Chosen: The Complete Edition (Allure), page 27
“Wait!” I exclaimed. I was still naked. Surely, he didn’t intend to drag me out like that-- “What are you doing? Don’t--!”
He silenced me with a glare that sent a chill through me. Stumbling after him, I tripped and would have fallen if he hadn’t caught me up in his arms, the rough denim of his jeans rubbing against my bottom as I struggled.
I managed to land a fist against his chin but the blow had no effect. Restraining me with humiliating ease, he carried me down the stairs but only so far as the landing of the floor directly below. Setting me on my feet again, he thrust open a heavy wooden door. Beyond lay darkness broken only by the glare of two arc lamps illuminating a steel frame chair that was bolted to the floor.
At the sight of that chair, panic sparked in me. I turned to run only to slam into Adam’s chest. I felt as though I’d hit a stone wall, not very different from the ones surrounding me.
I fought, flailing out at him and screaming but he wasn’t to be deterred. In moments, I was in the chair with my wrists securely cuffed behind me. As he bent down beside me, Adam’s eyes met mine. Holding my gaze, he pushed my legs apart until they were spread wide, leaving me fully exposed to him. His index finger brushed along my seam, parting my outer lips just enough to tease my clit.
“So beautiful,” he murmured.
The only words he had spoken were unmistakably filled with regret and a note of finality that made me tremble.
Whatever he intended, I didn’t think that I could bear it. Giving into the fear threatening to engulf me, I pleaded, “Don’t do this, Adam, please!”
He didn’t reply but instead went about the business of securing each of my ankles to a leg of the chair. His touch was cold and calculated. When he was done, I was unable to move, spread wide and helpless.
“You’ve made your point,” I gasped. “I shouldn’t have tried to get away but--”
Before I could finish, he reached under the chair. Only then did I notice the circular hole cut into it right in front of me. I had barely begun to imagine what that could be for when Adam pressed the palm of one hand downward against my clit and with his index and middle fingers splayed wide the lips of my sex. With the other hand, he lodged the wide, bulbous head of a vibrator firmly against my vulva.
As I stared at it in dawning horror at what he intended, he stood, turned his back on me and walked into the shadows beyond the glare of the lights. Almost at once, I heard a soft, whirring sound and felt the head begin to move against my vulva.
“No!”
A warm flush rippled through me as my breath quickened. Staring down at the vibrator protruding up through the hole in the chair, I screamed, “You bastard! Don’t do this!”
He didn’t respond but I could make him out where he stood beside a table where, I saw to my horror, the red light of what could only be a camera glinted, an evil eye mocking me. The cameras outside my cell had been bad enough but this--
“Noooo!”
Even as I screamed, I saw his hand move and realized that he was holding a control device. As he pressed down, the speed of the vibrator increased.
Desperately, I tried to twist my lower body away but he’d secured me too well. Every move I made only pushed me harder against the rapidly spinning head so large that I felt its pulsations from my clit to my vagina. Within seconds, I was engorged and acutely aroused.
Still, I fought the first waves of a powerful orgasm as they began to build in me. I wouldn’t give in to this, I couldn’t! But my body had other ideas. My nipples hardened almost to the point of pain. My head fell back, my neck arching. Consciousness slowly but inexorably contracted to the focus of exquisite pressure between my thighs.
When Adam increased the speed yet again, I was defeated. Sobbing, I cried out as my vagina contracted fiercely, trying to claim the cock that should have been there even as I damned the man who was doing this to me.
Wave after wave of contractions tightened every muscle in my body before finally, a seemingly endless time later, the vibrations slowed. Sagging against my restraints, I dragged in air and heard the frantic beating of my heart like a bird trapped within the bone cage of my ribs.
With the greatest effort, I lifted my head and stared into the shadows. Adam hadn’t moved. He was still standing there, watching me. I wanted to berate him, to plead with him…
Before I could do either, the vibrator speeded up again. I was hurled back into the dark embrace of all-consuming sexual hunger, slave to a merciless cycle of arousal and release.
One orgasm flowed into the next, a cascade of torturous pleasure that drowned all conscious thought and will. My body clenched over and over until every muscle throbbed. The wetness dripping from me made the chair under my buttocks slick. My thighs quivered as spasms rippled under the taut skin of my abdomen. The merest whisper of air, moving over my swollen breasts and engorged nipples only added to the delirium of the torment he was inflicting.
At some point, my body took over, rejecting the last shreds of reason and reveling instead in its power to do what no man’s could. I embraced the true carnality of my nature, the primal force that lay between my legs and within the hyper-activated pleasure centers of my brain.
Vividly aware of Adam watching me, I gazed into the shadows and slowly, deliberately flicked my tongue over my lips, imagining as I did so that it was his cock I stroked. The darkness enveloping him could not conceal his harsh groan.
He stepped forward, just close enough to the light that I could see him more clearly. His hand went to the zipper of his jeans, easing it down over the bulge of his massive erection. Freed, his cock jutted forward, long, thick, and hard to the point of bursting.
