Denial falls smoothly off my tongue. “Nothing happened.”
“You’re lying.”
Raising my head, I bring the violin up close to my body. “How do you want me to hold this?”
Strong, nimble fingers grip my wrist where my pulse is beating a rapid tattoo. “Once you are seated facing the wall, cross your legs, rest the bottom on your calves, and let the handle nestle between these beautiful breasts of yours.” As he finishes that provocative statement, he reaches up to run the back of his fingers gently over the curve of one of the breasts in question.
I gasp. They are still sensitive from earlier. My eyes move up to meet his. As he repeats the move, I clamp my bottom lip between my teeth.
That’s when a seductive grin appears. “I like teeth,” he tells me before turning on his heel, making his way back to the easel. He’s letting me know that, all along, he’s been aware of the sensual journal entry I read earlier, and he knows, somehow, that I’m hiding a secret.
What he doesn’t know is that secret involves a dark-haired woman with talented hands. My secret involves the woman he so obsessively loved, a woman he himself has admitted to wanting close by at all times.
Well, that woman has crept into my mind. Somehow, she has stolen my very sanity because now I want her hands on me. I begged for her to touch me until I, too, lost myself in the beauty of a fantasy—a fantasy I still don’t fully understand.
***
She is aroused. As she sits there holding the violin, Phillipe can tell that Gemma is one-hundred percent aroused. Her breasts are beautifully flushed, and her nipples are nice and tight.
When he handed her the violin, her eyes dilated, and he could have sworn that he could smell her arousal and he is reminded of the passage she must have been up to. A moment in time that had literally changed him as a person.
He wants to talk to her about what she read.
Once he is behind the easel, he looks over to where she sits. The violin’s handle is resting against her skin, and her hands are holding it with so much care that he can’t help but feel moved by her attentiveness.
“So, tell me, Gemma. What did you learn this afternoon?”
Her eyes focus on him, so he lowers his on purpose, giving her the space she might need to open up.
“I’m here to ask you questions, not the other way around.”
Raising only his eyes, he tells her, “Well, you are being so quiet, so I’m trying to start an open forum.”
“Well, I don’t need one,” she tells him firmly. “If you weren’t so disagreeable this afternoon, I wouldn’t feel this way.”
“And how do you feel?”
“Confused,” she admits immediately.
“What are you confused about?” He genuinely wants to know.
“You. Her. Both of you together,” she tells him, licking her lips.
She shifts where she is sitting, and he wonders for a moment if she is aroused by what she just said. I believe she is.
“What is it about us together that’s confusing to you?”
“I don’t know.” She quickly adds, “That’s a lie, and I promised myself I wouldn’t do that.”
“What? Lie?”
“Yes.” She nods. “You seem so different through her eyes.”
Silence stretches between them as the weight of her words float across the air.
“Interesting choice of words. How do I seem different?”
He watches her red fingertips caress the side of the violin as she continues looking down at it.
“With her, you seem…happy.”
Phillipe acknowledges that with a nod. He explains simply, “I was happy, happier than I had ever been. I guess it showed.” He stops and asks, “What do I seem to be now?”
Gemma turns her head and looks at him with narrowed eyes. “Angry, sad, hurt.”
Placing his brush on the easel, he moves over to her. He’s tired of not being able to do what he wants, and right now, he wants to touch.
“Angry?” he asks, stopping and crouching down before her.
She raises her eyes to his. “Yes, that day I saw you, you were in your room and...”
Phillipe cocks his head and waits. Let her say it.
“And you were hurting yourself. Why? Why are you hurting and punishing yourself if you didn’t do anything to be sorry for? I don’t understand. I’m confused.”
Reaching out a finger, Phillipe traces the pad of it against the turgid tip of her ripe breast.
“Have you ever had a moment of passion that was so deep and so fucking perfect that you know you will never have it again?” he asks.
Gemma’s eyes move to his lips before shifting back to his eyes.
“Have you?” he presses.
She shakes her head as she returns the question. “Have you?”
Phillipe feels the side of his mouth pull up into an ironic smirk. “Yes, and no matter what I do, I can’t seem to capture it again.”
***
I’m holding the violin so tight that I start to think I might accidentally crush it. What is he trying to tell me? He is so close to me that I can smell the scent that always seems to cling to him. It’s making my head spin.
“I don’t understand.” I finally manage to push out of my mouth.
His right hand moves to stroke my hair, gently tracing it to the tip where he twirls it around his finger. His heated stare wanders all over my face but never dips below my neck. I can’t explain why, but it makes me even more aroused that he doesn’t feel the need to outright stare at the obvious. It’s almost as if he has memorized it already.
Dropping the ends of my hair, Phillipe stands and walks around my body, tracing the tip of his finger against my shoulders, until he’s behind me where he kneels down. I can feel the fabric of his clothes pressed against my back and bare skin.
“What I mean, Gemma, is that I’ve experienced a moment so perfect that it remains unequaled.”
I think about that for a minute as a shiver runs down my spine, starting where his warm fingertips are touching the base of my neck.
