Chapter 14
FOURTEEN
GRIM
A short hour later, I climbed into Gemma’s room. She would be out for a while, so it was as good a time as any to check in. I bent down, pressing a little black button hidden inside the doorjamb’s weather strip, and tried not to think about how close I came to crossing the line.
How much I fucking wanted to.
How wet she was on my hand. The silent plea in her eyes, her body and mind yielding so easily for me. Gemma’s obedience was a drug I would kill myself with. Happily. In life she was a spoiled, entitled brat, but with me?
Fuck.
I shook my head as a cherry-red light blinked. Still armed. It was a secret dual-locking system that only I knew about—Gemma always left her fucking room unlocked. The moment her door opened, an alarm went off, alerting only me.
There were three things I focused on with Gemma Crowne: secure from outsiders, accessible to me, invisible to her.
I walked past the red light and into her room, reading it like a diary. The book she was reading was face down, the bookmark deeper inside than the last time I’d been here. I lifted it up to see the title. Gemma Crowne pretended to read whatever book Reese Witherspoon picked out that month.
Madame Bovary.
This she was reading for real. Gemma liked dark and broken; old books that spoke of timeless pain.
I dusted my finger along the white powder on the vanity, remnants of cocaine.
Didn’t matter how many fuckers I threatened in this town, Gemma always found a way to get drugs.
Next to the powder, shiny pink flecks of nail polish caught the light. I stilled.
Something had made her sad.
Gemma liked to pretend she was perfect and happy, but there were tells. I pictured her ripping apart her manicure, that stony, walled look in her eyes.
I opened and closed my fists, tried to reason with the blood rushing through me, with the spikes in my veins screaming that she may have shed tears for someone other than me.
Those were my fucking tears.
I took one last look at the nail polish—who the fuck made her sad?—then moved on. It was a few hours before the night maid service. Her bedsheets were wrinkled, and a distinctly not-blonde hair lay on the pillow.
I swallowed, possession sliding like a knife down my throat.
Did someone sleep here?
The hair glowed a soft purple lilac in the moonlight.
One of her friends.
I pulled open her nightstand, the usual place for drugs. Empty. I went to the dryer vent. The dust pattern matched how I left it. The camera I’d placed undisturbed. No new ones.
Opened the smoke detector, checking for bugs. I checked the router for unfamiliar devices or Bluetooth signals. All good.
Her closet consisted of rows of sleek, shiny dressers, a wall of backlit shoes, an island with jewelry glowing through a glass top, and two chaise longues.
Her dresses were always a finger width apart, pink the dominant color.
I paused on the skintight dress she’d worn to the club, the memory of how it hugged her body shooting straight to my cock.
Fuck.
This was a Princess Gemma outfit. I liked Princess Gemma, because I loved fucking up her perfect pink exterior. Still, as I walked toward her shoes, I imagined her in black. That fantasy really fucked me up.
A color as powerful and darkly feminine as she pretended she wasn’t.
Shoes were the same, jewelry the same. There was nothing hidden in the first dresser. I pushed around scarves, still nothing.
I went to the second dresser. Her underwear was neatly arranged and color coordinated in its velvet-lined shelf. I pushed them aside and found a ziplock bag of loose pills.
Bingo.
I shoved them into my pocket, ready to shut the drawer, and paused. Gemma always had exactly ninety-seven pairs of panties in rotation. I counted ninety-six—she’d worn nothing tonight, and her laundry was done daily.
Where the fuck did it go?
That fucked sense of possession slid into my veins and I pulled out my cock. I wanted to mark her like a goddamn animal. Anyone who came near her would know.
Unmarked, unclaimed, not off limits.
I fisted my cock, stroking it over her perfectly aligned rows of panties.
I’d long since accepted that Gemma Crowne was more than a passing fixation. She was inside me, burrowed so deep in my marrow that even trying to get her out would render me lifeless.
But this wasn’t how this went. I didn’t fucking jack off into her clothes like a psycho in some early-2000s movie. I came in, I checked things, and I left.
But the idea that someone was here, someone had touched what belonged to me, twisted me up. That off-limits, forbidden fantasy where Gemma Crowne wore my mark has me fucked in the head.
I gripped the wall above me as an anchor.
Her colorful panties blurred with each stroke.
The real Gemma Crowne was messy, dirty. That night on the beach I hadn’t just seen it, I’d felt it.
The room dissolved and I was back there, back between Gemma’s thighs as she begged me to fulfill her fucked-up fantasies.
Back when I consumed her illicit ecstasy, her sighs, her perfect, tight pussy.
Her skin dimpled beneath my fingers when I gripped her hips.
Her legs found my back, pushing me deeper.
I gripped harder, stroked faster, a strangled, involuntary groan leaving my lips.
Fuck.
I hadn’t fucked anyone since her.
It had been five years, I was basically a monk.
I’d tried, but nothing compared to her. Gemma said the dirtiest fucking shit when she got going. I only saw her pristine princess act slip away once, but now she was stuck inside me. Every goddamn time I came, I heard her husky voice telling me to make her cry.
I grabbed a pair of her panties to smother my come.
Seconds passed in what felt like minutes. My head hung heavy, the arm anchored to the wall strained. She’d opened up for me on the beach—only for me—and goddamn if that wasn’t the most addicting drug.
Because, for a moment, I felt something.
I took a deep breath, a deadly truth passing through my thoughts.
This dark, vicious need is growing beyond something I can control.
I stuffed myself back into my jeans, prepared to toss the panties when I got back, when that same need curled in my gut. I placed them on top of her neatly organized ones. Messy. Fucked up with me.
Then left.