Chapter Seventeen
Gabriel
I’m a good man, but I’m not a fucking saint.
There’s only so much I can take of those big brown eyes staring up at me.
Her red mouth parted. Her bleeding heart held in her careful hands.
I’ve been keeping myself at a distance, trying to convince myself this is all some sort of elaborate act, but I can’t do it anymore. I know who she is. She’s shown me.
So I press her against the window and kiss her the way I’ve been trying to convince myself not to. I collapse under the weight of all my wanting. I give in.
I kiss her like she belongs to me. In a way nothing has in more than a thousand years.
She makes a small sound, and my hand shifts, my thumb dipping to her chin, pressing down, urging her mouth open. I sweep my tongue against hers, and she makes another sound. Darker. Sharper.
One of her hands fists in the front of my shirt, and the other slips beneath it, her palm against the bare skin of my rib cage.
Her hand is cold, and I grunt into her mouth, my entire body flinching.
I feel the shape of her smile against my bottom lip, and I bite the edge of it, her husky laugh slipping around us like smoke.
“Why are you laughing?” I drag my mouth down the curve of her jaw, under her ear. Along the line of her neck. I’m leaving no stone unturned. No single inch unmapped.
Darcy arches her back, letting herself be shaped by my hands. “I don’t know,” she muses, her voice a breathy gasp when I catch her earlobe between my teeth and pull. “I think I might be happy?”
“Wasn’t that the point of your list? You had a plan.”
She laughs, sinking her fingers through my hair. Her nails scratch at my scalp. “You were never part of the plan,” she whispers.
I’ve felt betrayed by my own instincts, but maybe my magic hasn’t been a warning but a siren’s call.
Maybe crossing paths with Darcy was inevitable from the very beginning.
Maybe this is exactly where I’m supposed to be.
Here, with Darcy, in a room made of glass with the sun painting everything gold.
I like the idea of that. Fate handing me something for once, instead of taking it away. I brush one more kiss against her mouth and then brace my hands on either side of her. She stares up at me, her eyes bright and wide and smiling.
“You could tear me apart, you know that?”
“I could,” she agrees. The smallest of smiles as her fingers climb the indents of my ribs. “But I won’t. You’re safe with me.”
We lose track of time in the lighthouse.
I kiss her against the window, against the slowly rotating flare of light, against the wall by the door when we’re trying to leave.
She laughs into my mouth, and I kiss her harder, trying to memorize the taste of her.
Now that I have it, I’m greedy for her affection.
I’m so tired of never taking anything for myself.
“Is this what corruption feels like?” I mutter against the skin of her neck, teasing my teeth against her collarbone.
She shivers, sinking both hands into my hair and pulling. “Have you always been this dramatic or is this a recent—ah—”
I bite.
“A recent development?” she finishes in a rush, breathy and sweet.
I smile and drop a kiss over the red mark. “Maybe you bring it out in me.”
A laugh, somewhere above my head. “I somehow doubt that.”
I kiss her until the light changes. Until the boats disappear. Until the tide rises and clouds begin to gather in the east. I finally unglue myself from her, satisfied at the hazy, kiss-drunk look on her face. How she sways after me, both of her hands fisted in the front of my shirt.
“We should go,” I say, tucking some hair behind her ear. “It looks like a storm might be rolling in.”
Her smile dims, and her eyes cut over my shoulder.
“Just an autumn shower,” I assure her. “They happen a lot this time of year. It’s nothing to be worried about.”
“Right,” she says, but her voice is faint and that little line is back between her brows.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” She shakes her head and forces a smile. “You’re right. We should get back.”
But she’s quiet as we wind our way down the stairs to the dock. Quiet as she climbs into the boat and wraps her arms around herself. Quiet as rain begins to fall in earnest from the sky. I shrug out of my jacket and wrap it around her shoulders, and she gives me a small, thankful smile.
“Good?” I ask.
She nods, a quick jerk of her chin to her chest. “I’m fine.” She glances up at the sky again with a frown. “How fast can you get us back?”
“As quick as I can manage,” I assure her, but she barely looks in my direction.
Unable to shake the feeling that there’s something she’s not telling me but uninterested in arguing about it in the middle of the Chesa-peake Bay during a storm, I untie the rope from the dock and start easing us out to open water.
The rain is harder out here, the wind sharper.
My attention keeps drifting to Darcy, but hers is focused firmly on the church steeples in the distance, reaching up to the sky like grasping hands.
Her dark hair is plastered to her forehead, a fierce, thoughtful expression on her face.
It’s how she looked at the bar. That first night. Like someone trying to see through a frosted window, her palm pressed to the glass.
By the time we’re back in the dock, we’re both soaked through, the rain still coming down in sheets. Darcy looks impossibly small under the weight of my jacket, her skin pale and her hair dripping over her face.
I help her stand, then grab her hips and urge her onto the dock.
“We’ll go back to the bar,” I tell her. “Get you something dry to wear.”
She glances down at her legs. “Can’t you just snap your fingers and dry these?”
“I could.” I grin, rain slipping under my collar and running rivu-lets down my back. “But I want to see you in my clothes.”
I’m desperate for it. The hem of my white shirt barely skimming her bare thighs. Maybe one of my sweaters, looped around her shoulders. But Darcy doesn’t say a word at my confession, her eyes faraway. I cup her cheek in my hand, tracing beneath her eye with my thumb until she looks at me.