As I stared, unable to look away, his fisted his shaft, running his hand up and down the considerable length of it first slowly, then more quickly. His eyes held mine, shrinking the distance between us as his rhythm quickened.
Pre-come beaded on the tip of his crest. I stared at it, entranced, as the waves of another orgasm built in me--savage, remorseless, not unlike Adam himself. Stripped of any will to resist, I kept my gaze on him, vividly aware of how he felt inside me…how he made me feel…
A sob tore from my throat as I surrendered to the truth. Despite everything I wanted to believe about myself and even in the face of all that he had done to me, I needed him desperately. He was in the air I breathed, the blood that flowed in my veins, the light that pierced the depths of my soul.
The orgasm that tore through me was so intense that white stars exploded nova-like behind my eyes. Bathed in their radiance, I saw Adam, close enough now that if my hands hadn’t been cuffed, I could have touched him.
His head had fallen back, the tendons of his powerful throat cording. His big, powerful body moved in rhythm with my own. I gasped, crying out his name. The hot splash of his semen over my breasts and belly clung to me as I spiraled away into thick, bittersweet darkness.
Chapter Seven
Grace
Istared at Adam across the width of the living room. In the charcoal grey suit perfectly tailored to his powerful body, he looked as indomitable as ever. But the stiffness in his shoulders and the slight tilt of his head hinted at a degree of wariness that I hadn’t seen in him before. Moreover, the unmistakable bulge in his trousers told me that I wasn’t alone in remembering what had happened between us in that windowless room shortly before I was “freed” and put on a plane back to New York.
The brutal, relentless force of those memories--life, death, ecstasy, despair--shook me to the core. As much as I tried to resist them, they were merciless in their onslaught. Confronted by their power, the walls that I had built around myself began to crack. Small fissures expanded rapidly until, between one breath and the next, the entire artifice collapsed.
Behind it was a reservoir of rage and humiliation that I hadn’t been able to acknowledge to anyone, not even myself. It had thwarted my attempts at therapy, kept me sleepless at night, and stripped the world of joy and hope. Now it threatened to drown every shred of reason that I still possessed.
For an instant, I saw Adam as though through the diaphanous red silk of the bed hangings. Saw his magnificent body bearing down on mine, the dark passion in his eyes, the bold, sensual curve of his mouth--
I blinked and the image vanished but my fury remained, growing stronger with every breath.
Rising from the couch, I shouted the question that he had yet to answer. “What did you do with the videos?”
He flinched…or perhaps he didn’t. The impression was so fleeting that I might have imagined it. In stark contrast to my own near-hysteria, his response was quiet and measured, yet tinged with unmistakable sadness.
“Your family got only a short, highly edited version of each with the understanding that there was much more. When those taken of you in the cell failed to have any effect, I considered what you had told me and realized what it would take to convince them.”
“Because nothing is more guaranteed to go viral than a celebrity sex video?” The words spewed from me, poison that I had to eject before it ate me alive. “That was what you intended, wasn’t it? The videos of me in the cell would only have elicited sympathy from the public, for me and for my family. But the last one…”
I was choking on the revulsion rising up in me. Barely able to breathe, I managed to gasp, “Oh, god, you didn’t--?”
No, of course he hadn’t. If the video of me being forced to orgasm over and over had been released, I wouldn’t have been able to set foot outside my apartment without being overwhelmed by paparazzi. Every sex fiend, pervert and weirdo would have me bookmarked. I would be notorious, the infamous object of shock, titillation, and endless, X-rated speculation.
As for my family---
“It would have been an incredible scandal,” I said. “The public image of the Delaneys, so carefully maintained for so long, would have been tainted beyond repair. The family’s reputation would have crumbled. Everything would have been open to scrutiny.”
My voice fell as pain twisted through me. I had known on some level all along but now I truly knew. The people I should have been able to depend on the most cared less than nothing for me.
“That’s why they finally gave you Uncle Ned,” I said, sorrow welling up in me. “Not to save me, to save themselves.”
Slowly, Adam nodded. He took a step toward me, then thought better of it and stopped. But the look in his eyes made his feelings all too clear.
“Don’t,” I said, hating how shaky I sounded. “Keep your sympathy, your pity, whatever! It’s meaningless. You used me every bit as much as they did. I was just a means to an end for all of you.”
I wouldn’t cry, I couldn’t. The tears that I might have shed fell instead into the inferno of my emotions. They rose transformed, sizzling wisps of smoke escaping from the charred remains of whatever dreams I had clung to. Foolish, stupid dreams about a man who had never seen me as anything other a necessary step to the fulfillment of his duty.
To his credit, Adam didn’t even try to deny it. “That was true at the beginning. I chose you because I believed that you were strong enough to withstand being held captive for what I assumed would be a very short time. I never imagined what the real effect would be on either of us.”
He hadn’t just said that. He wouldn’t have dared. But this was Adam, unlike any man I had ever known. He recognized no limits except those that he set for himself.
“Us?” I spit the word, laden with bitter contempt. “You’re claiming to have been affected? You took the intimacy we shared and twisted it into a weapon to get what you wanted. Did you think for a moment how that made me feel?”
