Page 9 of The Castle (Endgame 3)
“I know,” I moan, clenching around his finger. Part of me wants to push him out. The sensation is strange, his finger impossibly thick. My muscles press so hard around him. How can he stand it?
“Tell me your dirtiest fantasy, little virgin.”
“I don’t…” My voice cracks as he licks my clit again. “I don’t have any.”
“Liar,” he says, affectionate.
And maybe I am a liar. My fantasies were never fully formed, always glimpses of flesh, only the flash of golden eyes. I never allowed myself to dream that deeply, afraid of what I would find.
“I’ll trade you,” I say, my whole body trembling, on the precipice of an orgasm that might break me. “Everything is for sale. Isn’t that what you told me?”
He pauses, clearly intrigued. “And what will it cost me, this fantasy?”
“A secret.”
The silence clouds with darkness and danger—with threat more real than his castle to my king. “What kind of secret?”
“The kind worth selling.” He knows what I want from him. I’m not sure whether he’ll agree or not, but I know he’ll give me something real if he does. Honor means too much to him to shortchange me.
He pulls away from me, and I find myself mourning the loss. Is this his answer? Is this how I finally push him away, by asking for too much? Except he turns me around, and the determination in his eyes proves otherwise.
He lifts me like I weigh nothing, setting me on the cool stone where my hands were. My back entrance twinges, reminding me that something has just been inside. His large hand spreads my thighs, and he steps between them. We’re almost eye level like this, my body higher on the balcony, my legs dangling. It’s only his hands on my waist that keep me from falling ten feet onto granite.
My clit throbs from where he touched me, my inner muscles clenching around nothing. Part of me feels wild for him, unable to think until he lets me come. The other part can’t believe this is happening.
I know exactly how hard he works to guard his walls, and he’s letting me in.
That’s how much my fantasies mean to him.
“To understand one secret, I have to tell you another.”
A light wind lifts my hair, brushing over my neck, and I realize just how precarious my position on this railing is. How precarious my relationship with Gabriel Miller is. How precious my safety in Tanglewood is with Jonathan Scott on the loose.
“That doesn’t mean I’m giving you two fantasies,” I warn him.
The corner of his mouth lifts, his lips still glistening from my juices. “It’s a buy-one-get-one-free sale.”
Despite the levity in our words, I feel the weight of his confession looming. Suddenly I wonder if this was a good idea, if I’m sure I can handle whatever he tells me. It’s too late for second-guessing, too late to back out with so much on the line. “Tell me.”
He looks away, his eyes almost black in the moonlight. “Most of the girls who came to the brothel were early twenties. Late teens. Some of them had worked on the street. They were relieved to have a bed to sleep at night and food every day.”
I grasp Gabriel’s arms, as much to steady him as myself.
“Others…they came from debts. Bought and sold like cattle.”
My throat tightens. It’s not so far from what happened to me, and in that regard I’m lucky. As much as I’m angry at my father, as much as I dislike being cocooned in this castle, it’s a far kinder fate than other girls in my position. “I’m sorry.”
He shakes his head, expression hard. “And then one day, there was a little girl.”
“Oh no,” I whisper.
“You could tell…just looking at her eyes, you could tell she knew what we did. You could tell it had happened to her before. Even the older girls, sometimes they would fight. They would be shocked. Not her. She knew.”
“Gabriel.” My hands tighten on his arms. “You don’t have to finish.”
“I do. You should know who you’re dealing with. What you’ve got yourself into. You think you’re safe here with me, but I can’t fucking…” He presses his lips together. “I can’t fucking promise.”
And I understand that he needs to tell me, that the wall costs him something. It costs him too damn much. “What happened?”
“I told my father that was it, that I wasn’t going to help him keep a little girl. But it was a problem. He still owned the place and he still owned her. Even if I left, she’d be there with no one to protect her.”
My heart clenches at the thought of that poor girl—and of a younger Gabriel, powerless, faced with an impossible choice. “What did you do?”
“I paid for her.”
I shiver at the cold calculation in his words. “You protected her.”
