CHAPTER SIX
ELENA
My scream rips from me as Gabe angles my head back and seals his mouth over mine, stealing the sound for himself. A deep groan reverberates within his chest as he sinks balls deep inside me and settles there.
“Fuck, that’s good, sweetness,” he murmurs his appreciation against my lips, dropping his hand to my hips and pinning me in place.
“Now, be perfect and don’t move, no matter what.
I want to enjoy the feeling of the cunt that belongs to the wife of the man I just killed soaking my cock for the next hour while you come for me. Just for me, sweetness. Understood?”
I jerk, trying to breathe. The stretch of him is like nothing I've ever experienced before. My lungs refuse to fill with air. Gabe laughs softly in my ear as he reaches around me. One hand finds a nipple to play with, the other toys with my clit.
“Will an orgasm help take the edge off, Elena? Just a little?" He strums me as I writhe, and he clucks. His arms fold around me like a vice. “None of that. You stay nice and still. I’m not going to fuck you and you’re not going to ride me. Is that clear?” His voice hardens, bringing me back a fraction.
I nod frantically, winding my legs around his where he propped me before.
“Better,” he approves. “Now, relax and let your body take over. Be my little toy for the next hour, sweetness. You’re all mine now.”
I moan as the first tendrils of my orgasm reach for me. I soak in gentle touch, sweet and tender. Like he cares. Like he—
I bite back a sob but it catches me out and finds its release anyway.
“Shhh, sweetness. It’s okay. It’s alright,” Gabe coos in my ear. “Shatter for me. Break apart. It’s what you need.”
I sob again as my orgasm slams into me from nowhere. My body bears down, taking the thickness of him impossibly deep inside.
“Fuck,” Gabe swears. “Hell, woman. Tighten that little pussy like that around me again and I’ll soak your insides too fast.”
I mumble my reply into his shoulder, my head turned into his arm. He nuzzles into my neck, pressing tender kisses against my throat as his fingers toy my nipples, squeezing and plucking rhythmically.
The pressure I just got rid of rebuilds almost instantly. I hate my body for its attempt at tenacity when I thought it was exhausted. The next orgasm hits me as I squeeze my legs together. Gabe tuts and taps my ankles apart, enjoying himself far too much.
“Is this your reward or my punishment?” I mutter. “I can’t believe I cooked for you.”
He strokes my nipples gently. “Did you say you cooked, sweetness?” he murmurs thoughtfully.
“Yeah.” I snort and moan in the same breath.
Not impossible and, I think, quite talented.
“I had this stupid idea of you coming h– back, and me feeding you to say thank you. But instead you carved my body up like it was your personal table to eat at, and– shit!” I shriek as he rolls us, pinning me onto my back with my hands over my head beneath one of his, his cock still lodged deep inside me.
“You cooked for me.” Gabe’s forehead rests gently on mine. “After what I did for you?”
“I–yes?” I admit. “It’s stupid. I said that. Let me up,” I beg as tears cloud my vision.
I hate that he can see me like this as the sun crests the horizon, breaking through the haze that has concealed all the truths I hid from myself last night.
I sold myself to this man to prevent another man from killing me.
I gave away the last things about myself that I loved and he will never know or care.
And in that time I convinced myself that I matter to him. That I care about him too.
The truth is that I know nothing about this man and he knows nothing about me, either. All we know about each other is limited to a brief negotiation and last night's marathon round of sex.
My tears fall unhindered as he watches me. I hate myself all the more.
For years I managed not to show any emotion to Oliver. I never let him see me cry. Now, in front of this man I barely know? Here I am, letting everything out. He does me one favour, one thing, and I sell him my dignity along with my soul.
Or my heart.
Oh hell.
I haven’t. I can’t have.
Or maybe I did.
Gabriel Decker appears to have come to the same conclusion as me at the same time.
“Sweetness,” he murmurs in a hushed voice. The thickness lodged inside me swells.
I cry out, an involuntary sound I can’t prevent as he breaks his promise and begins to move.
I should hurt. Everything should ache and burn and tear.
It doesn’t.
Gabe cradles me in his arms like I'm the most precious thing he’s ever seen. He holds me close as I struggle for him, my legs tucked near his hips. I cry out when he reaches down and lifts one of my legs over his shoulders, rearing over me.
“Hold on,” he murmurs. “You can’t hurt me.”
But I can hurt you.
I hear what he doesn’t say, gripping his arms tight as he slams deep into me. My head tosses back, and a darkness that I swear the sun already chased away filters across my vision. My cries are distant as he moves over me, his words faint, though his touch is warm and close.
At no point does he leave me and I know he's always there. Even when my throat turns raw and I can’t hear him anymore, I know his arms are wrapped around me, cradling me to his chest.
His mouth seals to mine as I fade, his hips jerking as he fills me, hot and thick to the brim.
Gabe whispers words I know he shouldn’t even as my mind refuses to recognize them.
And I think I say them back.
Gabe’s bath is as warm and comfy in the sunlight as it was in the starlight. He has a collection of scented oils that I doubt are for him, and his tub is oversized to fit him which means I fit there too.
His arms wrap around me as he pours oil through my hair and combs it out. “Merry Christmas, sweetness.”
“Merry… it is?” I count the days in my head. “Oh, my God. It is.”
