The Knight (Endgame #2)(40)

In the heartbeats that follow, he could storm from the room. He could push me down on the floor and have his way with me. There are a million outcomes besides what he does. One knee on the floor. Then the other. With his height and breadth, he still comes to my chest.

This is the part where he tucked my head against his thigh, where he absolved me in a wordless balm. Where I could feel his arousal, already hard and throbbing.

His hands go to my jeans, careful and sure.

It’s like a fever, an intense burn that makes my skin warm and pink, that makes me shudder. His fingers are blunt as they stroke down my stomach, into the slick crest between my legs.

“Fuck,” he breathes.

And then he fuses his lips to my clit, making me buck in surprise. I knew what he wanted from me, but the slide of his tongue is still a shock. I cry out, and he groans his approval.

He pulls back to meet my eyes. “That’s right. Let them hear you. They’ll never get to taste you like this. Never get to feel your clit against their lips, will they?”

“Oh God,” I gasp. “No, no.”

Male satisfaction makes his eyes glow. “This pretty little cunt has always been mine. Say it.”

Those words. My cheeks flush. “This pretty—”

Two fingers nudge at my opening, pressing inside with a possessive force. My flesh molds around him, clenching and clenching, trying to pull him deeper. “Finish.”

“This pretty little—”

He leans forward to work a slow lick from his fingers to my clit, the extended contact a blissful agony. My hips rock against him, begging, desperate.

I know what he wants. “This pretty little cunt has always…”

When he sucks my clit, I lose all sense of time and space. I’m floating in a sea of sunlight and pleasure, only his mouth and his fingers and the rough sound of his encouragement.

He holds me on the brink until tears leak down my cheeks. It hurts, and I whimper. He’s merciless, teasing me with gentle licks and twists of his fingers.

“Always yours,” I manage to gasp. “I’ve always been yours.”

His fingers curl inside me, and I rise up on my toes. The pleasure radiates from my core, blooming over my breasts, my lips, all the way down to my toes. My mouth opens on a silent cry. His teeth graze my clit, and then I scream. They all hear me—those men downstairs. The dangerous ones, the powerful ones. They know who owns me now. And I know too.





Chapter Twenty-Five





After the orgasm hits, my legs crumple beneath me. Gabriel catches me in his lap, cradling me as pleasure renders me helpless. The tidal wave of pleasure recedes, but the water remains, lapping at my skin in remembered relief.

Gabriel doesn’t hold anything back, murmuring soft words while he strokes my hair. This is a side of him I haven’t seen before, but one I always knew existed—the natural counterpoint to his strictly enforced stoicism. He was so careful never to be kind, so deliberate in his remoteness. And God maybe that was for the best, because his tenderness hits me harder than the orgasm. A few seconds and I’m already addicted. You were always mine.

He moves before I’m ready, fixing my clothes and leading me downstairs.

Damon Scott waits for us, wearing a forbidding expression.

Through the link of our hands, I feel Gabriel tense. “We’re leaving.”

“Don’t you think you’ve done enough?” Damon asks.

The temperature drops by twenty degrees. “Clearly I don’t, since I’m taking her home with me. Since when are you the police around here?”

“Since I found out I failed her.”

The question strikes a chord in me—curiosity mingled with expectation. Something is happening, pieces moving into place around me. Not quite understanding the choices of my opponent but trusting that they have meaning. Which means the final blow is coming.

Exhaustion weighs down my limbs, my eyelids. The shock of my father’s involvement in my downfall, the blissful respite that Gabriel’s mouth offered. They lay a blanket over me, shielding me from the world.

“You have nothing to do with this,” Gabriel says, voice tight.

“I think I do. I’m the one who sold her to you. My—”

“No, Damon. She’s mine. And I don’t think you want to get between me and what’s mine. You aren’t suicidal.”

The threat is delivered with cold certainty, between two men who are friends. I don’t want to get between them. My family’s secrets are a dark vine, winding its way through the city, thorns leaving marks everywhere it goes.

“Please,” I whisper. “Don’t fight.”

The ticking of the grandfather clock marks the tension in inexorable evenness.

Damon studies me, dark gaze impersonal but thorough as it takes in my weariness. “There’s a week left of the thirty days, but I don’t give a fuck about that. Not anymore. Do you want to go with him?”

Gabriel’s hand tightens on mine. Clearly he’s willing to fight his way through, fight his friend. My heart has been cracked and battered ever since the auction, but the final blow is this—realizing that Gabriel still thinks I’ll say no. That he has to buy me, to force me, that I could never want him on my own.

“I want to go,” I say, my voice clear.