Chapter 15
My head lifts, ready to scoff at the offer of violence on my behalf. That’s Rowan’s territory, not this rich Alpha.
But his cold resolve gives me pause, and I remember the Gabriel who had moved through the shipping yard with me, silent and deadly. I remember how Gabriel’s cousin is an assassin, and how he’s somehow tied to one of the most feared gunrunners in the country.
When Micha was being stalked, I saw firsthand how dangerous the Rockfords can be, so why do I keep telling myself Gabriel is just a rich playboy? Because believing the lie makes it easier to disregard Gabriel and pretend he’s not serious.
But his offer to take care of the man who lives in my nightmares isn’t bravado, and he has the resources to see this vow through to the end.
“You don’t understand what you’re saying,” I whisper, throat tight at how willing he is to put himself in harm’s way for me. “You don’t understand what you’re getting into.”
“Then tell me.” His fingers remain on my arm, thumb tracing a small circle on my skin. “All of it, if you can. Or none of it, if you can’t.”
“I can’t.” The admission costs me, dragged from somewhere deep and wounded. “Not tonight. Not all of it.”
Gabriel nods, accepting this boundary without question. “Whenever you’re ready. If you’re ever ready. I’m here.”
Somehow, I believe him.
The air between us shifts, molecules rearranging themselves into charged electricity. Gabriel stands too close and not close enough, his presence a gravity I can’t escape.
My heart rate accelerates for reasons that have nothing to do with panic. I step forward, foot coming down on the envelope.
My mouth finds his, hard and desperate, teeth catching his lower lip as I press him backward. The kiss holds nothing of tenderness. It’s about escape, distraction, and grabbing onto this man as if I’m drowning.
Gabriel meets me without hesitation, his mouth opening under mine, accepting the onslaught without surrendering to it. His hands rise to my hips, touch firm but not trying to take over.
My fingers tangle in his hair, pulling his head back to deepen the kiss. I need this control, need to direct this encounter. It’s the only way to quiet the chaos in my head.
When I reach between us to grip him through his slacks, Gabriel catches my wrist, his fingers circling my wrist bones with deliberate care, as if pressure alone could bruise them.
“This doesn’t have to be about pain,” he murmurs, lips caressing my jaw, his breath a hot fan across my skin.
I try to pull free, to reclaim the momentum. “That’s exactly what it needs to be.”
His grip remains steady, neither tightening nor releasing. “It can be about real connection.”
His lips brush the hollow below my ear. “It can be about safety.”
“I don’t need safety,” I growl, free hand sliding beneath his shirt to find skin. “I need you.”
Gabriel pulls back far enough to look at me in the dim light. “Is that what you want? Me? Or would any body help you forget right now?”
The question hits harder than a physical blow, stealing breath. My hand flattens on his chest, feeling the steady rhythm of his heart beneath warm skin.
“You,” I admit, the truth clawing its way out of me. “Only you.”
His pupils dilate, swallowing hazel in a wash of black.
“Let me show you.” His hand releases my wrist to cup my jaw, thumb tracing my bottom lip. “Release doesn’t have to come with pain.”
We move toward the bedroom in a halting path, steps interrupted by kisses that grow less frantic, less punishing with each point of contact. Gabriel backs through the doorway, guiding without pushing, his body a magnet I’m irresistibly drawn to.
Gabriel pauses at the bed, fingers toying with the hem of his shirt before pulling it over his head in one smooth motion. His slacks follow, pooling at his feet, leaving him naked in the darkness.
He waits, making no move to remove my clothing, offering me the choice. The control. I pull my shirt off, each inch of uncovered skin a conscious decision rather than a frantic stripping. My pants follow, and I stand before him, scarred and trembling and painfully aware of every mark on my body.
Gabriel’s gaze travels over me without rushing, and when his hand lifts, I flinch, not from fear of his touch, but from fear of what it might reveal.