He shushes me when I try to sit up, counting my days out a second time. The head massage he offers drops me back into a semi-awake state, and he resumes combing my curls.
“How do you know what to do?” I ask drowsily.
The scented water soothes my body, the aches we’ve created, the way he’s reformed me. It’s not just physical. I’ve changed inside and out. I know that even if my mind struggles to accept that fact in such a short period of time.
“I didn’t always live alone, Elena.” Gabe pauses in his combing. “You’re not the only one who tried to have a family.”
I grip his thigh and twist. That creates a whole new world of aches as water sloshes around us but I ignore them. “Before?”
He seems to get what I'm not saying. “Yeah.” He winds my curls through the rake comb and continues to tug it through my hair in the same gentle method he used before I interrupted his rhythm. “Before I was deployed that time, I had a partner. She was pregnant.” his voice rasps.
“Gabe,” I whisper.
“I didn’t come home when we planned. Shit went sideways.
My deployment was a lot longer than expected because my operation overseas turned into a war camp rescue that ended in my best friend and a whole lot of other men I loved dying.
I brought him home. When I came back, she wasn’t there.
" He shrugs, still combing my hair with steady hands. “She’d given up, moved on. Decided I wasn’t coming back.
My little girl is being raised by another man.
I’m not allowed to see her based on my psych evaluation afterwards and a court who never met me in my absence. ”
“Jesus.” I lean into him, pressing my body to his. I have no idea what I’m doing apart from offering up any spec of warmth that I possibly can. “That’s— it’s not fair,” I whisper.
His mouth crooks into a smile, and his hands hold me without a single tremor. “I killed a man for a woman I met three days ago without a second’s thought. Then I told you that you can never leave. Perhaps they were right, sweetness.”
I stare at him. “I feel like I’m supposed to say something supportive. That you should be able to get your girl back.”
He shrugs again. “One day, if she wants, maybe she can find me. But I’m not a safe man, Elena. You shouldn’t be here.” His face hardens as he pulls me closer to him. “You do know that, don’t you?”
I lean into him. “I cooked for you.”
He stills. “You said that before.”
My heart beats faster. “When you were…away,” I say carefully. “I cried. I screamed. I ranted and raved and kicked things. I don’t think I broke anything apart from my sanity a few times. And I drank a lot of coffee,” I admit. “It’s good coffee.”
“It is.”
“And then I did what I do when I care about someone or I’m happy or comfortable. I cooked.”
He watches me. “Were you happy and comfortable after screaming your heart out when I locked you in here, sweetness?”
I return his study. “Yes.”
Gabe blinks.
“Up here, it’s quiet. Beautiful. Peaceful. I could think. And when I can think, I create. So I did.”
His mouth twitches beneath his beard. “I have a refrigerator full of meals, do I?”
I laugh at him. “Do I look like a girl who cooks meals, Mister Decker? You have three berry pies, a pudding, because I found a mix and I could—shush. Let me finish. A beehive cake, a strawberry gateau and a honey sponge cake. Oh, and a coffee roll but that’s gone because I also comfort eat when I’m sad.
” I finish my list and offer him a happy smile.
He huffs at me and slides his huge hands over my curves, squeezing his fingers in until dimples appear in my skin. “Woman, if you’re set on feeding me, I don’t think I’ll ever want to leave you here alone ever again.”
I swear I glow.
“So does that mean we’re okay?” I peek at him through my lashes.
“Fucking flirt,” he growls, dropping the comb. His hand cups my nape and he pulls me hard into him.
I gasp as he seals our mouths together, his tongue teasing mine in liquid kisses before he twists me in the tub. Sloshing water everywhere, Gabe pulls my legs to either side of his and pushes me down.
His cock nudges my entrance as I widen my eyes at him.
“Oh, no, Gabe. No. There's no way. I can’t—”
His growl against my mouth shuts me up as his hips surge upward. “If I want to fuck the woman I love, then I’ll have her,” he grates against my lips, then pulls back. “Unless I’m hurting you?”
I nearly laugh out loud. After everything that we’ve done in the last twelve hours, hurt doesn’t even come close. But I know what he means. There’s intentional pain and careless pain in sex. He’s talking about the latter. Real damage, tearing me because we didn’t prepare.
But the rest of his words catch up with my brain and I stop laughing.
The smile fades from his face.
“Sweetness?”
“You said that before. Last night. Didn’t you?” My brain is soup, but I know what I heard. I mean, I think I did.
Gabe sweeps wayward curls back from my face that spring back into my peripheral vision anyway. “I didn't think you heard me,” he says quietly. “You were pretty out of it by then.”
“I was, but I remember…” I frown. “This is fast.”
“It is,” he acknowledges. “But what we are isn’t normal, either." Gabe sighs, placing his hands on my hips and lifts me. His cock slides out of me.
I cry out at the sudden loss. “What are you doing?” I feel empty. Bereaved. “Gabe?”
He leans his head back against the edge of the tub and closes his eyes. One hand reaches over his head to a cabinet with a combination lock on it just within his reach. He spins a dial on it and pulls the small door open. A set of keys sit in his hand.
He opens his eyes, catches my hand and places the keys in them. “You know how I feel. For me, this is real. For you? This is yours. Your choice, Elena. Your freedom.”
Gabe closes his eyes and tips his head back again.
I stare at the keys in my hand, what he just gave me.
My heart beats that much faster.