Traps and Gretchen (Bayou Bishops #19)

ReadyKnot

Gretchen’s mouth had gone bone dry at that last threat. What was he saying? He would tie her up? Why?

Oh, she’d done it, she’d pushed too far. Damn her stubborn pride! She needed to come clean with him, but how would she? She hadn’t meant it to go so far but it was like an avalanche, once it got going, she got swept away.

“I believe this is the first time I’ve heard you speechless.”

Oh God, hearing such intention in his voice was too much for her. “I’m… trying to be nice.”

His laugh. It was big and strong and terrifying like everything about him. Which was why anger had always been her go to weapon from day one. It was the only thing strong enough to stand up to him and all his beauty and toxic lure. But she couldn’t keep using it if she was going to give herself to him. As a wife. A real wife. That was the realization she’d come to. She wanted him so much. Not even the pain of him not truly wanting her could keep her from having him.

“Nice and sexy, that’s what you’re being this week. And next week you will be what, Ma Petite Fyoo-rie?”

“I’m…” Oh God, apologize already! “I’m sorry!”

More deep, mocking laughter. “Do you even know the meaning of that word?”

“I do!” she forced out, spinning around and turning the stove off. “To prove it, I returned your rope. It’s here. I’m sorry I hid it. I’m sorry I was mean to you, I’m sorry I hated you for rolling the fate dice for me, I’m sorry I was… too childish to see that you can still be a good man even though you didn’t really pick me for a wife.” She caught her breath, pressing her hand on her heaving chest, waiting for him to blast her. The phone rang right in her ear, and she looked at the screen. The call had dropped! He was calling back! No!

She answered, fighting to steady her breaths, wondering what all he’d heard.

“Lost signal,” he said. “You were in the process of convincing me you knew the meaning of sorry.”

Oh no!

“But save it for when I get there. I want to see your pretty face when you give that performance.”

“You don’t need to stop for ropes,” she remembered, not sure if he’d heard that.

“Yes. I do,” he assured.

“I-I have yours,” she blasted. “I… I put them back. The ones I hid, I put them back. And… I’m sorry I hid them.” She swallowed to stop the pants from escaping.

“There’s that S word again,” he muttered, not even a little convinced.

“Yes,” she said, closing her eyes. She wouldn’t try to convince him. She’d just… be a wife and… he’d see she meant it. “You’ll hear a lot more of it. And see I mean it.”

This time the silence crackled. He’d never once made sexual advances toward her. Not that he could once she found out he’d been forced to pick her, she’d made it impossible. For good reason. Well… it seemed perfectly good at the time. And now he was showing interest but in all the wrong ways. She didn’t like the threat in his tone in connection to sexual things. She’d had every manner of sexual adventure one could imagine, even with monsters, but how far would book experience take her? And she was a thousand times more terrified of him than she ever had been. But there was no turning back or turning it off. She’d been cornered by Juliette and spilled everything to her, even cried. More like sobbed. She had no idea how to fix anything and Juliette told her how and that’s what she was doing, but it wasn’t working!

“I know how you love to fight. When I get back,” he said, the roughness in his voice dancing in her blood. “Be ready. We’ll have our biggest fight ever. And I will win.”

Oh God, no. “I don’t… want to fight with you.”

He gave a low, rolling chuckle. “Oh, Ma Petite Fyoo-rie,” he said quietly. “I think you have no idea what you want. But I do know what you need.”

Panic threatened to send her screaming and running clear out of the swamp. Or at least to her secret cubby at her beloved library now several Hatches away. The need to be there ached in her bones more than ever now. She realized she needed to respond then covered her mouth when a sob threatened. “Do what you must,” she blasted then hung up the phone.

“Oh Lord, help me,” she whispered, pacing in the kitchen. She nearly dropped the phone when it rang in her hand. A cry of relief took to the air at seeing Juliette’s name. It was a miracle. She blinked and blinked, fighting to clear the tears from her eyes to see the buttons. She spotted the green one in the blur and smashed it. “Juliette!” Her name blasted out on a sob.

“Gretchen! What’s wrong?”

“I’ve gone too far,” she choked. “I knew this was going to happen, he’s so angry, he’s not believing me, he-he-he suspects I’m up to games and I don’t blame him!”

“Deep breaths for me. Deeeeeeep breaths.”

She sucked several into her lungs, and released them out, her entire body trembling. “He’s coming back,” she whispered the second she could.

“From where?”

“He went to meet Fetch and Rowan.”

“Fetch and Rowan… what the swamp’s ass for?”

