Chapter Five #2
The curve of her mouth beckoned him. Lush and soft. The wind tangled in her hair, fluttering a scent of florals and sea around him like some kind of potion meant to tempt him. She would be a dream come to life if he pressed his mouth to hers.
She would be his end if he did not extricate himself from this.
“I have to leave,” he told her, the words coming from some strange place of panic he didn’t recognize. He had never panicked. He had plotted, he had acted. He had been in some…dangerous situations here and there for his job when dealing with people who were not altogether on the up and up.
Never once had he panicked.
But he recognized this need and its potential to turn him into what he’d been at eighteen. Obsessive, vengeful and wrong. No better than King Enzo with his manipulations and violence.
“Why?” she asked.
“I’ve been called away to work.”
“Have you?” she murmured, her mouth curved into a smile.
Like she didn’t believe him. Like she saw through him.
When certainly neither should be nor could be true.
He pushed off the balcony and moved back into his room. Never in his life had he lied to a woman about his reasons for leaving, probably because never in his life had he had to run from a woman. In any other situation, he would be sure he was made of sterner stuff.
But she tempted him, and she was the one temptation he could not allow. The one temptation that could never surface.
He found his bag—thankfully mostly packed—and tossed it on the bed.
“I should be gone closer to a month this time.” Perhaps longer, but he didn’t need to say that.
He put his laptop that sat on the desk into his bag.
He’d leave his toiletries—there was nothing in the bathroom he could not replace once safely home in Milan.
Perhaps he’d go to his other estate in Sydney.
Surely that was as far away from Maine as he could be.
He would find a woman. He would remind himself that what had taken over his mind was simply temporary.
That he was stronger than it.
He made a move to shoulder his bag, then realized somewhat belatedly that he was not wearing a shirt. Yes, he would need a shirt. And shoes. He set the bag down, but there was a problem.
Both shirt and shoes were on the other side of her, unless he crawled over his own bed.
He would not crawl.
So he stood there.
She stood in his way. Purposefully, he knew.
Her gaze roamed his face, like a tentative, explorative caress. He should have stopped it, sidestepped her. Instead, he stood frozen as she moved closer, gracefully, a bit like a ghost. A ghost that haunted, that played with his mind, because he did not move out of her reach.
He held himself perfectly still as she reached up, with those slim, elegant, princess hands to touch his face. Her fingertips danced across his cheeks. Her eyes were luminescent, her lips pink and lush. She studied his face like it was a marvel.
“Gabriel,” she murmured, his name shaped by her lips causing a bolt of lust to obliterate the recriminations he tried to hold on to. “You do not need to leave. I do not want you to leave.”
She moved to her toes. He reached out to stop her, to push her back down on her heels, to move her out of his way so he could walk around her.
Instead, his hands found purchase on her hips and stayed there, the soft fabric a whispered promise against his palms. Her skin would feel even better.
Perhaps that thought, and the attempt to fight it, distracted him, because it gave her the chance to brush her lips across his. The low beat of need held him in his grip. It was shame that he had not had the fortitude to stop this before he had been given a chance to linger.
But linger he did, in this half-kiss. Gentle, almost nothing pressure, even as his grip on her hips tightened, bringing her up closer, plastered against him. He could feel the weight of her breasts, the shuddery intake of breath. The way his own body turned to painful, hardened need.
She smelled like something fresh and new. Spring and promise. It would haunt him the rest of his life, he had no doubt. And if he got a taste of her…
No, it would be a step too far. A step he could not take back.
So he had to put a stop to it. Now. He set her back on her heels, ignored the ringing in his ears, that pulling, incessant need that he knew too well led him to dangerous places.
He focused all his energy on making sure his voice sounded like a scolding schoolteacher, though his breath felt ragged in his lungs. “That was uncalled for, Evelyne.”
“Uncalled for,” she echoed. Her color was high, her golden eyes dreamy, her hands on his shoulders. The scent of her, the faint taste of her lingered, fogging up his brain for a moment before he had the good sense to step back, away from her grip on him.
She touched her fingers to her lips, still looking at him.
He had a very disconcerting upended feeling.
For most of his life—even when he’d been traveling down the wrong path—he had always felt in control.
It wasn’t loss of control. It was letting base urges win.
He would have succeeded in murdering that man, if Alexandre had not waded in and pulled him off.
If Alex had not said the words that got through the haze of violence and revenge.
You are not like my father, Gabriel. I will not let you fall down that path.
So he had never once let himself follow the path of obsession again. These days, he remained one step ahead of anyone who might lure him below that surface. He was intelligent, privileged and quick.
But he was not one step ahead of her. Not even close. If he’d listened to his instincts instead of believing he had a handle on the situation, he would have been gone long before now.
So he had to use whatever tools he had to stop this. Now. Cruelty seemed the only way, much as he loathed to treat her badly. It was for the best. “A little hero worship is natural.”
