“What fucking game are you playing?” he demands.
I tighten my inner muscles and watch his eyes dilate further. “You don’t want me, so I’m giving you her.”
Shaking his head, he tries to pull out, but I tightly wrap my legs around his hips, tugging him back.
“No. You started this. You fucking finish it.”
I watch as his jaw clenches, and I feel his cock twitch inside of me. Leaning in to me, he flicks my lower lip with his tongue, and then he bites me hard. Gasping, I pull my mouth from his.
“So that’s what you want, Gemma? You want me to fuck you and call out forher? Is that whatyouwere doing all alone in here? Were you going to fuck yourself and think about her?”
While pushing hard against his hips, I’m frustrated out of my mind. I feel tears sliding down my cheeks. “None of your fucking business.”
He nods slightly. Like a hard punch to my gut, I’m reminded of her journal entry and the fact that his nodding is a move that is second nature to him.
“Fine. Have it your way,” he whispers as he proceeds to fucking rail me.
Over and over, he fucks me harder than I ever thought possible. As I claw his skin, I’m captivated by the ferocious power he’s unleashing. As he stiffens, my pussy clamps around him tight.
He looks me right in the eye and shouts out her name at the top of his lungs. “Chantel!”
The dream always ends there. That is when I awake.
It’s a strange dream, and I have to wonder what it means.
Stuck. You’re stuck.
Does he mean with him? Does he mean here in France?
Dreams are odd, strange things. It’s a good thing that is all they are—dreams.
Twenty-Five
SACRED
PHILLIPE LOOKS OVER to where Gemma is kneeling naked on the floor with her arms wrapped around her waist. He can see her fingers against her back and the violin propped up behind her.
TheSacredpose now resonates in the deepest parts of him. She’s stripped bare of everything, except for her violin and her soul.
When he walked by Gemma’s room earlier tonight, he heard her calling out Chantel’s name. He didn’t know what to think. At first, he stood frozen by the door while the name he cherished floated through the air. He thought he had imagined it until it was repeated over and over again.
Deciding to go in and investigate, he was shocked to see the bedroom empty, especially when he expected Gemma to be in bed. All that greeted him was an unmade bed with rumpled sheets and her open laptop, displaying that horribly tragic article. The words pointed at him like an accusatory finger.
That was when he heard it again. Chantel’s name was almost moaned this time. As he followed it to the bathroom, he found Gemma halfway submerged in the tub of water. Moving quicklyto her, Phillipe felt his stomach plummet as his heart picked up at a rapid tattoo.
No, no, no!was his initial thought as she lay there unmoving and silent. Automatically, he reached out, watching the blonde hair floating around her face change to black as he was hurled back to that day. That terrible time was forever etched into his mind with such alarming detail that he felt like it was an image carved on the insides of his eyelids.
Blinking rapidly as his frantic heartbeats increased, he grasped her naked shoulder. When he touched it, feeling her warm skin, he allowed his breathing to somewhat calm.She’s alive. As that thought registered in his mind, she opened her eyes to?—
“Phillipe?”
Looking away from the spot he had now painted over several times, he noticed Gemma was looking at him over her shoulder.
“Yes?” he replied absent-mindedly. He tried to bring himself back to the present with the woman who was there.
“You said something. I was just asking what you meant.”
Frowning, he shook his head. After placing the paintbrush down, he ran a hand through his hair. “I’m sorry. I don’t remember.”
