Page 29 of Vicious Devotion

I suck in a breath, gritting my teeth and turning my face into the pillow as I fight the urge to cry out, a helpless moan spilling into the fabric as the orgasm crashes over me. I buck against my hands, gasping out Gabriel’s name, wanting more. I want more of him, and even as I come apart with pleasure, shuddering from the force of it, it’s still not enough.

He’s the only thing that feels like enough. And I’ve started to wonder if he’s the only person who ever will.

I bite my lip as I come down from the high, emotions crashing over me that I can’t begin to untangle. I haven’t wanted to put a name to them, but even with as little experience in relationships as I have, I know what I’m feeling. What I’ve been feeling, for longer than I want to admit.

I’m in love with Gabriel. It feels inevitable, in a way, like there was no possibility that I was ever going to make it out of all of this without loving him. How could I not—a man who has done so much for me, who has been patient and kind, who has shown me that the world isn’t only the violent, terrifying place that it shifted into after the horrors of my wedding? A man who loves his children, who is the kind of father—and, at his core, the kind of person—who anyone would be lucky to just know, let alone love.

Adding in the physical part of our relationship made it inevitable. But we agreed that emotions wouldn’t be a part of it. That love wasn’t on the table. Gabriel told me that, in black and white, before he ever so much as kissed me. There was no ambiguity. No way for me to say I didn’t understand. And I agreed.

I told him I wanted him so that I would have a possibility of romance with someone else, in the future. I wanted to learn with him, so I could try to date without being terrified of intimacy. We were both painfully clear with each other about what we had to offer. What we wanted.

And yet we ended up here anyway—and I can’t imagine wanting anyone else.

The orgasm and the flood of emotion left me feeling wrung out and exhausted, but I take one of my sleeping pills anyway, not wanting to risk nightmares that might wake anyone else up. Before I know it, my alarm is ringing in my ear, and I fumble for my phone, hitting the snooze.

Tomorrow, I’ll be ‘off work,’ and although I know I’ll still end up doing things around the house and helping out, I have every intention of sleeping in until I wake up without an alarm.

I throw myself fully into getting back into my routine, trying to do anything other than think about Gabriel, and how he makes me feel. It feels nearly impossible, when one of the first things I see is him, sitting at the breakfast table in a light blue button-down linen shirt with the sleeves rolled up, the curling ends of his hair falling forward as he scrolls through his phone and takes a bite of the poached eggs Agnes made this morning and served over toast.

Fortunately, he takes off right after breakfast, going to handle things around the estate while Agnes, Cecelia, and I tackle the living room, working on finishing cleaning it before we start making firm plans for the renovation. Unfortunately, right around lunchtime, Gabriel comes strolling into the living room, wearing a t-shirt and boardshorts, and looking mischievous.

“Grab your bathing suits,” he tells Cecelia and Danny. “You too,” he adds, glancing at me. “We’re all going to go have lunch out by the lake.”

My stomach tightens, but it’s not with fear at the idea of being out in the open in a bathing suit. For some reason, the staff on the estate don’t make me feel as panicked as I did back in New York, when I tried to avoid anyone catching even a glimpse of me in so much as a short-sleeved t-shirt. I have a feeling that it’s mostly because we’re so far from home. I don’t have the same negative associations with being here. And when it comes to those older fears, Gabriel makes me feel safe.

It’s the bigger fears that still loom over me. As if the terrifying possibility of Igor finding me here makes the others less daunting.

I force the thought away, plastering a smile onto my face before either of the children can see otherwise—or Gabriel.

“Okay. Let’s go grab bathing suits!” I tell Cecelia and Danny, herding them towards the stairs. I don’t meet Gabriel’s eyes as I pass him, unsure of whether I want to see desire in his face at the thought of seeing me in a swimsuit—or not. I can’t help but think that the tension I still feel between us is one-sided. That his insistence on protecting me is from a misplaced sense of responsibility for me, and nothing else.

He agreed that he only wanted it to be the one time. And after all of this—I can’t imagine that he would still want me the way he did before. Not when I’ve caused so many complications, no matter what he says about not blaming myself.

The memory of him pinning me up against the wall on his private jet flickers back into my head as I go up to my room to change—but I’m still not entirely convinced that wasn’t just the adrenaline, that he actually still wanted me. And ever since then?—

I force it out of my head, digging around in my clothes, hoping that Gabriel packed a swimsuit for me. I haven’t fully unpacked yet, and I find it at the bottom of the bag he packed—two of them.

One is the same black bikini that I wore the night he found me out at the pool. My hand closes convulsively around it, my pulse beating faster in my throat. There’s no way I’m wearing this out to the lake, but I’m instantly flooded with desire, my skin hot at the memory of what we did the last time I put this on.

The other is my black one-piece, with white piping along the edges. I yank it out, my heart still pounding as I quickly pull it on and throw a pair of jeans and a t-shirt over it, shoving my feet into a pair of sneakers. I don’t look at the bikini again as I walk out, desperately hoping that what I’m thinking isn’t showing on my face.

Gabriel must have known I’d find it at some point. Why did he pack it? He had to have also known I wouldn’t wear it here. Unless he just wanted to remind me?—

The clattering sound and mingled shrieks of Cecelia and Danny running downstairs thankfully yanks me out of my train of thought. Gabriel is waiting with a soft cooler that’s probably filled with the lunch he wants to take out to the lake, and he glances at me once before herding the two children toward the back door. I hang back a little, my pulse still throbbing at the base of my throat as I try to collect my thoughts.

I have to find some way to move past this. To not feel like this around him, all of the time. It will be impossible to keep going, otherwise. And I don’t want to lose what I’ve found here. If we do somehow make it out of this, I want to stay. I want to keep this happiness and sense of home that I’ve found. It’s not just the threat from Igor that could destroy it. It’s also the threat that’s posed by me wanting more than I can have. More than Gabriel said he could offer.

There’s a vintage Land Rover outside, a dark green with a soft beige top that Gabriel rolls back as Cecelia and Danny clamber into the back. He walks around, opening my door for me, and I give him a smile as I climb up into the passenger’s seat. His arm brushes against mine, briefly, and I feel a shiver run down my spine.

My breath catches, and I try not to let it show.

Gabriel climbs into the driver’s side, tucking the cooler between the seats as he starts the car. I slide my hands over the cloth seat, looking over at him. “This is really neat,” I murmur, taking in the wood grain and the old-looking radio, and he grins.

“This was my dad’s. He loved this car, took amazing care of it. There’s newer ones—” he gestures at two others parked not far off, “—but he loved driving this one all over the estate. It’s been nice, driving it since I’ve been back.”

“Can you teach me?” I laugh a little wistfully. We didn’t get far in our driving lessons back in New York, before everything imploded. I have no idea if Gabriel will have the time or desire to teach me here.

“You’d have to be willing to learn to drive manual.” He taps the stick shift. “But it’s not that hard, once you get used to it.”

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