“So, what you’re saying is that because the moment was perfect, you can’t feel that pleasure anymore?” I try to make sense of his words while his fingers trace across the curve of my shoulder and move down my arm.
“What do you think I mean?” he queries, his mouth now joining his fingers on my left shoulder.
My fingers tighten against the violin as I dare myself to say it. Just do it. Don’t be a coward. “I think you have been ruined since the night Chantel took you in her hands and pleasured you. I think you have trouble doing that on your own now, so instead, you punish yourself. You hurt yourself, trying to get where you want to go, and you get frustrated because you can’t.”
As my speech comes to a definite end, his fingers stop tracing, and his mouth stops the lazy kisses. He lowers down on his knees behind me as his hands smooth around my waist and move down between my thighs to cup my aching sex. All the while, I am clutching her violin, just as she once did. The only difference in this scenario is that I know I am using it as a shield. Against what though, I have no clue.
Removing his hands from between my legs, he strokes his palms up my thighs to run his fingers over mine where I still hold the violin. He traces each finger, slipping in between, and then his mouth is by my ear.
“What makes you think I don’t get there? And, let’s be clear here, Gemma. Say exactly what you mean.”
Taking a breath, I feel my breasts rise on each side of Diva, reminding me that she’s here in the room again. “The morning I saw you.”
“Yes?” He breathes softly.
“You didn’t—”
“Didn’t what, Gemma?”
Looking back over my shoulder, my eyes connect with his. “Come. You didn’t come.”
“But, in the vineyard, inside of you, I came,” he reminds me.
I feel my core clench, and I have to shift because there is no way to tighten my naked thighs wi
th my legs crossed as they are.
“Yes, but you were with me, not by yourself.”
His left hand traces back down to my leg to my inner thigh. “I like you like this. Your legs are already open for me.” He growls.
I once again shift mindlessly.
With a wicked smooth voice, he questions, “Do you know your inner thighs are wet?”
I nod silently, trying to remind myself I am asking him something. “So, why do you hurt yourself?”
I feel his fingers slide between my legs, moving up to touch my pouty wet lips. I shiver as my mouth parts on a moan.
“Because I deserve it,” he tells me.
My fingers hold the violin in place as I look down to see his right hand tracing the strings now, almost as reverently as he’s stroking me between my thighs.
“Why?” I sigh, wanting to part my legs further for him. “Why would you think that? You didn’t—”
“Shh.” He hums as he has before, while his hand on the strings comes down to where I am cradling the violin. “Give me this,” he instructs.
I let go of Diva. He accepts it and leaves me abruptly. I take the moment to stand and face him. I’m completely naked and quivering with need as he places Diva in her case. As he turns, my eyes can’t help but fall to below his waist. He’s as aroused as I am, and I can feel the tension in the room like it’s a live wire.
“Tell me what happened this afternoon.”
He completely catches me off-guard. Shaking my head, I refuse. Instead of answering, I take my hand and press it down between my legs, trying to ease the ache. His eyes glance done at the apex of my legs before they move back up to my eyes.
“This portrait for Chantel and me was about regaining trust and finding strength, yet you still hold yourself back from me, Gemma,” he explains, stalking toward me.
I step back as he moves forward, and my naked back bumps up against cool, rough bricks. I have nowhere to go, and he’s a solid unmovable force in front of me. I’m achingly aroused, and at the same time, I find myself fighting the instinct to take flight and run.
“You want me to trust you and tell you why I do something, yet you won’t tell me what happened to you this afternoon,” he continues.
I open my mouth to lie, but I find his index finger up against my lips.
“Don’t tell me it was nothing because I don’t believe you.”
Blinking up at him, I remain pinned to the burnt copper bricks, like a trapped butterfly. Removing his finger from my lips, he opens his palm and places it on my chest at the base of my throat where I know he can feel my pulse beating nervously against his fingertips.
“Do you trust me, Gemma?”
I have no idea. I want to. I don’t have any reason not to, but as his eyes narrow and methodically trace down over my nakedness, I find I can’t answer him.
My needy body is responding to every word he’s saying while my mind is screaming at me to get out of here. It’s telling me over and over that he’s playing with me, yet my weeping sex is yelling at me to shut the hell up and let him have me.
His hand grips my shoulder, gently pulling me forward an inch, and he turns me so I’m now facing the wall.
“Stay? Or run?” he questions mimicking the thoughts in my head. “Trust me or trust them?”
Trust them? Who? The public? The people outside of the world I now find myself immersed in.
I really want to ask him, but I don’t have the chance because he’s urging me closer to the wall.
Unrelenting, he instructs, “Put your hands up on the wall, Gemma.”
Thoroughly confused and shaking, I raise my hands, placing them palms flat against the wall. It feels as though I have no choice but to obey him, and then he’s all up on me.
His hands smooth up my naked back on both sides of my spine to my shoulders where he squeezes them for a moment, right before his fingers twist into my hair, tightly gripping it. I gasp at the unexpected bite of pain.
“You don’t know if you should trust me, do you?” His big body crowds in against me, pushing his hard cock through his pants against my ass. “That’s probably smart. You’re trembling.”
