I imagined Chrissy on her back beneath me, brown eyes wide and soft and trusting while I sank into her cunt bare for the first time. I pictured her months from now on her knees again, belly swollen round with my baby, tits heavy and leaking, still begging for my cock because she’d never get enough of me.
The image that almost made me stop breathing was Chrissy, nine months pregnant and glowing, her hand curved protectively over the life I’d put in her, while I fucked her slow and deep from behind and whispered against her ear that she’d never been more beautiful than she was carrying my child.
The fantasy detonated behind my eyes like a bomb, and I came with a snarl that echoed off marble, thick ropes of cum painting the shower wall, hips jerking helplessly into my fist. My knees nearly buckled and I had to lock them to stay upright. Pleasure crashed over me in waves so violent that my vision blackened at the edges.
Still not enough, I thought.
It would never be enough until I was actually inside her, until I’d filled her so many times my seed took root and her body changed because of me, until she wore my real ring and my last name and woke up every morning with me still dripping out of her.
I slammed the water off and stood there panting, watching water and cum swirl together down the drain.
Tomorrow morning, she and the other so-called contestants will each pick a ring and be proposed to by their respective partners. I’ll propose to her as Jacob and see how she responds. Tomorrow night, after the first challenge, she’ll put the blindfold back on and wait for me again.
And soon? Soon, I’ll take everything I need from her.
I will breed her and keep her with me forever.
And when ‘Mr. Stonewood’ is finally unmasked and she realizes the monster who wrecked her throat tonight and the gentle groundskeeper who changed her tire in the dark were the same man all along, she’ll already be so full of me there will be no leaving.
I smiled into the dark, slow and feral.
You’ll be mine soon, little doll. Very fucking soon.
Chapter
Sixteen
CHRISSY
December 12, 9:00 AM
Every time I blinked,I thought about the rules again.
You have one goal: survive the week without breaking the most important rule. Don’t fall in love with the wrong person.
The Game didn’t say what happened if you broke it. It didn’t need to. I could feel the threat in the empty space where an explanation should’ve been, humming under my skin like static. By the time maids unlocked each of our doors and Henry’s booming voice called us all down to the main hall for the day’s first challenge, my nerves felt raw, like someone had taken sandpaper to them in my sleep.
Assuming I’d slept, of course.
I tugged at the hem of the dress I’d grabbed from my wardrobe this morning, a deep emerald velvet number that skimmed my hips and hit just above my knees. It was more expensive than everything I owned put together, and still somehow not warm enough. The lodge was cold in a way that sank into mybones. Alabama winter, with its wet chill, had a special way of burrowing into your core and not letting go.
I smoothed my palms down my thighs, more to give my hands something to do than because the dress needed it, then forced myself to turn the knob and open my bedroom door.
The hallway outside buzzed with quiet tension and too-strong perfume. Other women filed out of their rooms one by one, dressed like they were heading to a photoshoot instead of walking into a ten-day-long psychological experiment. Nerves pulled their shoulders tight, and sharpened their voices into quick, breathy laughs that didn’t sound real.
“Good morning, ladies,” Henry called from the far end of the corridor, his posture straight as a steel beam. “Please make your way downstairs to the east sitting room. The first challenge awaits you.”
The first challenge. Like everything that happened to me last night somehow didn’t count as a challenge.
Heat flashed across my cheeks at the memory. The feel of his hand on my ass. The way his voice had wrapped around my spine, low and icy and smug.
You’re going to take your punishment for fraternizing with the help, and if you take it well, I’ll let you stay in my Game.
Mr. Stonewood — whoever he really was — had sounded disgusted with me for giving Jacob the time of day, but underneath the disgust there’d been something else… something darker and hungrier.
I still didn’t know what unsettled me more: that he’d punished me… or that he’d rewarded me afterward.
I slipped into the moving stream of contestants, clutching the carved banister to steady myself as we descended the grand staircase. Red and green and gold garlands wound around the railing like something out of a Christmas movie. The massive tree that had been erected and decorated in the foyer overnight glittered with ornaments, crystal icicles, and twinkling lights. It should’ve felt magical.
