At home. His home. But I like that he calls it home. I like that he’s invited me into a place that is his castle. His private space. We link our arms together and start walking.
“About those bad habits,” he says. “You tell me yours. I’ll tell you mine.”
“I’m messy,” I say. “I’m bad about leaving my shoes by the bed and not in the closet. Stuff like that. And my hair is wild in the mornings.” I give him a coy look. “But you know that.”
“Your hair is sexy as fuck in the morning.”
“But you don’t like redheads, right?” I tease.
“You’re it, Abbie. You’re exactly what I like. Even if you don’t know it yet.” He leans into me and presses his lips to mine. “I’ll show you upstairs.”
I smile. God how easily he makes me smile. “Promise?” I whisper.
“I never make a promise I don’t keep.”
It’s a light moment, invaded by a flicker of a memory of him talking to my ex, of his promises to hurt Kenneth; of my certainty then in that moment, that Gabe could hold his own with a brutal man like Kenneth. I wait for this to bother me, but it doesn’t. I admire his strength. I like that he’s protective. I like him. I am falling for him. I might truly fall in love with him.
I shove aside thoughts of Kenneth but as soon we arrive back at Gabe’s building a thirty-something man with a stubble roughened jawline, steps in front of us. “Abigail Tanner?”
I stiffen and Gabe’s fingers flex on my hip. “Who are you?” he asks and Dexter must sense our discomfort because he snarls and starts to growl.
The man, whose trench coat could be hiding a weapon, holds out his hands. “Easy there, puppy.”
I want to say good boy, I really do. My ex was murdered. Until now, it never crossed my mind that someone might want me dead as well. I was his wife. I was linked to him for five years.
“He doesn’t like it when you call him a puppy,” Gabe snaps. “In fact, it really pisses him off. Almost as much as strangers showing up outside my apartment. Who are you and what do you want?” Dexter snarls louder, Gabe tightening his hold on him, or I’m pretty sure he’d live up to his killer name.
“I’m a reporter for the NY News,” he says. “I have credentials.” He motions to his coat. “I can show you.”
“Credentials or a gun?” I demand. “How do we know which you’re reaching for?”
“A reasonable fear,” the man concludes, “especially considering your ex-husband was killed execution-style. I’m sure you’re afraid you’re next.”
And there it is. He’s confirming my new fear that I don’t want confirmed. “You’re digging for information we don’t have to give,” Gabe snaps. “We have nothing to say to you.” Gabe turns me and Dexter toward the building.
The man calls out, “You’re the new man, Mr. Maxwell. Were you jealous? Did you kill him?”
My heart squeezes and I feel like it’s being ripped out of my chest. I don’t want this for Gabe. It’s so unfair. He doesn’t deserve to be treated like this. I rotate and scowl. I open my mouth to speak, but Gabe turns me to face him. “Don’t say a word. That’s what he wants. To goad you into saying something he can print. Walk away. Together. Let’s walk away together.”
The doorman appears by our side, as the reporter calls out, “You spoke to him the night before he died! I know you spoke to him, Gabe Maxwell. Did you fight?”
Gabe’s jaw sets hard and the big, burly doorman rushes to our sides. “You want me to deal with him?”
“Yes, Steven,” Gabe replies. “The sooner the fucking better.” He palms him a large bill.
“Consider him handled and please, take shelter inside and enjoy your evening.”
Dexter thanks him by licking his hand. Steven offers the killer dog a tiny smile and pets him but Gabe is already leading us toward the building.
“Don’t talk in the elevator,” he warns, as we cross the lobby and he punches the call button. “We can’t risk being recorded and we now know we have reporters charting our every move.”
I nod, hating our perfect walk has become this. The elevator takes several ridiculously long minutes to arrive which I use to worry about Gabe and the attacks just thrown his direction. Once we’re inside the car, Gabe punches in our floor, leans on the wall and to my relief, pulls me to him, holding me close. I rotate and wrap my arms around him. I hold him close, too.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Abbie…
The minute we’re off the elevator, Dexter is bounding down the hallway, apparently feeding off my need to be in a private spot where Gabe and I can speak. Gabe catches my hand and links our fingers, and miraculously, that easily, I can breathe again. Gabe does that for me. He calms me down. He makes me feel like I’m standing with him, while my ex was always above me.
