my worries into a hard knot in my gut.

Gabriel will tell me.

He’ll tell me soon.

He doesn’t tell me. Two days pass, and he pretends everything is normal even though I know it’s not. He does nothing but work and brood. Barely even talks to me.

I ask him to take a break the first afternoon and he agrees, but he’s so distracted it takes a lot of effort to get him fully aroused and then even more effort to work him up to climax. The following morning, we do have sex like normal after his swim, but it’s silent, tense missionary that doesn’t last very long. He doesn’t talk to me, and he doesn’t kiss me much. He doesn’t even stare at me in that focused, fervent way I’ve come to expect during sex.

I offer to give him a massage afterward, but he doesn’t want it. He says he needs to work.

And that’s what he does. Work. All day until late afternoon, only pausing briefly to go to the bathroom.

He doesn’t eat the food I plate up and set beside him. He takes only a few sips of water.

It’s misery. I know something is terribly wrong, but he won’t tell me what it is so that I can try to help him through it.

Starting at midafternoon, I watch and wait for an opportunity to suggest he take his normal break, but he won’t even look up from his notebook.

Finally I can’t take it anymore. I bluntly announce, “It’s time for your break.”

He blinks a few times, his eyes still pointed at his notebook. Then he slowly raises his head.

“It’s late,” I tell him, my voice cracking despite my best effort to control it. “You’ve worked all day without stopping. You need at least a short break.”

For one horrible minute, I think he’s going to refuse. Reject me. But he finally inclines his head in a slight nod, and that’s all the permission I need.

I walk around to the back of his chair so I can rub his shoulders. He hasn’t been this tense and tight for a long time.

“Don’t take too long,” he mutters gruffly, closing his eyes as I dig my fingers into his clenched muscles.

“I won’t. But you know you always work more productively after you take a break.”

He doesn’t reply to that. He doesn’t make any sounds at all. Not even the normal soft moans he often makes when I massage him. His breathing is a bit raspy, starkly audible in the silent room. I can even hear my own soft, uneven inhales as I fight against tears of helpless confusion.

I knead his neck and shoulders for almost ten minutes since I can’t seem to loosen him up. He’s getting kind of restless, so I stop before I want to, afraid he might simply call an end to the break before it barely gets started.

After moving around to the front of his chair, I kneel down on the small rug and part his legs to make room for my body between them. He’s watching silently as I unfasten his pants and reach into his underwear to draw out his cock.

He’s only partly hard. Not even halfway. I stroke him gently and then lean forward to take him in my mouth. He smells strongly of his natural scent. It’s deeply familiar and has always been comforting to me, but for some reason today it breaks my heart.

I hollow out my cheeks with the normal strong sucks I use to get him all the way erect. When it has only a small effect, I make the throaty sound around his cock he’s always liked.

He doesn’t even look at me. One of his hands is clenching the armrest while the other is loosely curved around the back of my head.

I moan again as I suck some more, hard and fast.

He sighs and moves both his hands to my face to ease my head back. “I can’t do this today, baby.”

My throat aches from a lump of pained emotion. My eyes burn as I stare up at him. “I don’t mind if it takes a while. You always feel better if?—”

“I can’t today.”

There’s no arguing with the tone or the expression on his face. It’s not cold or angry. It’s tense and guarded. Unyielding.

“Okay,” I mumble, standing up and fighting the instinct to reach out and caress his face. “Can’t you please tell me what’s wrong?”

“I told you nothing’s wrong.”

“But I don’t believe you.”

His jaw works. His eyes drop briefly. For a few seconds I hope he’ll relent, but he doesn’t. “I can’t control what you believe.”

That’s the end of the conversation. I go back to my seat, stare out the window, and try not to cry.

The next morning, when Gabriel returns from his morning swim, he takes a long shower. When he finally emerges with a towel around his waist, he says he doesn’t want to have sex.

I fight off my hurt feelings so that I don’t burst into tears as we talk. “Okay. That’s fine. I can?—”

“I’m just going to get dressed and start working.”

“Are you sure? We don’t have to have sex. We don’t have to do anything sexual. I could just give you a massage.”

He stares at me. If he appeared resentful or impatient or annoyed or reluctant, I would immediately drop the subject. If he was getting bored with me—the same mouth, the same pussy, our same repeated routine—I could maybe understand. But he’s not any of those things.

He’s wounded.

He needs me.

“Gabriel, please,” I whisper, a single tear sliding down my cheek.

“Okay,” he mumbles, looking away and toward his bed. “Just a massage.”

