Chapter 10
We lay together afterward, a twisted bundle of limbs. His hands never stopped touching or stroking, and I realized once you got beyond the darkness in him, the whips and pain, he was the most sensual man alive.
“Still awake?” he asked.
“Yeah.” I let out a huge yawn.
His chest rumbled underneath my cheek in laughter. “Barely.”
“You worked me over good.”
“The working over was mutual, Kayla.”
A question rose but caught in my throat. I swallowed and forced it from my lips. “Why me?”
He fell silent for so long, I was certain he had no intention of answering. “I didn’t want to want you.”
I could relate.
He drew lazy circles up and down my spine. “You got to me. I noticed how much you loved your daughter…” He heaved in a breath. “I don’t want to talk about this right now.”
“Gage, I just want—”
“Not now,” he barked.
I flinched, and he let out a sigh. “I’m always going to fuck up. I’ve got a horrible temper.” He paused. “But you already know that. You know that better than anyone.” He hauled me on top of his lap and brought my left leg over his right thigh so I straddled him.
My head fell back, mouth open though no sound escaped, as I pushed down onto his cock. He rocked into me, slow and steady.
“How could you hurt me like that?” I gasped as he pushed higher.
The glow from the clock on the nightstand illuminated his expression. He closed his eyes, and his face tensed, as if he were in pain. “I looked at you and all I saw was him.”
“What do you see now, Gage?” I lifted and slid down his smooth shaft, inch by inch.
He groaned, and his eyes opened but remained hooded. “I see this incredible, sexy woman who belongs to me.” He plastered his hands on my breasts. “Only me.”
His possessiveness shouldn’t have sent me over the edge, but it did. I collapsed onto his heaving chest afterward, slick with sweat and spent, but still yearning for answers.
“You said it’s your mother’s ring. Are the two of you close?”
“We were, before she died.”
Something clicked, and I recalled Ian mentioning her death years ago. “Cancer, right?” I said, my chest squeezing the breath from me.
“She passed a few months after Liz.” He paused, his Adam’s apple moving as he swallowed hard, and I sensed him shutting down. “People die, Kayla.”
“Tell me about Liz,” I pressed.
“I don’t talk about her.”
Each time we were together, he stole another piece of me. I wanted the same from him. Answers. An idea of what made him tick. Was that too much to ask?
“You want this to work between us. You want me to stay and marry you, but you give me nothing in return. That’s hardly fair.”
“I gave you three orgasms tonight. That’s hardly nothing.”
Even though I heard the amusement in his tone, his words still irritated.
“You’ve taken everything from me,” I said. “You literally turned my world on its head.”
“I haven’t taken everything. Not yet.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Your heart. You still hold it close, still guard it.”
“Can you blame me?”
He didn’t answer right away. “No.”
I lifted my head. “Gage? I…you…”
“Tell me.”
“You have my heart.”
He drew my face to his, and our lips met. “You still haven’t said what I want to hear.”
“You still haven’t told me about Liz.”
“You don’t quit, do you?”
“Do you?” I countered. “You push and push until you get what you want. I’ve learned from the best.”
His hands fell from my body. “She was my first. First everything. I was so fucking angry all the time, and she taught me how to let it out, introduced me to the deviant side of sex. We connected, understood each other.”
“How did you find out about her and…”
“Say his name.” The steel in his voice made me cringe. “If you can’t even say his name, then we have a problem. I’ll go mad knowing you still love him.”
“I care about him, but I was so young when we were together, and we were barely together, Gage.”
“In Texas,” he said, his eyes narrowing. “Why didn’t you sleep with him?”
I dropped my face to his chest with a groan. “Why are we talking about this? We were talking about you.”
“This is about me. Now answer the damn question.”
“Your anger is ruining this!” I was appalled at how close I’d come to admitting I loved him, but then he had to go and remind me why I shouldn’t love him at all.
“And you’re inability to answer a simple question is making me jealous as fuck. I can’t stand the thought of you feeling anything for him. Now tell me! Why did you send him away?” He paused. “Or maybe you didn’t.” The timbre of his words grew deadly.
“Gage,” I said, grabbing his face, “I didn’t sleep with him.”
“But you wanted to. You’ve always wanted him, so why didn’t you fuck him?”