He pulls out his keys and unlocks the door. The minute it’s open, he unhooks Dexter, who bounds forward again with panting glee. He’s home and that dog knows it. I feel oddly good about being at home here, too, but that’s all the more reason for me to worry about Gabe. To worry about his family. It’s my turn to bound into the hallway and I do so, but leave out the panting. I rotate to face Gabe, and he’s shut the door, already right in front of me, his hands settling possessively at my waist.
“You need to stop worrying,” he says. “I’ve got this. I’ve got you. I’ve got us.” He turns me around and pulls off my coat.
“He’s going to smear you in the press,” I say, turning as he hangs up my coat on the coatrack, and shrugs out of his own. “He’s going to make you look like a killer.”
“He’s not going to slander me,” he replies. “That would land him in court. He’s trying to intimidate us into talking. I don’t intimidate.”
“I’m worried about you, Gabe, even if you aren’t.”
“That’s the point. He wants you to worry. He wants you to talk. He wants a story.” He takes my hand. “Come with me.”
He’s clearly not listening. He’s leading me through the living room, towards his obvious solution to our problems: the bar. Dexter is now sitting by the couch with a bone in his mouth, watching us pass by. I wave to him and he turns away as if he thinks I’m about to take his bone.
“Drink time,” Gabe says lifting me and sitting me on a barstool.
“We’ve done this before. I don’t drink well.”
He steps behind the bar and pours me a whiskey. “Try it,” he says, setting the glass in front of me. “Honey-sweet perfection, baby, like you on my tongue. We’ll get that asshole off your mind, one way or another.”
My cheeks heat. “Did you really just say that to me?”
He leans on the bar in front of me. “Would you rather me say it to someone else?”
There’s a push between us with that question that is so much more than it appears on the surface. It’s about commitment, about reassurance. “No,” I say. “I do not want you to say anything even remotely like that to another woman.”
“Did it bother you when I said it to you? Did it offend you?”
“No,” I say easily. “No, it just took me off guard.”
“Your ex didn’t talk dirty to you?”
“Was that talking dirty?”
“That was a warm-up.” He winks. “It gets better.” He points at the glass. “Drink up, baby. You’re wound as tight as a rubber band ball.”
I accept the drink and decide he’s right. I need to relax. I down the liquid, warmth spreading down my throat and settling low in my belly. “I felt that,” I say, touching my throat.
“What do you feel?”
“Warm,” I say. “Really warm.”
He fills my glass again. “Drink a little more. Don’t down it.” He lifts a finger. “Not yet.” He rounds the bar and walks into the kitchen, grabs something from the fridge and returns. He sets a can down next to me.
I inspect it. “Diet Sprite?”
“A man has to watch his waistline.” He winks. “It’s nice and smooth with the whiskey, or so my sis
ter tells me. Before she got pregnant, of course.” He mixes the drink for me.
I take a sip and the whiskey goes down smoother. “I approve. I like it.”
He pours a glass for himself and then claims the stool next to mine, both of us facing each other, both of us sipping our drinks. His hand settles on my leg and I set my glass down. The whiskey wasn’t what made me warm. It’s him, all him.
“You,” I whisper.
“You,” he whispers. “Stay with me until this is over. And if that’s three days from now, stay longer. I don’t want you to leave any time soon. Hell, I might not want you to leave at all.”
My heart swells with so many emotions, too many emotions. “We’re moving fast, Gabe. So very fast.”
“I know what I want,” he says. “And that’s you.”
“You say that now, but wait until your firm is all over the news, and not in a good way, because of me.”
“Not because of you. You didn’t do this. My father was already involved in this.”
“But you weren’t.”
