Gabriel

by Naima Simone

  “Gabe,” she rasped and swallowed against the soreness even the small word caused her abused throat. A whimper escaped her as she twisted in his arms and brought her face level with his. Desperation scraped her raw as she dug her fingers into his shoulders and crushed a kiss to his lips and chin. “I need you,” she whispered, spattering quick kisses across his mouth. “Please,” she begged.

  “Leah,” he said, clasping her waist and bracing his arms as if preparing to push her away.

  But she shook her head, cutting him off. She threw her weight forward, not allowing him to put any space between them. She didn’t want words. She wanted his heat, his touch that could erase everything from her mind, the ecstasy Gabriel alone could demand from her body.

  A shudder shook him, and she felt the aftershocks of it against her body. He leaned forward until their foreheads touched and their breaths mingled. Her chest rose and fell in rapid succession as if she’d just run a marathon. Her name left his lips, and the low whisper brushed her mouth. He enfolded her in a tight embrace, holding her close, so close she wished it were possible to meld into him permanently so she would never again know what it felt like not to have his hard muscular planes fit against her.

  “Gabriel, make love to me,” she pleaded against his cheek, her fingers clutching his back, her fingernails pinching him through his shirt. “Make me forget.”

  He stiffened beneath her for several long seconds. Then he jackknifed from the bed, hoisting her in the air. As he pressed her back to the mattress, his mouth crashed down over hers, his tongue plunged between her lips.

  She yearned to taste him on her tongue, feel his touch on her skin. She needed it like a dying man lost in a desert craved water. He held her steady for the ravishment of her mouth, and she arched into him. He bore down on her, his chest a solid wall against her breasts, the hard ridge of his cock a wicked, delicious pressure aligned with her throbbing heat. A groan of hunger rose from his throat and vibrated into her mouth. She swallowed it and demanded another, which he surrendered to her.

  He grasped her head between his palms and angled her for a deeper penetration. His hips surged forward and down, mimicking the possession of his mouth, his tongue. Fevered, she thrust him off her and levered up from the bed. She fisted the hem of her sweater and jerked it free of her body. His gaze flared bright with desire as he reached behind her and quickly divested her of the thin, lacy bra beneath. Desperate to feel his bare flesh next to hers, she attacked his shirt, not bothering with the buttons, but tearing it upward and, with his assistance, ripped the material over his head. She dragged him back down to her and their twin moans at the feel of skin on skin filled the room like a symphony. The swell of her breasts pillowed against his chest, and the hard points of her nipples jabbed his muscles.

  His mouth ate at hers, and his palms skimmed up her rib cage and cupped her sensitive breasts. She cried out and bucked in his hold as he grazed his thumbs across the tight buds. And it wasn’t enough.

  He tore his mouth free of hers and trailed a hot, damp path down her chin, neck, and across her collarbone until he came to the tips that she yearned to have surrounded by his tongue. He sucked one between his lips, drawing hard, and she jerked beneath the lash of his tongue and the pinch of his fingers.

  “Gabe,” she pleaded, threading her hands through his hair, twisting the strands and tugging. He groaned and switched breasts, treating the other to the same treatment. It was ecstasy, torture, both.

  He abandoned her flesh and tussled with the button on her jeans without any hint of finesse. Finally he freed the closure and tugged down the zipper. Hunger and a craving for a deeper, hotter, wetter connection fueled her clumsy motions as she kicked free of the denim. He dropped to the floor, removed her boots with the same haste, then peeled the jeans and panties from her body, leaving her lying bare before him.

  She didn’t try to hide from his avid gaze. Desire incinerated any hint of modesty, need lifted her arms and beckoned him to return to her. He clutched and lifted her hips, planting an open kiss to her stomach. She gripped his chocolate curls, catching him close. He breathed her in—the scent of her skin, the musk of her sex, heated, and wet for him.

  It should have embarrassed her, the intimate press of his nose to her body. But she reveled in it. She wanted him to know she was on fire—just for him. She wanted to wrap her legs and arms around him, surround him, be filled and branded by him.

