Innocence Defied (New York) (4 page)

“No.” He shook his head as if he were trying to get water out of his ear, and his long blond hair waved around his gorgeous face. “No fucking way are we doing this, Oops.”

Gage sat back from the cradle of her hips with a whimper he disguised as a moan. Nothing in his life had ever felt as right as Zoe in his arms. He told himself that was because he was a sick fuck, but that did little to diminish the insistent throb in his cock. He tortured himself by looking at her spread before him. Those mile-long legs were currently draped over his thighs and he thought his retinas were going to bleed when he looked at her pussy and saw all their messing around had stuffed the red scrap of her panties between her lips so they lay there, exposed, puffy and wet, just waiting for his hand, mouth and cock.

Her hips were softly rounded, and as he surveyed them, something caught his eye on the right one.

“Is that what I think it is, Oops?” he asked in a warning growl. Her eyes popped open, and she didn’t need to look down to know what he was talking about.

“Yes.” She nodded without elaborating.

He didn’t need to tug the elastic of her thong out of the way to know what it read, but he tugged it anyway to get an unimpeded view at his initials forever branded in a tattoo on her lovely hip.

“When?” he demanded.

“When I was eighteen.” His eyes flicked up to hers and she added, “For my birthday, as a present to myself.”

Her words, and the blazing intensity behind them, caused a shiver to course up and down his spine. Without thought, his thumb traced over the bold G.H. that marked her otherwise flawless flesh. It was the family brand. His grandfather had designed it when he was born, and it was on everything from the cattle, to the stationary and even the sprawling gates of the family estate in Houston. They were in an old English script, and the artist had done an amazing job of getting the colors just right with the black edges fading to gold so it looked like antique jewelry. Something primal and raw struggled to break out of him, but he locked it back down ruthlessly and shoved off the bed.

He was in the boxers he’d taken to sleeping in since she’d come, and though they didn’t do much to hide the full-throttle erection he sported, he was thankful for the little cover they did offer.

“We’ll stay here today, Oops, but not like this. We got some fixin’ to do, and fixin’ we are gonna do, until you realize that you and me and this…” He waved a hand over the bed, trying to ignore the way she looked all tumbled and tousled in it. “This is never going to happen again.” Then he turned his back while he still could and stalked to the bathroom.

He locked the door once he got there, and Heaven only knew if he was locking her out or himself in. He sure as hell didn’t.

When he got out of the shower, he was relieved to find her dressed and in the kitchen making breakfast. She stood at the stove with all that raven hair piled on top of her head, while she flipped French toast with one hand and worried her thumb nail between her teeth with the other. He now had firsthand knowledge of what she looked like naked, so seeing her covered in the skimpy black tank top and yoga pants only fired his desire to strip her.

“When did you learn how to cook?” he asked out of desperation—to think of anything besides her body.

“I took a cooking course my senior year and for part of my college freshman year too.” She shrugged one shoulder and didn’t look up from the pan. “I thought that maybe, if I could cook…” She hmmm’d to a stop and peeked up at him for a brief second. “Maybe you’d like it if I knew how to cook.” She finished in a huff, like she was confessing a grave misdeed.

“Huh.” Gage plopped down onto one of the chairs at the kitchen island and stared. He was more than a little touched at further proof of her crush. He still couldn’t get the image of his initials carved into her hip out of his mind’s eye. Almost two years ago she’d branded herself as his, and now he heard she’d also taken classes she thought would endear her to him. It was humbling to be the recipient of that level of devotion.

And terrifying.

Terrifying when it was coming from her.

Terrifying because it was just the sort of devotion he was looking for in a slave.

“Zoe, darlin’,” he began, mustering his determination to put them back on the right path. “This is never going to happen. You got to know that.”

She turned from the stove with a plate in each hand, and set one in front of him before she took a seat across from him with hers. Gage looked at the perfectly browned triangles of battered bread, crisp strips of bacon and the wedges of fruit slices that garnished the plate, and felt his heart give a sad twist.

“Oh, baby.” He met her eyes and saw now what he’d always accepted as sisterly devotion was in reality a devotion that was far from sisterly. It made him ache for her—for the heartache she had in store when she realized they could never be. “This looks amazing. You went to a lot of trouble here. We coulda just ate cereal, but this looks down right perfect.”

The first bite was so good he gave her a heartfelt, “S’good,” and shoveled down half the plate, before he looked up to notice she was not eating her own. She was instead watching him with a somber look of purpose.

“I’ve saved myself for you.” She must have mistaken his shell-shocked lack of response as a lack of understanding, because she elaborated. “I’m a virgin.”

As he gulped down the glass of orange juice in front of him to try and cool off his libido and gear back the panic, she added to his torment, “I want you to take my virginity next Saturday…for my birthday.”

Chapter Seven

By eleven o’clock that night, Gage was well on his way to rip-roaring drunk. Zoe was a virgin. A virgin who thought she was in love with him and wanted him to take that virginity as a fucking birthday present.

He scowled at the giant flat screen TV in front of him and took another swallow of scotch. They’d argued for hours today. He shook his head at the thought. He’d never known her to be anything other than accommodating to him—and to her whole family, for that matter. She’d lived to please others all her life, and especially him. But today she’d shown him that she damn well had a backbone and a mind of her own. She cried and pleaded at first. So quietly sad his heart had cracked right in two. Then he’d insisted she was too young to know what love was, and the tears had dried up pretty damn fast.

“You have no right to say that to me,” she’d said in the frostiest tone he’d ever heard out of her. “Don’t you dare tell me that I don’t know my own mind. My own heart. If you don’t feel for me what I feel for you, fine. But don’t stand there and try to tell me what I am or am not feeling.”

