The Castle Read online

  “Christ,” he mutters. “No panties. I never would have been able to focus on the game if I knew you were bare under this.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind for next—” A whimper escapes me as his blunt fingers push inside. He twists them, and sensation bursts through my body, lights behind my eyes.

  “Already wet.” His satisfaction fills the air, as sweet as the scent of bougainvillea reaching up beneath the balcony. “It won’t take much to make you come.”

  I press up on my toes, squirming away from his relentless caress. “Wait.”

  “It’s too soon to beg, little virgin.” As if to prove the point, he presses a kiss at the base of my neck. And another one lower, trailing down my spine with a casual sensuality that leaves me breathless. When he reaches soft skin, he bares his teeth—swiping the flesh of my ass with the sharp edges.

  There’s a rush in my ears, a mix of pleasure and trepidation, the wildness of Gabriel Miller that I can’t ever get enough of. Loud enough that I almost don’t hear the footsteps on the patio below.

  A long shadow appears across the smooth flagstone.

  “Gabriel! Someone’s coming.”

  “Oh, that’s right,” he murmurs, his lips brushing against my sex. The vibration makes me shiver. “I thought I’d be late so I asked West to come by and check on you.”

  “Tell him you’re—”

  His tongue sweeps from my clit up to my ass, and I squeak in surprise. “You tell him,” he says, devious intent running beneath his voice.

  Instinct has me pushing back, standing up, stumbling away from the railing. His hands are firm, inexorable as he guides me back. He presses my palms to the stone, a shock of cold.

  “Stay,” he murmurs, kneeling behind me again.

  West comes into view, an imposing presence with his military boots and not-quite-concealed firearm. He nods to me from below. “Ma’am.”

  Oh God. “Um. Hello.”

  “Did Gabriel make it home?”

  His tongue swirls around my clit with painful urgency. I make a low moan before I catch myself. “Yes!” I shout. Somehow I force myself to speak normally. “Maybe twenty minutes ago.”

  “Excellent. No trouble tonight?”

  His fingers push inside me, revealing just how turned on I am. I’m slick and swollen, the walls of my sex producing unbearable friction with his calloused skin.

  “No,” I say, my voice wobbling as Gabriel dips inside for my liquid. “No trouble.”

  West cocks his head, and I wonder if he knows. I don’t think he can see Gabriel from that angle, but he must know something’s strange. He must hear the wet sounds from between my legs, smell the scent of my arousal in the air. “You can always call. I’m sure Gabriel told you that. If you need anything, if you hear anything.”

  Despite the strange sensuality of the moment, my body tenses. If I hear anything. As if he knows I hear things. How could he know? He would think I’m crazy. Gabriel would think I’m crazy.

  “Okay,” I manage. “Thank you.”

  Please go away now. West has been nothing but professional with me, but I’m dying here.

  And then something wet and thick presses to my back entrance. I gasp aloud, the sound echoing off the granite. He’s never touched me there. And now the tip of his finger is inside me, stretching me open.

  West gives me a faint smile. “Tell Gabriel I came by, will you?”

  “Of course,” I say, my voice too breathy.

  Long, casual strides carry him back around the property the way he came. “Oh God,” I whisper. “He knew.”

  “What did he know?” Gabriel asks, murmuring against my slick flesh. “Spell it out, little virgin.”

  My face flames. “He knew you were there.”

  “Doing what?” he asks, his tongue sweeping my folds.

  He won’t rest until I answer him. “Licking me,” I whisper.

  “That’s right. I’m licking you. And what else?”

  “You have your finger…”

  “Where is it, little virgin?” He twists the finger, making me squirm.

  “In my bottom.”

  He bites the plump flesh between my legs. “Asshole.”

  “My…my asshole.”

  “Have you ever wondered what it would be like? Taking me here?”

  I shake my head as hard as I can. “It’s dirty.”

  A low laugh. “I like dirty.”

  “I know,” I moan, clenching around his finger. Part of me wants to push him out. The sensation is strange, his finger impossibly thick. My muscles press so hard around him. How can he stand it?

