Chapter 11
Belle
I sat on the edge of the dining table long after the sound of his footsteps faded up the stairs.
My body buzzed—hummed, really—in a way that made my skin crawl. My breathing refused to steady, each inhale catching somewhere between my ribs and my throat. My hands shook when I pressed them flat against the wood, fingers splayed wide like I could anchor myself to something solid.
I could still feel him. Not his hands—he'd barely touched me, and that was worse somehow. I felt his voice, the low rasp of it curling around my spine. His restraint. The way he'd controlled my reaction with chilling precision, like he'd been practicing this moment in his head for a year.
He played my body like he'd been waiting to learn the notes.
I wiped my face roughly, hating the heat under my skin. Hating the way my thighs still trembled. Hating the slickness between them that had nothing to do with what I wanted and everything to do with what he'd made me feel.
I hated him.
I hated myself more.
My jeans lay in a heap on the floor where he'd stripped them off me.
I slid off the table, legs unsteady, and bent to retrieve them.
My underwear was missing—discarded somewhere between the bedroom and the dining room in the chaos of being carried, of being positioned—but I refused to search for it.
I pulled the jeans on, anyway.
The denim scraped against my skin, rough and grounding and necessary. A reminder that I still had a body that belonged to me, even if he'd just proven otherwise. Even if every nerve ending still sang with the memory of his mouth, his fingers, the deliberate cruelty of his denial.
I'm not broken. Not yet.
The candles had burned low, wax pooling in uneven circles on the table. The food sat untouched, congealing in the dim light. The whole scene looked staged—romantic, even—if you didn't know better. If you hadn't just been spread out on that table like an offering he'd sampled and left half-finished.
I pressed my palms against my eyes until I saw stars.
My body still buzzed. My pulse still thrummed in places I refused to name. My breathing still hitched every time I replayed the way he'd looked at me—not angry, not even cruel.
Certain.
Like he already knew how this ended.
Like I was just catching up.
I lowered my hands, staring at the stairs he'd climbed. The bedroom door at the top had closed with a quiet click, no lock, no warning. Just expectation.
He was waiting.
And my body—traitor, liar, coward—wanted to go.
The plate of chicken sat where he'd left it.
I stared at it with equal parts fury and hunger, jaw clenched so tight my teeth ached.
The meat glistened under the candlelight, still warm, perfectly seasoned.
He'd cooked for me. At least, I thought he did.
Like this was a date. Like I had any choice but to sit here and exist in the aftermath of what he'd just done.
Part of me wanted to shove the whole plate into the sink. Watch it shatter. Grind the porcelain into the drain until my hands bled, and the sound drowned out the memory of his voice in my ear.
Part of me wanted to starve myself out of spite. Prove that I could still say no to something, even if my body had already betrayed me once tonight. Twice, if I counted the way my stomach twisted now—hollow and insistent and humiliatingly loud.
I hadn't eaten since morning.
A stale bagel at the bookstore counter, hours before the world tilted sideways. Before I signed my name on a contract that had teeth. Before I learned that Gideon Jones didn't need force when he had patience.
My body trembled with leftover adrenaline, legs still unsteady, skin still flushed. I hated that he'd left me like this—wound tight and fraying, hungry in ways I refused to examine.
I picked up the fork.
The metal felt cold against my palm. Heavier than it should.
I told myself it was survival. Basic biology. Fuel for a body that had been wrung out and left shaking. Nothing more.
But when the first bite hit my tongue—tender, rich, exactly the kind of comfort I didn't deserve—I couldn't stop the sound that escaped me. Small. Involuntary. Relief disguised as hunger.
Forced obedience or survival—I didn't know which.
Maybe there wasn't a difference anymore.
I ate slowly, methodically, alone at the table he'd set for two. The candles flickered lower. The house settled into silence around me, vast and cold and waiting.
Small mercies, I told myself.
I could eat alone. I could take this one thing without him watching. Without his eyes tracking every movement, every surrender.
But even that felt like a lie.
Because upstairs, behind a door that didn't lock, Gideon Jones was waiting.
And we both knew I'd come.
I stood in the doorway, plate scraped clean, staring up the staircase.
The silence pressed down from above. Heavy. Expectant.
No footsteps. No voice calling down. No command echoing through the empty space between us.
Just waiting.