What if he sees right through me to the broken boy beneath? What if now is when he realizes how damaged I truly am?
He pauses, hand suspended between us. “We can stop.”
The offer hangs in the air, genuine and undemanding. He would stop now, walk away without complaint, and go to sleep on the couch.
I shake my head, a single trembling motion. “Don’t stop.”
Gabriel sits on the bed, then lies back, leaving me to join him on my own terms. I climb onto the mattress, body moving with a will separate from my racing thoughts. His hands find my hips as I straddle him, the position familiar but the energy between us transformed.
His mouth finds mine again, the kiss slower this time, deeper. One hand slides up my back to cradle the nape of my neck, fingertips threading through my hair. The other traces patterns along my side, each touch light enough to send shivers across my skin.
His hands continue their exploration, moving lower, over my hips, down my thighs. When his fingers brush the raised scars on my inner thighs, I flinch, muscles locking in automatic defense.
Gabriel freezes. “Too much?”
“No.” I force myself to breathe through the instinctive panic. “Keep going.”
His touch returns, gentler than before, tracing each scar with a reverence that threatens to break me. No disgust, no pity, just acknowledgment of pain survived.
Layer by layer, my defenses fall away beneath his careful hands. The urgency that drove me earlier quiets, replaced with a deeper desire that’s more frightening in its intimacy.
Gabriel takes his time, reading my body’s responses.
When he reaches for the bottle of lube, I track the movement, my pulse spiking, but I don’t shove him down, don’t switch our positions. As he slicks his fingers and pushes them inside me, I tense not from pain but because I’m allowing someone access to the most guarded parts of myself.
Gabriel pauses, waiting for me to relax and nod for him to continue.
“I’ve got you,” he whispers, drawing me down for more kisses as his fingers move inside me, seeking out my prostate.
The first brush over that sensitive spot pulls a jolt from me, and Gabriel soothes my nerves with more drugging kisses while his free hand strokes my dick, keeping me hard and deep in the haze of pleasure.
When he pushes another finger inside, the burn of being stretched sizzles up my spine, and my back arches, my hips bearing down on his fingers.
“That’s it.” Gabriel kisses and sucks on my jawline. “Take what you need.”
“Fuck.” I grip his shoulders, hips rocking, my dick sliding in and out of his hand. “Give me more.”
He adds a fourth finger, and a moan tears from my throat. Blindly, I wrap my hand around his leaking cock, pumping his shaft, and he groans, his hips thrusting upward.
The pleasure continues to build, intense in a way I’m not used to, but it’s not enough.
In desperation, I grab his wrist, pulling his fingers from my body, and rise up onto my knees to position myself. I need to do this while everything still feels good, need to reclaim what was stolen from me before it slips from my grasp again.
“Hey, take it slow,” he cautions. “There’s no rush.”
“Fuck you,” I pant as I try to sink down on his hard length, but his blunt head slides up my lubed crack instead, and I growl with frustration.
“It’s okay, I’ve got you.” He rolls us over, positioning himself above me with careful movements. “Is this okay?”
“Just do it already.” My legs wrap around his hips, pulling him closer in an invitation I haven’t extended to anyone since before juvie.
Gabriel’s cock pushes into me, inch by inch, his eyes locked on mine the whole time.
The stretch burns, my body fighting the intrusion despite how much I want it.
My breath catches when he’s halfway in, and the cold memory of concrete against my back flashes, but then his tongue strokes mine, dragging me out of those memories.
My fingers dig into his shoulders, holding on as he fills my body, the heavy weight of him inside me nothing like those other times. This is my choice. My want. My body opening for him because I said yes.
“Stay with me,” he murmurs, his forehead pressed to mine, breath mingling with my own. “Right here, with me.”
His hips rock into mine in a gentle rhythm that curls my toes, his cock hitting my prostate with each thrust. I dig my nails into his back, the muscles flexing under my fingertips as he works above me. His hand grips my jaw, thumb rough on my cheekbone, holding me there so I can’t look away.