  “Tell me your dirtiest fantasy, little virgin.”

  “I don’t…” My voice cracks as he licks my clit again. “I don’t have any.”

  “Liar,” he says, affectionate.

  And maybe I am a liar. My fantasies were never fully formed, always glimpses of flesh, only the flash of golden eyes. I never allowed myself to dream that deeply, afraid of what I would find.

  “I’ll trade you,” I say, my whole body trembling, on the precipice of an orgasm that might break me. “Everything is for sale. Isn’t that what you told me?”

  He pauses, clearly intrigued. “And what will it cost me, this fantasy?”

  “A secret.”

  The silence clouds with darkness and danger—with threat more real than his castle to my king. “What kind of secret?”

  “The kind worth selling.” He knows what I want from him. I’m not sure whether he’ll agree or not, but I know he’ll give me something real if he does. Honor means too much to him to shortchange me.

  He pulls away from me, and I find myself mourning the loss. Is this his answer? Is this how I finally push him away, by asking for too much? Except he turns me around, and the determination in his eyes proves otherwise.

  He lifts me like I weigh nothing, setting me on the cool stone where my hands were. My back entrance twinges, reminding me that something has just been inside. His large hand spreads my thighs, and he steps between them. We’re almost eye level like this, my body higher on the balcony, my legs dangling. It’s only his hands on my waist that keep me from falling ten feet onto granite.

  My clit throbs from where he touched me, my inner muscles clenching around nothing. Part of me feels wild for him, unable to think until he lets me come. The other part can’t believe this is happening.

  I know exactly how hard he works to guard his walls, and he’s letting me in.

  That’s how much my fantasies mean to him.

  “To understand one secret, I have to tell you another.”

  A light wind lifts my hair, brushing over my neck, and I realize just how precarious my position on this railing is. How precarious my relationship with Gabriel Miller is. How precious my safety in Tanglewood is with Jonathan Scott on the loose.

  “That doesn’t mean I’m giving you two fantasies,” I warn him.

  The corner of his mouth lifts, his lips still glistening from my juices. “It’s a buy-one-get-one-free sale.”

  Despite the levity in our words, I feel the weight of his confession looming. Suddenly I wonder if this was a good idea, if I’m sure I can handle whatever he tells me. It’s too late for second-guessing, too late to back out with so much on the line. “Tell me.”

  He looks away, his eyes almost black in the moonlight. “Most of the girls who came to the brothel were early twenties. Late teens. Some of them had worked on the street. They were relieved to have a bed to sleep at night and food every day.”

  I grasp Gabriel’s arms, as much to steady him as myself.

  “Others…they came from debts. Bought and sold like cattle.”

  My throat tightens. It’s not so far from what happened to me, and in that regard I’m lucky. As much as I’m angry at my father, as much as I dislike being cocooned in this castle, it’s a far kinder fate than other girls in my position. “I’m sorry.”

  He shakes his head, expression hard. “And then one day, there was a littl
e girl.”

  “Oh no,” I whisper.

  “You could tell…just looking at her eyes, you could tell she knew what we did. You could tell it had happened to her before. Even the older girls, sometimes they would fight. They would be shocked. Not her. She knew.”

  “Gabriel.” My hands tighten on his arms. “You don’t have to finish.”

  “I do. You should know who you’re dealing with. What you’ve got yourself into. You think you’re safe here with me, but I can’t fucking…” He presses his lips together. “I can’t fucking promise.”

  And I understand that he needs to tell me, that the wall costs him something. It costs him too damn much. “What happened?”

  “I told my father that was it, that I wasn’t going to help him keep a little girl. But it was a problem. He still owned the place and he still owned her. Even if I left, she’d be there with no one to protect her.”

  My heart clenches at the thought of that poor girl—and of a younger Gabriel, powerless, faced with an impossible choice. “What did you do?”

  “I paid for her.”

  I shiver at the cold calculation in his words. “You protected her.”

  “It was the only way to keep her safe. Every hour she would have had to work, I paid for her to sit in her room. Alone. None of the men with their fucking hands on her.”

