Chapter 23 #2
“I’m not leaving without my wife.”
“Gage, please don’t do—”
“I mean it,” he interrupted. “What do I need to do to get you to come home?” To my utter astonishment, he dropped to his knees and nuzzled my belly.
“You want me to beg? Well here I am, baby. For you and our children, I’ll do anything, even if it means getting on my knees, and I don’t give a fuck who’s around to see it. ”
God, I was going to cry.
“Gage, please get up.” As much as I loved him kneeling at my feet, we both knew he didn’t belong there. “I’ll go home with you.”
“You don’t have to do that,” Simone said.
Gage shot her a glare. “This is between my wife and me.”
“Then why did she come to my house with a packed suitcase? You need to give her some time.”
“She’s had time. Slumber party is over.”
My friend was about to explode, so I interjected before she did. “Thanks for everything, Simone,” I said, silently pleading with her to understand. “I think I should go home.”
“But you were a mess yest—”
“Babe,” Ian said, massaging her shoulders as if that would be enough to calm her. Who knew? Maybe it would. He probably knew her buttons and how to set off each one better than anyone. “Let them go. Kayla’s a big girl. She can take care of herself.”
His new attitude astounded me, and I couldn’t help but wonder if a second chance at life was the only reason behind the change. I knew Gage had spoken to him the night he sent him away, but I’d never had the guts to ask what they’d talked about.
And I probably never would. That was a conversation Gage would likely never tell me about.
We both had our flaws; I relapsed into the land of trust issues every time new doubts arose, and he refused to open up emotionally.
We could fight each other on those two things until we destroyed our marriage and each other, or we could accept them.
Everyone had flaws. Some more than others.
“Thank you for having me,” I said. Not everyone was lucky enough to be blessed with a friend like Simone. She’d always have my back, and I prayed that when the time came, if it ever did, I’d get a chance to have hers as well.
Gage laced our fingers together. “Where’s your suitcase?”
“By the couch.” I pointed to the sofa where I’d slept last night, tossing and turning and agonizing over my impetuous decision to leave. There was a saying I’d once read in some pregnancy book, or maybe I’d seen it on a forum, but I’d found the advice sound.
Never make big decisions while pregnant.
Gage fetched my suitcase as I put on my coat.
Before we reached the door, I stopped to give Simone a hug.
But I didn’t dare touch Ian, and the glance he exchanged with Gage spoke volumes.
Just because they’d managed to occupy the same room for ten minutes without tearing each other’s heads off didn’t mean they were on the way to becoming best buds.
But I was optimistic. People changed. Gage had, in spite of his habit of hiding painful things from his past. I had too, in spite of my penchant for doubting first and asking questions later.
Even Ian had gone through a metamorphosis.
Maybe, by some miracle, these two would someday bury the past and find some common ground.
We left without another word, having already said our goodbyes—for now anyway—and Gage pulled my luggage behind him as he led me to the car. After stowing the suitcase in the trunk, he opened the passenger door and helped me into the seat.
Gage settled in beside me and amped up the heater before digging my cell out of his pocket. “It still works,” he said, handing it to me as if it were a token of apology. “But I’m afraid the screen is cracked. We’ll get you a new one.”
I merely nodded, my thoughts still lingering on what had happened in Simone’s apartment.
Gage steered the car onto the road. Fog hung over the city, obscuring skeleton trees and roadway signs, and though the heater blasted warm air toward me, I shivered in my cold leather seat.
Neither of us spoke until we were on the freeway.
“Did you know he was going to be there?” he asked.
“No.”
A few nail-biting beats passed. “They seem happy together,” he said.
I could not have given him a more stunned expression. “I think they are.”
Letting out a breath, he ran irritated fingers through his messy hair. “I didn’t sleep at all last night.”
“Neither did I.”
“Baby…I was wrong.”
I had no words. My mouth was too busy gaping.
“I should have told you.”
“I’m glad you can see that now,” I said.
“But if you ever leave me like that again…” He shook his head, jaw rigid.
“So I’m to be punished then?”