  His hands were rough as he dragged her closer still, opened his mouth over the core of her body. She cried out, her back arching hard and high, offering more of herself to his erotic assault on her body and senses, like a pagan sacrifice. His tongue lapped at her as if she were the finest delicacy he couldn’t get enough of. And when he thrust inside her, she trembled on the edge of orgasm, so close the electrifying shimmer of release gathered at the base of her spine.

  “No,” she panted, shoving at his head and shoulders. “No, Gabe. I want to come with you inside me.”

  His moan hummed over the flesh of her inner thighs, but he obeyed her plea. Straightening, he snatched his wallet from his pocket, snagged a condom, and shed his pants. She reached for him, welcoming him as he covered her and thrust into her with one strong, possessive stroke. Her hands dug into his lower back, and she shook beneath him.

  “Shh, baby,” he soothed, and gripped her head between his palms, scattering kisses over her lips, cheeks, and chin. “Easy.” He tried to slow down, to give her body time to accept him, but she didn’t want easy or gentle. She longed—needed—to be taken. She wanted to be pounded into orgasm and oblivion. They could do gentle later.

  “Gabe,” she cried, her heels digging into the back of his thighs and grinding her mound in a tight little circle against his pelvis. He grunted, and his hips gave a short jerk forward. “Please,” she gasped and bucked hard. “Move.”

  With a low rumble, he lifted off her, grasped her ass in his palms, and surged into her. She writhed beneath him, a victim caught up in this tempestuous, passionate storm. Sweat gleamed off his skin, making it shine like gold. His wild curls, even more unruly from her clutching fingers, framed his beautiful face in a brown tangle. She wanted to see him like this always. To have him bent over her, twisting and thrusting, bringing her pleasure, demanding she give it to him. She spasmed around his cock as once more orgasm loomed, propelling her to the edge. His grip on her tightened as he rode her harder, faster, fiercer.

  “Leah,” he groaned, falling over her, his palms slapping the bed on either side of her head. His mouth crushed over hers, and he took a hard, brief kiss before pulling back and repeating her name over and over. Need roughened his voice. The same need originating from the depths of her equally starved soul. She looked into his blazing eyes, almost as if peering into the blue heart of a flame. A cry choked her, and tears stung her eyes as she closed them.

  The orgasm struck without warning. It took her under, consumed her. And as she called out Gabriel’s name and twisted and shuddered beneath him, she plummeted over the edge, knowing love kept her tethered and safe.

  …

  Shadows extended over the floor and bed as dusk claimed another day. Gabriel stretched over Leah and turned on the bedside lamp. Its soft glow helped alleviate the deepening shades of gray. Intimacy wrapped them in its sheltering arms, and he welcomed the respite before cruel reality intruded.

  He settled back on the pillows, and she curled into his side like a drowsy kitten. He smoothed a palm down her spine, and she nestled closer, resting her head in the natural crook between his shoulder and neck. Her warm, slow breaths caressed the patch of skin over his collarbone, and her delicate, fine-boned hand covered his heart.

  A heart that had seized when he’d stood in the bathroom door and spotted her huddled next to the toilet.

  His first impulse had been to snatch his phone from his pocket and call an ambulance. Leah hadn’t been one of those children who suffered from seasonal and annual bouts of flu or infections. He could count on one ha
nd the number of times she’d been ill, including a ruptured appendix at thirteen and pneumonia at fifteen. Seeing her swollen, tear-stained face and shaking body, alarm had cut off his windpipe.

  But then she’d pushed to her feet, and he’d glimpsed the anguish darkening her eyes into moss-green pools. In an instant, it dawned on him that her pain wasn’t physical but emotional. He’d been on intimate terms with the kind of torment reflected in her shattered gaze—the kind capable of piercing flesh and bone and tearing into a heart without mercy.

  Dread had rippled through him even as he’d closed his arms around her and anticipated her rejection. But when she’d lain back in his arms, then asked him to make love to her, a knot inside him loosened, eased.

