Beauty in Spring (Beauty #1)(15)
“I’m well,” I tell him and it’s not a complete lie. My body is fine.
It’s my heart that’s sick.
“Yet you still lie abed.” Silently he prowls closer, and sudden tension prickles my skin. Because there’s something different about him this morning. Something taut and wild, sharper than the feral edge he’s gained as this new Gideon. Something more like he was that first day, when he was covered in dirt and blood.
That is not the only the only difference in him, though I can’t immediately pin the other down. But whatever I’m sensing in him, it knots in my belly, heavy with despair and dread.
I sit up. “Are you all right?”
He doesn’t answer as he reaches the side of the bed. Instead he cups my cheek in a gentle hand, his thumb sweeping over my lips. “Do you linger in bed in hopes of a breakfast tray appearing? After all, it is your birthday.”
Joy fills my heart, unknotting the dread. “You remembered?”
“I could hardly forget.” Something dark passes through his expression before he focuses on me again, his gaze searching mine. “So shall I pamper you today, Cora?”
I grin. “Yes, please.”
“Then you shall be pampered. And on this day, I will not ask anything of you.” Abruptly his mouth lowers to mine, and he says gruffly against my lips, “I will only give.”
Starting with the sweetest kiss. Then giving pleasure, as the kiss deepens and heats, until I’m whimpering and clinging to him in desperate need. And giving more, slowly making his way down, worshipping my breasts and teasing my nipples into fiery points of arousal. Tasting the taut skin of my belly, until I’m quivering with anticipation, and finally moving lower, pushing my legs wide to make room for his shoulders as he settles between my trembling thighs.
Then he gives me another kiss, one that doesn’t end, even as I writhe and scream and convulse against his tongue. After I collapse back against the pillows, shaking, he gives a few seconds’ respite—then claims me with his mouth again, fingers thrusting deep as he lashes my clit with merciless teasing licks.
The second orgasm he gives builds slowly before crashing over me in a devastating wave that leaves me boneless and sated—unable to do anything but simply lie in my bed, threading my fingers through his thick hair when he pillows his head against the softness of my stomach, holding me tight.
Thinking I know the need that holds him in such a rigid grip, I try to urge him up over me again. “Let me taste you this time, Gideon.”
On a rough groan, his body goes utterly rigid—then he abruptly pulls away. Pushing his hands through his hair, he stares at me with blatant hunger, his cock a thick bulge behind denim.
“Not today,” he says hoarsely and the bleak despair that flattens his gaze twists that knot tight inside my chest again. “Today is only for you.”
I reach for him. “That would be for me—”
“Not today.” He closes his eyes as if to shut out the sight of me, naked and yearning for him. “I barely have any bloody control as it is.”
“Good. The point would be to make you lose it completely.” Just as his mouth completely destroys my control.
He barks out a short laugh. “You don’t know what you ask for.” Then shaking his head, he turns away. “Stay right there in bed, birthday girl. I’ll bring your breakfast tray.”
“I’d rather you feed me something else!” I call after him.
His long strides never falter. He vanishes into the corridor, and I’m left staring after him, feeling utterly lost.
Then utterly bewildered, when I glance down—and spot the parallel slashes tearing through the white linen bed sheet on either side of my hips.
The chain feels heavier today. Oftentimes I barely even notice it. The links never catch on any objects and pull me up short. If I have to thread it down the back of my shirt, such as when I’m wearing a T-shirt that I pull over my head instead of a button-up blouse, the chain seems content to lie against my skin. Even when the house was busy with people cleaning, it never seemed to get in anyone’s way despite trailing across the floor from one wing to the other.
Not today. Today it seems to deliberately lie in my path to trip me. Today it catches on practically every leg of furniture I pass. Today it gets trapped in the shower drain, and as I dress it tangles in my hair, yanking painfully at my scalp. As if trying to slow me down, to halt my every step. As if to keep me from going anywhere.
As if it hadn’t already been doing that for almost a month.
So after Gideon brings my breakfast, I’m slow to get started. Then we have lunch together in the solarium, where my dessert is another long, languid orgasm, with Gideon feasting from my lips as his thumb strums my clit and his fingers sink deep into my virgin sheath. And just as before, when I try to touch him, he abruptly leaves me alone, hungrily licking my pussy juices from his fingers as he goes.
It’s long into the afternoon when I finally make my way down to the garden—where the chain promptly snags on a rosebush, and I spend a frustrating fifteen minutes trying to get free.
And I know it’s not natural behavior. Not that the chain is natural in any sense—just as so much here at Blackwood Manor is no longer natural in any sense—but before today, the chain only passively prevented me from passing beyond the estate’s property line. Now it seems to be actively preventing me from going anywhere. And it can’t be a coincidence that the chain begins behaving in this way on my birthday, the anniversary of the day he originally gave me the necklace as a gift.