Chapter Seven
Gage
I feelthe moment she slips away from me and promptly wake up. I keep my eyes closed, feigning sleep, though, sure that she’s just going to slip in and out of the bathroom and return to my arms.
I know I didn’t imagine her response to me earlier. Just remembering how her sweet, tight, little pussy had spasmed around me makes me painfully hard again.
Fuck, I need to have her again. I wanted her again immediately after that first time, but I forced myself to refrain. I was already rougher than I should have been with her for her first time, but dammit, she has the kind of pussy that a man loses his mind to. I couldn’t control myself once I to inside her.
I hadn’t planned on taking her that way—certainly not tonight either. But I was full of tension when I came in today. And when she’d bent over in that pretty little dress, the perfect little globes of her ass just peeking out around those tiny goddamned panties, I’d lost it. Fucking lost the last shred of restraint I’ve been holding onto. I’ve been in a perpetual state of blue balls ever since she’s been here, no matter how much I jacked off, and tonight, the pressure was just too much.
Ava’s piece of shit father thought he could get away with not holding up his end of our bargain. My guys found out he still had yet to shut down his little human trafficking operation, and I could’t allow that infraction to go unpunished.
I’m sure my men have taken care of the problem by now, and I’d given them the go-ahead to use whatever force necessary to deal with the issue.
If that means that asshole is dead by now, then the world will only be a better place in my opinion. I hate it for Ava, but I sense there will be no love lost between them at this point. She hasn’t asked a word about her father since the day he gave her to me, and I can’t blame her. I have a feeling he died to her that day, and rightfully so.
A stab of unexpected conscience pricks at me. I accepted her as a bribe—but the difference is I love her and want to keep her. Yes, I love her. I don’t know at what point I realized it, but it’s true. I’m completely fucking in love with Ava Sinclair—in an obsessive, almost psychotic way. I’ll do anything to keep her. Anything to make sure she’s safe, and eventually she will be happy here with me.
I frown at that thought and realize that Ava still hasn’t come back to bed. I get up and go into the sitting room where I accosted her earlier.
Her dress is gone.
I curse and hurriedly pull my pants up before heading for the open door.
I find her at the bottom of the stairs heading for the front door and am hit with a sudden sense of deja vu as I recall how she ran from me the first day I brought her here.
I stop in my tracks as a wave of reality crashes over me like a ton of bricks.
As if she senses me, she turns, her eyes wide as she sees me standing at the top of the staircase looking down at her.
I can see her beginning to tremble from here, and I deflate.
I don’t want her fear. I don’t want her resentment. And I finally realize that’s all I’ll ever have with her if I make her stay here against her will. She’ll be my prisoner.
Oh, her body might respond to me, but I’ll never have her heart and soul. She’ll always keep her true self locked off from me, living a half life, fighting herself day to day, guilt-ridden by her body’s response to me when her mind hates me and what I’ve done.
I really am a monster.
I once thought I’d do whatever it takes to keep her, her wishes be damned. She’ll come around in time. But looking down into her soft, doe-colored eyes, I suddenly see how I’ve been deluding myself.
My little Georgia peach will never be happy in a cage—no matter how gilded it is.
And my god, the rough way I took her. It was her first time. I should have been gentler. Christ’s sake, no wonder she’s running from me.
She’ll never get over me kidnapping her. She’ll see me as just the same as her father. Someone who buys and sells humans.
And I can’t bear the thought of her thinking of me as that sort of monster.
Heart heavy but mind made up with what I have to do to prove I really love her, I turn my back on her, silently giving her permission to go.
I can’t watch her leave me, though. I can’t watch the one good thing to ever light my dark world walk out that door.
And when I hear the heavy thud of the door closing, pain like I’ve never known wracks my entire body until I’m shaking so bad I collapse to my knees, my fists clenched tightly as I reign in the urge to chase after her and drag her back here.
Ava.
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