I’m so relieved by his acquiescence I almost burst into tears. I can barely fight back the sobs. I usually take off my nightgown for our morning session, but I keep it on today, going to get the massage oil and then climbing onto the bed beside his outstretched body.

He’s on his stomach, his face turned away from me. I don’t say a word as I oil my hands and begin the rubdown.

We’re both silent as I work my way down his body, and it’s not until I’ve reached the back of his legs that he really starts to let go of the tension. He makes long exhales as I knead the strongly developed muscles of his thighs and calves. By the time I reach his feet, he’s even releasing a few soft groans.

I’m so relieved by those small sounds of response that I almost start crying again.

“You can flip over,” I murmur when I’ve pulled on each of his toes.

He does as I say. The towel has come unwound from my moving it out of the way for the massage, and it stays on the bed when his body turns.

He’s completely naked. His cock is partly erect.

I ignore it as I turn my attention to his right foot and ankle.

He makes more guttural sounds of release as I move back up one leg and then the other. His cock is hard all the way when I reach his hips.

But he told me he only wanted a massage, so I don’t touch him the way I want. I stroke his belly. Move up to work on his chest and shoulders. Then each of his arms.

“Jess,” he says, thick and low.

My eyes shift to his face.

He stares at me, hot and intense.

“I can take care of you if you want.” I’ve still made no moves toward his groin.

“Please,” he rasps.

Stifling a whimper of relief, I adjust my position so I can reach his cock. I hold his shaft in one hand as I lean over to suck on the tip.

His hips buck slightly in response. He doesn’t have much control this morning.

Adjusting my lips, I take him farther into my mouth, establishing our familiar rhythm of sucking and bobbing my head. He moves his hands to hold fistfuls of my loose hair.

I’m thrilled and overwhelmed with a bone-deep tenderness as I suck him off and revel in his helpless responsiveness. He’s going to come soon. I can feel it in his erection and all through his body.

He needs it. He needs me. And I’m capable of giving him what he needs.

He’s guiding my head. Rocking his hips up toward my mouth.

I’m prepping myself for him to come soon when his soft moans and grunts turn into words. “Please. Please. I don’t… I don’t… I don’t want to do it.”

It slams into me like a blow. I freeze. Then very slowly let him slide out of my mouth and straighten up, my fingers and my lips and my heart all trembling.

He blinks up at me groggily. “What’s going on?”

“You… You said you don’t want to do it.” A couple more tears stream out of my eyes.

It’s clear he has no idea what he just said. After a minute of orienting himself and processing the explanation, he says, “I didn’t mean you, baby. I’d never mean you.”

“But you don’t want me to do this for you anymore?”

“No, that’s not it. I did want it.” He’s distracted from the pleasure now. He’s still hard, but he’s lost the momentum of his climax. His eyes are focused. “I wasn’t talking about anything connected to you.”

“Then what…?” I can’t get the whole question spoken through the tightness of my throat.

“Fuck, baby,” he breathes out with a slump of his shoulders. His eyes close for a minute. “I didn’t even know I was saying that out loud.”

“You were.” I want to touch him so badly I have to clench my hands into fists to resist the impulse. “I know you’re allowed to keep it to yourself. And I can see that whatever it is must be a real struggle to deal with. But why… I don’t understand why you can’t tell me. I’m your partner.” I swallow hard. “I’m not just your partner in bed. I’m your partner in life. If something is this hard for you, I’m the one you tell.”

The final words feel familiar. Like an echo in my memory. I realize Gabriel spoke them to me in the past.

Maybe he recognizes them too. His face twists dramatically, his eyes squeeze tight, and his shoulders shake a few times.

A surge of fear pushes me into action. I’ve never seen Gabriel so broken before, and I’m not sure I’m strong enough to handle it. I reach out to grab one of his big hands and hold it in both of mine. “Gabriel, please tell me.”

“I don’t… I don’t even know how to start.” He’s gotten control of himself again, clenching all his deep emotions tightly inside him. He finally meets my eyes, and he lifts his hips to pull the towel out from beneath him so he can cover his groin. He’s no longer even a little bit hard.

“It happened in your meeting with the president the other day. Did he not like your plan?”

“He—” The word chokes him. He clears his throat with a short cough. “He said he did. He said most of it was good. But there were… there had to be changes before it was presented to anyone else.”

“I thought the council was supposed to decide things like that.”

“That’s how the public believes it works, but it’s not how things occur in reality. He’s not going to let something get presented to the council for discussion unless he already approves of it.”

I’ve often wondered why President Vincent so often sits back and listens during council meetings instead of expressing his opinions and pushing for decisions. This is evidently why.

