by Jenna Mills
“You’re a good man,” she said, and the soft words serrated with a viciousness that almost had him putting a fist through the window.
He’d used her. He’d openly and deliberately used her to further his revenge against Marcel Lambert. And then when he was done with her, when she’d served her purpose, he’d not only discarded her, but had thrown her to the wolves.
“An honorable one,” she whispered, refusing to stop, despite the rigid way he stood. “Loyal.”
He could see more than just her steady progress through the reflection. He could see himself, the uncompromising stance of his body.
“You do the right thing for the right reasons.” With those words she closed the last of the distance between them. “You stand up for what you believe in. You care and you hurt.”
Her hand skimmed his shoulder. It should have been cool. There was no reason for warmth. But it was warmth that seeped through him.
And it was warmth that destroyed.
“I saw you the night you buried Alec—”
He twisted toward her so fast she had no chance to prepare. “Don’t,” he snapped, but she didn’t back away and she didn’t stop.
“And I’ve seen you with your family, your friends. With Jack last night, the way you dragged him from the fire…” Her eyes almost seemed to glow. “And me,” she whispered. “At the warehouse.”
The memory sliced back, the vicious moment he’d seen her sprawled beneath him on the dirty floor. “I hurt you.”
“But you didn’t mean to,” she countered, keeping her eyes steady on his. “You didn’t want to.” Almost hesitantly, she moistened her lips. “Don’t you think I know that, Gabe? Don’t you think I know that you’ve been spinning for months now, trying to get a footing? To get back to the man you are?” Sliding her hand into his hair, she left only her thumb against the side of his face. “The man who tackled me, who taunted me, who kissed me at the fund-raiser…that’s not you.”
He wanted to pull away. He needed to pull away, to quit looking into her eyes. Quit seeing. Quit believing.
Quit wanting.
“Yes—” he gritted the words out “—it is.”
Very little light made it to the back of the room, leaving only shadows to play against her face. “Everyone has a breaking point,” she whispered, and his chest wound even tighter.
Nothing prepared him for her to feather her mouth against his. Or for her words, dark, drugging. Broken. “And I’ve hit mine.”
He’d discovered Evangeline’s duplicity late one afternoon in November. The next day Val had died in his arms, and he’d realized everything he’d believed about her, the life they’d been building, had been a lie. He didn’t remember much after that, days, weeks, they all rolled together.
“You asked what I want,” Evangeline whispered with another little kiss to his mouth. “The answer is you.”
She was so soft. And sweet. Warm. He’d told himself it was all an illusion, part of the game the D.A. had asked her to play, but here, now, like this, there were no games, no agendas.
“And I have for so long.”
Just her. Evangeline. The woman he’d tried to carve out of his life, but who’d refused to go away, even when she should have. She’d come to him, the way she had so many other nights, when he’d found her in the darkness of his dreams.
“A few days before Christmas I woke up in my car,” he stunned himself by saying. “It was overcast.” Gray everywhere. “Cold.” His engine had been running. “And I didn’t know where I was—” he hesitated, gave her a moment to absorb what he was saying “—or how I got there.”
Her eyes went dark. “You don’t have to do this—”
“My mouth was dry.” Like cotton. And he’d smelled stale bourbon on his clothes.
She said nothing at that, just kept watching, touching.
“I was by the lake,” he told her.
Against the side of his face, her fingers tensed. “Alone?”
“An empty bottle of bourbon on the floor and pain pills in my lap.” Val’s semiautomatic on the passenger seat. But he didn’t tell Evangeline that, didn’t see any point. “I sat there a long time.” Because for the first time in his life, he flat damn had not known where to go. He could have called Cain or Saura, Jack. He knew that. But he hadn’t known how, hadn’t wanted them to see him like that. “The sun was trying to break through the clouds….”
Briefly her eyes closed, then opened.
“It was almost eleven when I got home and brewed coffee, took a shower.” He looked down at the dark hair falling into her face, but still, did not allow himself to touch. “Then I got a bottle of whiskey.” He could still see the way the clerk had looked at him, the pity in her eyes. “And a refill on my prescription.”
“No,” she whispered, and then came her other hand, lifted to the other side of his face with a tenderness that should not have been possible, not between them.
“And I put them on the counter.” Where he could see them every morning. “Everyone thought I was spinning out of control,” he said. Saura and John…Cain. One by one they’d stop by his house, checking up on him. “But I never took one sip, one pill.”
She slid her thumb toward his lower lip, where she rubbed.
“I just kept holding on,” he muttered. “So goddamned tight, because I knew if I let go again, for even one minute—”
Something hard and dark flashed through her eyes. “Don’t. Gabe. Don’t tell me to leave—”
Slowly he lifted a hand to her face. “I wasn’t going to.” And slowly he touched. “But if you stay—”
“Let go,” she said before he could finish. Then, softer, “Let go…”
The words slipped in through the shadows, and like a battered levee, the restraint he’d been exerting didn’t just let go.
It broke.
Chapter 12
E vangeline knew the exact second Gabe let go.
For so long he’d been holding back from her, separate from her, as if an invisible wall had slammed down between them.
