by Ivy Layne
I didn't care. I didn't care about anything but Gage touching me. Kissing me. He was heat and strength, surrounding me, taking me over. I wrapped my legs around his narrow hips, holding him tight, rolling my hips into his. His chest rumbled with a groan as he lay me back on the island.
Tearing his mouth from mine, he dropped his face into the crook of my neck, his breath hot against my skin. He was holding back, restraining himself so fiercely his muscles shook in barely perceptible tremors. I rolled my head back on the cold marble of the island, pressing my breasts up into him.
I didn't know what I was doing. I wasn't thinking. Gage had kissed me, and at the touch of his lips, something inside me had broken open, something feral and needy. After so many years of emptiness, my body had woken up, and it wanted.
Gage's mouth closed over the side of my neck, sucking and tasting my skin, his tongue tracing my frantically beating pulse. At the touch of his long fingers on the side of my breast, I went wild, squirming against him, shuddering when his fingers closed over my nipple and squeezed. A bolt of pleasure streaked between my legs, and I gasped his name. “Gage.”
His mouth moved to my ear, and he breathed, “Sophie. Fuck. Sophie.”
A thump sounded down the hall, followed by a tumbling noise as if someone had knocked over a stack of books. We both went still, breath caught in our lungs, hearts pounding frantically. Ice washed through me as I realized where I was, spread out over the island in the kitchen of Winters House, Gage Winters between my spread legs, his hand on my breast, his mouth on my neck.
What the hell was I thinking? I was going to lose my job. And Gage – Gage hadn't struck me as the kind of man who took advantage of a woman working for him, but here I was.
He hadn't exactly taken advantage though, had he?
At that thought I shoved him back and scrambled off the island, yanking my robe shut and tying the belt in a tight knot. I couldn't meet his eyes.
“Excuse me,” I said, moving to sidle past him and escape the kitchen.
Gage's hand shot out and closed around my wrist. I jumped in surprise. I didn't mean to. Some reactions are too ingrained to outgrow and, for me, being grabbed by a strong hand is one of them. I went still under his grip, then carefully twisted my wrist in his hand, trying to free myself without struggling. Struggling only made it worse.
Gage's fingers held me securely, but his grip wasn't tight. Wasn't painful. Voice so low I could barely make out his words, he said, “Wait. I heard something. You heard it too, didn't you? I don't want you to walk out there by yourself.”
Gage's demeanor had shifted, and I'd been so panicked from his hold on my wrist, I'd missed it. A minute ago, leaning over me on the island, he'd been shaking with tension. Now he was the same, but it wasn't passion firing his nerves.
I looked up into his eyes and realized he was on high alert, every one of his senses focused on the sound we’d heard down the hall.
“Maybe it was Aiden,” I whispered. I knew it wasn't Amelia. She slept like a rock and after months of working for her, she’d never woken a second earlier than she had to. But, for that matter, I'd never known Aiden to be awake in the middle of the night either. I was up often enough; I would've noticed.
Agreeing with my inner thoughts, Gage said, “No, it's not Aiden. I would've heard him on the stairs, and Aiden never wakes up in the middle of the night.”
“You think someone's in the house? The alarm is on. Isn't it?” My gaze swept the kitchen, settling on the lighted panel by the door to the laundry room. Red lights glowed, indicating that the alarm was set and operating normally.
Gage's hand tightened on my wrist, and I winced. Immediately, his fingers fell open, and he released me. His blue eyes met mine, focused and intent but somehow haunted. Something lurked there, dark and afraid. Until that moment, it hadn't occurred to me to be afraid. But I remembered someone had broken into this house once before, and when they had, two people had been murdered.
“I need to go check it out,” Gage said. “I don't want to leave you in here. Too many entrances. It's not secure. I want you to follow me down the hall. Stay right behind me, okay?”
I nodded. I wasn't completely sure there was someone else in the house. The alarm was on, and I'd heard something, but maybe I’d misunderstood. Maybe it was the air compressor kicking on, or the refrigerator in the garage. It was a big house, and old.
