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As if it hadn’t already been doing that for almost a month.
So after Gideon brings my breakfast, I’m slow to get started. Then we have lunch together in the solarium, where my dessert is another long, languid orgasm, with Gideon feasting from my lips as his thumb strums my clit and his fingers sink deep into my virgin sheath. And just as before, when I try to touch him, he abruptly leaves me alone, hungrily licking my pussy juices from his fingers as he goes.
It’s long into the afternoon when I finally make my way down to the garden—where the chain promptly snags on a rosebush, and I spend a frustrating fifteen minutes trying to get free.
And I know it’s not natural behavior. Not that the chain is natural in any sense—just as so much here at Blackwood Manor is no longer natural in any sense—but before today, the chain only passively prevented me from passing beyond the estate’s property line. Now it seems to be actively preventing me from going anywhere. And it can’t be a coincidence that the chain begins behaving in this way on my birthday, the anniversary of the day he originally gave me the necklace as a gift.
On the same day Gideon claims to have no control and leaves claw marks in my bed. The same day the knot of dread in my gut won’t untwist. It all adds up to something, but I don’t know what that something is.
But there is something I do know. Because as irritating as the golden binding is, as much as I hate it…if wearing this chain was the price I had to pay to stay with Gideon forever, I would pay it.
Yet he can release me. So I don’t understand why he doesn’t. I would stay either way.
Though perhaps the tower where he spent so much time partially answers that question. Because the only thing clear about this whole insane situation is that Gideon has lost far too much, and he’s spent years desperately trying to hold on to memories of a happier time.
Now he’s holding on to me instead of setting me free—as if he’s afraid of losing me again.
Does he truly not know that I wouldn’t go? That this is my home, has always been my home, and my place has always been at his side?
I just want to be free. Not free of him.
And that is what I’ll tell him when he finds me again. Because he promised pampering today, but there’s nothing more luxurious than spending time with my hands in the soil—and only the pleasure Gideon gives to me surpasses the joy of bringing this garden back to perfumed, colorful life. When I’d first arrived here at the manor, I’d seen this garden and believed there was no place for me here anymore. But with every new bud and bloom, I’m more certain than ever that this will always be my home. It was just waiting for me to return.
The sun is low in the sky when movement near the house catches my eye. Gideon, approaching the garden with his face drawn into harsh lines and his eyes burning a fiery green, as if witnessing the torments in the pits of Hell.
His demand is a rumbling crack of thunder. “Where have you been?”
In confusion, I look around me. “Where else would I be?”
“I have searched for you for two hours.” Gideon crosses the garden to stand before me. “I couldn’t hear where you were, couldn’t find your scent. And this bloody thing”—he grips the chain dangling from my neck—“led me through every fucking room in the house!”
I tell him, “It’s being weird today.” And so is he. “Of course I’m out here. Where else would I be?”
“You shouldn’t be here.” His voice is hoarse as he cups my face in his hands, his gaze wildly searching mine. “I have more to give you. And I hadn’t wanted to rush but we’re out of time.”
“Okay,” I say slowly, trying to calm the panic that’s rising within me, witnessing his urgency. “Do you have the gifts with you or do we need to go inside?”
“It’s inside. It’s outside.” Turning, he sweeps his arm in a half circle, as if indicating the garden—or beyond. “It’s all of this. Blackwood Manor.”
“What? How can it be mine?”
“I had the paperwork drawn up this week. It will all be yours.”
Is this another proposal? “What do you mean, exactly?”
“I don’t have any family to leave it to. And in my heart, you have always been my wife.” His tormented gaze burns into mine. “So if something happens to me…it’s yours.”
“Nothing is going to happen to you.” Even the joy of hearing him call me his wife can’t overcome the pain of what he followed it with. My chest aches at the very thought of him being hurt…or worse. “And I don’t want that gift. Not if I get it like that.”
“You’ll take it,” he growls the command fiercely, “because I wouldn’t trust the property to anyone else. And I have something more to give you.”