The last words slipped out before I could stop them. I tried all the same, biting down on my tongue hard enough to taste blood. As exposed as I had felt before, I feared being even more so, stripped bare, unable to hide anything from him.
His eyes glittered darkly. At his sides, his fists clenched and unclenched, as though he was fighting a battle with himself not to reach out and--
“For a moment?” he demanded, the challenge exploding in the air between us. “I couldn’t think of anything else then or now! I let you go because you deserve every chance to be free of me! You think I don’t know what I am? What I’m capable of?”
I couldn’t tell which was worse, the rage I felt at his actions or how much I felt for the man himself. As much as I hated what he had done to me--or even to us, as he claimed--he had acted from a deeply ingrained sense of duty and a determination to wrest justice from an unjust world. If that made him a monster, then some aspect of my own nature was equally as dark and flawed.
I had never conformed to my family’s expectations, at least not more than superficially. But now America’s Princess, the name I had always despised, was well and truly gone. She might as well have drowned in that rip current. By the time Adam and I mated in a wild frenzy on the beach, I was well and truly free of her.
As reluctant as I’d been to admit it at the time, ours had been a savage celebration of life hurled into the face of death itself. If he thought for a moment that I would forget that, he didn’t know me at all. The question was could I ever forgive what had followed?
Trapped in my pain and rage, I stood frozen, unable to move. Not so Adam. The space between us shrunk in an instant. Miles, worlds, opposing realities dissolved into nothingness. I saw the flush that darkened his high-boned cheeks and the harsh surge of his breath. The air between us trembled.
“Damn it, can’t you hear me?” he demanded. “I was trying to do what was right--for Rolf, for the people who depend on me, and ultimately for you. I couldn’t let my own feelings sway me. Your attempt to escape again--putting yourself in danger again--forced me to act. I had to end it and then I had to let you go!”
He thrust a hand through his hair in a gesture of raw frustration and made as though to turn away from me.
The red mist returned, moving in front of my eyes. Rage at all that had torn us apart threatened to consume me. Only one force was greater, overriding everything else. Yearning--hot, remorseless, carnal but also so much more.
“Don’t you dare do that,” I said.
He frowned, his gaze returning to lock with mine. “Do what?”
“Turn away from me. After all that happened between us--”
The memories of how we had been together, how we had touched, what we had revealed to one another were unbearably real and raw. They drove me over the brink and beyond. What little was left of my self-control shattered.
I lashed out, my palm striking his lean cheek. The sound reverberated in the opulent room, against the silk-covered walls and beyond the terrace doors opened to the night descending over the city.
My skin where it had touched his burned but I was hardly aware of that. All I could think of was that he hadn’t so much as flinched. I waited through the space of one heartbeat and the next for him to retaliate but he just stood there. Slowly the realization dawned on me that he intended to take whatever punishment I inflicted because he believed that he deserved it.
Sobs clogged my throat. I shook from head to toe. My vision blurred, awash in tears.
“Don’t deny what really happened between us,” I said, half-plea, half-demand, all desperate. “Or do, tell me that I’m wrong, that I’m deluded. But don’t lie--to me or to yourself.”
He sucked in breath, let it go slowly. Something shifted behind his eyes, a giving way as though he, too, had walls that were crumbling.
“No lies?” he asked.
I stood on the precipice, feeling the ground falling away under my toes. In another moment, I would find out if I truly could fly or--
My chin lifted. I stared at him directly. “We deserve the truth, both of us.”
A moment passed, another. I couldn’t breathe. My heart hammered painfully. A constriction built in my throat, a hard knot of regret, loss, despair…
“Grace.”
No one had ever said my name like that, part plea, part benediction. No one had ever touched me as he did, closing the distance between us to stroke his hand tenderly along my cheek, catching the dampness of my tears.
“Grace,” he said again, his tall head bending, at once blotting out the light and banishing the darkness.
Chapter Eight
Adam
Itasted blood, a faint trace of it when my tongue stroked hers, taking, claiming even as I marveled at what she permitted.
Was it possible--? I couldn’t even frame the thought, forgiveness being so far beyond anything that I dared to hope for.
But the blood…the copper tang of her life…that stirred a dark force deep inside me that I was all too familiar with.
I wanted her--hard and fast, up against the nearest wall, driving into her until she screamed in ecstasy and took everything that I had. And then I wanted her again, over and over, until all the barriers between us were gone and nothing was left except the stark honesty of our need for each other.
But first--
She wanted truth and I wanted to give it. But I didn’t have the words, not then, for something that I had never experienced before in my life and didn’t know how to make sense of. All I could do was show her.
My hands shook, slipping under her skirt, over her slim, taut thighs to find the little scrap of lace between them. A groan broke from me when I felt her dampness.
Clasping her hips, I eased her skirt up to her leather-clinched waist. She gasped but didn’t resist. Nor did she object when I turned her around so that we were both facing the glass doors that led out onto the terrace. Lavender and pink remnants of the sunset still clung to the western horizon but above the long swathe of Central Park the sky was a pewter dome opaque enough to hide the stars.