There are shadows there. Hidden in the soft amber of her eyes.
“Darcy.” I frown. “What is it?”
She shakes her head, and the shadows slip away like mist. “Nothing. I don’t know.” She frowns up at the sky. “I guess I just don’t like storms.”
“Thought dancing in the rain might be your thing,” I try to joke. “Should probably be on your list.”
But she doesn’t laugh. She doesn’t so much as crack a smile. “I don’t really feel like dancing.”
“All right, sweetheart. We don’t have to dance.”
I thread my fingers through hers and guide us quickly down the narrow alleyways back to the bar.
The cobblestone is slippery beneath our feet, and the pumpkins stacked in the storefront windows watch our progress with curious, judgmental eyes.
When I finally get a glimpse of the bar, I make a ragged sigh of relief.
The orange bar light flickers in the window, and I deposit Darcy in a soaked heap next to it while I fumble through my pockets.
“Hey!” One block down, Nate is ducked under the awning of the flower shop, his hands cupped around his mouth. “You got my keys?”
I shake my head. This asshole.
“Yeah, I’ve got your keys,” I yell back. “You need them now?”
I can see the slash of his grin and not much else. “You know I like to fish after a storm. C’mon. Toss ’em over.”
Absolutely not. There’s no way I can toss him a set of boat keys that are roughly the size of a paperclip across a street during a baby monsoon. With Nate’s coordination, they’ll likely drop through the storm drain and we’ll both be knee-deep in the water, trying to fish them out.
I glance at Darcy, standing like a statue at the very edge of my porch, staring at Nate. She’s gone pale and still, her hands clenched into fists at her side.
“I’m going to run these keys over to Nate,” I say slowly, ducking to try and meet her eyes. “Go inside. Grab whatever you want from my room. I’ll be up in a second.”
Her expression clears and her eyes finally find mine. “Don’t think you can start bossing me around just because we kissed a little bit.”
I slip my hand over her hip and squeeze. “We made out like the world was ending, Darcy, and yeah. I’m gonna tell you what to do sometimes.” I press a firm kiss to the middle of her forehead and clap my hand against the curve of her ass. “Go inside. Warm up, please. I can’t stand you shivering.”
She snorts, and I bound off the small porch of the bar, making my way to Nate. The material of my T-shirt clings to my chest, Darcy still draped in my jacket. I hand him his keys as soon as I’m close enough.
“So?” he asks. “How did it go?”
I try to scrub some of the rain out of my hair, but it’s useless. I’m soaked. “What?”
“The love boat. Did she like it?”
“Please tell me you didn’t call me over here to talk about Darcy.”
“Of course I called you over here to talk about Darcy.” He looks at me like I’m stupid. “You know I don’t give a shit about fishing. She came back with you, so I’m assuming she liked the lighthouse. C’mon. Tell me everything.”
“I’m not telling you anything.”
I turn to glance over my shoulder. The porch is empty, the door to the bar closed. I hope she listened. I hope she’s upstairs.
Nate flicks me in the middle of my forehead.
“Details, dude. Last time I talked to you, you were all She works for the opposition, I cannot possibly entertain the idea of courting her. And then you’re banging on my door in the middle of the night, going on about boat keys like a maniac.
We had a deal. You get the love boat. I get the details. ”
I can’t believe I’m having this conversation with him when Darcy is quite possibly half naked in the middle of my apartment. “I’m not discussing this with you right now.”
“Give me something,” he whines.
“No.”
“A little morsel.”
“No.”
“A teensy, tiny—”
I shove him backward into the front window of Frank’s, then bound off the porch.
I hear him laugh, his boots scrambling against wet pavement as he rushes to catch up, still going on about how it’s important for men to have safe spaces to discuss their feelings, and you really should open up more because it’s good for your chakras and—
But I’m not paying attention.
His boots, scrambling against wet pavement.
Wet pavement.
Wet pavement.
Darcy’s distance, and the way her magic was flirting at the edges of her irises. Her hands, curled into fists.
Wet pavement.
Cracked glasses.
Somewhere down the road, tires squeal against the asphalt. A beat-up SUV rounds the traffic circle, barreling too fast down the narrow road. The windows are cracked, and there’s a Fleetwood Mac song on the radio.
Wet pavement, I think hazily. Cracked glasses.
Nate is wearing his glasses today, the thick frames splattered with raindrops in the storm. He can’t see.
He can’t see.
“Fuck,” I mutter, turning to stop him. To push him back with my magic. To do something. But my hands are shaking, and everything is moving too fast. The car, the storm, Nate. I’m too far away. I’m not fast enough. I’m frozen, again, and I can’t—I can’t—
Farther up the street, a black blur moves across the sidewalk. Darcy sprints through the rain, her dark hair streaming behind her. My heart lurches, and I know what she’s going to do the second before she does it.
“No,” I whisper.
She runs into the street without hesitation, her hand extended. The car banks to the left, trying to avoid her, but the back tires skid out. The car is moving too fast. The roadway is too wet. The SUV slides and Darcy, she’s right in the way—
There’s a flash of black, a high-pitched yelp, the squeal of tires, and then—
Nothing.