She should have stayed away from him. That would have been the logical thing to do. She should have been glad when he’d exposed her role in the D.A.’s sting and turned his back on her. She should have welcomed the reprieve.
But it had already been too late, she now knew. From the moment he’d tackled her in the warehouse, the wall she’d hammered between them had started to crumble. He’d formed an unholy alliance with her not because of any lingering desire to be with her, but because he’d needed her.
Needed. Her.
The words punished. He crushed her in his arms and his mouth came down against hers, as his whiskers scraped her jaw and his hands tangled into her hair, as the heat of his flesh seared through her clothes.
“Evangeline,” he breathed as she opened to him, opened and gave and took. “Evie.”
Everything fell away—the distant past and the recent past, plans and strategies and reality—and she reached for him, yanked the thick towel from around his shoulders and put her hands to the hard planes of his back, even as he shoved at the denim jacket.
“Let go,” she said again, as her heart kept right on breaking. She’d never imagined—ever—how much he’d been holding back, how much control he’d been exerting to keep it all together.
To keep her away.
But she knew that now, felt it in the rough glide of his hands over her body and the greedy slant of his mouth. In his kiss she tasted a hunger that rocked her and a hurt that she wanted to chase away, the faint remains of coffee—but no whiskey. None, at all.
But I never took one sip, one pill.
He’d been testing himself, she realized. Not casually, as most people would do, but by putting temptation right in front of him. Every day. He’d tested himself and driven himself, isolated himself from everything and everyone who might have offered him an easy way out.
“You,” he murmured against her mouth, and the rhythm of her heart changed. “You wouldn
’t go away,” he said in a hoarse strangled voice. “Even when you should have.”
“No,” she whispered, loving the feel of him, all of him. Of Gabe. This was how she’d wanted him to come to her, with an unchained hunger that sang through her. It had killed her to stand on the sidelines and watch his world blow up around him, to not be able to go to him or help him. To hold him or love—
Love.
The word should have stopped her. Instead, it drove her, and all she could think was more. Now.
“So beautiful,” he muttered, sliding his mouth along her jaw to her neck. She heard the rasp break from her throat and arched into him, thrilling to the scrape of his whiskers against her neck. His hands moved restlessly along her back, as if he wanted to touch all of her at once. Take all of her.
More…
“Yes,” she urged as he slid a hand around her rib cage to cup her breast, and the heat curled deeper. “Yes…” And then everything went blank and mindless and she wasn’t sure who moved first, whether she dragged him or he dragged her; she only knew that his mouth returned to hers and the kiss deepened, even as they slammed into the closest wall.
“Yes,” she said again, and all she could think was now, more. Closer. Everything.
So long. For so long she’d waited. And for so long she’d denied. She’d almost lost him in the process. And now—
She ran her hands along the planes of his body, loving the corded muscles of his back and the strength in his arms. Then the flatness of his stomach, down the dark trail of hair to the waistband of his jeans, where she fumbled with the snap and the zipper. The need to feel him drove her. All of him. To feel and hold and love—
But his hands were moving, too, restlessly, almost frenzied, shoving the denim jacket from her arms as his mouth left hers and slid to her collarbone, sprinkled little kisses along her shoulder.
Let go, she’d told him.
Let go, she’d told herself.
But she’d never imagined…only dreamed. And then he was there, hot and hard and heavy in her hand, and everything fell away, everything but the need. The need for him. For this man. For Gabe.
Gabe.
He hiked her leg up around his hip and she felt him start to move, start to lift her from her feet. But that wasn’t what she wanted. She wanted here. She wanted now. Like this, with all the fire and passion and emotion boiling between them.
“No,” she murmured, pushing at his jeans.
He pulled back and looked down at her, rocked her with the dark cobalt gleam in his eyes. “Evie—”
Her slow smile defied the frenetic rush of her breath. She kept her eyes on his and lowered her leg, made quick work of her panties. Then came his jeans, down his legs and kicked from his ankles. And then she reached for him, slid her arms around his shoulders as she returned her leg to his waist and felt him pressed up against her. “Let go,” she murmured again.
Because she had. She’d let go. Of everything. Except Gabe. And the truth that rocked her world.
“This,” he muttered, but she didn’t know what he meant, didn’t want words. Just him. She threaded a hand through his hair and urged him closer, couldn’t stop the mewl that tore from her throat when his mouth slanted against hers as he braced her against the wall, curved one hand around her waist as his other slid between her legs and found her slick and ready.
Then he was there, Gabe, filling her, sliding deep. With a hoarse little moan she welcomed him, closing her eyes and arching into him as her bones threatened to melt. This, she realized as her body adjusted to the size of him. This. Him. “Gabe…”
He slid his mouth from hers and buried his face in her hair, started moving again, sliding out for one brief second before pushing back in. Again. And again. With each deep thrust her blood hummed and her body burned and she held him tighter, tighter. His skin was hot and slippery, and when he started to move faster, she knew she’d used her nails.
But then his mouth was on hers again, hers on his, claiming and seeking and wanting, needing, their bodies moving together with an abandon she’d never expected, giving and taking and…letting go, even as they clung to each other. Even as they held on.
