Bared to You

“You please me.” I crossed to him, the black robe swaying around my legs. I loved that he’d put on something that matched what he had given me.

  “I want to,” he said soberly. “I’m working on it.”

  Stopping in front of him, I drank in the beauty of his face and the sexy way the ends of his hair caressed the top of his shoulders. I ran my palms down his biceps, squeezing the hard muscle gently before stepping into him and pressing my face into his chest.

  “Hey,” he murmured, wrapping his arms around me. “Is this about me being an ass at lunch? Or whatever it is you need to say to me? Talk to me, Eva, so I can tell you it’ll be okay.”

  I nuzzled my nose between his pecs, feeling the tickle of crisp chest hair against my cheek and breathing in the reassuring, familiar scent of his skin. “You should sit down. I have to tell you things about me. Ugly things.”

  Gideon reluctantly let me go when I pulled away from him. I curled up on his couch with my legs tucked underneath me and he poured us both glasses of golden wine before taking a seat. Leaning toward me, he draped one arm over the back of the sofa and held his glass with the other hand, giving me every bit of his attention.

  “Okay. Here goes.” I took a deep breath before starting, feeling dizzy from the elevated rate of my pulse. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been so nervous or sick to my stomach.

  “My mother and father never married. I really don’t know too much about how they met, because neither of them talks about it. I know my mom came from money. Not as much as she married into, but more than most people have. She was a debutante. Had the whole white dress and presentation thing. Getting pregnant with me was a mistake that got her disowned, but she kept me.”

  I looked down into my glass. “I really admire her for that. There was a lot of pressure for her to make the baby—make me—go away, but she went through with the pregnancy anyway. Obviously.”

  His fingers sifted through my shower-damp hair. “Lucky me.”

  I caught his fingers and kissed his knuckles, then held his hand in my lap. “Even with a kid in tow, she was able to land herself a millionaire. He was a widower with a son just two years older than me, so I think they both thought they’d found the perfect arrangement. He traveled a lot and was rarely home, and my mom spent his money and took over raising his son.”

  “I understand the need for money, Eva,” he murmured. “I have to have it, too. I need the power of it. The security.”

  Our eyes met. Something passed between us with that small admission. It made it easier for me to say what came next.

  “I was ten the first time my stepbrother raped me—”

  The stem of his glass snapped in his hand. He moved so swiftly he was a blur, catching the bowl of his goblet against his thigh before it spilled its contents.

  I scrambled to my feet when he rose to his. “Did you cut yourself? Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” he bit out. He went into the kitchen and threw the broken glass away, shattering it further. I set my own glass down carefully, my hands shaking. I heard cupboards opening and closing. A few minutes later Gideon returned with a tumbler of something darker in his hand.

  “Sit down, Eva.”

  I stared at him. His frame was rigid, his eyes icy cold. He scrubbed a hand over his face and said more gently, “Sit down…please.”

  My weakened knees gave out and I sat on the edge of the sofa, pulling the robe tighter around me.

  Gideon remained standing, taking a large swallow of whatever was in his hand. “You said the first time. How many times were there?”

  I took conscious breaths, trying to calm myself. “I don’t know. I lost count.”

  “Did you tell anyone? Did you tell your mother?”

  “No. My God, if she’d known, she would’ve gotten me out of there. But Nathan made sure I was too afraid to tell her.” I tried to swallow past a tight, dry throat and winced at the painful sandpapery burn. When my voice came again, it was barely a whisper. “There was a time when it got so bad I almost told her anyway, but he knew. Nathan could tell I was close. So he broke my cat’s neck and left her on my bed.”

  “Jesus Christ.” His chest was heaving. “He wasn’t just fucked up, he was insane. And he was touching you…Eva.”

  “The servants had to know,” I went on numbly, staring at my twisted hands. I just wanted to get it over with, to get it all out so I could put it back into the box in my mind where I forgot about it in my day-to-day life. “The fact that they didn’t say anything either told me they were scared, too. They were grownups and they didn’t say a word. I was a child. What could I do if they wouldn’t do anything?”