“He was looking for a way to bite us back. He would have found a way no matter what. We expected a war. We hoped we wouldn’t get one.” He rests his forehead on mine, his hand settling at the back of my head. “I will handle my father.” There is a rough quality to his voice that undoes me.
I pull back to look at him, his hand returning to my leg with his other. “He’s your father. Would he really want to ruin you?”
“He’s my father. Translation: yes.”
“What Reid said to you in the hallway—about your dark side—” I hesitate with how to continue and he reacts.
His hands fall away from my legs and settle on his own. “What about it?”
I press my hands to his. “Don’t tell me you want me here in your life, and then pull away from me. All in or all out, Gabe. I don’t care about your father. I don’t care about how dark you can get unless it includes killing people and hurting people just to hurt them. You’re an attorney. You have a job to do, and I’m not naive. I know you have to be hard. I know you have—”
“You don’t know, Abbie.” He untangles his hands from mine and reaches for his drink. “And never going to know those parts of me. That won’t change. If you can’t live with that—”
“I can’t. I can’t live with that. All or nothing, and at the park, you said—”
“You can have all that I am now. Other parts are past and buried, where they need to stay.”
Like the reason he had a vasectomy, I think, and I want to say it, but my gut says, that’s pushing him too far, too fast. “Gabe—”
He downs his drink and stands up, walking to the window, where he’s told me he stands above the city, to escape the rest of the world. To that spot he allowed me to visit with him. He let me into his space, his kingdom, his head, just not his past. He needs that to be enough. I scoot off the stool and he presses his hands to the glass. I close the space between us and slide between him and the window.
He responds instantly, tangling his fingers into my hair. “I won’t ever show you that part of me. It exists. You know. Leave it the fuck alone.”
Now I’m angry. He’s holding me and pushing me away at the same time. “Because I’m weak? Because I’m this pathetic girl you need to save to feel like you aren’t whatever monster you’ve decided to call yourself? Because I’m scared? Or maybe it’s you who’s scared? You’re scared to show me the real you.”
“Maybe there’s a reason to be scared.”
“Maybe you want me to be scared.”
“You do like to run, Abbie.”
My chin lifts defiantly. “I’m not running now, now am I?”
He stares down at me, intense seconds crackling between us before his mouth crashes down on mine; his big body pressing me against the steel railing, a wild desperate hunger in him that isn’t gentle or funny as he can be, but rough, demanding, and edgy. This is the man who can be bad and I have this sense that he’s about to test me. That he’s about to show me the real Gabe Maxwell.
And I like it.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Abbie…
“What do you want, Abbie?” Gabe demands, tearing his mouth from mine. “Say it. I need you to be clear. What do you want? But be careful what you ask for. You’ll get it.”
“More,” I say, twisting my hands in his T-shirt. “More of you, Gabe. All of you.”
He slides his hands under my leggings, palming my backside I left bare in the rush to take out Dexter. “More doesn’t get you a nice, funny guy, Abbie.”
“Thank fuck for that. Show me. Stop hiding. Stop trying to be only what you think I want, Gabe. Stop trying to be less than you are because that makes us less than we can be.”
“And if you can’t handle who I am?”
I’m on fire now, poking the bear and I can’t hold back. “And you’re afraid to find out. Is fear all I make you feel?”
His mouth suddenly crashes down on mine once more, his tongue pressing past my teeth, his kiss demanding, angry. He’s pissed. At me. At himself, I think, and that’s what I want to know. That’s the part of him I want to understand, I want to demand he show me.
“Get undressed,” he orders, setting me back from him, crossing his arms in front of that broad perfect chest of his.
My chin lifts in defiance, in refusal to allow him to intimidate me. Maybe he wants me to think he’s a monster like Kenneth. Maybe that should even piss me off but it doesn’t. It challenges me.
I pull my shirt over my head and toss it aside. “See?” I say. “Sometimes I even follow orders.” I unhook my bra, shrugging it away, exposing my naked breasts, the cold air puckering my nipples. “I must be very, very afraid of you.” I toe off my shoes and peel away my leggings, no panties to fret with. I’m not wearing any. Naked now but for socks, I’m not messing with, I close the small space between us and stand in front of him. “Or maybe I was right. You’re the one who’s afraid.”
