Gage moved in a blur and pain exploded in my throat as his hand bit into it enough to steal almost all my oxygen. His cold eyes ran over me as I struggled to breathe. But I didn’t struggle out of his hold as I was sure he expected me to do.
This was a challenge. He wanted me to be scared. Think he was going to hurt me. He wanted me to escape that. Escape him.
But I didn’t. I just stared at him, my eyes a silent dare to squeeze harder. Fury and arousal danced in his eyes at my reaction. He held me for a beat longer, and then his grip loosened. He didn’t completely let go, still held me in place, but the pain was mostly gone and I could breathe easy.
In theory, at least. No one could breathe easy with Gage’s eyes on them.
“You don’t fuckin’ know what you’re asking for,” he growled, voice feral.
“Yes I do. I’m not afraid of you,” I said, slightly raspy.
He looked at me as if trying to find the cracks in my words. “Yeah, babe, because you’re brave in ways I’m not,” he said finally.
I wasn’t prepared for that response, not in the midst of his fury. “What are you talking about?”
“Because I’m afraid of you,” he ground out. “Only thing in my life I’m afraid of. Because you’re the only thing in my life that’s priceless.” The grip on my neck tightened once more. “And you askin’ me to show you what’s inside, what’s really inside, that fuckin’ terrifies me, because I can’t fuckin’ control that shit. And once I let it out, I can’t rein it in. I’m terrified that I’m gonna be responsible for ruining the only thing left in my life that’s priceless. It’s been ten years since I’ve touched something—someone—and not wanted to cause them pain.” He paused. “Not needed to cause them pain. I don’t fuckin’ want to do that to you, Will. You’re the first person in a decade I’ve wanted to touch with something resembling tenderness. But I don’t have that now. It’s gone, that ability. It died. There’s only pain left.”
I didn’t let his gaze go, though I was sure he wanted me to. He wanted to scare me away with his admission. His threat.
“You’re not going to ruin me, Gage,” I whispered. “The world has already done that. And even if it hadn’t, I want you to ruin me. There’s something inside of me, not something you created but something you awakened. It’s a darkness, maybe not as black as yours, but one that wants you to drag me further down. Wants you to show me everything depraved in your head. I want you to do things to me that you’ve been too scared to do to anyone else.” I paused. “In fact, I’m going to have to insist that you do.” My voice was husky, the being inside me that I’d silenced for so long finally getting her say.
The knife he always wore on his belt was out of its sheath and running down my body before I even knew what was happening. The tearing of my clothes was a roar in my ears as he literally cut my shirt off me.
And my bra.
My core pulsated with the violence, with the sharp and deadly weapon being so close to my skin.
Not the knife.
Gage.
He had transformed since he’d unsheathed his knife.
Because at the same time, he’d unsheathed his monster.
My need was almost painful as my eyes locked on his, the flat edge of the knife pressing into one of my hard peaks.
Gage’s gaze didn’t leave mine.
The knife circled one nipple.
Then another.
“Your cunt dripping wet, Will?” he asked, voice little more than a growl.
I gasped as the sharp edge of the knife pressed into the swell of my breast, almost tearing at the skin before Gage flipped it and ran the point down my midsection.
His hand came up to shackle my neck when my answer was a succession of sharp breaths. “I asked you a fucking question. When I do that, you answer.”
The tip of the knife pressed into my lower stomach in warning.
“Yes,” I breathed.
The knife ran along the waistband of my skirt. “Yes what?” Gage demanded.
He wanted me to prove something. To shed the skin that covered what was really underneath. “My cunt is dripping wet for you, Gage,” I whispered, my voice throaty. Raw.
“Christian,” he said, his voice feral. Throaty. “I’m Christian to you when we’re like this. Never outside of this. Never. I’m always Gage then. I have to be. But here”—the flat of the knife pressed into my soaking panties—“here, I’m Christian.”
I jerked, and the movement pressed the tip of the knife into my skin, enough to draw blood. Gage hissed as though it had cut through him, his eyes flaring in panic.
I snatched his wrist, the one holding the blade now stained with my blood, stopping him from yanking it away.
“No,” I demanded, not breaking his gaze. “Don’t stop.”
It took pain, brutality for Gage—Christian—to slice off a tiny piece of himself and hand it to me. And I was willing to go through anything to get more.
His eyes flared and the knife paused for a moment more. Then it tore through my panties and I was standing there naked, exposed, and bleeding in front of Gage. He lifted the knife and licked the small amount of my blood off the steel, not breaking eye contact with me the entire time.
I watched, rapt, hypnotized and terrified by the man—the monster—in front of me.
The knife moved down to the sheath as he grabbed one of items from my hands.
“You trust me, Will?” he asked, stretching the blindfold over my head.
“Yes,” I said instantly.
His eyes flickered with menace. “You shouldn’t.”
And then everything went black.
My first instinct was to panic. My vision had been taken from me, and I stood naked in front of the most dangerous man I’d ever met. Instead of fighting that panic, I gave in to it, let it sink into my bones.
“We’re all monsters,” Gage murmured, lips against my ear. His entire body pressed against my naked skin, the rough leather of his cut grating against me.