Odd sounds weren’t unusual, and at night things like that always seemed amplified. What you might ignore during the day grew to a threat in the dark. That didn't mean there actually was a threat.
I felt a little calmer after talking myself down, but that didn't mean I didn't follow Gage closely out of the kitchen. He guided my hand to his belt loop, silently threading two fingers through the strip of canvas. I shuffled down the hall behind him, pausing as we reached the doors to the dining room.
Gage stopped, scanning the moonlit room. A moment later he nodded to himself, and we moved on, through the entry hall, stopping again at the doors to the living room. Gage did another quick scan before we moved on.
The library and Aiden's office were at the end of the hallway, facing one another, the wine room in between. Gage pressed me to the wall outside the library, crowding me with his big body. Shielding me, I realized.
“It was here,” he said, “the library or the office. I need to check them out.”
“I can help,” I said, inanely. I wanted to help, but honestly, what did I think I was going to do? I was a nurse. Unless there was someone standing in the middle of the room holding a sign that said I'm the intruder, I wasn't going to be much use.
Gage must've agreed because he said, “No. I don't have time to take you to your room and clear it.”
Making a decision, he led me to the wine room in the back of the short hall between the library and Aiden's office. Gage swung the door open, tucked me behind his big frame, and quickly determined the room was empty. Flipping on the light, he led me in, saying, “Lock it behind me. Don't open the door until I come back.”
“Be careful,” I said.
Gage gave a short nod and pulled the door closed. I flipped the bolt and settled in to wait.
Chapter Eight
Sophie
The wine room was less a room and more an oversized walk-in closet. The proportions were cozy, the design intimate. Racks of wine bottles lined the sides and back walls from floor-to-ceiling, the bottles secured behind glass, a discrete digital display showing the temperature.
In the center of the small room was an island with a small sink, dishwasher, racks of wineglasses, and drawers that probably contained all sorts of wine-related tools I wasn't familiar with. I wasn't a big wine drinker. I wasn't a big drinker at all. My husband had loved wine and had expected me to enjoy it with him. Reason enough to avoid the stuff now.
With the door securely shut, I couldn't hear a thing from outside the wine room. The more I turned it over in my head, the less I was sure we heard anything. Maybe it was my own guilty conscience.
Gage had kissed me. And worse, I’d kissed him back.
I needed to get my head together. I was not going to mess up my life like this. The last thing I needed was a man. My brain thoroughly agreed, but my body—still humming from the feel of Gage between my legs, his mouth on mine, his calloused fingers exploring me—my body disagreed.
I'd never felt anything like that before. Never. I'd kissed a few boys in high school, hadn't dated much in college or nursing school. I'd been too busy, too worried about losing my scholarship and trying to finish as quickly as I could to bother with something as trivial as a social life.
Then I'd met my husband on my first job, and that had been the end. Anthony had been my first lover, and never once had he inspired the reaction Gage did. Not even close. I’d thought kisses like Gage's belonged in the movies.
A quick knock sounded on the door to the wine room, followed by, “It's Gage.”
I unlocked the door and opened it. “Did you
find anything?”
Gage shook his head. “No one's there. Everything's fine. I'll walk you to your room.”
I tried not to wonder if Gage was going to kiss me again. I doubted it. As we crossed from the back corner of the house, where the library was, to my bedroom in the front, Gage kept his arm securely around my waist. His eyes scanned the space around us with each step.
When we reached my door, Gage followed me in. For a second my heart leaped in hope before I ruthlessly reminded myself there was nothing to hope for. If Gage thought he was here to pick up where we left off in the kitchen, he was mistaken.
We shouldn’t have kissed, and it wasn't going any further than that. When he led me to the bed and pushed me down to sit, my mind and my body went to war, my brain insisting that I set him straight and my body ready to lay back and let him do anything he wanted.
