Chapter 6 #2
And the walls…we’d broken in each one. He’d taken me many times in this space, in many ways, from slow and loving to fast and harsh. Time hadn’t wiped the slate clean, despite marriage. Despite the fact that I loved this insane man more than he deserved.
Because in that moment, I wanted to kill him.
He studied me for a few seconds—seconds that felt like minutes. Finally, he stood, and rather than beam me with anger and the promise of degradation, his eyes widened in a way that was foreign to me. As if he’d been caught red-handed.
My stomach lurched. Vomit rose. When it came to him, my instincts were usually on the money, and they were screaming bloody murder.
I failed to breathe as I brought my hand to my throat, brushing trembling fingers over the collar he’d locked around my neck before we’d married.
I had no key to it. He kept it on him at all times.
Because he owned me. Because I was his plaything he kept locked away, ready and available to use and fuck when it suited him. I didn’t want to ask, let alone hear the answer, but I had to know.
“Did you sleep with her?”
“God, no, Kayla.” He rounded the desk, creeping toward me like one would sneak upon a skittish animal.
I held a hand up. “Don’t you dare come near me.”
He halted at my venomous tone. “Don’t do this, baby. You’re overreacting.”
His cautious demeanor, and the fact that he didn’t have me over his desk, ass reddened from his belt, spoke louder than the thunder in my ears. A tear finally slipped free. Glaring at him, I swiped it away. Pretended it wasn’t there.
I wasn’t crying. Crying meant he was hurting me, and I’d let him hurt me enough. Day after day, I let him wreck me. Crying meant those women were speaking the truth.
“Why aren’t you punishing me, Gage?”
“Seriously? You’re picking a fight with me because you want to be punished?” Ignoring my protesting hand, he took a step toward me. Helplessly, I watched him take another, and another until my back hit the door.
Trapped. Nowhere to go. Right back at square one…where I always ended up with him.
He wrenched my arms above my head and shackled my wrists in his strong fist. “Is there a reason you need to be punished?”
“N-no.” I hated how shaky my voice was, how the lie seemed to dance off my lips too easily. My face heated, flushing my cheeks with deception.
“You’re looking guilty as fuck, Kayla. Are you sure you don’t need to be punished?” The uncertainty in his eyes had disappeared. Now that he had me subdued and back under his control, those few moments of unsteady ground he’d stood on were no more. His world was solid again.
Mine was crumbling beneath my feet.
“The thought of you with her kills me.” Another tear dripped down my cheek. “Why is she back?”
He brushed the sorrow from my face, and the gesture was so gentle and caring, I wanted to sob.
His mouth settled on mine, coaxed my lips apart, plundered away my insecurities.
Tightening his hold on my wrists, he shoved his free hand under my shirt and cupped me, thumb whisking the hardened nipple poking through thin silk.
“Gage…” I sighed against his lips, disarmed by his touch. Pliable submissive waiting to bend upon his command. That was me.
“There is no one but you. No one.” His gaze sparked with meaning. “Can you say the same?”
“Yes.” Though not in the way he meant. Not in the way he was hoping for. No matter how much I loved him, needed him, was bound to him…Ian would always have a tiny piece of my heart. Deep down, he knew that, or he wouldn’t have asked.
“You’re it for me, baby.” His gorgeous blue eyes, fringed by thick lashes that normally shadowed his secrets, held steady. He didn’t avoid my gaze, didn’t look away in shame or regret. They bespoke truth.
I’d misunderstood. He would build me a new foundation, assure me that I had nothing to fear. Those women were wrong. Katherine wasn’t—
“But there is something I need to tell you.” He swallowed hard, and my legs almost gave out. If he hadn’t pinned me to the door, I would have leaned against it to prop me up.
“Tell me what?” I wanted to take the question back. Wanted to cover my ears and sink through the door to the other side, where I wouldn’t hear the words he so clearly didn’t want to say. Gage didn’t do nervous.
“Katherine’s son is mine. That’s why she was here the other day. We were arguing over visitation.”
A blade sliced through my heart, freshly sharpened. She’d given him the one thing I hadn’t been able to. We’d tried. Jesus, we’d tried. Day after day, week after week. We’d fucked more times than most people fucked in a lifetime, yet my curse still showed up like clockwork every month.
“How long have you known?”
“A couple of months.” He paused, hesitating. “But I suspected last year after…”
After we lost the baby.
The truth crashed over me. He hadn’t believed he could have kids, so finding out the doctors had been wrong—that he was capable of knocking up a woman—had changed everything.
Why hadn’t I given thought to Katherine’s son?
I remembered seeing him once, long before Gage had blackmailed me into sexual slavery.
Now that I considered it, there had definitely been a resemblance.
How could he have kept something this huge from me? We’d turned a new page the day we married, left the lies and blackmail in the past.
Except you’ve been lying for weeks.
That annoying voice in my head was right. How hypocritical to feel betrayed when I’d kept something from him as well. Only my lie was small in comparison. I’d only wanted a little freedom. A few stolen hours each week to give something back for the gift I’d been given.
The gift of Eve.
I yanked my hands free and pushed against his chest. “Let me go.”
“We need to talk about this.”