The handcuffs left my grip.
My heartbeat intensified.
My breathing shallowed.
My pussy clenched with utter desire. Utter pleasure. Already, I could feel my orgasm building within me, threatening to level me.
“There is a small number of people who will look in the mirror and recognize they are one,” Gage continued—not Christian, no, this was still Gage—the rattle of the handcuffs an omen of what he was going to do with them. “The rest of the world won’t believe what they see, so they make up a mask for the world, for themselves, and make excuses.” His hand ghosted between my breasts, his palm atop my heart for a moment before moving to take my nipple between his thumb and forefinger. He tweaked it. Hard.
“Pain is the only way we know we’re alive,” he murmured, letting my nipple go. “It’s the only constant in this world. It’s the only way to make sure we’re living.” A hand circled my neck. “And Lauren, you’re about to find out how alive you are.”
The hand tightened once more, every one of my senses intensified with the theft of my sight. There was no darkness. No abyss. Only Gage. He was the abyss. His hand at my neck, the pain of the grip was the only thing keeping me grounded.
He yanked at me so his mouth landed on mine, brutally laying waste to my soul with his violent kiss. I matched it with violence of my own, until blood from both of us flooded into our mouths.
I lifted my hands to tear through his hair, the skin of his back, to hold on tighter.
The loss of his mouth was immediate, and I stumbled forward slightly as he stepped back and there was no longer anything keeping me grounded.
“No,” Gage’s growl came from somewhere in the darkness. “There’s no fucking touching me.”
He paused, and I floated in the nothingness of the silence. Pressure circled my wrist as he dragged me across the room. Disorientation had already set in; I was in my home of ten years, but somehow I had no idea where he was leading me.
I guessed he was t
aking me to the bedroom, though it felt like the opposite way based on the hard floor under my feet and not the plush carpet of my bedroom.
We stopped and the grip left my wrist.
“Lie down.”
I immediately complied with the harsh command, though slowly, because I didn’t have anything to hold onto and Gage didn’t offer me anything. Chivalry may or may not have been dead, but it hadn’t even been born with this version of Gage.
The wood floor was cold against my flaming skin, a shock against my sensitive nerve endings.
The thump of his boots against the floor were earth-shattering rumbles in my sightless world. Beads of sweat rolled down my temples as my heart beat with excitement and fear.
Pain exploded at the back of my head as Gage bunched my hair into his fist and yanked me back so his teeth brushed my exposed neck, then moved up to my earlobe.
“You should be a fucking sin,” he hissed.
I relished the pain, the violence. It hurt, but I loved it. The wetness between my legs was proof of that.
“You are a sin,” he said from above me, releasing my hair. “But I’m the worst sinner of them all.” The handcuffs rattled, and I twitched as I felt the sound in my core.
“On. Your. Back,” he bit out.
Shaking, I complied.
I was lying naked, blindfolded, on my floor.
It was wrong.
It should’ve been demeaning.
But it wasn’t.
“Hands above your head.”
I did as asked.
Gage clasped my wrists together in one of his hands, the cold steel handcuffs clicking around my wrist and then something metal.
I tried to move.
I couldn’t.
He had cuffed me to the bottom of the banister that ran along the top of my stairs, serving as a barrier from someone falling down them. Now they were serving as an instrument of my torture.
My worship.
Gage’s lips landed on the spot just below were the metal was biting into my skin.
Then he was gone. I heard his boots, circling me. I traced his movements with my ears until he was standing at my feet. My nipples throbbed, my entire body aching with need. I was almost coming out of my skin with desperation for his touch.
But I wasn’t going to move without his permission. He had snatched my power away. I was at the mercy of his cruelty.
“Spread your legs,” he commanded.
My breath hitched with what I imagined him seeing if I did so. Him, standing, fully clothed. Me, naked, blindfolded, and cuffed on the floor below him.
“You want me to make you?” His whisper carried over the air, caressing and abusing me with its threat.
I spread my legs slowly, exposing myself to him.
He let out a harsh hiss.
There was a long silence. One I spent inside my protective darkness. It should’ve terrified me more, but it didn’t. It gave me permission to give in to Gage’s commands, to my own desires, using only instinct, without barriers. Without reality surrounding me.
Gage knelt between my spread legs, his fingers spreading my sensitive skin so I was completely and utterly exposed to him.
My back arched violently with the touch, my climax threatening to explode through me. Gage’s hand against my stomach pressed me down gently.
“Your cunt is beautiful, Lauren,” he murmured, his fingers probing, exploring, worshiping.
My breath was strangled with his words, with his touch.
His hands left me and I wanted to scream with my desperation.
His fingertip traced my curls, the small strip my waxer always left despite the trend to take everything off.
“Beautiful,” he repeated.
Then his finger moved up, over my hip bone, the side of my body, circling my breast with a gentleness that was in direct conflict with everything else. With Gage himself. The touch was reverent.
Then his mouth followed the journey of his finger, first pressing a slow and gentle kiss to the hair covering my pussy before he inhaled deeply and audibly.
My stomach dipped and flames crept up my neck.