“What do you think, Kayla?”
“Am I not allowed to have feelings?” I angled to face him head-on. “What about space? Is that out of the question too?”
“You’re allowed to have feelings. But space? Fuck no. Not only are we married, but you belong to me. If you need space, I’m happy to put you in the cage for a while. You can have all the time in the world to think things through in there.”
I gulped. “Gage, please.”
“Please, what?”
“Please don’t hate me for what I did.”
He glanced at me, raising incredulous brows. “That’s not even possible. Jesus, Kayla. I’m upset that you bolted like that, but I don’t hate you. I could never hate you. I’m so fucking in love with you that I can’t see straight.”
“You might want to tone down the love a little, so you don’t wreck the car.”
He laughed. “Fuck, you’re crazy, and I love you for it.”
“When she told me those things, I went crazy, and I doubted you. Again. This nasty voice in my head told me you only wanted me to get at him, that I’m only a possession to you. A thing you use.”
“You’re everything to me.”
On that note, with those words echoing in my mind in the soft way he’d spoken them, we rode the rest of the way home in silence.
By the time we reached the driveway and rushed to the front steps, the sky had opened, but we beat the worst of it by seconds.
Rain pounded the windows and danced on the rooftop.
And something smelled delicious. My stomach growled, reminding me that Gage’s arrival had interrupted dinner.
“Come,” he said, reaching for my hand. He escorted me into the dining room where a man I’d never seen before readied the table for us. A full Thanksgiving dinner had been set out.
“Dinner is served, Mr. Channing. Do you require anything else?”
“No, thank you.”
The man made himself scarce, and a couple of moments later, I detected the front door open and close.
“You knew I’d come back.”
“I was hoping.” His mouth tilted up in a halfway grin. Bringing a hand to his tie, he loosened the knot before reaching into his pocket. “First things first though.” He fisted a set of clover clamps—the worst kind I’d ever been punished with.
“If you weren’t pregnant, you’d have a date with my bullwhip in the anal stocks right now.
Lucky for you,” he said, coming closer, “your womb is growing my baby and making your belly sexy as fuck.” Stopping in front of me, he cocked his head to the side.
“Just how sensitive are your nipples these days?”
I covered my breasts on instinct until he flattened his mouth into a firm line. Slowly, I let my hands drop and dangle at my sides.
“Good girl,” he said, beginning with my left nipple.
“Ow!”
“It hurts, does it?”
“What do you think?” I said, scowling.
“Good. Now address me properly before I change my mind about the stocks.” He raised a thoughtful brow. “Or you could spend some time in the cage after dinner.”
“No, Master. Please. I’ll be good.”
“It is Thanksgiving, and I’m feeling grateful and a bit lenient, so assuming you get rid of that bratty attitude and let me feed you,” he said, pinching my other nipple between his horrible clamp, “I’ll offer you some mercy. No cage.”
I was relieved to hear the words no cage fall from his lips, but my mind had latched onto the first part of what he’d said. “Feed me, Master?”
“Mmm, yes.” He whirled me around, causing my head to spin, and used his tie to bind my hands at the small of my back.
“I imagine you’ll have a difficult time eating without the use of your hands.
” Happy with his handiwork, he pushed me into a chair and ordered me to spread my legs before taking a seat a mere arm’s length away.
And in between bites of turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, and the best damn cranberry sauce I’d ever had, he fingered my pussy until I teetered on the edge of orgasm, then he yanked on the chain connecting the clamps every time I uttered a plea to come, no matter how small.
Even a whimper for more got my nipples punished.
My face had become a tear-stained mess from the vises trapping my overly sensitive buds in never ending torture.
And yet the pain faded the instant he pushed his fingers into me again.
Arching my spine, I curled my toes. “Please let me come!”
He brought those same digits, slick with my arousal, to my chin. “You will not come tonight.”
I groaned.
“But you’ll be happy about something else.” Turning intense blue eyes on me, he slowly dipped his fingers between my lips. “The next time you do come, it’ll be at the expense of the bitch who made you leave me in the first place.”