27. Bellamy
Chapter 27
Bellamy
G ideon walked me back to the house in silence. He almost seemed out of place without his right hand, but he was far harder to read than Fletcher so I couldn’t be sure. When we reached the house, he climbed the steps to the porch in front of me, his back bowed as he slipped through the door. Still not a word, still not even a look. I followed him up a creaking and winding staircase to the second floor of the massive house.
It was much the same as Thorn Hill, but dissimilar enough that it was easy to see the differences between the two societies. Rose Hall was cavernous and quiet. Thorn Hill was filled with conversation, laughter, and oftentimes sex. Not to imply people didn’t live in fear—or awe—of Fletcher Sinclair. I hadn’t been lying to him in the woods when I’d told him what I knew of him, but even the air in Rose Hall was different. I got the impression Gideon commanded respect in a way Fletcher didn’t care to.
Lost in my own thoughts, I stumbled and slammed into Gideon’s back after he came to a stop in front of a door on the second floor. He grunted at the force of the impact, but still remained unspeaking. He opened the door, and I peeked around him, finding a well-appointed bedroom with what looked like a bathroom attached against the opposite wall.
Nothing that night had gone how I’d planned. After the chase with Fletcher and the way he’d warned me about Gideon, I’d expected to be taken with as much force and power as soon as we arrived back at the house, but that was yet to happen.
“Did you want me to clean up?” I asked, assuming that the state of me was too disheveled for him to take interest. “Fletcher didn’t…I’m…”
Gideon shot me a scathing look, and I snapped my mouth shut before I said anything else.
The fear-laced arousal from the woods hadn’t faded, and even after the long and silent trek through the woods, my erection hadn’t even thought about giving up. My middle finger burned with a sharp pain where my nail had torn below the quick, and every time I poked at it, another burst of arousal exploded out from the base of my spine.
I realized, standing there in the hallway, I wanted to tempt The Beast.
I needed to. I was meant to make an ally of Fletcher and if I was going to get any information about Gideon to take back to him, I had to work fast. My time at Rose Hall was beyond limited.
While the thoughts raced through my brain, Gideon let go of the door handle and spun on his heel. He was halfway down the hall before I realized he was leaving me and I chased after him, fingers curling around his wrist and drawing him to a halt.
“Where are you going?” I asked.
“Don’t touch me,” he growled.
He didn’t even need to shake me off, I let go on my own.
“It’s just…where are you going?”
“My room.”
“I thought?—”
“You thought wrong,” he snapped, glaring at me over his shoulder with so much force I wished the forest floor had swallowed me up beneath the weight of Fletcher’s thrusts.
“I’m…I’m here of my own accord,” I said softly, wringing my hands together in front of me, aware of how dirty and tattered my clothes looked, at how much of a lie the words must have sounded to him.
“Did Fletcher force himself on you?” Gideon asked, squaring his shoulders but still keeping his back turned to me.
“Technically,” I said, “but I did want it.”
Gideon turned his face toward the wall, giving me the soft angles of his profile and the tight purse of his lips. His dark-blond hair fell in soft waves toward his shoulders, strands escaped from the knot at the base of his neck.
“I want you , too,” I said.
“You don’t know what you’re saying.”
If he’d look at me, he’d see how untrue his assumption was. He’d see clearly, with his own eyes, how much the fear and the adrenaline turned me on.
“What, then?” I asked.
“What, nothing,” he said. “Do whatever you want, but do it in your room.”
It was playing with fire, but I hadn’t gotten off with Fletcher and my body was electrified. The adrenaline was a drug and I never wanted to come down. I couldn’t stop the words from coming out of my mouth, but I knew if Gideon left me alone to jerk off in the shower of one of Rose Hall’s many guest rooms, I would claw my way through the lathe and plaster walls until I could escape.
“I didn’t come here to twiddle my thumbs.”
He ignored me, instead saying, “I’ll bring you up something to eat shortly.”
Before I could argue further, Gideon was gone, down the stairs and somewhere into the heart of the house that was too far removed for me to see. Resigned, I stepped into the guest room and closed the door behind me. It latched closed louder than I expected, and all it took was one quick test of the knob to figure out it had a self-locking mechanism and I was trapped inside.
“Son of a fucking bitch,” I cursed Gideon North and Fletcher Sinclair under my breath before stalking through the room toward the bathroom. Any malice I had toward my host died on my next breath.
The bathroom was bigger than the bedroom itself, a palatial landscape of black marble with gold fixtures. A clawfoot tub sat comfortably under a window, a shower with the biggest rainfall head I’d ever seen tucked into the far corner. The vanity had two gold sinks situated beneath the most ornate gold-framed mirror I’d ever seen.
I left the bathroom and tried the bedroom door one more time, confirming I was going to be stuck inside for the long haul. A different sort of fear laced up my spine, but there was no point in letting it overwhelm me. The only escape was through the window, and I knew without looking it would be locked and barred. Without anything better to do, I stripped out of my clothes and left them in front of the door. I was going to appreciate that bathtub for as long as I could.