  My hands clench in Gabriel’s shirt, pulling him close. It suddenly strikes me as absurd that he’s still dressed. Because he just had his mouth on my most private places. And because he’s baring the darkest parts of himself right now.

  “It cost everything I had saved up, thinking I was going to leave. And it cost years of my life, working for my father, doing whatever he said, shaking down drug addicts, keeping the girls in line.”

  My throat tightens. “You did what you had to.”

  “How do you know that?” He sounds disgusted with himself. He sounds furious. “How do you choose between one woman and another? How could I force so many women to spread their legs while keeping one safe?”

  “She wasn’t a woman,” I whisper. “She was a little girl.”

  He shakes his head. “I was so sure, then. I knew what I needed to do. I would have fucking killed anyone if they’d laid a hand on her. Even my father. And I probably would have been killed in the process, so this way I kept everyone safe.” A rough laugh. “Everyone except so many fucking women.”

  “They understood,” I say, even though that’s not true. How could a woman understand her oppressor? Why should she have to? “And even if they didn’t, I understand. You had an impossible choice.”

  “In the end it wasn’t my father who killed her.”

  My throat tightens. “She died?”

  His expression is grim. “While I was so busy keeping the men out of her room, she was plotting for ways to escape.”

  “No,” I whisper, but the picture already unfolds in my mind—gruesome and stark.

  “I think she knew how little was keeping her safe. A kid with more pride than sense. That was me. And her age. Once she was older, I wouldn’t have had any excuse for keeping her locked up.”

  I bury my face against his chest, bracing myself for what’s to come. What he’s lived with.

  “She came up with a plan to run when I wasn’t there, out on a fucking errand. That’s the part that sticks with me. That I had kept her in that room. That she was afraid of me. I was the one she hid from.”

  “Gabriel.”

  “And the men who found her,” he says, his voice almost painfully emotionless. “They didn’t see a little girl, not anymore. They saw a girl old enough to work on her back, like all the others. They fucked her. And then they left her there to bleed out.”

  I stare at him, horrified. I knew the story had a tragic ending, but this is beyond anything I could have imagined. It’s not even human. Not animal. These were monsters. “Oh God.”

  “And it was my fault,” he says, his voice still flat. “Because I let her escape.”

  “No,” I tell him. “You aren’t responsible for them.”

  “Don’t fool yourself,” he says coldly. “Those people are out there. The ones who would hunt you down. Who would fuck you. Who would watch you die.”

  Ice floods my veins. “You’re not just keeping people out, are you? You’re keeping me inside.”

  “Do you really want an answer to that?”

  I think I already have one. “I’m not a little girl.”

  He looks down, studying my bare legs, spread around his hips. “I know that, little virgin. I’ve made sure of it.”

  “Stop.”

  “I had your blood on my cock proving the point, didn’t I?”

  I swallow hard. “Stop it. I know you want to punish me. You want to punish yourself, but you don’t deserve that. What happened was awful, too awful for words. And not your fault.”

  “That’s my secret, Avery. I’m paid up. Now tell me your fantasy.”

  My mouth drops open. “I can’t—not after that. I can’t talk about sex.”

  “That was our deal. Don’t you dare go back on your deal. I think of all people you should know the steep penalty for doing that with me.”

  I flinch, unable to stop myself. “I’m not holding back. I just… You told me something terrible. Something horrifying. I can’t tell you about some secret fantasy now. You don’t even want me to.”

  He raises an eyebrow. “Don’t I?”

  “You’re just trying to punish me. That’s what this is.”

  “What would I be punishing you for?”

  “For asking. For pushing. For wanting you to open up to me.”

  He laughs, the sound hollow. “If I had wanted a girl who didn’t ask questions, I would have paid for one. Instead I bought you.”

  A shiver runs through me. “If you want to know my fantasy, I’ll tell you.”

  “Rose petals?” he asks, his voice mocking. “Candles? Champagne?”

  “So I’m innocent,” I retort. “You could have bought a girl who wasn’t. Instead you bought me.”