“Because he deserved better!”
“He deserved better?” He shoved me off and jumped from bed.
“Better than you? Is that what you think? Perfect Ian Kaplan, golden boy of the century, can do no wrong, right?” The tall, rigid outline of his body towered over me, and I shrank away.
“I’ve got news for you. He doesn’t deserve to breathe your name.
He knocked up Liz. She was six weeks pregnant when he killed her.
I can’t even think about it because it makes me so fucking mad I want to tear something apart! ”
I blinked, only now aware of the tears streaming down my face. “Gage…”
“I saw you years ago, you know,” he said, his tone eerily calm.
“During a rare visit when he and I pretended to fix things. You were so entranced by him that I wasn’t even a blip on your radar.
” He paused, and the disquiet rang through the room so loudly, I was tempted to cover my ears.
“He never got over you, and me destroying you would’ve destroyed him, but you fucking destroyed me instead.
You gave me a glimpse of something I thought I wasn’t allowed to have.
Fuck, Kayla, neither one of us deserves you.
” He pulled on a pair of pants and then stomped toward the door.
“Where are you going?”
“Away, before I do something else unforgivable.” The door slammed in his wake, and his steps thundered down the hall. I was amazed the disturbance didn’t wake Eve.
I sat in bed for a few moments, too stunned to comprehend what had just happened. Before I thought twice about it, I scrambled to my feet, wrapped myself in his satin sheet, and went after him.
It was probably a dumbass move, but I wasn’t known for my rational decisions lately. I found him in the hall, his face against the wall, hands fisted at his ears. I tiptoed to his side. Complete darkness blanketed us, and the house was so still it unsettled me. Gage was too still.
“How did you know the baby was his?” I was poking an angry tiger with that question, but I didn’t care—not if making him mad would get him to open up.
“You really want to do this?” He kept his voice low, probably so he didn’t wake Eve.
I let out a breath. “Yes. You can punish me all you want, hurt me if you need to, but I’m not dropping this. You demand all of me? Well I’m demanding all of you. Tell me everything.”
He didn’t move, didn’t look at me, and at first I thought he was going to flat out ignore me.
“I can still smell her blood, and maybe it’s on my hands as much as his because I went after them that night.
I knew she’d been with someone else, but when I found them together…
I just lost it.” He tightened his fists further, as if he could squeeze the memory into nothing.
“She died in my fucking arms, took everything good about me with her, and he never even knew about the baby.”
I needed to touch him, possibly more than I’d ever needed to touch another man before. Tentatively, I smoothed my hand over his back, but he sprang out of reach.
“You want to know why I hurt you? I did it because I couldn’t let go. It was all I saw at first. Him with his hands on her, and her blood all over mine.”
“Gage…I’m…” I gulped, my eyes stinging.
“Go back to bed, Kayla.”
“No.”
He pounded a fist on the wall. “I could lock you in the basement for the night.”
“Do it.” God, why couldn’t he open up to me? Why was getting him to tell me anything like prying a bone from a rabid pit bull?
He moved fast, like a snake striking unsuspecting prey, and hauled me into his arms. The sheet slid from my body, forgotten on the floor as his mouth crushed mine.
His kiss silenced my protests as he carried me down the hall, thankfully in the opposite direction of the basement.
He kicked the bedroom door shut behind us and threw me onto the bed, and his body followed.
I became prisoner to his arms and legs as he slammed into me, his thrusts brutal while his mouth kept mine busy.
Unlike earlier, this was fucking in its basest form.
I couldn’t ask questions if he was screwing me like an animal.
Logical thought fragmented, leaving me with scattered pieces of the things I needed him to tell me.
Ian, Liz, baby, death…Gage’s brokenness.
I’d never noticed that about him before.
Thought I was the only broken one, and he was just the fucked up one.
Focus. What were we talking…no, arguing about?
My body betrayed me, and I stopped caring about anything other than the feel of him moving inside me. I came with a breathless cry, my hands fisting the pillows as I arched into him. This had to be a record. I’d never had so many orgasms in one night.
And I never wanted it to end.
His groan of release rumbled onto my lips, and in the afterglow of the explosion, he tucked me against him before sleep claimed us.