Elle
“Talk to me, dove,” Gant says, his knuckles turning whiter by the second on the wheel. “Distract me.”
He’s distracting me by just existing.
My eyes fall from his tense jaw to the sharp bob of his throat to the deep hollow between his collarbones. His hair, once slicked for Stassi’s performance, has escaped the pomade’s hold because his waves are returning, dropping from the perfect coif to his forehead, the tips falling into his black eyes. I stroke the back of his head absent-mindedly, remembering the way the cropped strands had tickled between my thighs.
I slide my fingers from his hair to his neck, to his erratic pulse point. I don’t know what possesses me to press on it. I guess I thought I could slow it down, but it only doubles its pace.
He pries one of his hands from the wheel, clutches my wrist and drags my fingers to his lips. His dark eyes are wide, focused on the road with a madness that intensifies with each digit he sucks on.
I can’t help the tiny chuckle that escapes my raw throat despite it all.
“What’s funny, baby?”
“There’s not even anything on them.” If they were dripping with slick, I’d understand. But he doesn’t laugh as he devours my middle finger, and suddenly my stomach’s tightening and not with more giggles.
“It’s been five fucking days, ,” he says licking between them, “If I can’t get inside of you, I need a bit of you inside of me. Just tasting your skin and inhaling your scent is good enough for now. ”
My throat clenches, and suddenly, I’m breathless. “I shouldn’t be sitting here. It isn’t safe.” I shift in his lap, and his grip leaves my wrist to slide between my thighs. With one tug, he forces my ass back against his hard cock.
“If you leave me,” he rasps, releasing my ring finger from his lips with a pop, “it’ll be even less safe. I told you, I need you.”
But I can’t need you. Not like this. Not yet.
“I’m right here,” I say, kicking my right leg over his to climb into the passenger seat, but his fingers have an iron grip on my pussy.
“Move and I’ll curl my fingers in your cunt like a fucking fish hook and anchor you to me,” he says, his fingers skimming the edge of the tiny strip of fabric that’s keeping us separated.
But I do move, involuntarily rocking against him because he’s stroking me painfully slowly over my swelling clit.
“Fuck, this corset is cheap,” he mutters, slipping his middle finger through the gusset and pulling. The fabric tears with little resistance, revealing my sheer black stockings beneath. “It’s so thin, it can’t even hold a little moisture without soaking through.”
His fingers leave me for a half second to flip down the visor, and I meet his gaze in the little mirror, although he can’t see my face. He can only see my pale pussy shining through the thin black fabric as his eyes flicker from the road to me on a circuit.
“ Fuck ,” he rasps, pinching my clit and I arch against him as his fingers work to break the thin barrier and expose me completely.
No. Not yet.
“ The road ,” I say breathily, grabbing his wrist as we shoot around a curb and beneath a street light. “Focus on the road, not me.”
But I know he won’t, not with my legs spread. I close them, trapping his fingers and spinning so that my side’s against his front again.
He said to distract him, so distract him with a turn-off. Distract yourself with a turn-off.
Immediately the topic that crushed me before he touched my slit comes to mind.
“Jarett’s with Jaime.” I watch him carefully, gauging his reaction.
If Sylo was with Jarett at the Watering Hole, then Gant and his father can’t be responsible for his current state, right?
Sylo… Fuck, how did Sylo and Jarett’s brother play into all of this with Madame? I don’t know, and I don’t think Gant does either. There’s no way he doesn’t see the resemblance between Jarett and his uncle. Sure, I’d never shown him Jarett’s picture and his face was hidden in the sex video, but he must know what he looks like. He hunted me for two years. Surely Jarett was involved in the search too, even if Jarett was Bart’s focus and not his.
“She deserves him. He deserves her,” he says simply, his sharp jaw ticking as his fingers sink into my inner thigh, kneading me.
“You hate my parents,” I say matter-of-factly.
“No. I abhor them, yet their match made in hell created you. You’re my angel, . I know that’s why my mother gave Jarett the time of day.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” I mutter, trying not to play into his words. But they are playing repeatedly in my brain. My angel.
“She led me to you. She knew I’d need you.”
I shake my head against his chest. “You know that’s not true.”
“It’s my truth.”
“You think all this pain and chaos needed to happen just for you to know me? Little miss no one?”
“You’ll never understand it. You are not just someone to me. You’re my everyone.”
That burning sensation in my nose and eyes from just a half-hour ago in my old neighbourhood is back. Even my throat burns and cracks when I say, “I can’t be your everything.”
“I orbit around you. How could you not be my centre? How could there ever be any escape when we’re this intertwined?”
“You made me your centre when you started this insane revenge game.” At the last word, the floodgates reopen, and tears slip down my cheeks before I can stop them. Game . This game, this fucking game that changed my life forever. I wipe the tears away discreetly, but he catches my wrist, and we make eye contact in the rearview mirror.
