Chapter Six #3
It was a storm. Perhaps it would destroy, but in the throes of it, Gabriel only felt the power, the pleasure. The rightness of plunging into her, again and again and again.
She moved against him, a wild, wanton mythical creature, too beautiful to believe she existed.
She consumed him, until he felt like he was but a wave, crashing again and again against the rocky surf himself.
Maybe they were nothing but wind and sea, crashing against each other, never meant to do anything but.
And he crashed into her one last time, a glorious release of everything. Disaster. Absolute glorious disaster.
When he could see again, he looked down at her. Her smile was smug and her eyes half closed, like she would just drift away into sleep, here on the living room floor in the middle of the afternoon.
But it was not over. It could not be over, because once it was…
He refused to think past that. He swept her up into his arms. He did not recognize what fueled him, what moved through him with her warm body tucked against his.
It had a different tenor to everything he’d felt before, and yet he knew it was just as—if not more—destructive.
It would be obsession, it would be vengeance, it would destroy.
In the moment, he wanted all that destruction. He carried her upstairs and all the way to her room. He laid her on her bed, and nothing about the smug satisfaction on her face changed him. She regarded him under dark lashes.
He stood on the side of the bed, rational thought trying to get its grip on him again. But she had other plans.
“Do you want to know what I did while you weren’t here?” she asked him, sultry and full of promise, her intent whispering through his brain so that all the warnings went silent.
She lay naked on her bed, stretched out and magical. Maybe she was a witch casting a spell on him. The spell was better than anything he’d ever experienced.
“I touched myself and wished it was you.”
His body hardened again, so easily, so powerfully. He throbbed with need. But he didn’t touch. He didn’t lower himself to her once more. He met her gaze. “Show me,” he ordered.
Her mouth curved. “I dreamed of that too.” She trailed one hand down her body, cupping her own breast with the other. She did everything to her own body he wanted to do with his own hands, but he watched instead, hardening as she brought herself to a glorious, crashing climax.
Her gaze met his as her breathing came in quick bursts. “You’re better.”
He had no response to that. To her. Nothing in words anyway.
He gripped her leg, pulled her to the edge of the bed, spread her legs wide so that he could see the glorious heart of her. He waited there, watched the color rise in her cheeks, spread over her breasts. And still he waited, drawing out the moment, the anticipation.
“Gabriel,” she whispered finally.
And then he positioned himself at her entrance but then waited again. As she tried to move against him, wriggle closer. “I like watching you so desperate, principessa.”
She huffed out a sound, frustration or amusement or both. “I would think you might like watching me come apart.”
“That too. I like it all.” He moved slowly. Drawing out the anticipation and pleasure. She was begging long before he was fully inside her, and even as his body demanded more, he stretched it out. Denied them both what they sought.
“Gabriel. Now.” It was not an order. It was a plea. But she spread her arms wide, arched her body, taking him even deeper. “Now,” she repeated.
And then something broke. Him. Both of them. Everything went wild and uncontrolled. Her screams, his demands, echoing through the house. The desperate sounds of bodies meeting. And her scent, still sweet and everywhere.
He felt her fall over that sensual cliff over and over again before he could no longer deny himself. He emptied himself into her on a primal growl of triumph.
Yes, this. Her, always her. His.
At some point, night had fallen, and they had dozed, sated and perhaps mind numbed by all they’d found in each other.
When he woke, it was pitch-black, and Evelyne was curled up next to him, fast asleep, like that was exactly where she belonged.
His heart cracked, but he had been down this road before. Maybe it felt different, but it would be the same obsession, the same madness. It would drive him to places he could not allow himself to go.
It would drive him to places she did not deserve to witness.
Didn’t all of this prove it? He should have never crossed this line. It was a betrayal of what Alexandre had asked of him, and it was a betrayal of all the promises he’d made to himself when he’d gotten his life back.
Even as need tried to find its way into his bloodstream once more at the feel of her warm body pressed to his, he felt cold. He could see it all clearly now. He slipped out of bed. She didn’t stir.
Had he known this would happen all along? Had he hoped this would happen all along? He watched her sleeping form and accepted that, yes, if he’d truly wanted to stop this—he would have never returned after that kiss. He would have handled all of this from afar.
But he’d returned. He’d needed to see her one last time.
More though, he’d wanted just this. Her. And because he was weak, he had taken it. A mistake, but a fixable one.
He left her sleeping.
With no plans to ever return.
Evelyne had awoken to night outside her window and the unsurprising truth that Gabriel was gone.
Truly gone. He had left her. She knew he would not come back now. There was no doubt in her mind. Whatever he had allowed between them he viewed as an unfixable mistake. The heat, the passion, the glorious pleasure of it all was wrong in his mind. For whatever reason.
Evelyne sighed. She didn’t cry then—tears would come later as she sought to live someone else’s life. As she came to certain realizations. In this moment, she made a promise to herself.
She would make the best of what came next. She would live as Lina Marino. She would drive to town and make friends and build a life. Maybe it would be a lie, but it would be her lie.
So a few months later, when it finally occurred to her that the lethargy, the nausea, the tears that finally did come and didn’t want to stop was a sign that she might be pregnant, she did not ring the emergency number Gabriel had given her. She did not contact him.
She calmly put the color-changing contacts in—though she refused to dye her hair—and drove herself to the store in town, purchased a pregnancy test, figured out the self-checkout so no one in the village she’d come to know would see and took it home.
When the test was positive, she still did not call Gabriel.
No, he had left her. And this was no emergency. This was her life, and she got to live it as she saw fit.
So she would do this on her own.