  Now, in the quiet after the storm of their lovemaking, he waited. His heart pounded, his stomach clenched with anxious anticipation. What had occurred in the time since she’d left him this morning? Yet even as the question popped into his head, he maintained his silence. As selfish as it may be, he wanted to eke out every possible second of this eye-of-the-storm time. His arms tightened around her as if he could trap them in this precious gloaming. The time to let her go and watch her walk out of the apartment and away from him would arrive soon enough.

  “There are videos, Gabe.” Her voice, husky from her emotional tempest, was a soft, weary confession in the quiet of the room.

  He stiffened, shock rolling through his body like a lightning bolt. What the hell is she talking about?

  “Richard raped so many boys. And he recorded the acts. He kept a collection. My God, Gabe.” Her fingers curled into his skin. “He molested his own stepson. How could he…?” She shuddered violently, and Gabriel squeezed her closer even as the depths of Richard’s evil rolled over him in a tidal wave of horror.

  “How did you find out?” he asked.

  “Renee,” she replied, and revealed the details of her visit to Richard’s ex-wife.

  As Gabriel listened, his revulsion and terror grew. Five boxes full of tapes. How many boys had Richard violated, damaged, stealing their innocence? How many lives and souls had been tainted because of his perversion?

  The son of a bitch sickened him. And though Gabriel understood his callousness might make him a bit of a monster, he didn’t regret Richard’s death. Not for one second. He hated that Chay had been forced to take a life, hated the burden of the secret he and his friends had carried all these years, hated the pain Richard’s disappearance had caused the people who loved him…but, no. He couldn’t find remorse that the asshole was in the ground where he could no longer hurt anyone else.

  Richard had so much blood on his hands. Still did.

  Gently, Gabriel palmed Leah’s shoulders and eased her up. She gathered the sheet to her breasts as he rose and rested a shoulder against the headboard.

  “Did Nathan call you?”

  Her shoulders slowly straightened, and she lifted her chin to a stubborn angle.

  “Yes, he did,” she said. “It didn’t take long to figure out you’d called him first. I believe if I was a man, the term could be called cock-blocking.” Her eyes narrowed. “Nathan pulled me off the investigation.”

  “So why were you at Renee Pierce’s house, then?” He wouldn’t apologize for trying to protect her. She refused to listen to reason—a psycho had already attacked her. Continuing to dig into Richard Pierce’s past would only enflame the perpetrator’s anger and paint an even bigger target on Leah’s back. Gabe would do anything to keep her alive and safe, even if protecting her meant going behind her back and playing dirty.

  “Nathan is my employer, not my keeper. Neither are you,” she added grimly. “I believed going to Renee’s would provide more answers. And it did. Now we have material evidence strengthening Chay’s claim of self-defense. And I’m not sorry about taking the risk. Gabe,” she said quietly. “I’m not Maura.”

  An immediate objection rose inside him. He’d never expected her to be like Maura. He— Hell.

  Do I? He stared at Leah. Yes. Yes, I do.

  Until the night she died, he hadn’t worried about his wife’s safety. He hadn’t harbored concern over whether or not he would find Maura unscathed at the end of the day.

  First a police officer and now a private detective, Leah wouldn’t be content with the sheltered life Maura had led. Leah was a protector, a champion; it was her nature. She would demand to shield instead of being shielded.

  He closed his eyes. Snapshots of time flashed across his eyelids: Leah checking up on him, a plate of food in hand. Leah holding him in her arms as he sobbed his grief over his family. Leah twisting and arching beneath him in sweet, sensual abandon.

  Leah bursting through the front door of her home, bleeding and bruised.

  “When I was a kid, my mother dated men who…hurt her,” he murmured, meeting Leah’s gaze. He searched her face, touching on every feature, committing them to memory. “I remember hiding in my room, helpless, listening to her being slapped and punched by men she invited into our lives.”

  “Gabe,” Leah breathed, brushing a caress over his jaw.

