Chapter 34 - Gabriel
I watch her sleep.
It's become something of an obsession—this quiet cataloging of her unconscious form. The way her lips part slightly with each breath. The flutter of her lashes against her cheeks. The way her hand curls protectively over her stomach, even in sleep, as if some deep instinct has already taken root.
My child is in there. Our child.
The thought still feels impossible, even hours later. I've spent my entire adult life building walls, accumulating power, preparing for threats. I never built anything meant to last beyond my own lifetime. I never saw the point.
But now there's this. A future I never imagined, growing cell by cell inside the woman I love.
I press my hand over hers on her stomach, feeling the warmth of her skin through the thin fabric of her shirt.
She's still wearing her clothes from yesterday—I didn't undress her beyond removing her coat and shoes.
It felt wrong somehow, taking liberties with her body while she was unconscious, even though I've taken far greater liberties when she was awake.
Everything is different now.
The first gray light of dawn is creeping through the windows when she stirs. Her eyes flutter open, confused for a moment, then settling on my face with something that looks like relief.
"You're still here," she murmurs.
"I told you I would be."
"I know." She stretches, catlike, her body arching in a way that sends heat pooling in my groin despite my best intentions. "I just... I wasn't sure if last night was real. If any of it was real."
"It was real." I brush a strand of hair from her face. "All of it. You're here. You're staying. You're—"
"Pregnant," she finishes. "Yes. That part is definitely real. I've thrown up every morning for the past week to prove it."
"You've been sick?"
"It's called morning sickness, Gabriel. It's normal." She smiles at the concern on my face. "I promise I'm fine. The baby is fine. Everything is fine."
The baby. The word sends another jolt through me—wonder and terror in equal measure.
"I want to take care of you," I say. "Both of you. I want to give you everything you need—doctors, vitamins, whatever pregnant women are supposed to have—"
"Slow down." She presses her fingers to my lips. "We have time. Months and months of time. Right now, I don't need doctors or vitamins." Her eyes darken, her voice dropping. "Right now, I need something else."
"What do you need?"
She answers by kissing me.
It starts soft, almost tentative—a question rather than a demand. I let her lead, let her set the pace, my hands gentle on her waist as she presses closer.
But gentleness has never been our language.
Within moments, the kiss turns hungry. Her fingers tangle in my hair, pulling me closer. Her teeth catch my lower lip, a sharp sting that goes straight to my cock. She moans into my mouth, and the sound undoes something in me—some last thread of restraint I'd been clinging to.
I roll her beneath me, pinning her to the mattress with my weight. She gasps, her eyes flying wide, but there's no fear in them. Only heat. Only want.
"Tell me to stop," I growl against her throat, "and I will. Tell me you're too tired, too overwhelmed, too anything, and I'll hold you until you fall back asleep. But if you don't tell me to stop—"
"Don't stop." She arches against me, her hips seeking friction. "Gabriel, please. I need you."
I've never undressed someone so carefully.
Every button, every zipper, every scrap of fabric—I remove them like I'm unwrapping something sacred. She trembles beneath my hands, her breath coming faster as I bare her to my gaze.
God, she's beautiful. She was beautiful before, but now—knowing what she carries, what she's become—she's transcendent. The slight new fullness of her breasts. The barely-perceptible curve of her lower belly. The flush that spreads from her cheeks down her throat to her chest.
"You're staring," she whispers.
"I'm worshipping."
I lower my mouth to her breast, drawing one tight nipple between my lips. She cries out, her back bowing off the bed, her hands fisting in the sheets.
"Sensitive," she gasps. "Everything is so sensitive now—"
"Good." I switch to the other breast, lavishing it with the same attention. "I want you to feel everything. I want you drowning in sensation."
I kiss my way down her body—the valley between her breasts, the soft plane of her stomach, the jut of her hipbones. I linger at her navel, pressing my lips to the skin that shelters our child.
"I'm going to watch you grow," I murmur against her belly.
"Watch your body change, watch you bloom with my baby inside you.
I'm going to worship every inch of you, every new curve, every stretch mark.
" I look up at her, letting her see the ferocity of my devotion.
"You're going to be so beautiful, Poppy. You already are."
"Gabriel—" Her voice breaks on my name.
I spread her thighs, settling between them, and press my mouth to her cunt.
She screams.
I eat her like a man starved—licking, sucking, devouring. She's drenched already, slick with arousal, her taste flooding my senses until I'm drunk on her. I slide two fingers inside her, curling them to find the spot that makes her writhe, and work her with my tongue until she's sobbing.
"Please," she begs. "Please, I need—I can't—"
"Come for me." I seal my lips around her clit and suck. "Give me the first one."
She shatters with a wail, her walls clenching around my fingers, her whole body convulsing. I work her through it, gentling my touch as the aftershocks ripple through her, until she's boneless and gasping beneath me.