All his decisions are made beforehand and in private.

“So what changes did he want to make?”

“He said it was too… too generous. It gave people too much power. So he wants to add some… boundaries , he calls them.”

“Boundaries?”

“Limits. To keep people in check so they don’t become intractable or ungovernable.”

From the way he’s articulating, it’s clear he’s repeating words that the president spoke himself.

“What specific limits does he want you to add?”

Gabriel’s mouth tightens and twists for a few seconds before he answers. “He mentioned several things. Some I can work with. They wouldn’t necessarily gut the overall system I’m trying to establish. But… but…”

My heart is racing now with a different kind of fear. I can’t even imagine what change President Vincent wants to make that would create this kind of anguished resistance in Gabriel. He can’t even get it said.

“What is it?” I murmur. “Gabriel, you can tell me.”

“He wants to…” It’s like he’s fighting through a block in his throat. “He wants me to integrate indentured servitude back into the financial system.”

My vision blurs, and my throat tightens as his answer hangs in the air.

I can’t process it.

I can’t understand it.

I can’t even breathe.

I can’t breathe .

With a strangled sound, I lean over partway, coughing until the air can get through.

“Baby.” Gabriel cups my cheek and raises my head so he can see my face. “Are you okay?”

“Y-yeah.” My throat has opened back up, but it feels like I’ve been slammed into a stone wall. Jarred. Aching. “But what are you talking about? He can’t mean to bring back?—”

“He does. He told me so directly. He wants me to smooth it over with the more palatable parts of the plan so people won’t care so much. Won’t focus on it. But he wants to make sure people aren’t too free .” He stretches out the words unnaturally. “Too free to cause problems. That’s what he said. He’s bringing indentured servitude back and trying to mask it with the illusion of added benefits.”

“No. No!” I hug my arms to my middle. “No, he can’t!”

“He can, baby. He will. With or without me.”

“But he’s not… No, he’s not like that! I thought he was better than that.” It’s so shocking and so upsetting that I’m almost crying again. I wish I could control myself better than this, but I’ve never been strong like that. “He’s always been better than President Patterson. He… he’s cared about people.”

“No, he hasn’t.” Gabriel picks up one of my hands the way I was holding his earlier. As if he’s trying to help me hold myself together. “What you’ve seen has all been a front. A pretense. He covers it with his charisma and with shallow pleasures he hopes will distract people. But he’s the same sort of dictator that Patterson was. He simply knows how to hide it better.”

I’m choking again. Sobbing. Leaning over with jerky spasms of emotion and pulling my hand away from Gabriel’s so I can cover my face with both of mine.

“I’m so sorry, Jess,” Gabriel murmurs thickly. “I’m so sorry. I know you hoped he was better than that.”

I hear the gentle words, and they mean something to me. But there’s no way for me to stop sobbing. My nose is running, and snot’s smeared all over my face with my tears. Gabriel gets up but comes right back to the bed with a soft handkerchief from the bathroom.

He hands it to me, and I use it to mop up my face.

I’m broken. It feels like I’m broken. But Gabriel still matters to me—more than anything—so with effort, I manage to compose myself enough to speak. To explain. “It’s not just the president.”

“I know.” He’s seated on the bed beside me, still wearing nothing but the towel he tucked back around his waist. “It’s not only him who has disillusioned you. It’s me. Because I’m going to have to do what he wants.”

Another sob rips out of my throat, and it takes a minute for me to swallow it down. I already know what he’s telling me. I was blind before—my entire life—but I’m not anymore. My mind has always worked fast, putting all the pieces together, and I can see everything now.

Everything.

Including the lie to which I’ve devoted my life.

“That’s not it. It’s not just about you. Because if the president has never been what I thought, that means the Central Cities have never been what I believed. And that means that… that…” I gasp. Jerk my head to the side. Contort my mouth and cheeks to keep from falling apart again. “That means that everything I’ve done, all those years I spent dreaming of doing something worthwhile, being someone who matters, giving myself for the good of… The greater good… All of that is wasted. It’s wasted . Poured down the drain. Tossed in the trash. I thought what I do matters in a larger sense, but it doesn’t. It’s just another part of that pretense of shallow pleasure that’s been used to hide the ugly reality. They used me— me —to hide the truth about this place from the world.”

Once I started to speak, the words pour out in an agonized rush. And I’m sobbing again by the end of it. Hiding my face in the wet handkerchief.

Gabriel makes a weird, stifled sound. Then he takes a few raspy breaths. “Oh my God. I’m so sorry, Jess. I’m so sorry.”