She held his gaze, not getting haughty or even narrowing her eyes at him as he’d expected. As he’d hoped. Instead, she smiled. “Then why won’t you let me worship?”
That had more than just his throat tightening. He could not find his voice for a throbbing, portentous moment. When he did find it, the sound was rough, pained. “Evelyne, I do not know what you think is happening…”
“Well, apparently nothing is happening. Though I don’t see why.” She gestured at him. “You aren’t…uninterested.”
Uninterested. If only he could even conjure the meaning of the word in this moment.
“Do you remember what you told me that night I broke you out of the palace?” he demanded.
Her eyebrows drew together, as if thinking back and coming up empty.
“You told me, in that haughty princess way of yours, that your brother would kill me if I took advantage of you.” And he did not believe this exactly—because Alexandre was good and right and had once stopped him from killing a man—but there were dungeons in Alis, among other punishments.
She reached out, slid her palms up his chest before he stepped away. “You wouldn’t be taking advantage. Have I not made that clear?”
He caught her hands by her wrists. Slim, her pulse skittering under the weight of his fingers.
For a moment, he forgot himself. He thought only of the feel of her hands against his skin. And he held them in his own. He could put her hands exactly where he pleased. He could…
“You’re bored,” he said, forcing his voice to be commanding and cold. Forcing himself to believe the words he said. “You’re lonely. I’m not your plaything.”
She looked up at him, head cocked, the gold of her eyes glowing like a hypnotist’s pendant. “Why not?”
He thought he should be outraged by how flippant she was being. Instead, he was aroused. Tempted. If she wanted to play…
“I’m not a virgin, you know,” she continued, turning her hands in his grip so that her fingers trailed along the underside of his jaw. “I can be your plaything right back. Perhaps I am lonely and bored. What would be so wrong with…entertaining each other?”
Entertaining each other. It brought to mind a million scenarios, but he did not let his mind settle on one. He thought of another time, when the obsessive want for a woman had obliterated all else. And his only savior had been…
“Your brother.”
“Is a continent away,” she said, as if every excuse of his was nothing.
He could not let himself be fooled. But by God he wanted to be. The want of it all beat in him, loud and tight as any drum.
“I cannot contact him,” she continued, her gaze watching where her fingers touched his jaw. “And he cannot contact me. If you feel so certain he would be…disapproving, he would not have to know. No one, in fact, would have to know.” Her gaze met his. Direct. Seductive. “But us.”
For a moment, his grip tightened. For a moment, he thought giving in was all he had in him.
But this was Evelyne, and he had promised to save her. Truly save her. Not sink her into his darkness like he once had another young woman. Not become a monster like the father he’d saved Evelyne from.
You are a monster, Gabriel. That old voice. That old reminder.
Yes, he could be. But he would not be.
He dropped her hands and whirled away, furious with how she had somehow turned all his normal protections on their head. “Have you thrown yourself at anyone who shows you a modicum of attention?” he demanded of her.
He knew how to be mean. He knew how to cut an unwanted pass off at the source. He knew how to accomplish all these things. To keep that surface level. To never allow anything deeper.
For her own good.
Why didn’t they seem to work on her?
No one would have to know. But us.
He found his shirt, jerked it on. Everything inside him was a hard, tense ball. “I’ll be back in a month or so.”
“It was about a month just five minutes ago. Now it is a month or so?”
He shouldered his bag, gave her a cold look. “Behave, Evelyne.” He moved past her, almost to the door.
“Run away, then.”
He stopped, midstride, turned in utter shock. “What did you say?”
“I said, run away, then,” she replied, enunciating each word carefully. A bright, glittering challenge. She even lifted her chin.
He moved for her then, swift and furious, and held himself back with his last shred of strength. He towered over her, desperate to put his mouth on her neck where her pulse fluttered. On her breasts, right where he could see the outline of her hardened nipples through the fabric of her nightgown.
Instead, he kept his voice cool and cutting. “If I fell for your sad attempts at seduction, it would be you who would be wanting to run away. Except it would be too late for you. You’re a sheltered, pampered child, and you know nothing of the real world, or a man’s wants.”
She didn’t drop her gaze. Color didn’t even bloom on her cheeks. She raised a regal eyebrow.
“You forget, Gabriel, where I grew up. I may be lacking in education, the ability to cook or take care of myself in a country under a fake name. Perhaps you are even right about a man’s wants and how little I know of them, but I know how to handle angry men.
I know what really drives them, and you aren’t angry at me. ”
“No?”
“You’re angry at yourself, because you want me too.”
He stood there, breathing through the truth. There was no way to win this fight. He recognized that, just as Alex had once taught him that sometimes you could not advance, advance, advance. Sometimes you had to have the wherewithal to separate from your feelings and retreat.
“Goodbye, principessa,” he said, and then he left her.
Not sure he’d ever return.