Chapter Nine #2
And still, she’d loved the pink, the ruffles, the picture of the mother she’d never known. Much of the decor didn’t fit who she was anymore, but it still felt familiar and like home.
Home. Except with none of the old fears. Because her father was dead. Every shackle, every abuse she’d suffered here was just gone.
Evelyne did not know how to fully absorb it just yet.
“What is wrong?” Gabriel asked when she just stood there.
“Nothing.” Evelyne blinked back some tears, no doubt aided by the hormonal parade going on inside her. “I just assumed… I assumed Father might wipe any sign of me out, but everything is still here. Untouched, almost.”
“No doubt Alexandre’s doing.”
“No doubt,” she agreed, finally moving forward.
Alexandre. She thought she’d done a pretty good job of smoothing over a lot of unexpected information, but…
“He didn’t seem happy,” she murmured, wandering over to the cushioned window seat.
Though it was dark outside, she could picture the gardens in her mind.
“Did you expect him to be?”
“I suppose not.”
“He was happy to see you, Evelyne.”
She inhaled deeply. Yes. Perhaps he’d been a little off-kilter, but there had been so many changes, and he was no doubt bearing the brunt of them. Well, now that she was back perhaps she could take on some responsibility, ease some of his.
She turned to face Gabriel. To deal with the fact it wasn’t just her same old room, it wasn’t just Alex, Gabriel was in her life now. Permanently, more or less.
She studied his expression. Guarded. Stiff. He didn’t want to be here, but he was. What did she do with that?
A childhood of abuse, coupled with a brother who did everything he could to protect her from what parts of the abuse he knew about, had taught her that her only option was to roll with the punches.
She thought she’d done a pretty good job, through the past nine months of her escape and exile. And something about this pregnancy had supported the one truth she’d held on to to get her through the tough times.
Yes, there were always tough times, things to endure. But there was also always goodness and hope and something lovely on the horizon. Life was peaks and valleys of good and bad—sometimes all at the same time.
So it was imperative to reach out and relish in the good, hold on to it while it was there. She could be offended by Gabriel, she could be mad at him, she could bemoan the fact he didn’t love her.
Or she could just enjoy him. Take what good there was in this situation and let that outweigh the bad.
She studied the handsome man in her bedroom, who she was now technically married to even though they’d said no vows. Perhaps that was not good as a whole, but there were parts of good to be found within this situation.
“I suppose you will have to share a bed with me, whether you want to or not,” Evelyne said, trying for innocent, no doubt sounding smug. “If you want Alex to believe my little story.”
“And what a story it was,” he muttered. He ripped his tie off and tossed it on the chair. Frustration was at a boiling point, she could tell. And perhaps it was her great tragedy that she liked his boiling point. She loved when he lost control.
It was like seeing under a very shiny surface. Oh, she’d enjoyed his smiles and charm. The innate ease of friendliness he’d moved about the palace with before, but seeing the explosions underneath had revealed a much more interesting and alluring man.
Or you’re just really messed up.
He undid the top button of his shirt like he was feeling a bit…strangled.
“Let me help,” she said, moving over to him. She reached up to the second button and undid it before he grabbed her wrists and stopped her forward progress.
“We will not be doing this again,” he told her darkly, stepping away from her and letting her wrists go.
She sighed. Would she always be throwing herself at him? Maybe. And maybe she should find some sort of shame over that, but for all her exhaustion, there was something else winding its way through her body, and she wanted him to take care of it.
Six months she had done her level best not to think of him, what he’d brought out in her, what they’d brought out in each other. But he was here now.
She smoothed her hands up his chest, just as she had done the first time she’d thrown herself at him. Would it ever get old? Would it ever start to be embarrassing?
Or was the sex just that good?
For both of them. Whatever his reservations about her, they were not their physical compatibility.
She still remembered the exact growled tenor of when he’d said she haunted him.
Had he thought of her in such ways these past six months? She hoped it tortured him, the thought of their night together.
But not enough to withhold the same now.
“Why not? We are married. You said so yourself. We are actually married and will function as such. I will not tolerate affairs, so I suppose you shall have to settle for me if you’re expecting to enjoy more than your hand.”
He scowled at her, but she saw the sparks of heat. Of want. Whatever he thought of her as a person, there was no denying they had chemistry.
A good. A good she wanted to enjoy.
“If you’re worried about the baby, it is perfectly safe.
Every book I read said so with annoying clarity.
” She moved to him again, this time putting her palms on his chest like she had the first time she’d kissed him.
“Like a constant reminder I could be having sex with you and wasn’t. Because you weren’t there.”
He looked down at her, his expression stoic and unmoved. But his body wasn’t.