He reaches out to pull me into a hug. It’s awkward because of our positions on the bed, but I need it. I sob into his bare chest as he holds me tight.

We stay that way for a long time, until I’m too exhausted to keep crying. The grief hasn’t faded. Only my energy.

Then I finally draw out of his embrace. He gazes at me with a deep, sad, resigned fatigue that matches what’s in my own heart.

“So what will you do?” I ask.

He shakes his head. “I don’t have any choices here. You see that, don’t you?”

I nod because I do see it. I see everything now.

“He threatened my career and my livelihood to get me to the palace in the first place. He still has both of those in his fist. I can’t leave. I can’t run away and get a different job or live any sort of safe life. His influence reaches so far. And I can’t try to get the council on my side and overrule him because he’ll never let it get to that point. He’ll kill me if I defy him, Jess. He will.”

“I know.” I never would have believed it even yesterday, but it’s as clear as day to me now. “He probably won’t even let you leave the Capital. He’ll suspect you’re trying to run away.”

“He will. I tried to argue with him in the meeting the other day. I pushed back pretty strong, and at one point I told him I wouldn’t do it.” Gabriel lets out a soft, bitter laugh. “That was a mistake.”

“What did he do?”

“He threatened… He did it with a smile, always pretending to be civil, but he… I only have one thing that really matters to me other than my life and my work. I only have one thing left to lose. He knows it. He threatened to take you away from me.”

“Wh-what?”

“I told you before I’ve always tried not to act like you’re special to me, but he knows better. He’s seen through me, and he’s recognized that you’re what matters most to me.”

If I had any tears left, I would be crying again now. I hug myself, swaying slightly as I process what he’s saying. “Gabriel.”

“So he knows how to control me now. All he has to do is threaten you and I’ll do anything he says.” He’s not meeting my eyes. He’s staring at an empty spot in the air.

“No. I’m not important enough to sacrifice everything else for. If there’s some way for you to still do the right thing, then?—”

“Baby, I can’t.”

His abrupt interruption stills me.

“I can’t. Sometimes the world summons its forces on all sides of you, trapping you, keeping you from doing anything except what they want. That’s what’s happened here. To both of us. I don’t want to die when it finally feels like I have something to live for, and I can’t lose you. I won’t. Unless…” His head jerks to the side again. “Unless you don’t want to be my partner anymore.”

“No!” The one word is loud. Too loud. I grab for him, clutching at his upper arms. “Gabriel, no. Of course I still want to be your partner. I’ll always be your partner. Please don’t do anything that gets you killed. I couldn’t… I couldn’t bear to lose you either.”

With a rough sound, he pulls me back into a tight hug. I return the embrace so urgently that I end up pushing him backward onto the bed. He doesn’t let me go, so we end up lying there together, holding each other.

After several minutes, Gabriel says, “I’m going to do what he says, but I’ll try to write it up in a way that won’t lead to as many abuses. It will still be bad but maybe not as bad as it was before.”

“Yes. Yes, do that. Do what you can to make it better. But please don’t defy him. It’s not worth that.”

“It is worth that,” he murmurs, so soft I can barely hear it. “But I’m not strong enough to do it.”

“You don’t have to be strong enough. No one is strong enough to bear the weight of an entire broken system on their shoulders. Gabriel, you’re trapped. So do what you can. And trust that… that…”

I can’t finish the sentence because there’s no longer anything to trust in.

What can we hope for here? That other people will step up to somehow hold back the tidal wave of cruel reality? That a divine being no one believes in anymore will miraculously intervene to fix a fallen world?

There’s nothing. Nothing. Except Gabriel and me, holding on to each other in the fury of a hurricane.

“At least my family got out,” I say at last.

“Yeah. They’re safe. Maybe you should?—”

I know what he’s about to suggest, so I don’t let him finish. “I’m not going to visit them and never come back. Even if it’s safer. I’m not going to leave you, Gabriel.”

“Okay.” His arms tighten briefly.

After several minutes, I say, “I’m sorry.”

“What do you have to be sorry for?” He brushes a kiss against my hair.

“You’ve worked yourself half to death on this project. You’ve spent all this time and so much of your mind and experience and effort and… and soul to create it. You thought you could make the world better just like I did. And all of that is getting dumped into the trash too. All of it. Poured down the drain. You might not have fallen apart the way I did, but I know it’s hurt you just as much.”

He doesn’t answer immediately. His body shifts restlessly against mine. Then, “Yeah. It has.”

“I’m really sorry about that.”

“Thank you,” he murmurs, as broken as I’ve ever heard him.

There’s nothing left to say.