“No, we don’t.” Putting all my strength into freeing myself, I shoved him back, inch by hard-won inch, and managed to jerk the door open before he could grab me again. He glanced at the busy room full of his employees, and the boss mask fell into place.
“Don’t you dare walk out that door.” Though he wore a neutral expression for show, his tone dropped to a range that never failed to ring my warning bells. “We aren’t done here, Kayla.”
How could he wipe all signs of feeling from his face? Was part of him always pretending? Always keeping an iron grip on control?
“I can’t even look at you,” I said, not giving a shit if the entire floor heard me.
All sign of pretenses vanished. He tugged me into his office and slammed the door. “How do you address me?”
“You don’t get to be my Master today. Today you’re just my husband who had a kid with another woman and failed to mention it.”
He hauled me to the desk, his fingers grasping my bicep with enough strength to bruise. “You will call me Master, even if I have to beat it out of you.” He reached for his belt. “Bend the fuck over and lift your skirt.”
“No.”
His mouth formed a severe line. He wasn’t used to being defied. And he hadn’t punished me out of anger in so long that the determination in his hands as he unbuckled his belt tore through me. I hadn’t stepped out of line since we’d married. Not that he knew of, anyway.
“You don’t tell me no.” He lunged for me, grabbed a fist full of my hair, and forced me over his desk. My palms slapped the smooth surface. “Fuck, Kayla. Your defiance is only turning me on.” He kicked my legs apart and thrust his fingers into me.
I pushed to my toes with a startled cry.
“Who am I?” His grip on my hair tightened.
“A liar.”
“Wrong.” Slowly, he inched his thumb into my ass, igniting a ring of fire I couldn’t escape. My stomach roiled from the intrusion.
“Gage, stop.”
“You don’t issue the orders. I’m your Master, and if I want to finger your tight little asshole, I will.”
I struggled for about two seconds before flopping onto the desk, my body a boneless mess of defeat. Fighting him only prolonged the pain. My breaths blasted the mahogany surface of his workspace. I relaxed my muscles and accepted his probing thumb.
Accepted that I was helpless.
The hardest part of accepting that I was helpless was accepting that I’d put myself in this position. I’d married him when I should have walked. Loved him when I should have hated him. Bent when I should have stood on my own two feet and not only said no, but meant it.
Instead, I found myself bent over with my ass bared. Again. And the truly fucked up part was my body’s reaction to everything this man did to me.
“Your cunt is so damn wet, Kayla. It doesn’t lie. And that low groaning in the back of your throat? That’s you begging me to take you, whether you want to admit it or not.”
“Fuck you, Gage.”
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you? I’m sorry to break it to you, but two of your holes are occupied at the moment, and the only one left is spewing some dirty shit right now.”
“Oh my God, you’re insufferable.”
“Say it, Kayla.”
“I’m not calling you Master.”
The bastard laughed, and I wondered why until he curled his fingers inside me. His thumb added pressure in my ass that stopped hurting and started feeling good.
Damn it.
He was relentless in holding me prisoner on the desk, my hair in his fist and my cheek to the wood. Legs spread wide for his plundering fingers.
I couldn’t stop from pushing my ass into him, couldn’t hold back a plea for more. Couldn’t deny that I wanted him. I needed him.
What the fuck was wrong with me?
I had no backbone. That was my problem. Because he had me anytime he wanted, and he knew it. I let out a breath that ruffled my bangs.
“You win, Master. Fuck me. Please, for God’s sake, fuck me.”
He leaned into my back, his cock pushing against my tender ass where his thumb had been two seconds ago. “Do you remember what I said I’d consider if you made it the whole week without coming?”
My heart skipped a beat. Him, at my mercy. How could I forget? “I remember.”
He brought his lips to my ear. “If I fuck you right now, I won’t stop until you come. Are you sure you want that?”
Yes, I wanted it. Wanted him. But the chance to have the upper hand tempted. Taunted.
“Let me go,” I whispered.
He released his grip on my hair and stepped back.
As my blood pumped steady in my veins, I regained my bearings. Regained my damn mind and recalled the reason he’d had me bent over and taking his thumb up my ass.
The words of the grapevine duo tumbled through my head, end over end, an incessant provocation.
I rounded on him, anger rushing through me like a flash flood in the bereft of deserts.
But the burn in my ass served as an annoying reminder.
Screaming at him would accomplish nothing, except for a return to his desk.
So I tried leaving, my mouth a straight line to keep my tongue in check.
He blocked my attempts, first stepping to the left then the right.
“Move,” I said through gritted teeth. “I’m done here.”
His answering smirk grated. “How can you be done? I haven’t even started yet.”
“You can use sex all you want, but this isn’t going away. You have a kid with Katherine. She gave you what I couldn’t.” What I might never be able to give.
Pain flickered in his eyes, matching the ping in my heart, and I took the opportunity to force my way past, scooping up my shoes on the way to the door. As I reached for the handle, I glanced over my shoulder.
He leaned against the desk’s edge, in the place where he’d had me sprawled and vulnerable. “If you walk out, prepare for the consequences when I get home.”
I paused, surprised by the way he held on to his executive desk with whitened knuckles. He thrived on control, and right now, he straddled the ledge.
We’d battled, and though he’d won, I wasn’t down yet. I threw one last glare in his direction. “Don’t hold your breath, Gage. I might not even come home tonight.”