ONE
“How are you doing, Emma?” Gabriel whispered close to my ear. His warm hand slid beneath my fluttery skirt and stroked my nak*d hip. I shifted my stance, doing my best not to give into my desire to lean into him.
“Good.”
“Just good?”
I nodded, finding the alternative of admitting that I wasn’t exactly comfortable worse. I felt exposed and a little unsure of myself—hardly the confident, sexy woman I wished to be around him.
Gabriel’s palm cracked smartly against my backside. The throbbing pain took no time to sink inside my flesh. “Now, Emma. You know better than that. You’re supposed to use your words to lie to me, remember?”
I gasped aloud, partly in pain and partly in shock. How the hell was he so damned perceptive?
“I’m sorry.”
“Are you?” Gabriel questioned softly. “Or are you sorry because you got caught?”
He spoke so sweetly in my ear. The burn marking my skin declared him a tyrant. I lifted my chin and answered firmly, “Yes, I’m sorry.”
“To which one?”
“Both.”
Gabriel circled me, letting his fingertips lightly score my sensitive stomach before traveling around my hip and across my back. My skin erupted into goosebumps as I tried to focus on him.
“So you’re just good, hmm?”
“Just good.” I resisted the urge to pivot on my feet so I could follow where I expected him to be.
“What would take you from good to better? Tell me, Emma. I really must know, my sweet girl.”
I loved it when he spoke to me like that. Gabriel reduced to me a quivering female puddle of desire. I reached out with my senses, seeking balance as a horde of emotions rioted. This was all still so new to me. I didn’t know how much of my struggles were my natural reticence about the new turn in our relationship and how much was me just being me.
Controlling. Aloof. Invulnerable except when I was. A block of marble masquerading as a breathing woman named Emma Adams. For many years, I had liked being that hardened, impervious, and single-minded creature.
Until I met Gabriel again.
It was difficult to believe it’d only been a handful of weeks that this beautiful, glorious creature crashed into my life. Smiling like the sun, he’d dismantled me piece by piece within minutes. His playfulness, his audaciousness, his supreme willful arrogance wormed their way past my defenses.
Which became harder and harder to sustain.
If Gabriel attempted to use brute force to dominate me, my instinct would have easily risen up to fight back until he lost. But his sweetness…oh, his sweetness slayed me. It made me want to please him, to be worthy of his kindness and to please him so I could have more.
I really wasn’t completely comfortable in discovering this about myself. Fear always took advantage when I least expected it, making my mind a pitted organ short-circuiting at the worst times. It was most strongly during those moments that I’d try to push Gabriel away long enough until I could get my bearings.
But he never really let me push him away. Gabriel stayed with me, working through my fear with the kind of gentle patience I never knew him capable of having. Even if his methods were unconventional…
If only I’d understood myself better, I would’ve done so many things differently. I wouldn’t have been so anxious and unsure. Still, the only way I could learn is to go through it. Just like life.
You’re sure to judge me harshly for being so afraid—especially when Gabriel obviously loved me. I wouldn’t be able to blame you for your opinion either. Thinking back on it, I wanted to slap myself silly for wasting so much time and going in circles. I can’t explain why the fear held me as strongly as it did. I just know that it did and I suffered terribly for it.
His elegant fingers pressed into my tender inner thigh, bringing me back to him. I remembered his question. What could he do to take me from good to better? If only I understood myself as well as he seemed to. I’m sure it was Gabriel’s uncanny understanding that kept us together while I fought to make sense of our past, present, and future.
“I don’t know, Gabriel. I…I’m really not sure.”
He kissed the sensitive fold of my elbow. “That’s unacceptable, Emma. We’ll simply have to find the answer together then, won’t we?”
I almost smiled. Patient. So very patient. “I’m good, Gabriel. Really.”
“I don’t want you to just be good. I want you to feel divine, my little goddess.”
Standing on a literal pedestal, with my arms securely bound in front of me with yards of red ribbons and my body draped in a short virgin-white Grecian gown, I experienced a twinge of divinity. I was his goddess for the moment—one to be admired yet possessed. I wondered what Gabriel’s expression held as he looked at me.
Pride? Lust? Yearning? Love?
I didn’t know because I was blindfolded.
Gabriel’s kiss ghosted on my upper thigh. Warmth settled low in my belly. I itched to run my fingers through his golden hair as my lips crashed into his. My captivity punished even as it heated my blood. Gabriel was right—this truly would be an exercise in patience and control. The ache for him already etched itself deep in my bones.
Denial and anticipation…it was the latest game I’d slowly learned to play with my devilish Gabriel Gordon.
You make me want you more and more each day. And it’s driving me insane.