“What do you think is happening here?” he demanded.
“We are married. I like the way you make me feel. I like you. I don’t know why you hate me so much, but I know you enjoy my body.”
His scowl deepened, if that was even possible. “I do not hate you.”
“You do a marvelous impression of dislike then.”
“Dislike.” He said the word with such disdain. “If only I disliked you, Evelyne.”
She cocked her head. He sounded so tortured and she didn’t understand.
“I think if you liked me, you wouldn’t be so dismayed to find yourself here.
” And still she moved her hands up his chest, around his neck, pressing her body against him—though that was quite a different experience with a baby bump between them.
“It must be nice to have such a simplistic view of things. Like. Dislike. Black. White.”
She wondered if it was a flaw in herself that she found his disdain so funny.
“All right. I have a simplistic view, what with this simplistic life I’ve been given.
” She gestured around her. She didn’t need sarcasm to do the hefty lifting here.
The palace itself would have been a complication even if her father had been given a heart.
Nothing was ever simplistic, but maybe that’s why she did not get hung up in the complexities. They simply were.
“What is your complex view of the situation, Gabriel? Enlighten me.”
“You are a smart, vibrant young woman.” She thought he made a kind of move to remove her arms from his neck, but it was almost like he was afraid to touch her, even though she was touching him.
“Your resourcefulness has been incredibly impressive. You’re even funny, when you aren’t trying to torture me.
I have no reason to dislike you. Except for the torture, I suppose. ”
I have no reason to dislike you. It wasn’t poetry, and yet she felt her poor romantic heart softening. He’d called her impressive. “Then why do you behave as though you dislike me?”
“Have you ever considered something darker and far more volatile?” he demanded. “Has it ever occurred to you that my obsession with you is unhealthy and that your insistence we act on it makes an already difficult situation untenable?”
He sounded so—the word he used—tortured. It made very little sense to her, but she liked the explanation. If it were true.
“You’re obsessed with me?” She eyed him critically. She didn’t know how leaving her for six months was obsession, but if that’s what he claimed…maybe she’d claim it as well. “Though a six-month disappearance doesn’t quite support that theory, I rather like the idea.”
He shook his head as if despairing of her. “You won’t,” he said darkly.
“Perhaps I should be the one to judge.” She moved to her toes, managed to angle herself enough to press her mouth to his. She wanted obsession. That all-encompassing need and pleasure she’d found in his arms back in Maine.
She wanted him. Here in her old life that would soon become her new life. With him and their baby. So many complexities. But what else was new?
He kissed her back in spite of himself, she knew. That it was physical reaction, not choice. Because he kept his hands off her, like he thought he could avoid this if he only kept his hands away from her body.
She pulled her mouth from his, scowled at him. “Oh, touch me, Gabriel. It is what we both want.”
As if he’d been waiting for a command—and God knew he was not waiting to be told what to do, since he couldn’t be told what to do—the leash on all he held back broke.
His hands were reverent, and it send waves of warmth and need through her. It was different, because her body was different. Because they were married. Because they were home. Because nothing had actually been settled, but he couldn’t run away this time.
She wouldn’t let him. Alex wouldn’t let him, and actually, she didn’t think he’d let himself. He would feel too responsible for the baby she carried now that he knew about his existence.
And so while the tensions he tightened inside her were the same, it was not the storm crashing between them. It was not anger and fear, and maybe that word he used—obsession. It was something deeper.
They were in it now. No way out. So they sank into the ocean that took them over. Onto the pretty pink bed, ridding each other of their clothes, until they were skin to skin, body to body.
His mouth tasted, his hands tormented in all the best ways. His body was a thing of glory—muscled and masculine. She roamed him with her hands, with her mouth, as he returned the favor.
When he moved her on top of him, seated deep inside, she looked down at him and felt like the ocean herself. A powerful, undulating storm that would not be satisfied until she’d crashed to shore over and over and over again.
And his gaze, stark and hungry, a powerful magnet. She moved against him, and they watched each other as the tension grew, coiled, and hers…exploded. He sat up, holding her in his lap, still deep inside her, and pushed her up, up, up again. Closer and closer to one more shuddering release.
She held on to him, whispered his name, reveled in the physical glory.
She bit his shoulder, and he growled as his grip tightened, as his body tightened and then thrust one last time, pulling her down tight on top of him so that she catapulted one last time into that vibrating ocean of pleasure he always gave her.
Life was not simple, no, but it was so simple to give herself over to him, to enjoy him, to be with him just like this.
And when he did not immediately lecture her or get out of her bed, she smiled and curled into him. Perhaps he did not want to be.
But he was hers now. She cuddled in closer, rested one hand over her belly.
Theirs.