He knew I'd come, eventually. The inevitability sat between my ribs like a stone, cold and unyielding. All I had to do was climb those stairs, open that door, and surrender the last shred of autonomy I'd clung to all night.
It would be easy.
Too easy.
My feet didn't move.
Instead, I turned left. Down the hallway I'd barely registered during the tour. Past the kitchen with its gleaming counters and untouched appliances. Past guest rooms that looked like catalog photos—beautiful, sterile, unlived-in.
I told myself it was curiosity.
Exploration.
A way to kill time before the inevitable.
But the truth settled heavier: If I can't escape him, I can at least understand him.
The house stretched wider than I'd realized. Floor-to-ceiling windows framed the lake, black and endless under the night sky. Every surface reflected nothing back—glass, steel, polished stone. Clean lines. No clutter. No photographs except that single team victory shot I'd glimpsed earlier.
Nothing personal.
Nothing human.
I found a study tucked behind a half-open door.
Dark wood. Leather chair. Bookshelves lined with titles I didn't expect—philosophy, history, poetry. Not the collection of a man who lived only for hockey and conquest.
My fingers traced the spines.
And somewhere upstairs, Gideon Jones waited.
The house stretched endlessly. Room after room opened into more of the same—clean lines, empty surfaces, nothing out of place. The kind of quiet that money bought. The kind that made every breath feel too loud.
I moved through hallways that mirrored each other perfectly. Left wing, right wing, each corridor identical in its sterile beauty. The symmetry unsettled me more than chaos would have. Everything had its place. Everything followed a pattern.
Including me, apparently.
My fingertips dragged along the banister as I climbed a secondary staircase. Cold metal bit into my skin, grounding me when the silence threatened to swallow me whole. Each step echoed despite my careful treading. The house wanted me to know it was listening.
I glanced over my shoulder.
Nothing.
No shadow in the doorway. No figure waiting at the top of the stairs.
Just absence.
And absence, I learned quickly, could be louder than presence.
I pushed open a door at random. Another guest room. Pristine white linens. Curtains drawn. A bed no one had ever slept in. I closed it again, pulse jumping at the soft click.
The next room: a gym. Equipment arranged with military precision. Weights organized by size. Mats rolled and stored. Not a towel out of place.
The next: a media room. Leather recliners. A screen that took up the entire wall. Remote controls lined up on the armrest like soldiers.
Every space empty.
Every space waiting.
I kept moving, half-convinced I'd round a corner and find him watching. That patient stare. That knowing smile. The certainty that I'd come back upstairs eventually, because where else could I go?
But the hallways stayed empty.
The rooms stayed dark.
And somehow that absence felt more predatory than his presence ever had.
Because Gideon didn't need to follow me.
He'd already proven he knew exactly where I'd end up.
I stopped at the base of the main staircase again. Looked up toward the bedroom—our bedroom—where the door remained closed. Where he waited behind wood and silence and the suffocating weight of inevitability.
My legs trembled.
Not from fear.
From the terrible knowledge that part of me—some small, traitorous part I couldn't silence—wanted to climb those stairs.
I found the study again by accident.
Or maybe it found me.
The door hung half-open, spilling warm light into the hallway like an open mouth. Every other room had been dark, locked tight or deliberately empty. This one waited.
My pulse kicked.
Trap or invitation?
Both, probably.
I stepped inside anyway.
The air changed immediately—thick with the smell of cedar and something darker underneath.
Leather, maybe. Old wood. And beneath that, faint but unmistakable: him.
That cologne I'd breathed in when he'd leaned close at the dining table, when his mouth had been inches from mine and my body had forgotten how to lie.
The scent wrapped around me now, possessive even in his absence.
Bookshelves lined three walls, floor to ceiling. Hardcovers organized by color, not title. Dark spines bleeding into darker ones. No dust. No disorder. Just control masquerading as taste.
But it was the fourth wall that pulled me deeper.
Trophies.
Framed magazine covers.
Glass cases holding signed pucks, game-worn jerseys, relics of a career I'd never bothered to follow.
I moved slowly along the display, fingers hovering over plaques I didn't dare touch.
MVP. Team Captain. League Champion.
Newspaper clippings preserved under glass: JONES LEADS TEAM TO VICTORY. THE ICE KING STRIKES AGAIN. Headlines that painted him as untouchable. Inevitable.