He’s right. I am.
“You’re trying to scare me,” I whisper.
“I’m trying to warn you,” he admits.
If it’s possible, his voice dips lower, so low that I can feel it stroke between my thighs.
“I’m not what you want, Gemma. You seem to be confused and struggling to understand who I am, but shouldn’t you be questioning yourself? Why would you want someone like me?”
I squirm against him and try to fight against the grip in my hair.
“Let me go,” I tell him. I want to leave and get away from him and the words coming from his mouth. He is hitting too close to home.
“I would…” He pauses for a moment and I hear a belt unbuckling. I know what he’s about to do. My body wants it, but my head is telling me to get the fuck out.
“But I don’t want to,” he whispers.
Swallowing, I try as hard as I can to push back off the wall.
“I don’t want this,” I deny feebly. I feel his hand loosen my hair. “Let me go, Phillipe.”
I think he’s about to do as I’ve asked until he moves. His whole body is flush up against me, and I move slightly. My breasts are pressed against the chilled wall while his hands trap mine at my sides. His body is wrapped up close behind, like he’s trying to crawl inside of me.
“You’re lying again,” he rasps into my ear.
His voice is edgy and almost sinister in its frustration, but what frightens me the most is that I can’t explain why it makes my soaked pussy clench so hard that I almost come.
Releasing my arms, his hands slide around both sides of my hips and cover my bare mound. Pressing my hot cheek against the wall, I start to pant as I try to sound believable, needing to convince him and myself. “I’m not. I don’t want this right now.”
But, I moan as one of his hands slides down between my thighs, and I feel his hard, hot cock throbbing insistently against my ass crack.
“Yes, you do. You just don’t want to admit it,” he persists.
As he voices one of my biggest fears, I feel two of his fingers slide down over my distended clit through my soaking wet lips. Shifting a little, I bring my legs together, and I feel his mouth on my shoulder.
“No. Keep them apart, Gemma, so I can get inside of you.”
Biting my bottom lip to stop myself from screaming, I leave them where they are, but still, those clever fingertips start to push up into me.
“Okay then, have it your way. Drenched.” He groans. “Absolutely drenched.”
I find myself finally giving in, embarrassed by the way my traitorous body is responding to this man — a man I don’t want to need right this minute. He moves back and pulls my hips away from the wall, tilting my ass up toward him.
In a voice I hardly recognize, he tells me, “Your body is begging for me to fuck it, Gemma, and I think your mind is too.”
I can’t help myself from responding. “I think you’re already doing that.”
“What?” he quietly demands.
“Fucking with my mind.”
I feel him dip his legs a little. His cock begins sliding through my hot, wet folds from behind, pushing through to meet where his hand is stroking my clit. I wish I could see down between my legs because I know he is also touching the tip of his own cock as it slides back and forth, teasing my entrance with the promise of a good hard fuck.
“Hmm, your ass is perfect,” he states, stroking a warm palm across my cheeks. The tips of his fingers are on my crack, and they grip tight, gently pulling my cheeks apart. “So fucking perfect.”
My breathing is out of control now as my hands support me against the wall. My breasts are swaying with each torturous slide of his cock between my needy pussy lips, and all I can think about is what he’s looking at. Closing my eyes on a moan of my own, I wait for his next move.
br /> “All I am telling you, Gemma, is that maybe you should heed what the stories have told you. Maybe you should run. Run far away from me.”
I’m about to respond when his cock suddenly penetrates me with a long hard thrust. I gasp and bite my lip as he growls and lets go of my ass to grip my hip.
“But, for right now, it’s too fucking late,” he enlightens me, punctuating each word with a hard thrust.
His left hand moves to my ass, and his finger strokes over the dark pucker he’s looking at.
“Right now, you’re mine, just like she was mine. I’m going to pull you under and drown you in me until you can’t forget.”
His words are darkly disturbing. They’re too close to everything I have read. It’s too close to everything I have heard or been told about.
He flexes his hips, and his cock strokes deep inside of me. All I can do for the immediate moment is brace myself and hold on for the storm.
After all, if I am going to drown, this isn’t such a bad way to go.
Isn’t that the biggest mindfuck of all?
Chapter Twelve ~ Broken Trust
Day 11
Broken Trust ~
Today, I was on a mission—a mission to rectify a wrong.
It had been three days, and still, Phillipe remained aloof.
He had returned from his walk the other night and told me everything was fine, but it hadn’t been. He hadn’t even been back to paint. It was almost as though he had distanced himself from me, and I had felt it as acutely as I would if I had lost a limb.
When I awoke this morning, he had already left the mattress we share up in the studio. I could hear the soft strands of a violin playing from a recording I had given him, so I knew he was somewhere in the room with me.
“Phillipe?” I called out. I waited for a response but not for long.
“Yes?” he replied, his deep voice sliding over me like a caress.
I felt the side of the mattress beside me dip.
Reaching across the pillow, I touched his fingers with mine. “Will you take me to town today?”
There was silence, except for the music floating around us as I felt his fingers squeeze mine.
“Of course.”