  “How did you get out?” he asked hoarsely. “When did it end?”

  “When I was fourteen. I thought I was having my period, but there was too much blood. My mother panicked and took me to the emergency room. I’d had a miscarriage. In the course of the exam they found evidence of…other trauma. Vaginal and anal scarring—”

  Gideon set his glass down on the end table with a harsh thud.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered, feeling like I might be sick. “I’d spare you the details, but you need to know what someone might dig up. The hospital reported the abuse to child services. It’s all a matter of public record, which has been sealed, but there are people who know the story. When my mom married Stanton, he went back and tightened those seals, paid out in return for nondisclosure agreements…stuff like that. But you have a right to know that this could come out and embarrass you.”

  “Embarrass me?” he snapped, vibrating with rage. “Embarrassment isn’t on the list of what I’d feel.”

  “Gideon—”

  “I would destroy the career of any reporter who wrote about this, and then I’d dismantle the publication that ran the piece.” He was so cold with fury, he was icy. “I’m going to find the monster who hurt you, Eva, wherever he is, and I’m going to make him wish he was dead.”

  A shiver moved through me, because I believed him. It was in his face. His voice. In the energy he exuded and his sharply honed focus. He wasn’t just dark and dangerous in his looks. Gideon was a man who got what he wanted, whatever it took.

  I pushed to my feet. “He’s not worth the effort. Not worth your time.”

  “You are. You’re worth it. Damn it. Goddamn it to hell.”

  I moved closer to the fireplace, needing the warmth. “There’s also a money trail. Cops and reporters always follow the money. Someone may wonder why my mother left her first marriage with two million dollars, but her daughter from a previous relationship left with five.”

  Without looking, I felt his sudden stillness. “Of course,” I went on, “that blood money’s probably grown to considerably more than that now. I won’t touch it, but Stanton manages the brokerage account I dumped it in and everyone knows he has the Midas touch. If you ever had any concern that I wanted your money—”

  “Stop talking.”

  I turned to face him. I saw his face, his eyes. Saw the pity and horror. But it was what I didn’t see that hurt the most.

  It was my greatest nightmare realized. I’d feared that my past might negatively impact his attraction to me. I’d told Cary that Gideon might stay with me for all the wrong reasons. That he might stay by my side, but that I’d still—for all intents and purposes—lose him anyway.

  And it seemed I had.

  I tightened the belt on my robe. “I’m going to get dressed and go.”

  “What?” Gideon glared. “Go where?”

  “Home,” I said, weary to the bone. “I think you need to digest all this.”

  His arms crossed. “We can do that together.”

  “I don’t think we can.” My chin lifted, grief overwhelming my shame and heartrending disappointment. “Not while you’re looking at me like you feel sorry for me.”

  “I’m not made of fucking stone, Eva. I wouldn’t be human if I didn’t care.”

  The emotions I’d run through since lunch coalesced into
a searing pain in my chest and a cleansing burst of anger. “I don’t want your goddamn pity.”

  He shoved both hands through his hair. “What the hell do you want, then?”

  “You! I want you.”

  “You have me. How many times do I have to tell you that?”

  “Your words don’t mean shit when you can’t back them up. From the moment we met, you’ve been hot for me. You haven’t been able to look at me without making it damn clear you want to fuck my brains out. And that’s gone, Gideon.” My eyes burned. “That look…it’s gone.”

  “You can’t be serious.” He stared at me as if I’d grown two heads.

  “I don’t think you know how your desire makes me feel.” My arms wrapped around me, covering my breasts. I suddenly felt naked in the worst way. “It makes me feel beautiful. It makes me feel strong and alive. I—I can’t bear to be with you if you don’t feel that way about me anymore.”

  “Eva, I…” His voice faded into silence. He was hard-faced and distant, his fists clenched at his sides.