  “I couldn’t do anything to defend her then, but when I met Maura, I swore she would never have to fear me, and that I would protect her with my life. Her and Ian. But I failed—I failed to keep my wife and son safe. Losing them broke me. I begged God to let me die with them.” He’d even bought a gun intent on joining them. Fortunately, the courage to take that final, lethal step had eluded him. “But you wouldn’t let me go. You nagged, bullied, and pushed me into living again, into feeling again. I didn’t want to desire another woman—a part of me still doesn’t. I’m a selfish coward, because I don’t want to need you. Because losing you—” He broke off as his throat went dry and closed on him. “Because losing you would destroy me. And I’m not ready.”

  A sad smile curved her lips. “I’ve loved you since I was sixteen years old, and I’ve lost you twice since then. First to Maura, and again to her death. If I lost you tomorrow, I’d grieve but at least I’d have had touched you, held you, loved you.” She cupped his cheek, smoothed the pad of her thumb over his bottom lip. “For me, whether it’s one moment or one hundred, you’re worth the risk. But I can’t make you want more. And I can no longer go on without it.”

  She slid from under the covers, gathered her clothes from the floor, and silently dressed. He sat, frozen. “I’ve loved you since I was sixteen years old.” Jesus. How had he not known? Yet if he thought about it, she’d shown him in a thousand different ways.

  God. Leah loved him.

  Stop her! his heart cried out. Don’t let her walk away.

  The words lodged in his throat. The finality in her tone and the resignation and acceptance that had darkened her beautiful eyes before she turned from him clawed at his chest.

  Again, his soul demanded he call out to her as she crossed the room, her spine straight, proud. But once more he remained silent.

  She was leaving him.

  And this time, he knew she wouldn’t come back.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Leah glanced across the conference room table to meet Raphael’s dark gaze. The short sleeves of his black, vintage Metallica T-shirt revealed vivid tattoos covering his arms from wrists to shoulders, and silver glinted at his eyebrow and ears. With the body art, piercings, and fierce scowl creasing his forehead, it seemed he should have been visiting Malachim’s law office as a client instead of a guest. He was an intimidating figure until you peered into his navy blue eyes and noticed the worry and fear lurking in their depths.

  “What now?”

  “We go to the cops,” Gabriel said, replying to Raphael’s question. “Especially now that we have the tapes.”

  Leah risked stealing a look at him. He stood in the corner of the conference room, arms crossed, knee bent, and foot pressed to the wall. As he’d done all morning, he avoided meeting her gaze, instead staring at some distant point above her head. The pain and disappointment tried to swell inside her, but she submerged the hu
rt under reason and determination. Right now, they—she, Gabriel, Malachim, Rafe, and Chay—had decisions to make. She’d met the four men at Malachim’s office, where she and Gabriel had informed the other three about her visit with Renee the previous day and the video tapes. God. She briefly closed her eyes. The grief and shame in Chay’s hazel eyes had nearly punched a hole in her stomach. She despised Richard for causing such suffering for the teenage boy Chay had been, and the haunted man he was today.

  Later—there would be plenty of time later to excavate the pain of Gabriel’s rejection and wallow in it.

  This moment was about Chay.

  “After all this time?” Raphael challenged. “Who’s going to believe us twenty years later? I say we find this asshole—”

  “And how do we do that?” Gabriel snapped. “We don’t even know where to start.”

  “Richard,” Leah murmured. “It starts and ends with Richard. The person who broke into my house is the same one who sent the letter and the flyer. For some reason, he turned on me, thought I made a better casualty than investigator.” She paused, having already considered the angles. “Before running out of the house, he said, ‘Tell my special boy I said hello.’ When Gabriel and I visited Catherine Pierce, she called Richard her ‘special boy’ several times.” Leah shifted her hands to her lap, hiding them under the table so neither Gabriel, Malachim, Raphael, nor Chay could see the nervous twisting and clenching of her fingers. She’d never forget the malicious glee in her attacker’s sibilant whisper. Never. “Catherine displayed a…fanatical desire for revenge. What if she’s the one who sent the letter? She hated seeing Gabriel with me. What if she decided I wasn’t giving the investigation enough effort and sent someone after me? Punishment for failing, maybe.”

  “Special boy?” Chay rasped from the end of the table.

  “Chay?” Malachim half rose from his chair next to Leah. “What’s wrong?”