  He strokes the backs of his fingers against my cheek. “Don’t you see, little virgin? This is why I need you. So many girls, broken so young. Not only her. All of them. Whether they were nine years old or sixteen, the end result was the same. A hard life and a shallow grave.”

  My breath catches. “That’s terrible.”

  “I needed something pure. Someone who had never seen that side of this city. And I never wanted you to know it. You should have taken your million dollars and never looked back.”

  “Maybe I will,” I say softly.

  His smile is sad. “It’s too late for that. Jonathan Scott has his sights set on you. You’ll never be safe. You understand why you have to stay here, right?”

  He’s not afraid of Jonathan Scott getting in. He’s afraid that I’ll escape. “I’ll stay here, for now. I’ll do what you say, but I have a voice, too.”

  “Then tell me, little virgin. Use that voice to tell me what you dream about in the dark.”

  My body has cooled after that dark story, but I tell him anyway. Because he gave me something incredibly valuable as payment. He gave me his pain.

  “I have these dreams,” I say, my voice halting.

  He grows still. “Dreams?”

  Everyone thought my mother was crazy. They’ll think you’re crazy, too. I can’t tell him about the voices. I can’t bear the look of disbelief I would see in his golden eyes.

  Those eyes watch me expectantly, so I give him a different secret instead.

  Even that feels scary. “I have dreams about being tied down.”

  His expression darkens, his eyes turning bronze. “And?”

  “There are hands on me, all over, every secret place. They touch me like they own me. Like I’m a piece of marble.”

  His hands tighten on my waist. “Keep going.”

  “I’m naked, exposed. I can’t stop anything that happens to me. I can’t do anything but take it.”

&nb
sp; Gabriel groans, pulling his tie loose. I expect him to undress, to take me against the balcony. Instead he wraps the silk around my wrists. My eyes go wide. “What are you doing?”

  “Did you think I would wait?” Using the tie, he tugs me off the balcony. The stone feels freezing beneath my feet. My legs buckle, and Gabriel catches me. He guides me gently to the floor, turning me over, onto my knees. I barely have time to fight him before he loops the end of the tie around the balusters.

  “Wait,” I whisper, even though I’m not sure. Not sure if I want him to wait.

  Not sure if he’ll listen to me anyway.

  The knot he makes doesn’t seem strong, but when I try to get away, it tightens into a hard kink of fabric. The restraint only makes me pull harder, yanking uselessly as he watches, his lids low over golden eyes, steeped in lazy satisfaction.

  “Don’t worry,” he murmurs, running his lips down my shoulder. “This isn’t the last time we’ll do this. A hundred different ways. Soft and then rough. Every place you can think of and then more.”

  He positions himself behind me. “And most of all, when you’re least expecting it. Because that’s part of the fantasy, isn’t it? Not knowing who it is? Not knowing when he’ll find you?”

  I shiver. How does he know the parts I left unsaid?

  His cock nudges me, finding me slick. “You’re ready,” he says on a groan. “Always ready for me.”

  And then he’s inside me, pushing my walls apart, opening me, tearing me where my body can’t accommodate his size. My mouth opens on a silent cry, my hands still pulling, pulling, completely tied up.

  He swears under his breath, holding himself inside me. “Yes, we’ll definitely do this again. But right now I just need to use you.”

  His hands dig into my hips, fingertips bruising. That’s the only warning before he slams fully into me again, so hard I let out a shriek of pain and surprise. He withdraws and then pushes in again, completely focused on his own wild pleasure. He’s an animal rutting on the plains of the safari, concerned only with a primal mating drive. He owns me in the purest sense—where my pleasure doesn’t matter.

  He slams into me again and again, a blunt force trauma that my body accepts in pure sexual shock. The teasing from before, the pain right now, it blends together in a whirlwind of sensation. And when he bites down on my shoulder, I shatter. My orgasm comes suddenly, making my insides bear down, my hips buck against him. He shouts behind me, his cock pulsing fresh heat into my sex. He draws out his orgasm and mine, pushing his still-firm cock into my slick heat with lazy thrusts, every slide a new wave of sparks behind my eyes.