He was smelling me. There. It was wrong. Dirty. And it caused wetness to flush between my legs.
He growled. “Can fucking smell you getting turned on by this, Will. You’re a devil too, disguised as an angel.”
The vibration of his words traveled to my clit, jerking my body with bouts of pleasure.
My hands became claws, straining against the metal of the cuffs.
Then, just as I was convinced I needed Gage’s mouth on me more than I needed my next breath, it was gone.
I exhaled with a violent pain I didn’t know was possible without actual injury. He was hurting me, causing pain by depriving me of pleasure.
His mouth moved slowly, torturously against my hips, my navel, up to the underside of my breast. Finally his lips circled my nipple and he sucked at it, causing me to cry out, my thighs clenching to the point of pain. His teeth grazed my nipple so sharp pain mingled with pleasure.
And just as I thought he was going to make me come, it was gone.
I let out a hiss between my teeth.
His hand circled my neck, then moved up to cup my cheek as he pressed me against the floor. “Oh, don’t worry, baby, I’m gonna make you come,” he murmured against my mouth. “I’m gonna make you scream. Just needed to make sure you know you’re at my mercy. And I don’t have fucking mercy.”
And then he kissed me.
But it wasn’t brutal and hard like I expected.
I didn’t know anything else, because brutal and hard was all I had experienced from Gage. It was all I knew.
But he was showing me something else. Someone else.
He moved leisurely, slowly, cupping my face like it might shatter if he gripped it too tight. My heart crashed against my chest as the slow and gentle kiss didn’t do anything to slow it. No, it only made it more frantic.
His mouth left mine.
“Gonna eat your cunt now, Lauren,” he murmured, voice less than a whisper, the crude words working to raise it to a yell.
I couldn’t speak.
But he didn’t need me to.
He moved down my body.
And then I could speak.
And then I screamed.
Gage made good on his promise.
He made me come. Again. And again. He tortured me with pleasure until my body was little more than liquid, my arms screaming from the angle they were forced to keep, my wrists burning with evidence of me trying to escape the cuffs.
But Gage didn’t show mercy.
He only showed more.
And I wasn’t sure if I could take more. But I wanted it.
I needed it.
He had taken off his clothes.
I wasn’t quite sure when that happened, but he was now naked, lying atop me, his skin bruising mine, pressing into me.
I needed him inside. Even though it would ruin me, I needed it.
He paused at my entrance, torturing me some more with just how close I was to being full. Complete.
“It was Gage that did all this to you.” His finger brushed my neck, where I imagined small bruises were already blossoming. “It’s Gage whose bike you ride on the back of. Who you wake up to. Sleep with.” The darkness was snatched away, but I still saw the abyss as I blinked Gage into focus.
He was held with violence.
With utter agony.
With painful beauty.
Demons clawed at the backs of his eyes.
“It’s Gage you’re gonna share your life with,” he growled. “Your pain.” He moved, just slightly, so he probed my entrance, teased inside.
I let out a harsh moan.
“But in here, and only in here, I’m Christian,” he said through clenched teeth. “He’s dead and buried, Lauren. And you’re an angel, but you’re never gonna resurrect him.” He pushed into me with a brutal beauty and I screamed, seeing stars.
Gage didn?
??t move as my pussy clenched against him.
He merely stared at me, waited for my vision to clear.
“Christian comes to life inside your pussy. But he dies outside of it, and there’s no saving him. You need to know that. It’s important, fuckin’ vital. He’s dead and gone. But here?” He moved slowly.
I bit my tongue.
“You get that, Lauren?” Gage—Christian—asked, voice strained.
“Yeah,” I rasped, at the edge of ruin. “Yeah, Christian, I get it.”
He twitched inside me as I said the name of the man he used to be. The name of the man the world had killed. I got it. This wasn’t the story where love saved something inside each of us.
No, it wasn’t that kind of story.
He moved, slow, beautiful, as if tenderness were the only way to fight the demons between us. I arched my back, straining against my shackles, meeting his thrusts, moving my lips against his.
It wasn’t that kind of story, but it didn’t matter because this was the only one we were going to get.
And it was everything.
Twelve
One Week Later
“There’s a club party tonight,” Gage said.
He was Gage now.
He was always Gage. I knew that, because there was no way he could be anyone else. I understood Gage was who he had built together from the skeletons of the man who had been Christian—the stranger who made love to me in the darkness—and I couldn’t think of him as being anything but Gage.
I glanced up from the pot I was stirring—I was melting chocolate for brownies because it turned out that Gage had a serious sweet tooth—and still, even now, seeing him and all his chaos in my ordered life was jolting. Like an earthquake that people were convinced meant destruction, but really it was nature’s way of shaking things into place.
I’d been so surefooted for so long, I forgot the excitement that came with unsteady ground.
Gage was on the other side of the kitchen island, watching me bake, talking to me. Whenever we were together, there was nothing else—no phone, no book, no TV. His intense attention was focused completely and entirely on me.
He was growing his hair. I liked that. He knew I liked it long and wild, running my fingers through it, tugging at it when he kissed me. When he was inside me.