I cursed myself for a fool. Gage left me sitting on the side of the bed and methodically searched my room. Here I was, trying to talk myself out of sleeping with him when Gage was only here to make sure I was safe.
He was quick but thorough—checking my closet, my bathroom, behind the curtains at the window seat, even beneath my bed.
“Lock your door,” he said abruptly when he was finished.
“You sure everything's okay?” I asked from my seat on the edge of the bed.
In answer, he said, “I'm not going to let anything happen to you, Sophie. Lock your door.”
Then he was gone.
Slowly, I stood and went to the door, turning the lock. I wasn’t sure if I was locking Gage out, or myself inside.
I didn't fall asleep until dawn. I wasn't afraid of the sound we’d thought we heard. By the time I'd locked the door of my bedroom, I’d convinced myself it had been nothing more than the overreaction of a guilty conscience.
No, I couldn't sleep because I couldn't stop thinking about kissing Gage. Every nerve in my body was awake, alive. Needy. I'd never felt this before. Maybe a little in those long ago high school fumblings with boys I could barely remember. Had I felt this with Anthony?
If I had, the memory was lost, the pleasure of desire burned away by everything that had come later. I wracked my brain for memories of those first dates with Anthony, but of all the emotions that rose to the surface, none of them was desire.
I'd been awed by Anthony. He was older than I was, successful, wealthy, and he’d wanted me. He’d taken me out to elegant restaurants, opened the door for me, treated me with respect and care. I'd been too young, too inexperienced, to understand. To see beneath his good manners to the monster lurking within.
Of all the things I’d felt with Anthony, I'd never desired him. Not like this. Not with every cell in my body, with a need that drove me so mindless I forgot where I was, who I was, and only wanted more.
More of Gage. More of his hot mouth on my skin, his hands on my body. I was alive. For the first time in my life, every part of me was alive. Awake, and ripe, and ready.
Even before Anthony, I’d felt as if my body were sleeping. I liked the idea of romance, of flowers and dates and kisses, but no one had really gotten to me. I'd never had a real crush, the kind that keeps you up at night, has you craning your neck to see if he's walked in the room, straining your ear for the sound of his voice. I thought there was something wrong with me, that I was lacking some essential element of being female. Of being human.
After I married Anthony, I was convinced it was true. I felt desiccated, dried out like an autumn leaf. He’d told me I was beautiful, called me his perfect girl, but he didn't want me. Not like that. Not with his body. In another marriage, it would've been a tragedy. By the time I fully realized what was missing, I was grateful.
Our wedding night had been chaste. As chaste as you can get while still having sex. I'd expected romance. Wasn't I supposed to? He hadn't been cruel; he'd been indifferent. I'd waited for him in our bedroom in a silky black negligee I’d shyly bought for the occasion.
Anthony's eyes had tightened at the sight of it, and he’d gently helped me into my robe before leading me to the bed. He lay me down on the side, pulling my hips to the edge of the mattress and gone to his knees between my legs. A moment later he touched me there. I remember jumping in surprise and his amused chuckle.
Then pressure and a tearing pain, Anthony moving over me with quick hard thrusts. He'd stiffened, emptying himself into me. For one brief second, we were frozen—me in confusion and Anthony in release—before he'd withdrawn from my body, tucked himself away, and stood. He hadn't said anything, just nodded and left.
The next day all of my nightgowns had been replaced with thick, white flannel that covered me from my neck to my toes. They were ugly and sexless, the kind of thing I imagined a grandmother might wear if she had terrible taste and was freezing cold.
Anthony came to my bed once a month. A doctor showed up a few weeks after our wedding to insert a birth control implant in my upper arm. They were supposed to last several years, but Anthony had the implant replaced every year, like clockwork, just in case. Anthony didn't want children yet. It never occurred to him to ask what I might want. The moment he decided to marry me, my wishes became irrelevant.
Irrelevant to him. I still had plenty of wishes, for all the good they did me.
