He had said his father drank himself to death. She wanted to ask how bad it had been, but the remote cloud around him told her it had been very bad. Her heart tremored, urging her to go to him, but his stillness held her off.
“I don’t drink,” she pointed out. “No more than you do.”
“I’ve noticed. I appreciate it.”
“So...?”
“Luli. You’re far too vulnerable.”
“You just said you don’t have to worry about me.”
“Yet I do.”
“Well, I’m worried about you! You have sex with people you don’t even like.”
“That was one misjudgment. Just...give it a rest,” he sighed. “We can’t, okay? I can’t let you start thinking this is real.”
“How is having sex making this more or less real? People who are married have sex. You’re afraid that if we sleep together, I’m going to want you to fall in love with me?”
“Yes.”
She folded her arms, aching because she already wanted that. Her marriage already looked very bleak, filled with lust and craving and deep yearning while he felt...nothing.
“I can’t say I wouldn’t,” she admitted. “I’ve always wanted someone to love me.”
His expression tightened as if her words had scored a line through him. “It’s not as idyllic as it sounds, trust me.”
“How do you know? Have you loved someone?” The world tilted and nearly dropped her off the edge into cold, airless space. “Is that why—”
“No,” he said, taking her aback with his harsh tone.
“No? Not even your parents?”
“Of course my mother.” He sounded like she was yanking out his teeth.
“Not ‘of course.’ I have no feelings for my father and terrible ones toward my mother. If you loved your mother and she loved you back, that’s good.”
“Well, I have grief over the loss of my mother, because I loved her. And terrible feelings toward my father. He couldn’t handle her loss at all. It was a nightmare. Because he loved her. He railed and wept and broke things. He told me love was agony and never to let myself feel it.”
For once Gabriel had stepped outside his jaded, impervious shell. He was breathing fire, snarling and showing his claws.
“I wouldn’t bother taking the advice of a man who was drunk and slurring from ten in the morning on,” he continued, “but he would grab me and cry against my chest, fall to his knees and tell me he loved me. He made me promise never to leave, never to get hurt or get sick or die. I was seven. I didn’t know how to promise that! And I don’t know if I loved him, but I do know it was agony.”
Oh, Gabriel. She swallowed, thinking of him being confused and grieving, then picked on at school. So alone.
Until he had money. Then everyone wanted to be his friend.
She abandoned her tea and went across to him, took off her earrings and made him give her his hand so she could put them in his palm.
“I love these. They’re beautiful. But I don’t want to keep them unless you want me to have them. You’ve given me things I need, Gabriel. You’ve given me someone who listens and draws me a bath and calls me intelligent. That’s far more valuable to me than anything you could buy me.”
She closed his fingers over the earrings, then ran her thumb across the hard bumps of his knuckles. She wanted to kiss his fist, which felt silly and too impactful. Emotions suffused her that she didn’t know how to express. There was gratitude, definitely, but other nameless things that urged her to reach out and offer, search for something in him, but give up to him at the same time.
“I have nothing to give you that equals any of that.” Her voice creaked.
His mouth opened in protest, but she squeezed his hand.
“Only me,” she continued. “And I want to. It’s okay if you don’t love me. But I want to touch you and hold you and feel those things you make me feel. I want to know what it might feel like if someone did love me.”
His breath hissed in and he pulled his hand from her touch, thrusting his closed fist into his pocket.
She set her hand on his chest. “I don’t want you to protect me from you or myself. I want you to let me become the woman I want to be.”
He made a strangled noise and pinched the bridge of his nose, eyes clenched shut.
“Please?”
“I’m only a man, Luli,” he said in a rasping voice. “When this all goes to hell, I want you to remember this moment. I tried to be honorable.”
“REALLY?” EXCITEMENT AND TREPIDATION and anticipation all came together in a war inside her.
“I’ve been wanting to tear that gown off you all night.” He opened his eyes and there was such atavistic light in his gaze, her heart stuttered.
“Don’t! I love it.” She looked down at her cleavage. “Plus there’s tape that will sting so bad if you pull it too fast.”
“You were put on this earth to drive me crazy. Go. Lock yourself in your room or meet me in mine. Now.”
She picked up her skirt and ran up the stairs, hearing him take them two at a time behind her. She let out a wild laugh, riding an adrenaline rush. She went straight to his room where she whirled to confront him.
He came in behind her, shirt open and pulled from his tuxedo pants, edges wafting like wings.
She gasped in awe at the sheen of his burnished skin stretched taut across lean muscles. He stalked her on panther feet and grasped her hips, dragging her into a soft collision with his bare chest. His mouth came down on hers in a blatant claim of ownership. His lips were hard. Devouring. Insatiable.
Her body responded in a flowering throb that made all of her hurt. She moaned at the pleasure-pain of it and he immediately dragged his head up.
“No?” he asked through gritted teeth.
“Yes,” she breathed. Groaned. She tangled her hands in his hair exactly as she had wanted to and urged him back to kissing her. She pressed her tongue to his and cried out with excitement when he sucked on her.
Wet, fiery kisses went down her to her throat. His arms folded all the way around her narrow waist and he held her tight and still, teeth against the straining cord in her neck.
“Tell me you want this,” he said against her skin. “Because I’m barely hanging on to control.”
“I do. So much.” She pushed her hands beneath his open shirt, freeing his shoulders, wanting to touch all of him.
He straightened to throw off his shirt and she saw his eyes, feral and ravenous. It sent a dangerous spire of hunger into the pit of her belly. Lower. Liquid heat pooled between her legs and she clenched with emptiness and longing.
“Take it off, then.” He nodded at her dress.
She swallowed and ran her fingertips along the inner swells of her breasts, watching him watch her lift the strap off her skin. She turned and gathered her hair onto the front of her shoulder, revealing the zipper at her spine.
He released it. Slowly. The lace relaxed and his hot hands took possession of her bared waist. He