My orgasm builds from the base of my spine outward, my ass clenching around him as I come untouched, cum spattering hot between our stomachs. I arch off the bed, a broken sound tearing from my throat.
Gabriel’s thrusts turn erratic, his breath hot gasps on my neck.
“Saint,” he groans, driving in deep and holding there as he pulses inside me, filling me up.
For those brief, suspended seconds, I forget to be afraid. Forget about walls and defenses. Forget everything except the connection between us.
And in that moment of forgetting, I find a peace I thought had been beaten out of me years ago.
We collapse together, his body like a weighted blanket holding me down on the mattress before he rolls to the side, our chests heaving in unison.
The air cools the sweat on my skin as reality filters back in.
The ceiling comes into focus above me, water stains forming images I’ve memorized during sleepless nights.
My body hums with aftershocks while my mind races to catch up with what just happened. Emotions I have no name for swell within me, too many to contain, threatening to drown me from the inside out.
Gabriel lies beside me, his breathing slowed to a steady rhythm. He doesn’t reach for me, doesn’t try to pull me close again, doesn’t demand cuddles. He simply exists beside me, patient in his stillness, waiting for me to decide what happens next.
I want to turn toward him. Want to sink against his side, bury my nose in the spot behind his ear, and have his arms wrap around me. Want the comfort of human contact without the price tag of pain or power that’s always been attached to it.
But wanting has never been safe for me. It leads to vulnerabilities, disappointment, and betrayal. Wanting is a luxury for people whose childhoods weren’t spent learning that attachment always ends in abandonment.
Gabriel shifts beside me, his hand turning palm-up on the sheet between us in an invitation without pressure. “You okay?”
Am I okay? Has anyone ever asked me that and actually wanted the truth?
I search for the lie, for the automatic “fine”, but find myself unable to speak the lie.
“I don’t know.”
Gabriel accepts this without pushing for more, and the quiet returns, punctuated only by our breathing and the distant sounds of a siren wailing blocks away.
My thoughts circle back to the envelope, and the fear returns, coiling in my stomach, but it’s not the blind panic from before. It’s a clear awareness of danger. Whatever comes next, I won’t be alone.
The realization should comfort me. Instead, it terrifies me more than any threat. Because if Gabriel stands with me, he becomes a target, too.
And if I lose him because of it…
Before I can talk myself out of it, I roll onto my side, facing him, studying the outline of his profile in the dim light. He stares at the ceiling, giving me privacy even as he lies naked beside me.
When I shift closer, his attention stays fixed upward, allowing me to approach on my terms.
My forehead comes to rest on his shoulder, the contact small but monumental. The warmth of his skin bleeds into mine, his pheromones filling my lungs with each breath.
Gabriel exhales, a soft sound caught between relief and surprise. His arm moves with careful slowness, lifting to wrap around my shoulders, his palm settling between my shoulder blades.
Tension bleeds out muscle by muscle until I half-melt against his side. The pressure in my chest eases, allowing my next breath to come easier.
I hate this weakness, this need for connection that persists despite years of trying to excise it. Hate how my body yields to his touch, how my mind quiets in his presence, how the chaos inside me settles with his arm around me.
But I don’t pull away.
Gabriel’s thumb traces small circles over my skin, the motion hypnotic in its repetition. His strong, steady heartbeat thrums beneath my ear in a rhythm my own pulse syncs with.
Sleep tugs at the edges of my consciousness, and my eyelids grow heavy, body sinking deeper into the mattress, into Gabriel’s careful embrace.
I fight it, clinging to alertness through force of habit.
“It’s okay,” Gabriel murmurs. “I’ll watch over you.”
The simple words should mean nothing, yet as sleep claims me, a single thought surfaces from the whirlpool of my mind.
If he ever leaves, I won’t survive it.