“Don’t ever try to stop them. Hide them. If they’re falling, let them fall on me. Soak me, I’ll drink them all.”
A hoarse whimper escapes my throat because I want to believe him, but I can’t. Not again. Still, my lips move of their own accord. “I’m not her centre. Jaime’s. She chose him. She will always choose him.”
“I can understand her logic.”
That catches me off guard. “How?”
“Because I understand her hyperfixation. I will always choose you. Tonight, you said I was a bad friend. I love my horsemen, but I love you more. You’re my pinnacle.”
Love.
Don’t fall for it. Your parents don’t even love you, much less someone like Gant Auclair.
Don’t fall for it.
Don’t —
But then I’m leaning up and pressing my lips against his.
Make it believable, Rin had said. It feels believable because this idiocy is real on my end. I’m hopelessly, pathetically trapped in his gravitational pull, and he’s surrounding me with a dizzying speed.
When the world finally stops spinning, I realise the car’s stopped in a dark, seemingly private garage. Is that why I was so dizzy when he kissed me? All the hairpin turns to get up here. Or was it his taste I craved in my nightmares?
Up here…
I peer over the hood, over the cement barrier, and down at the glittering city. There’s a glass lift to the left waiting for us. We’re at the penthouse. His penthouse.
I’m so busy looking at the lift that I don’t realise I’m being lifted like a child. No, like a teddy, a doll. He’s between my legs, our chests flushed. My fingers dig into his shoulders for support, and yet I never feel like I’m going to fall when I’m in his arms.
“Put me down,” I protest, but it sounds like a broken record even to my ears. He’d lifted me out of the club in front of a thousand people. Why would I think he’d drop me now when it’s just him and I and the entire city beneath our feet?
“So you can try to run again?”
“You made sure I can’t,” I snark, gazing over his shoulder at my bobbing feet, where only one filthy soft boot remains. Damn, when had I lost the other one? Before or after Jarett and Jaime? Before or after I lost my mind in his arms and my heart down his throat?
“You’ll never have to stand on them here. I’ll be your feet.”
“How?”
“You know how to ride me, Dovey.”
I swallow hard as the lift doors slide open, and we step inside. With one swipe of a black key card, we’re moving up. It’s hard to believe we weren’t already on the top floor.
“And when we go to Beaulieu in a week?” I ask.
“I’ll be your feet then, too.”
I knit my brows. “You can’t dance for me.”
“Watch me,” he whispers in my ear, and a shiver racks my spine as I grip him tighter.
I watch him on one of the reflective walls. He’s drinking in our intertwined silhouette, his left hand stroking my hair, his right arm firmly beneath my ass.
“We look, fit , so good like this,” he whispers almost to himself, then to me. “I need to sink, melt into you. Dissolve into you…” His nose brushes my neck, his dark eyes peering up into mine beneath heavy lashes. “Will you let me?”
The question despite his normal, cold, intonation sounds so fucking vulnerable, hopeful, and pleading, but I don’t answer him because the doors slide open and we step into his home.
His home. Remember that.
It’s nothing short of stunning, from the matte black walls to the natural wooden accents to the textured fabrics that add dimension to the masculine lair. That’s what it feels like, a lair.
Suddenly, I feel tiny, a feeling my ballet instructors, namely Gant’s own mother, would laugh at. But that’s how I feel under the triple-height ceilings, like a speck. But Gant doesn’t feel like a speck holding me, caging me against him.
He feels like he belongs because it’s his territory. Of course, he stalks the massive corridors and knows every hiding place.
My feet itch to get to the floor, ready to sprint despite their fragility because this dark, beautiful lair has activated my cavewoman instincts. I know I’m in danger as I take in Gant’s beautiful face against the backdrop of where he lures his prey. How can I ever win here when I’m on his turf?
“What’s that?” I ask, surprising him as I rip my legs from his waist and fall to my feet with a dull ache. Before he can reach me, I fly to the opposite side of the room with feigned interest. “The floor’s different here.”
I barely get a chance to study the mysterious black covering before I’m pulled away.
“Don’t go near it.”
“Why?” I ask as he knits our fingers and tugs me toward a massive hallway that seems to stretch on forever in the dim lighting.
“It’s not secure,” he says darkly, guiding me past a dark ramp where two double doors await.
The ramp reminds me of a cinema entrance…a theatre? In his house? Sorry, penthouse. Why am I surprised?
“What’s down there?” I stall because I know where he’s leading me.
“Nothing more important than where we’re going.”
I dig my heels into the glossy flooring, but it’s no use; I slide effortlessly alongside him.
“Don’t you want to give me a tour first?”
He shakes his head. “I need to take one.”
“What?” But it dawns on me the minute those dark eyes skim my body before they flash ahead again, determinedly.