  I loosened the sash of my robe and shrugged the whole garment off me. “Look at me, Gideon. Look at my body. It’s the same one you couldn’t get enough of last night. The same one you were so desperate to get into that you took me to that damn hotel room. If you don’t want this anymore…if you don’t get hard looking at it—”

  “Is this hard enough for you?” He broke the drawstring of his pants pushing them down to expose the heavy, thickly-veined length of his erection.

  We both lunged at the same time, colliding. Our mouths slid over each other as he lifted me to wrap my legs around his hips. He stumbled to the couch and fell, catching our combined weight with one outstretched hand.

  I sprawled beneath him, breathless and sobbing, while he slid to his knees on the floor and tongued my cleft. He was rough and impatient, lacking the finesse I’d become used to, and I loved that he was. Loved it more when he levered over me and shoved his cock into me. I wasn’t yet fully wet and the burn made me gasp, then his thumb was on my clit, rubbing in circles that had my hips churning.

  “Yes,” I moaned, raking my nails down his back. He wasn’t icy anymore. He was on fire. “Fuck me, Gideon. Fuck me hard.”

  “Eva.” His mouth covered mine. He fisted my hair, holding me still as he lunged again and again, pounding hard and deep. He kicked off the armrest with one foot, powering into me, driving toward his orgasm with single-minded ferocity. “Mine…mine…mine…”

  The rhythmic slap of his heavy balls against the curve of my buttocks and the harshness of his possessive litany drove me insane with lust. I felt myself quickening with every twinge of pain, felt my sex tightening with my growing arousal.

  With a long, guttural groan he started coming, his flexing body quaking as he emptied himself inside me.

  I held him as he climaxed, stroking his back, pressing kisses along his shoulder.

  “Hold on,” he said roughly, pushing his hands beneath me and flattening my breasts against him.

  Gideon pulled me up, and then sat down with me straddling his hips. I was slick from his orgasm, making it easy for him to push back inside me.

  His hands brushed the hair away from my face; then wiped my tears of relief. “I’m always hard for you, always hot for you. I’m always half-crazy with wanting you. If anything could change that, I would’ve done it before we got this far. Understand?”

  My hands wrapped around his wrists. “Yes.”

  “Now, show me that you still want me after that.” His face was flushed and damp, his eyes dark and turbulent. “I need to know that losing control doesn’t mean I’ve lost you.”

  I pulled his palms from my face and urged them down to my breasts. When he cupped them, I splayed my hands on his shoulders and rocked my hips. He was semi-hard, yet quickly thickened as I began to undulate. His fingers on my nipples, rolling and tugging, sent waves of pleasure through me, the gentle stimulation arrowing to my core. When he urged me closer and took a hardened tip in his mouth I cried out, my body igniting with need for more.

  Clenching my thighs, I lifted. I closed my eyes to focus on the way he felt as he slid out; then bit my lip at the way he stretched me sliding back in.

  “That’s it,” he murmured, licking across my chest to my other nipple, fluttering his tongue over the tight, aching tip. “Come for me. I need you to come riding my cock.”

  Rolling my hips, I relished the exquisite feel of him filling me so perfectly. I had no shame, no regrets as I worked myself into a frenzy on his stiff penis, adjusting the angle so that the thick crown rubbed right where I needed it.

  “Gideon,” I breathed. “Oh, yes…oh please…”

  “You’re so beautiful.” He gripped the back of my neck in one hand and my waist in the other, arching his hips to push a little deeper. “So sexy. I’m going to come for you again. That’s what you do to me, Eva. It’s never enough.”

  I whimpered as everything tightened, as the sweet tension built from the deep rhythmic strokes. I was panting and frantic, pumping my hips. Reaching between my legs, I rubbed my clit with the pads of my fingers, hastening my climax.

  He gasped, his head thrown back into the sofa cushion, his neck corded with strain. “I feel you getting ready to come. Your cunt gets so hot and tight, so greedy.”

  His words and his voice pushed me over. I cried out when the first hard tremor hit me; then again as the orgasm rippled through my body, my sex spasming around Gideon’s steely erection.

