Chapter 15
15
GAbrIEL
T he sound of Luca being beaten as I made my way toward the stairs was made sweeter by an added chorus: the horrified, frantic breathing of my lovely wife.
Celia’s delicate neck twisted in my grip as she turned to cast another furtive look back at the dining room.
“You did this to them,” I said. “I don’t want to hurt them. But I will be obeyed. I will be respected in my own house. I will not be lied to by those I protect.”
“Those you protect?” She twisted in my grip, and I let her go. She was facing me as she stepped onto the top of the landing. Since I was still a few steps down, she could almost look me straight in the eye. “How can you demand that I tell you the truth, Gabriel, when you don’t do me the same honor?”
“Oh, it’s easy.” I reached to touch her rounded cheekbone. She really was a strikingly beautiful woman. She was always trying to manipulate me now, but I could imagine her kneeling for me. “I’m the one who has all the power.”
She shook her head. “I don’t think that’s true. You need me for your plans.”
I leaned in toward her confidentially, and despite herself, she looked curious. I whispered, “Not in the way you think.”
Then I climbed the last of the stairs toward her. She turned and hurried toward our bedroom, as if there was any escaping me in my own house or in our world.
I followed her into the bedroom. I didn’t want to miss her reaction.
She stopped dead in the doorway. Then she started trying to back up, but I was there, and she collided with me. Her perfect, lush ass pressed against my body, and I felt my cock harden.
I slid my arm around her waist, holding her against my body, and lowered my face to press a kiss to the side of her throat. Her body trembled against mine.
She always responded when I kissed her—no matter how much she tried to hide it—terrified, trembling, but part of her still surrendering to me. I brought my lips up to kiss the side of her throat just below her ear, and she tilted her head to one side, welcoming me in.
I didn’t want to stop kissing her.
“Gabriel?” she asked, her voice still shaky. “What are you going to do to me?”
“Whatever I want,” I promised her, before I steered her the rest of the way into the bedroom.
In front of us was something she had seen before I had. I’d had it ordered along with an engagement ring, but I hadn’t seen it until now, since my men had brought it up for me.
No wonder she had reacted the way she had, trying to escape our bedroom and trembling in my arms.
The cage was generously sized, the same size as a queen bed. It was tall enough for a petite woman to stand in comfortably. It was utterly empty.
And, because I’m not completely without a sense of humor, it was gilded.
Celia fought to escape her gilded cage. I’d make it more than metaphorical for her until she embraced it.
“I can’t let my wife run away,” I told her.
She looked at me with her eyes flooding with tears, backing away but I could see her resignation in her eyes. She knew that if I wanted her in that cage, that was where she’d be. “Gabriel, please. All I wanted with the phone was to be able…”
It was a split-second pause before she caught herself and began a new thread. The stumble was so faint that someone else might not have noticed. “To call Luca and Dante if I need to. I know the three of you have kept secrets from me.”
“Tell me what you really were doing with the phone, Celia, and I’ll tell you what secrets the three of us are keeping.”
“I wasn’t doing anything to hurt you, Gabriel! That’s not what I want. I want us to be allies, I despise my father.” She stumbled over her words in her desperation to confess, and I didn’t doubt she was telling me the truth. She just wasn’t telling me the truth that I had asked for. “And I despise Royal. If you and I could really be husband and wife?—”
“For that to happen, one of us would have to trust the other first,” I pointed out. “One of us would have to bare our soul first .”
She stared at me, chewing her lip, and I believed that she really was considering it. But I didn’t think she would give in that easily.
I grabbed her and kissed her, and she kissed me back. The two of us kept trading quick, fervent kisses all the way up until I pushed her into the cage. I kept my hand on her body to make sure she didn’t fall.
She gave me the most shocked look as I swung the door closed, as if the ending hadn’t always been obvious.
“And since one of us has a cage and one of us is going into it, I can imagine who is going to have to trust first. To talk first.”
She stood there, frozen. I thought it was impossible to shock her, but she seemed shocked right now.
“Gabriel,” she whispered.
I sat down at my desk to do some work, though really, all I could do was watch her. She stood there a little longer, still seeming as if she were shocked.
I would miss having her in my bed. I liked the way she smelled and the soft sound of her breathing and the warmth on the other side of the bed.
But having her in the cage kept her close too. It had its own charms.
Eventually, she sat down on the floor of the cage. “Are you going to give me a pillow? A blanket?”
That sounded like our imperious Princess.
“Probably not,” I told her. “Not yet.”
It was satisfying to have her actually under my control. I should have been beyond jealousy, but somehow when it came to her, I wasn’t. I hated that Dante had touched her, even though I had told him to do so. That should have been the ultimate power, except that I knew that she loved him, and she did not love me.
I didn’t want to love her back, but I did want her to love me.
Love, however, was the one thing that I couldn’t force into existence.
Obedience, though, I could.
She curled up on her side, her legs drawn up to her chest. She was quiet for so long that I thought perhaps she’d fallen asleep. Then, quietly, I heard her say, “Aren’t you going to let me brush my teeth?”
I didn’t respond, still looking over my work.
“I’m not going to make a very good status symbol for you if my teeth rot out of my head.”
“You’re not going to make a very good wife for me no matter what, let’s not kid ourselves,” I told her from my chair, before I rose and walked over to her. “I’ll take you to the bathroom. You can shower and change for bed as well as brushing your teeth. But I require something from you first.”