She shook her head many times before the words came. “I don’t know. They were coming to eat dinner, now they’re not and he’s on his way back to fight with me!” The last words gained hysterical momentum, forcing her palm over her mouth to keep from screaming.

“Honey, honey, breaths. Deep breaths. Okay not that deep, mercy, you’ll pass out! What do you mean he’s coming to fight?”

“He’s using rope,” she remembered, ready to vomit. “He’s so angry.”

“He won’t hurt you,” she assured. “I know that much, so calm down.”

Juliette had no idea how terrifying he was to her. “I did everything you said, I-I-I made sure he knew I was sorry and showed him I was available as a wife and…” She smacked her palm over her mouth, fighting back another sob.

“And what? Breathe. Evenly.”

She steadied her breaths, trying to remember how that worked. Deep in through the nose, slow out of the mouth?

“That’s it, nice and slow out, all the way out. So, you did what I said and how did he take it.”

“Like I’m… on to another move against him,” she whispered. “He thinks I’m plotting his ruin.”

“I know this is going to sound crazy but that’s a good sign, this is all a good sign.”

“It is?” she couldn’t keep the screech from her voice.

“Yes, it is. This means you affect him a lot. ”

“How do you know that, did you talk to him? Did he say this?”

“No, I didn’t talk to him, but that he’s fighting is good.”

“How?” she begged.

“Because he’s not leaving. Men like him only fight for one reason, and that’s because there’s something worth fighting for .”

She sucked in more breaths and released them, the air vibrating out of her trembling body. “I’m not even the woman he thinks I am,” she strained, hurrying to the door and opening the curtain on the window.

“You’re an amazing woman.”

“It’s all a game, a pretense,” she strained out. “He thinks he has something worth fighting for but really, he’s fighting for an illusion, the one I showed him when we first met. I’m not that woman! She’s just somebody I pretend to be when I need to be strong, I-I-I pick up personalities in the books I read, I don’t mean to, it just happens, and I use them when I need to, I borrow them, I don’t become them, the real me is… is…” The words that should never be spoken aloud quietly slipped past her tormented soul. “Nobody. A nobody that lives in a place called nowhere. I’m only as smart and witty and fun as the character I’m borrowing from a pretend story.”

“Oh honey.”

The whispered words brought forth a huge sob then more panic as she checked the window again. “I need to call and see where he is, I can’t have him come back and find me like this.”

“Okay listen up, sister,” Juliette said, her voice back to a lifeline. “You’re going to continue doing what you’re doing. Stick to the plan. Tell me what the plan is.”

“Submissive wife. Just be submissive. Whatever he wants, give him.”

“That’s it,” she said, simply. “He’ll figure it out, he’ll know, and if he doesn’t, well, shame on him and he’ll deserve it when I beat it into his dumb skull myself .”

“I think he needs another wife.”

“Stop it!” she half yelled, making her jump. “ You are his wife!”

“I don’t need money and there’s a hundred other women he could have and if I leave it’s not his fault, he’ll be free to be with—”

“Say it and I’ll go over there and smack you. I dare you. You . Are. His. Wife. The end! Now, go get yourself cleaned up and get ready to do what we talked about. You hear me?”

She nodded, back to sucking in deep breaths and releasing them. “I’ll need a cold shower.”

“Whatever you gotta do, do it. And call me when this blows over. It will blow over and you will survive it. Understand?”

More nods, more tears, more shaky breaths.

“Say it, I need to hear you say it. ‘I’ll survive’.”

“I’ll survive.”

“It’ll blow over.”

“It’ll blow over.”

“You’ll thank me.”

She nodded with eyes closed. “I’ll thank you.”

“Good now, go on then. Love you my lil’ sister. You gonna be fine !”

Boiling tears flooded her eyes, and she hung up before letting out her fattest baby sob yet. Her little sister. Oh, how many times she’d longed to hear words like that spoken to her with such affection. The real her. Not one of her fakies.

She looked around, hurrying to the window again and peeking out, her guts in knots at the fear of seeing that beautiful giant stalking up the steps to come and fight with her. Ever since she’d submitted to the idea of being his wife and stupidly added seduction to it, everything changed. Things opened. Her eyes, her mind, her body! Her secret sexual cravings she only ever allowed out within the safety of fiction were running rampant, leaving her starved and desperate. And who was leading the charge? All her nobody parts! And they weren’t even assimilated, they were just flying around in the warzone she’d created, a chaos of irrational hungers scrambling to find the right somebody to help make it right, but all the somebody’s were out of her reach. She was stuck in the land where real people lived real lives with real purpose and she was fighting with a man who thought he had something real to fight for!

