Chapter Twenty #2
I drag my teeth up the side of Gabriel’s throat, then trace the delicate lines of ink that spread down over his shoulder with my tongue.
Brad could light half of this hallway on fire right now and I doubt I’d even notice.
It’s just me and Gabriel and the low sounds he keeps making, his fingertips pressing marks into my hips.
There’s a murmured apology, and then footsteps retreating.
“He’s gone,” Gabriel says somewhere above my head, but I don’t stop.
I want this. I want this blissful oblivion. I want that first night we were supposed to have, when I decided I was going to take something different for myself.
“Darcy—”
I shake my head, biting down hard on the delicious slope between his shoulder and neck. When he talks, he ruins it. Doesn’t he understand? I don’t want to think. I just want to be here with him.
Gabriel grunts, and his hips thrust forward, knocking me into the wall and pinning me there.
“Darcy,” he warns, his voice dark.
“Gabriel,” I breathe back.
He uses the hand in my hair to angle me backward, fingertips rubbing at my scalp. I can see him better now. The downward tilt of his mouth and the flash of his eyes. I wait for him to tell me to stop, that this is a mistake, that we were playing pretend, but he doesn’t do any of those things.
He watches me carefully. He waits.
“What do you need from me?” he asks.
My chest pulls tight. An echo of a heartbeat thumps once, painfully, right in the center of me. It is the perfect thing for him to ask. The thing I need most.
“I need you to pretend.” My voice is thin, two octaves too high with hope skating along every edge. “Just for right now, can we be those two people you talked about? The ones who are looking for a dark corner to disappear into?”
The ones who don’t have to run from anything. Who don’t have to hide.
“Can’t we pretend?”
Gabriel thumbs at my cheek. His face slips into something earnest, soft. “I’ve never pretended anything with you.”
And then his mouth is on mine.
Gabriel kisses me exactly the way I’ve asked for. He kisses me like it’s a continuation of that night in the alley. He kisses me like it’s the punctuation at the end of a sentence, like he’s making a statement. Rough and demanding and deliciously, deliriously perfect.
“If we were two people”—he pants, in the space below my ear—“I wouldn’t stop at kissing you.”
A hot fist of desire coils low in my belly, and I arch into him. “Then don’t stop at kissing me.”
He grunts out an animal sound, then bends down and lifts behind my knees.
I wrap myself around him like a bow, arms and legs hugging tight while my mouth presses against his neck.
He smells so good here. Warm skin and soft sheets and the cinnamon he likes to put in his coffee.
An oddly whimsical choice for a man who’s so efficient in every aspect of his existence.
Gabriel slaps blindly at the wall, finds a doorknob, and then we’re moving.
He takes long, purposeful strides until I’m dropped unceremoniously on a desk, a cup of pencils and a stack of paper tumbling to the floor.
We’re in some sort of office, but I’m distracted from observation by Gabriel in front of me.
He pushes my knees wide, slots his hips between them, and grips my chin with his hand.
“I want to make you come,” he whispers. My stomach hollows out, a delicious tug. His eyes are burning fever bright. “Tell me how.”
“I don’t—” I swallow, struck dumb by his boldness. “What do you mean?”
“You don’t know what you like?”
I want to turn my face to the side, embarrassed, but Gabriel doesn’t let me. His fingers soften from demanding to gentle, caressing down my neck. He rubs his thumb there, soothing me. “Is this too much?” he asks.
I slip my hands under the hem of his shirt, dragging my nails back and forth over the hard planes of his back.
“I’m not used to this,” I whisper.
“What?”
“Wanting.” I squeeze him tighter. “It’s been a while for me. With this.”
He nods. “For me, too.”
“I don’t—”
“We can go back to the bar,” he offers. He’s still stroking his fingers up and down my neck, a mindless pattern that has goose bumps pebbling against my skin. “I’ll make you more of those fruity drinks you say you hate.”
I shake my head. I don’t want to go back to the bar. I don’t want the fruity drinks. I want to stay here with him. I want him to make me come, I just—
“I don’t know what I like,” I confess with a mumble.
I died in my twenties after spending my adolescence battling illness after illness.
Casual sexual encounters weren’t exactly in the cards for me.
Then, when I was at the department, it always seemed like an unnecessary complication to workplace dynamics.
There was a Cupid once, not long after I first started.
And a spirit who worked for the Office of Nightmares, but those were brief, unfulfilling encounters that ended with me—
“Stop thinking,” Gabriel says. His hand drifts lower to the front of the simple blouse I’m wearing.
He toys with the top button, before carefully sliding it loose.
He does it to the next. And the next until the material parts, revealing the black bralette I have beneath.
He inhales a deep breath, then releases it slowly. “Do you trust me?” he asks.
I nod.
“Then let me take care of you.”