It didn't take long to realize that Anthony didn't want a wife. He wanted a possession. He alternately praised me, punished me, or forgot about me entirely, depending on how I fit into his plans.
One night, he might inform me we were having guests and expect me to play hostess. He’d praise my cooking, and kiss my cheek and give the perfect impression of a loving couple. The next night he might pull me from my bed in the dark and come at me with closed fists, his eyes cold and empty.
I rarely knew why. Anthony was completely self-contained. Nothing ever showed through the mask he presented to the world. There were no cracks, no signs of what was coming. At dinner, he might thank me for ironing his shirts so perfectly and hours later beat me unconscious. I knew his job was stressful, though I didn't entirely understand what he did, and by the time we'd been married a month I knew better than to ask.
Obedience was survival. I never knew what set Anthony off, but I knew he expected me to obey his every order. I thought if I did as I was told, I might be able to save myself.
I tried. There was no escape. I thought about it constantly. Anthony played the part of a loving husband, but he knew what he wanted, and he was clever. We lived miles from anywhere, buried in the country. When we gave small dinner parties, Anthony's friends would tease us, commenting on a sophisticated young couple like us choosing such a rural setting. Anthony always pulled me close and said that we liked the privacy.
His property was bounded by a tall fence, patrolled by well-trained dogs, and there was always, always a guard. They never spoke to me. The first time I tried to leave, the taxi had been politely turned away by the guard, and I’d been told to go back inside. I hadn’t yet understood that I wasn’t just Anthony’s wife, I was his prisoner. Anthony had punished me without a word, pulling me from my bed in the dark, the only sounds in the room his fists striking my body and my gasping promises never to leave.
I’d tried again when I worked up the courage. That time I made it as far as the fence before I was found and returned to the house. Anthony punished me that night with a white-hot rage I’d never seen before. I’d been sure he would kill me as he struck me over and over, kicking me when I fell to the floor. At the end, he dragged me up, his arm around my neck, and choked me until my vision went black and I passed out.
It was the only time he left a mark on my face. My eyes were swollen shut when I woke the next morning, my body so bruised I could barely move. Anthony had been there at my side, holding my hand. He spooned broth through my torn lips and, for the first and last time in our marriage, he explained why he wanted me. Why he couldn’t let me go.
“It grows in me,” he’d said, as calmly as if we were discussing the weather. “The darkness buil
ds up, every day. Telling me to do things. Bad things. The darkness wants blood. You’re the only one who makes it go away. It likes you. So sweet and pure. If I give you to the darkness for a while, it leaves me alone.”
That was when I understood. Really understood. Anthony wasn’t cruel. He wasn’t mean. He was completely insane. He was a monster, hiding behind the mask of a normal man.
Only once did I work up the courage to ask what he’d done about the darkness before he found me. Once was enough.
Anthony had shaken his head sadly and trailed a fingertip down my cheek, saying, “Sweet Sophie. If I told you, it would give you bad dreams. The darkness needs blood. It’s happy with just a little of yours. Anyone else, and it needs so much more.”
I never asked again. I didn’t want to know. Maybe I should have been glad that his beatings spared some other person a more horrible fate. I wasn’t. I didn’t want to sacrifice myself for the good of some stranger. I just wanted to be free.
Freedom was a dream. A fantasy. I ordered my clothes from catalogs, my groceries from a list I gave to the guard. Every few months a stylist came to trim my hair, working in silence while the guard watched us both.
Once Anthony brought me home after our wedding, I never left that house until he died, three years later.
Two years had passed since the day the kind police officer had informed me of Anthony's death. I'd gone through the motions, half-paralyzed by the tentative hope that I might have been granted a second chance at life. I sold our house and quietly moved away.
For the first year, I’d focused on getting my nursing license current and finding a job. After so much time away from the world, I found that I preferred working in private homes rather than the hectic environment of the hospital or clinic.
I thought about going to therapy. I knew I should. But, something inside me revolted at sharing the humiliating details of my marriage.