God help her. If he hated her now, he’d want to murder her when he learned the truth about her. And yet somehow, that was the very least of her fears. The real terror was him. His voice. His eyes. His perfect angry mouth. His impossibly beautiful body. And now his ropes.

A brand-new tidal wave of panic hit her. He was going to do sexual things to her. He would see her naked! How did she prepare? She looked down at her dress. She wore matching black intimates. Was that… appropriate for such a time? Was this the message she wanted to give him? A woman with enough boldness to wear black? Isn’t that what black meant? Bold? It wasn’t innocent like white or pink. But changing the message would… what would it do? Raise his suspicion even more. Maybe even prove it.

Stay the course. Don’t change. Wash your face. Submission. Remember the plan. You are his. You do whatever he says. Should she call him something particular? She’d mocked his beautiful real name and now hated herself for it. She loved his name. Neelo. She hated him for how much she loved it. She hated that she only knew that name because a pair of dice rolled in her favor. Dots on squares. That was her value. Her worth. And as accurate as it was, the truth had never hurt more. The only strength she’d had was her courage to live a pretend life. And now she didn’t want to live a pretend life, she wanted to live a real one but had no idea how.

The ring of the phone froze her. She stared at it on the counter, her feet stuck to the floor.

What if he was on his way to the house that second? Giving her a last warning?

She flew to the phone and pressed the button before looking to even see a name. “Hello?”

“I have a question, my librarian.”

Her stomach jolted at his deep voice. She swallowed. Wet her lips. “What?”

“In five minutes, I’ll be there. But I want you to tell me what you know about rope bondage.”

Oh my God . She read several stories that involved various forms of BDSM. Not all had rope in them but those did. What was he wanting her to know about it? “I’ve read of it,” she forced out quietly. What was it called. “Shibari,” she remembered. “It means…”

“I won’t use Shibari,” he said, confusing her while his low tone scared her.

“Okay.” What other forms were there? And why wouldn’t he use Shibari?

“For you, I’ll use Kinbaku.”

Her brain raced, searching for the meaning. “That’s Japanese,” she realized.

“It is. It means to bind tightly. And when I use it, it will have very little to do with art and even less to do with the rope. Do you know what it has to do with? What it will mean to me?”

Everything in her screamed she did not want to know. Submissive! “If you… want to tell me then I want to know.”

His low chuckle pressed between her legs like the massage vibrator she sometimes used there. “I want you to want to know. I want you to need to know.”

“I do,” she blasted, her pulse a war drum beating in all the wrong and right places. “I want to know what it means to you.”

“It means forcing you into a position of complete submission. It means stretching you physically and testing you mentally. It means breaking every secret part of you wide open. And then it means me taking all of that and tasting it. Slowly. Because I want to savor it. I want to understand it. But if I don’t like what I taste Ma Petite Fyoo-rie, I will cut the ropes. I will cut every tie they represent. And you will never see me again. But… if I do like what I taste, Ma Belle Fyoo-rie. Then, I will bind you tighter. I will open you wider. And I will devour you. I will own every part of you. I will bind up your very deepest parts and trap them inside myself until my blood flows with your blood and all that you are will become mine. I’m two minutes away. Be waiting for me in my bed. Submissive wife.”

He hung up and she stood there, swaying in the storm he’d brought inside her. Be waiting in my bed submissive wife.

Her numb mind went on autopilot, and she watched the walls move past her. She felt the bedroom knob, cool against her palm. She heard the metal click as she turned it and then froze, realizing where she stood. His room. It had been off limits to her. By her own order. She’d entered it once in a fit of rage she’d borrowed from one of her personas and never recovered from that aftermath. There were some powers no amount of fury could protect you from and his room and all that it held was one such power. Its profound affect was the spreading kind. His room called to her the way a highly anticipated book called to her mind. But beyond that door was not just a book, it was a trap. A soul trap. With life sustaining things she’d not only be required to consume but want to. More than anything.

No turning back.

The sound of the front door jolted her into action, and she flew into the room and hopped onto his bed, scrambling to the center of it. She placed her hands at her sides and closed her eyes tight, feeling the coarse patch blanket made from bear fur under her fingers. The smell of him engulfed her like flames until she opened her mouth for more air. Now she could taste him. And he was coming, his footsteps heavy in the hall, measured in her blood, matched by her pulse.

No turning back.

Oh God. She was laying in heaven.