“Gabe.” Maybe she spoke. Maybe she didn’t. There was no way to know, not when he rested his forehead to hers and drove in one last time, drove in hard and deep with a need that almost sent her to her knees.
Instead, she held on and simply shattered.
She still had her dress on. The slinky fabric prevented skin from touching skin, but did nothing to conceal the pounding of his heart. It slammed steadily against hers, as it had for the past…
Evangeline had no idea. No idea how much time had passed, how long they’d stood there in the shadows of his sparsely furnished living room. There was only the press of body to body, and the stillness and her dress bunched up between them.
She never would have imagined. She never could have imagined. Gabe was a man of control and rigor and discipline. Even his slow easy smiles were deliberate, calculated. He always had an angle. Always had a strategy. He never let go, never lost control.
Opening her eyes, she looked up at him, felt everything inside her start to rush. With his dark hair falling against his forehead and the glow to his eyes, the whiskers shadowing his jaw and his chest bare, he looked as though he’d stepped straight out of her dreams. Except for the wince.
And it stripped her bare. He was the one who stood completely naked, she the one with her dress still on, but she’d never felt more exposed in her life. She opened her mouth, found only a whisper. “Hey.”
The light in his eyes darkened. “Hey.” It was only an echo of what she’d said, but his voice was rough and raw, tentative almost, unsure. Then came his hand, the single finger to the side of her mouth. “You okay?”
The tenderness in his voice, of the flesh beside her mouth, rocked her. But then she remembered the roughness of his whiskers, and she knew why he looked so horrified.
This time the tenderness was hers, starting in her chest and streaming through her, warming everywhere it touched. And because she couldn’t stand it one second longer, couldn’t just stand there and not touch him, when he’d touched her so deeply, she lifted a hand to his mouth and skimmed her thumb along his lower lip.
“Why wouldn’t I be?” she murmured with a slow smile.
He didn’t move; she wasn’t sure he breathed. “You’re still dressed.”
And something inside her just melted. Gabe was one of those men who always knew what to do or say, how to handle a situation. Nothing rattled him. Nothing rocked him. But here, standing naked in the shadows of his living room, with his jeans in a heap on the floor, her panties tossed on top of them, with abrasions on her face and scratches along his back, he looked as if he didn’t have a clue what to do.
Because she still had her dress on.
The dichotomy charmed. It wasn’t fair to laugh. She knew that. But the look on his face, the hard line of his mouth and dark light to his eyes…Maybe it should have sobered her. Maybe it should have hurt or disappointed. But instead it endeared.
“Oops,” she said, and felt her eyes go heavy. She stepped into him then and dragged her hand down to his chest, where she skimmed her thumb along the mauve of his flat nipple.
“I’m thinking maybe you should let go more often,” she murmured, leaning in for a teasing kiss. He didn’t move, not when she used her tongue, not when she pulled him into her mouth. “Gabe,” she started, glancing up. But then she saw his face.
No one had ever looked at her that way, with a violent clash between need and restraint. No one had ever touched her while trying so very, very hard not to. No one had ever made her feel so very fragile, while at the same time so very, very strong.
This was the Gabe she knew, the Gabe she’d fallen in love with despite all the evidence she’d stacked against him. This was the Gabe who was in control and knew what he wanted, who went after it.
“Do you have any idea,” he rasped, and finall
y he moved, finally he reached for her, returned his hands to her body, “any idea at all what you do to me?”
All her life she’d been a dreamer. And all her life she’d found them through sleep. But for the first time, the dream started while her eyes were open.
“Maybe,” she said, and all those horrible shades of gray fell away, leaving only Gabe standing in stark relief. Gabe, whom she knew now; Gabe, whom she trusted.
Gabe, whom she wanted.
“But maybe you should show me,” she whispered, curving her arms around his neck. He slid his arms lower then, used them to lift.
Holding on, she pressed into him and wrapped her legs around his waist. She’d always known he was strong, that beneath those tailored suits was the body of an athlete. But nothing prepared her for the reality of him, his muscular legs and flat stomach, his chest. Tilting her face up, she drank in the feel of him moving against her as he strode from the living room. Their mouths met and she opened to him, threaded a hand through his hair as the kiss deepened and he carried her into the darkness.
She slayed him.
Through the midnight quiet Gabe could hear Evangeline’s breath, the rhythm of her heart. But she said nothing, not with words; asked no questions and made no demands, requested no promises. She just curved her legs around his waist and held on, kissed him as if she’d been waiting for him her whole life. He carried her through the shadows of the house he’d once shared with another woman, and finally he saw. Finally he knew.
She should have walked away. She should have stayed away. He’d given her every reason to. But she’d refused to turn her back on him, had kept vigil long after she should have given up.
But giving up was not an option. She was tough and gutsy and tenacious. She didn’t scare, didn’t run. Even when she should. Someone had threatened her tonight. Someone had gone to great lengths to bend her to their will. To break her. She’d come to Gabe as instructed, but that’s where the compliance ended. She’d reached out when she should have pushed.
She’d given honesty when lies would have been safer.