I’m not sure I want any more of his gifts. “What do you—”
But I’ll take this. His mouth claims mine, his hands capturing my face and drawing me close against his hard chest. Tender and sweet, filled with a longing that brings tears from my eyes, his kiss feels like a declaration of love and home and forever.
My throat’s clogged with emotion as he draws away, winding the golden chain around his fist.
“Cora Walker,” he says in a voice so hollow that each word seems to echo from an empty space in his chest, “the promise I made when I gave you this necklace…that vow means nothing. I have no intention of marrying you now.”
Breathless with pain, I stare mutely at him.
“My final gift is your freedom,” he continues harshly. “Now get the hell away from Blackwood Manor.”
Freedom…?
I lift shaking fingers to my neck. The chain is gone. Instead it dangles from his fist…but it’s just a necklace and a diamond pendant again. Just a piece of jewelry.
A piece of jewelry that means nothing. Feeling as if my entire world is tearing apart, I raise blurry eyes to his. “Gideon?”
“Go, Cora.” Face tormented, he backs away from me. “Damn my selfish heart. I said that today I would only give, but in truth I was taking every moment for myself. One last day. But I should have sent you away the same hour you arrived.”
“But why?” My voice cracks. “Why?”
“Just get out of here.”
Tears spilling down my cheeks, wildly I shake my head.
“Get out!” he roars.
A sob breaks from me. “But I have nowhere to go. This is my only home.”
Pain slashes across his face. “Then run to the village,” he tells me hoarsely. “I don’t care, as long as you’re anywhere but here. Because I never want you to step foot on this estate again—not as long as I live.”
Each word shatters my heart. With my hands flying to my mouth to muffle my agonized cry, I flee from him, blinded by tears. But this is my home, and every step so familiar that I make my way to my bedchamber in the northwest wing without any memory of getting there. With sobs ripping from my chest, I begin throwing clothes into my suitcase, but don’t even get it half full before I crumple to the floor, bawling helplessly.
Gideon gave me my freedom…then threw me away before I could make my choice. But I would have stayed. I would have stayed.
And he never gave me a chance to tell him.
I cry until I’m spent, then lie there shudder
ing on the floor, all of my strength gone and my body as limp as a rag doll’s.
I don’t know where I find the will to get up again. But it must be from the same place where I find the resolve to unpack all of the clothes in my suitcase and put them away in my wardrobe again. And it must be where I find the steel that stiffens my spine and lifts my chin, and sends me in search of Gideon.
Because I am staying.
And if he doesn’t believe it today, then he will fifty years from now, when I’m still right here.
In bare feet, I cross the grand hall and climb the stairs to the southeast tower. He’s not there. Wishing I had a golden chain to follow, I head back downstairs and slip through the corridor to the family wing. In the parlor, everything is quiet.
Except for the low groan that faintly sounds from farther within the wing—from the direction of Gideon’s bedchamber.
Heart pounding, I make my way to that room. The lamps are off and the curtains pulled, but orange light spills through the broken doorway to the solarium. Beyond those glass walls, the setting sun is but a sliver of light leaving behind a blood-red sky.
“Cora? God, no. Cora.” So guttural and thick, Gideon’s voice is almost unrecognizable. “Run.”
I did that last time. This time I go to him, to where he’s crouched beside his bed, his shoulders hunched and his bare skin bathed in the sunset’s flaming light.
“Gideon? What are you—” I stop dead, shock rooting me to the spot. He’s been chained to the bed, but not with a thin golden chain. Instead it appears as if the heavy rusted chain from the manor’s main gate has been padlocked around his waist. “Oh my god. Let me get you out! Who did this?”
“I did this.” A warning growl rumbles from him, and he catches my frantic hands, stopping me from pulling at the chain wound around the solid oak frame. His intense green eyes demand my full attention. “I knew you must still be here, because I was not… You have to run, Cora. Through the solarium and outside, as fast as you can. You have to make it past the gates before the sun sets, because that’s when the full moon will rise.”