She uncurled herself, sitting up to eye me warily. “What is it you want from me?”
“Tell me something that you’ve never told Dante or Luca.” I wanted her to start telling me her secrets. And I wanted something I didn’t share in any way with those two fools.
She put her chin in her hand, looking contemplative, as if she were actually giving my request thorough attention. Her long, platinum blond hair hung around her shoulders. The hoodie hid too much of her body.
“My mother used to write me letters on every birthday,” she said softly. She looked away from me as if what she were saying was too painful for there to be another person in the room. “I know she did, because she always read them to me on my birthday. And she put them in a box…but I’ve never been able to find the box. My father claims she never did such a thing.”
“What was in the letters?”
She raised her eyebrows. “Why would I tell you now? I assume I’ll have to go to the bathroom in the morning too.”
Her spirit was refreshing. And I longed to break it. “I didn’t know you had it in you to be this mouthy. But if you keep it up, I’m going to punish your mouth with my cock.”
She gave me a look that suggested I would be ill-advised to bring my cock that close to her and her teeth in her current mood.
But she was Celia, always practical, so she explained, “I don’t remember any of her letters word for word. I wish I did. She always just talked about what I’d done that past year, and how she felt watching me grow up, and the dreams she had for me.”
“I think she knew even then that she wouldn’t be around to see my dreams come true. Not that’s really happening anyway.” She waved her arm to encompass the gilded cage.
I wasn’t the kind of man to drive to her father’s house and torture him to get the box.
I’d bide my time.
But I wouldn’t forget.
Still, I admired how she was so brave in the face of overwhelming odds. She was so unlike the spoiled girl I’d first gotten to know. Nobody had really seen her, appreciated her, all these years.
It made me want to bring her a gift. To show her that I did see her.
Her foolishness, her weakness, had been just a facade. Just like I had my facade, though mine was very different.
She’d always been struggling, fighting, surviving.
She was admirable.
But she wasn’t mine.
Not yet.
And I couldn’t trust her.
When she got out of the shower, I was there to hand her towel. She knew I had been waiting for her, and she had taken an exorbitantly long shower.
But that was all right, because I had my revenge when she climbed out of the hot spray, her skin flushed pink and glowing from the heat. I wrapped the towel around her body. Her cheeks went a little pinker at my appraising gaze.
Then she frowned at the marble countertop where she had left her clean clothes. They were gone.
“Gabriel,” she began calmly.
You used your clothes to hide things from me,” I said. “Clothing is a privilege, Celia.”
Her eyes flashed. “No, it isn’t. For one thing, your staff could see me.”
Clever girl. She was implying it would make me look bad if I didn’t give her desires to her. After all, degrading her publicly now that she was my wife would degrade me.
I shook my head. “No one but me is ever going to see you naked again.”
“I don’t want you to see me naked either.” She anchored the towel firmly around her torso, as if that would matter to me.
“That’s unfortunate.”
“And second, Gabriel, it’s cold in here. I’ll freeze.”
“If you’re good, I’ll give you a blanket,” I promised her.
Her eyes flashed, but she didn’t fight me. Instead, she went back into the cage, crossing her arms over her generous breasts. She looks so perfect like this. I didn’t want to ever forget this memory.
Thoroughly caged, thoroughly pissed off, and perhaps one day, thoroughly mine.
“What do I have to do for the blanket?” she asked.
“Come over to the edge of the cage, get down on your knees, and open your mouth.”
Her lips pressed together tightly as if I had deeply offended her.
I shrugged. “That’s fine with me. I do enjoy watching you.”
She sat down on the floor with her back to me, but even that was a beguiling sight. I loved the way her long, light blond hair fell in waves over her shoulders, the gentle indent of her waist above her curvy hips, the expanse of soft skin made for me to kiss.
The scars on her back.
They sent a throb of fury through me, but I could bide my time there too.
It turned out I did sleep just as well when she was in a cage as I did when she was in bed beside me.
I woke in the middle of the night to find she was sleeping on her side again, one arm below her face to form a pillow. She must have turned toward me during the night, because all the perfect curves of her body were on display.
Her other hand was tucked behind between her thighs. It might have just been her sleeping pose, but it elicited a thousand fantasies for me. Did part of her long for my hand between her thighs, even while I was punishing her?
Eventually, she would surrender those perfect red lips for me. She would look up at me with those flashing eyes, and she would suck me down. Because that was what I wanted. Because that was what I demanded.
Because for the first time in her life, she chose to submit.
My fantasy shifted, imagining her eager to please me. I imagined kissing her soft lips, running my hand through her shining hair again before she smiled up at me teasingly and began to slowly drop to her knees. Her hands would run down my body until she reached my belt, and she would lovingly draw my cock out, looking up at me hungrily before she wrapped that sweet, filthy mouth around my dick.
And I wanted that, even more than I wanted her obedience.
I drew myself out and began to stroke myself, imagining her. I imagined my mouth on those breasts, my hands still going between her thighs, of bringing her ankles up onto my shoulders and driving deep inside her.
I rose from the bed and walked softly over to the edge of the cage, still stroking myself. I was almost tempted to go into the cage, I was so eager for her. Instead, I kept stroking myself, studying her beautiful face, until I shattered.
She didn’t wake as my cum sprayed across her perfect skin.
But even though I held all the power, as I walked back to my bed, I didn’t feel satisfied.
The way Luca and Dante felt for her was madness.
Was I coming to understand that madness?