That had been the beginning of the argument. His first ever with her. The shock of it still had him shaking his head in bafflement. She’d shouted at him. Oops shouted at him. She’d stood there in front of him with her hands clenched into tight fists on her hips and shouted toe-to-toe with him.

“I’m not right for you, little girl.” He’d thrown out as his own temper started to rise.

“
I’m
not right for
you
is what you really mean, isn’t it?” she’d thrown back. “At least be honest about why you’re rejecting me.”

“God, darlin’, I’m not rejecting you. I’m protecting you.” He’d wrapped his hands around her shoulders, and his muscles had trembled with the need to shake some sense into her. “You deserve better than what I got to offer. Can’t you get it through your thick skull that I’m tryin’ to look out for you, here?”

“If you were so concerned for what’s best for me, then you’d stop fighting me on this, because you
are
what’s best for me. You always have been.”

He brought her up to her toes and bent down until his forehead was resting on hers. What he told her next would haunt him for the rest of his life and it was a wound on his soul.

“Baby.” He’d swallowed and given her a soft kiss on the tip of her nose before continuing. “If I was vanilla, I’d snatch you up and marry you so fast you wouldn’t know what hit you. Damn the consequences. But I’m not and you are as vanilla as they come.”

The confusion and skepticism on her face only made things harder because they underlined just how sheltered she was. “What the heck are you talking about ice cream for? I hate vanilla. I like mint chip.”

His chuckle was bittersweet. “Vanilla is a term used for people who like their sex in a straight simple manner. No kink, no frills.”

She listened with a frown on her face and he saw that he needed to tell her more. “I am not vanilla. I’m a Dom, Oops. A sexual Dominant. Sex with me would involve pain. And bondage.” When she opened her mouth to interject, he added the killing blow, “And sex with other people. Lots of other people.”

With a groan, Gage got up to pace as the rest of the argument played in his mind like a song that looped over and over.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Zoe looked as bewildered as she sounded. “You would have sex with other women, even if you were with me?”

“Not just me, darlin’. I’d share you too. I’d expect you to have sex with other men or even women if we were together. And I’d watch or I’d join in, depending on what I want. Do you understand that? What
I
want, not you. I expect the women I’m with to follow my commands. Period. And the women I choose love that about me.”

Those big blue eyes filled with tears again, and the loathing he felt for himself right then was nothing he’d ever felt before. He’d never made apologies about who he was and what he wanted for himself. In this instance, however, he almost wished he was different, if only to spare her from the hurt and betrayal he saw on her face.

“So, you really don’t love me then. It’s true.” Tears leaked steadily down her cheeks as she looked him in the eye and delivered her own killing blow. “I saved myself for nothing. You’re really going to stand aside and let some other man take my virginity.”

He couldn’t describe the instant rage the statement caused, and he didn’t want to look too closely at where it was coming from.

“Oops.” His voice dropped to a menacing growl that had her stepping back and her eyes widening. “Don’t fucking talk to me about that. Ever. You hear?” He swung away from her in frustrated fury. “The thought of you letting some asshole touch you makes me want to kill.”

“But didn’t you just say—” she started, but he interrupted before she could finish.

“Yes, I said. I said
if
. If you were with me—that’s what I want. But you’re too good for that, Zoe. Too good for the life I lead.”

Here she got angry again. “Wait a minute. Too good for that? Does that mean you think less of the women you are with? These women who let you do all those things to them—you don’t respect them? Are they sluts?”

“For the love of God, Oops.” He’d wanted to bang his head into a wall right then. “No, I don’t think less of them, and of course they aren’t sluts. They are just different. They have different tastes and desires than you, that’s all.”

“I wouldn’t have ever pegged you for a hypocrite.”

He’d looked at her with open-mouthed shock. “Watch it, little one. Don’t think for a second I won’t turn you over my knee and tan your little ass if you deserve it.” His shocked anger melted back to frustration when the threat caused a flush to darken her cheeks and her breath to hitch. Fucking last thing he needed was signs that she might like kink after all.

“Look,” he said wearily, “we’ve been at this for hours. Let it go. You’re too young. And you’re too innocent. Your first time should be with someone young and innocent too. Not a Dom and definitely not me.”

When she’d muttered a strained, “Fine. Have it your way,” he thought the fight was over, and that she’d gone to her room to have a good cry. Only an hour later she’d come down the stairs, dressed to kill in a too-short, too-tight red dress, looking like sex on stilts. Without a word to him, she’d tucked her purse under her arm and headed for the door.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa there, Oops. Just where the hell do you think you’re going dressed like that and all alone?”

“Out.” With that flippant answer, she flung open the door and he’d had to slap it closed to keep her there.

“I don’t think so. You want to go out, we’ll go out, but both of us have to change first.”

“No,” she’d said, looking so defiant the Dom in him was itching to put her in her place. “I’m an adult, Gage. I’m going out and I’ll be home later.”

“Like hell you will.”

“Gage, you have made it blindingly clear that you don’t want me. That I’ve wasted all this time waiting to be old enough for you for nothing. Well, I’m not wasting another minute. You don’t want my virginity? Fine. I’ll find someone who does.”

It was the fear he would actually hurt her if he stayed another second in the same room with her that allowed him to let her walk out the door. The killing rage he felt tinged the edges of his vision in red, and even now—hours later—still hadn’t cooled from his blood.

He was going to kill the bastard, he thought, if she had the gall to follow through with her threat and let some asshole touch her. He was simply going to have to kill him.

Chapter Eight

Zoe was too mad to cry. She was mad at herself for rushing. If she had put herself off a little longer, she was sure things would have worked out just like she wanted. It had started so great this morning, and then she’d ruined everything by panicking and blurting out the truth.