"The first one?" she manages weakly.
"I'm not nearly done with you."
I strip off my own clothes with far less ceremony, too desperate to be inside her for any more teasing. She watches me through heavy-lidded eyes, her gaze tracking down my body to my cock, hard and aching.
"I want to be gentle," I tell her as I settle between her thighs. "I want to take my time, make love to you the way you deserve."
"I don't want gentle." She wraps her legs around my hips, pulling me closer. "I want you. All of you. Don't hold back."
I sink into her in one long stroke.
The sound she makes—pleasure and relief and desperate need—mirrors the groan that tears from my own throat. She's so tight, so wet, so impossibly perfect that I have to hold still for a moment, buried to the hilt, just to keep from coming immediately.
"Move," she demands, raking her nails down my back. "Gabriel, move."
I obey.
The rhythm starts slow—deep, grinding thrusts that drag over every sensitive spot inside her. But I can't maintain it. The need is too urgent, the pleasure too intense. Within moments, I'm fucking her hard and fast, driving into her with an abandon I've never allowed myself before.
"Yes," she gasps, meeting me thrust for thrust. "Yes, yes, yes—"
"You're mine." The words pour out of me, raw and unfiltered. "You've always been mine. From the moment I saw you, I knew—I knew you were meant for me."
"Yours," she agrees, her voice breaking. "I'm yours. I've always been yours."
"And this—" I press my hand to her stomach, feeling the place where our bodies join just above where our child grows. "This is mine too. Our baby. Our future. Mine."
"Ours," she corrects breathlessly. "Ours, Gabriel. Yours and mine together."
"Together," I echo. "Always. Forever."
I can feel her getting close again—the telltale flutter of her walls, the hitch in her breath, the way her nails dig harder into my skin. I angle my hips, hitting the spot that makes her see stars, and reach between us to circle her clit with my thumb.
"Come with me," I command. "I want to feel you come while I fill you up. I want to feel you milk my cock while I—"
She comes with a scream, her cunt clamping down on me like a vice, and I follow her over the edge.
The orgasm hits me like a freight train—blinding, all-consuming, endless. I empty myself into her with a roar, my hips jerking erratically as wave after wave of pleasure crashes through me. I've never come this hard, never felt anything close to this overwhelming rush of sensation and emotion.
When it finally subsides, I collapse beside her, pulling her against my chest, both of us trembling.
"That was..." She trails off, unable to find words.
"Yes," I agree. "It was."
We lie there in the growing morning light, tangled together, her head on my chest and my hand on her stomach. The sweat cools on our skin. Our breathing slowly returns to normal.
"I love you," she says quietly.
The words catch me off guard—still feel too big, too precious, too fragile to be real.
"I love you too." I press a kiss to the top of her head. "More than I knew I was capable of loving anything."
"Is this really going to work?" She tilts her face up to look at me. "You and me, a baby, all of it? Can we really make this work?"
"I don't know." It's the most honest answer I can give. "I've never done this before—any of this. I don't know how to be a partner. I don't know how to be a father. I don't know how to love without possessing, how to protect without controlling."
"But you're willing to try?"
"I'm willing to do anything." I cup her face in my hand, holding her gaze. "For you, for our child—there is nothing I won't do, nothing I won't become. You are my reason now. Both of you."
She smiles—a real smile, bright and warm and full of hope. "Then we'll figure it out together. That's what partners do, right? They figure things out together."
"So I'm told."
"You sound skeptical."
"I'm terrified," I admit. "But I'm also... happy. I think. This might be what happy feels like."
She laughs, pressing a kiss to my chest. "You're ridiculous."
"Probably."
"And dangerous."
"Definitely."
"And mine."
The possessiveness in her voice—the claim she stakes with that single word—undoes me entirely. This woman, who knows exactly what I am, who has seen the monster beneath the man, is claiming me as her own.
"Yours," I confirm. "Irrevocably. Eternally. For whatever those words are worth from someone like me."
"They're worth everything." She settles against me with a contented sigh. "Now let me sleep. I'm growing a human being, and apparently that's exhausting."
I hold her as she drifts off, watching the sunlight creep across the floor, painting golden stripes on the ancient wood.
For the first time in my life, I'm not thinking about threats. Not calculating risks or planning contingencies. Not bracing for the inevitable moment when everything falls apart.
I'm just... here. Present. At peace.
It won't last. I know that. The world outside these walls is still dangerous, still full of enemies and complications and darkness.
The Brotherhood will have expectations. My brothers will have questions.
The life I've built—the monster I've become—won't simply vanish because I've found something worth protecting.
But for now, in this moment, with this woman in my arms and our child growing between us, none of that matters.
For now, there is only this: the miracle of being loved by someone who sees you clearly and chooses you anyway.
It's more than I ever deserved.
It's everything I never knew I wanted.
And I will kill anyone who tries to take it from me.