Page 26 of Gideon
“I know what you are.” Her words weren’t a question. They were a statement. A barely whispered one, but a statement nonetheless. If she thought she knew what I was, the truth about me, let her say it. I wanted to see the firecracker who had fought me tooth and nail from minute one use that same courage and fire to speak the truth. I wanted to hear her say it out loud.
“And what is that, pray tell?” I sneered. She shook her head once, a short, choppy movement. “Ah, ah, ah. Say it,” I challenged her, my voice low, dark, and quiet.
“No.” Her shoulders squared in defiance. There she was. There was that little pistol I was just beginning to know.
“Say it. I fucking dare you,” I seethed. The gauntlet had been thrown. Now the only question remaining was: Did she have the balls to actually say the words?
The time ticked away on the clock on the wall as I waited for her to respond. I could see it in my peripheral vision, but my focus was only on her. The red-headed siren temptress who fucking tap-danced on my last damn nerve like a goddamn showgirl.
“Say. It,” I nearly growled out again, unwilling to let her escape the challenge I had laid down before her. I saw it. I saw it happen as the will and drive to rise to such a challenge welled up within her, spilling out of her body as she spun on her heel to face me. Her hands fisted in the rope as she leveled me with the most heated gaze I had ever seen on her. Fuck — onanywoman, for that matter. She finally hissed out the words, her vibrant green eyes narrowed at me like I was the scum of the motherfucking Earth.
“You’re a murderer.”
CHAPTER8
GIDEON
“WHAT?” My entire demeanor shifted as her words actually reached my brain.
“Murderer!” she yelled again. I could feel the heated anger coming off of her in waves.
And I did probably the absolute worst thing I could have done at that moment.
I laughed.
I didn’t just laugh. I bellowed so loudly and audaciously that I had to bend over and clutch my stomach and the complete lunacy of her statement finally clicked in my anger-riddled brain.
“What the hell are you laughing at?!” she shrieked, looking at me like I had lost my damned mind. Maybe I had, but the fact that she thought I was a murderer was the funniest thing I had heard in months — no, years!
“You think I am a murderer?” I echoed her words, wiping at the tears that escaped my eyes at the corners.
“Um, yeah!” she tossed back as though it were obvious as fuck.
“Why? Why on Earth would you think I’m a murderer?” I asked, needing desperately to hear whatever cockamamie idea had led her downthatrabbit hole.
“Why else would you have this?” she asked, holding up the hank of rope. The same hank I had been tying with just the night before. “And these?” she added, spinning around to grab the cable ties I sometimes used as additional bondage, and a knife that I used with a select few submissives in more intense play sessions.
“I’m not a murderer,” I stated calmly, gaining control of my laughter finally.
“I’m sure all murderers say that,” she scoffed with a dramatic roll of her eyes.
“Oh, Christ Almighty! I’m not a murderer,” I insisted.
“There’s no reason for you to have all this unless you are. Unless you steal people in the middle of the night and torture them and kill them. That’s probably why you have a boat, isn’t it? To dispose of them, here on the lake!” she deduced, looking almost proud of herself.
“That is not why I have all those,” I repeated myself slowly, my earlier light attitude giving way to darker intent.
“Then whydoyou have them?” she demanded. The way she demanded my answer made me want to take control of her and show her exactly how I used those ropes. Once the thought was in my brain, it dug in deep, cementing itself into my mind like a core memory I was now incapable of forgetting. Images flashed behind my eyes. Naomi, tied up in nothing but a simple chemise, lifted into the air for a crowd of people to admire. Bright ropes adorning her body as I tied her to our bed, for only me to see. And about ten thousand other images, all assaulting my mind and refusing to be turned off.
Just like my cock, apparently.
My hard length pressed against the fly of my jeans, demanding to be let loose and then buried deep into the vibrant redhead across from me.
“Tell me,” she demanded, narrowing her eyes at me further until they were mere slits of brilliant emerald.
I stepped forward into the room slowly, taking up space, filling the room with my presence as I felt my dominance beating at me to be let loose. I wanted desperately to not only tell her, but to show her exactly who I was underneath it all.
Yet I held on to that thinly kept control, reining myself in by the tiny thread of composure I had left.