  Teeth grinding audibly, he held on until the clenches began to fade; then he clutched my hips aloft and pumped upward into me. Once, twice. On the third deep thrust, he growled my name and spurted hotly, laying the last of my fears and doubts to rest.

  I don’t know how long we sprawled on the couch like that, connected and close, my head on his shoulder and his hands caressing the curve of my spine.

  Gideon pressed his lips to my temple and murmured, “Stay.”

  “Yes.”

  He hugged me. “You’re so brave, Eva. So strong and honest. You’re a miracle. My miracle.”

  “A miracle of modern therapy, maybe,” I scoffed, my fingers playing in his luxuriant hair. “And even with that, I was really fucked up for a while and there are still some triggers I don’t think I’ll ever get past.”

  “God. The way I came on to you in the beginning…I could’ve ruined us before we even got started. And the advocacy dinner—” He shuddered and buried his face in my neck. “Eva, don’t let me blow this. Don’t let me chase you away.”

  Lifting my head, I searched his face. He was impossibly gorgeous. I had trouble taking it in at times. “You can’t second-guess everything you do or say to me because of Nathan and what he did. It’ll break us apart. It’ll end us.”

  “Don’t say that. Don’t even think about it.”

  I smoothed his knit brow with strokes of my thumb. “I wish I could’ve never told you. I wish you didn’t have to know.”

  He caught my hand and pressed my fingertips to his lips. “I have to know everything, every part of you, inside and out, every detail.”

  “A woman has to have some secrets,” I teased.

  “You won’t have any with me.” He captured me by my hair and an arm banded around my hips, urging me against him, reminding me—as if I could forget—that he was still inside me. “I’m going to possess you, Eva. It’s only fair since you’ve possessed me.”

  “And what about your secrets, Gideon?”

  His face smoothed into an emotionless mask, an act so easily accomplished I knew it had become second nature to him. “I started from scratch when I met you. Everything I thought I was, everything I thought I needed…” He shook his head. “We’re figuring out who I am together. You’re the only one who knows me.”

  But I didn’t. Not really. I was figuring him out, learning him bit by bit, but he was still a mystery to me in so many ways.

  “Eva…If you just tell me what you want—” His throat worked on a swa
llow. “I can get better at this, if you give me the chance. Just don’t…don’t give up on me.”

  Jesus. He could shred me so easily. A few words, a desperate look, and I was cut wide open.

  I touched his face, his hair, his shoulders. He was as broken as I was, in a way I didn’t yet know about. “I need something from you, Gideon.”

  “Anything. Just tell me what it is.”

  “Every day, I need you to tell me something I don’t know about you. Something insightful, no matter how small. I need you to promise me that you will.”

  Gideon eyed me warily. “Whatever I want?”

  I nodded, unsure of myself and what I hoped to get out of him.

  He exhaled harshly. “Okay.”

  I kissed him softly, a silent show of thanks.

  Nuzzling his nose against mine, he asked, “Let’s go out to dinner. Or do you want to order in?”

  “Are you sure we should go out?”

  “I want to go on a date with you.”

  There was no way I could say no to that, not when I knew what a big step it was for him. A big step for both of us, really, since the last time we’d gone on a date it’d ended in disaster. “Sounds romantic. And irresistible.”

  His joyful smile was my reward, as was the shower we took to clean up. I loved the intimacy of washing his body as much as I loved the feel of his palms gliding over me. When I took his hand and put it between my legs, urging two of his fingers inside me, I saw the familiar and very welcome heat in his eyes as he felt the slick essence he’d left behind.

  He kissed me and murmured, “Mine.”

  Which prompted me to slide both hands over his cock and whisper the same claim back to him.

  In the bedroom, I lifted my new blue dress off the bed and hugged it to me. “You picked this out, Gideon?”

  “I did, yes. Do you like it?”

  “It’s beautiful.” I smiled. “My mother said you had excellent taste…except for your preference for brunettes.”

  He glanced at me just before his very fine, very firm naked ass disappeared into his massive walk-in closet. “What brunettes?”

  “Ooh, nicely done.”