He catches my hip and drags me to him. “You’re playing with fire.”
“Stop warning me away and pulling me back. Choose, Gabe. All in, remember? Or is that code for only if it’s me?”
His jaw clenches, his gaze lowering, raking over my naked breasts, and I can’t explain it, but I’m more naked right now, in this moment, with this man, than I’ve ever been before.
“All in, Abbie. That’s what you want? That’s what you’ll get.” He backs me up and presses my hands on the bar behind me and at my sides. He shackles my hips, and pulls me forward, forcing me to use them to hold myself up. “Keep your hands there,” he orders. “If you move them, I’ll punish you.”
Heat rushes through me but there is no fear. I don’t fear this man the way I feared Kenneth. I will never fear Gabe. I damn sure don’t fear the thick bulge of his erection pressing against my belly. “Punish me?” I challenge. “How would you punish me, Gabe?”
“You still haven’t been properly spanked, now have Abbie?”
“You spanked me, remember?”
“That was a love pat, remember? A spanking” he adds, most likely for effect, as he’s watching me with hooded eyes. “My hands on your pretty little ass. My cock buried inside you while I make it burn.”
His hand on my ass.
Spanking me.
His eyes lower to my mouth, linger with a promise of a kiss I crave but that doesn’t come, his gaze lifting with his own challenge. “Are you scared now?”
“If that’s the goal, it’s safe to say that you failed. I’m pretty sure what’s going on with me right now, can not be described as fear. Are you scared?”
I expect him to laugh or balk but he doesn’t. He leans in close, his lips at my ear, “From the day I met you, baby. From the day I met you.” He pulls back to look at me, blue eyes lit up and like fires in a forest, they burn a path through me. “And you’re right. I am pushing you. Right here. Right now. Don’t move.”
He steps back from me, and obedience is easy this time. He undr
esses. I get to watch and watching Gabe get naked is a sight to see. He’s long. He’s lean. He’s all muscle and that tattoo. That lion tattoo on his arm means more to me every time I see it. It’s strength and family. It’s him, the real him, the man willing to fight to win. And his cock, well, he’s blessed in that department and so am I. His shaft juts forward, thick and heavily veined with arousal.
My teeth sink into my bottom lip, all this talking and watching about to undo me. I need him. I need him next to me. I need him touching me. I need him inside me. I just need him to touch me and thankfully he does. He pulls me forward, cups my ass, scrapes his teeth over the spot where mine had just been, nipping roughly.
I yelp and he cups my head. “Now for that spanking. You didn’t think I’d forget, did you?”
“You really do want to scare me, don’t you?”
He grips my hair, erotic and rough, and tugs my gaze to his. “No. I want to give you a reason to forget the fucked up parts of me. I want to make you feel more pleasure than you have ever felt in your life.”
“And your hand does that?”
“Are you willing to trust me and find out?”
I don’t even hesitate. “Yes.”
He doesn’t immediately reply, as if he’s weighing my response, as if he’s thinking about his. “I need to know that you were never abused sexually, Abbie. I need to know this really is pleasure for you, a game we play and enjoy together. Not a trigger.”
That he stops in the middle of the emotions and physical push and pull between us and asks me this is everything. “Nothing is a trigger with you.”
“Did he ever—”
“No. Sex wasn’t his thing. He got off on fear, real fear. Not the emotional baggage kind of fear we’ve been talking about.”
His hand loosens in my hair, flattens on my head. “I would never hurt you. If you ever want to stop, just say stop.”
“You think I don’t know that? I told you: I know you.”
“Suddenly,” he says softly. “I hope you do.”
And then he’s kissing me again, and somehow it’s tender and rough with the demand at the same time, but then that makes sense. This is Gabe. This is the man I could fall in love with. This is the man I am falling in love with.
Her Submission Page 7