I’d become dangerously attached to Gabriel, needing and yearning for his presence. It mostly agreed with me. My work at Med-Tech as a junior analyst was still impeccable. Once I accepted my feelings completely and this came later, I flowed through my day in a strange combination of detachment and full awareness. Nothing bothered me—traffic clogging up before my exit, a delayed data import—all of it were simple problems with easy fixes.
Until Gabriel got involved.
The itch started usually about thirty minutes before lunch. My fingers became clumsy, hitting the wrong key two or three times before getting it right. I’d look at the computer clock every few seconds, irrationally behaving as if my attention would make time go faster. I could swathe the situation in lovely words of love, but it’d be an untruth.
I was a junkie needing a fix. A fix that came only when my phone rang.
“Hello, Emma.”
Oh God, how those two words dominated my world! Silken, they poured over me, making everything in my sphere right again. I’d calm instantly, able to perform as if I hadn’t been trembling inside with insatiable longing.
At first, I didn’t want Gabriel to know how badly I’d come to depend on him, even though giddiness would take such a vicious hold of me that I could barely keep from grinning. Breathless with pure happiness, I always felt like the teenage girl I’d never let myself truly become. I’d still somehow managed to answer him coolly, but only out of prideful habit.
Another product of fear that I’d allowed to spin out of control. It was an unnecessary barrier that encouraged me to run away from my true feelings.
“Hello, Gabriel.”
He wasn’t fooled by my impersonal response because the next words never changed.
“How are you surviving the day without me so far, my dearest love?”
His dearest love. I was Gabriel Gordon’s love. That brilliantly damaged, gloriously depraved, wicked angel was in love with me. I could barely believe it, especially considering our checkered past.
I still couldn’t help but wonder what exactly the fascination he had for me. Nostalgia? Challenge? Or maybe Gabriel really was more a masochist than a sadist?
My backside currently disagreed with that last question.
After Gabriel’s daily call, I’d meet him for lunch a few minutes later. Cuddled in his arms, arms wrapped around his waist and head on his chest, it was homecoming. I trembled from need, much as if I was on the verge of fever. Gabriel’s body shook the same as mine.
I didn’t have to wonder if this was the healthiest reaction to have towards one another.
“Gabriel?” I suddenly asked, mind shying away from the implications of our voracious needs.
“Yes?”
“How come you never text me instead of calling?”
His answer came swiftly. “I can’t stand texting.”
“Really? Why?”
“It’s impersonal. Something I am definitely not with you. Does it bother you that I don’t text?”
“No…I just wanted to know.”
“Really? Your mind is straying, Emma. That is no good, my girl.”
Silence reigned. I turned my head from one side to the other, blindly looking for Gabriel. I whispered his name, wondering if he was simply staring at me. “Are you there? Gabriel?” My bound arms stretched, fingers seeking any part of him to touch.
His steps echoed, communicating to my straining ear that he’d walked away. I couldn’t hear him anymore. Panic lit a switch. I nearly jumped down from the pedestal. I didn’t want to stand here alone in his leased penthouse’s entry way like a discarded statue. The point was to be studied and enjoyed—not ignored.
Gabriel’s silken voice came from far away. “Emma, you’re not alone. Stand still…don’t move…that’s the way of it…perfect. Just like that, Emma. Just like that. You’re doing so well, my dearest love. So well.”
My heartbeat slowed. I calmed down, locking my body in place so it wouldn’t break form and leap from the pedestal like a statue come to life. I didn’t want to lose and I definitely didn’t want to disappoint Gabriel.
And it would.
Despite how gentle and sweet he was during my training, I’d occasionally catch signs of worry in his beautifully blue gaze. Despite my commitment to immersing myself fully into this unique part of his life, I’d had several crashes. I knew Gabriel worried that eventually I’d tire of it all and walk away. That I couldn’t really be what I wanted to be for him. That the pressure would finally break me and I’d run.
I wanted to promise Gabriel that would never happen. I wanted to swear to him that I’d never leave him, but I didn’t. Not because I wasn’t sure, but because Gabriel’s doubts and fears ran as hard as mine.
Nothing I said would soothe the worry gnawing away at his contentment. The only way out was through. And not just for him.
I too suffered the disquiet that one day Gabriel would decide I wasn’t compatible. That I was too afraid, too insecure, too belligerent—basically too much trouble to undertake—especially when all he had to do was go the nearest discreet club for a submissive woman who’d instinctually know exactly how to stand on a pedestal.
My pride vehemently growled in protest. Even now, I hated even thinking something so negative about myself. I was a woman who’d overcome poverty to get a full ride into a prestigious university. I worked for a successful company in the medical field and I’d done it all on my own. No family connections. No charity.
I can stand on a damned pedestal with the best of them!
Although squared in spirit, I softened my shoulders and dipped my chin closer to my chest. My knee came up, bent at a gentle angle. The stiffness eased out of my limbs as I imagined them to be soft and malleable like clay, instead of unyielding like marble.