He swore that before the end of the night he'd have her calling out his name.
"Gabriel."
Dazed eyes looked up at him. He wondered if she could see clearly. Lord knew, he hadn't even come yet, and he was confused. Distantly, he was aware of the sound of the chanting he'd heard earlier in his ears play again. It wasn't distracting. It was comforting. In the same way he'd known he was doing the right thing earlier, he knew he was doing it again.
Not that he'd had any question that having sex with Loraine was correct. It was nice to know the universe agreed.
Pulling off his boxers, he was keenly aware that he was about to live a moment he would never be able to redo. He was about to make love to his soul mate for the first time. It was a once in a lifetime event that most people would never get to experience since most people would never know their other half. God, he was so lucky.
"Gabriel, you okay?"
He smiled. "I'm not going to cry if that's what you're worried about."
"I might."
"Yeah, but you're a girl."
She swatted at his shoulder. "You think?"
Positioning himself at the edge of her opening, he looked down at her eyes. They'd gotten huge.
"What's wrong?"
"Um," she seemed to be searching for a word.
"Just say it."
"You're really, really big."
He wanted to be complimented, but somehow he didn't think she said that as a good thing. "Are you worried that it will hurt?"
Frankly, he was worried about that for her too, at least in the beginning. If there was a way to prevent discomfort, he was distinctly uneducated on the subject.
"I'm worried it won't fit."
Leaning down, he nuzzled his head against her neck. "It'll fit, beautiful Loraine. I promise you that."
He raised his head to look at her as he placed a gentle kiss on her lips.
"Then let's do it. Take my virginity."
"I love the way you say things."
And he was happy to offer her what she wanted.
More than happy.
Chapter Fourteen
Loraine gasped as Gabriel's long shaft entered her body. Wow, after an initial pinch, the discomfort she'd worried about passed quickly and was fast forgotten. She'd never felt so… full… and it was Gabriel she was full of. It was stimulating. It was so damn right.
She could have giggled over the fact that her thoughts were becoming profane, using Gabriel's choice words, but then Gabriel moved and all thoughts of any coherence left her.
The world became nothing more than waves of passion filled with color and delight. It was like she'd never known her body before, never known how completely she could feel things until she had Gabriel moving inside of her. The chanting that had filled her ears when they'd started kissing became louder now. It added to her pleasure.
She moaned and bit down on Gabriel's lip. She wanted to taste him, wanted to eat him alive. She just wanted… more.
As if he knew exactly what she wanted, Gabriel pressed harder inside of her. She screamed his name, maybe more than once. She wasn't sure, and it didn't matter because something was happening to her. It was similar to when Gabriel had stroked her with his hands but more, oh, please, more.
Pleasure, so intense she saw stars before her eyes, exploded inside of her accompanied by a rising crescendo of chanting. It was beautiful. It was spiritual. It was perfect. Seconds later, she felt Gabriel follow her into oblivion. Opening her eyes, she grabbed his cheeks between her hands. Pulling him to her, she kissed his lips, his nose, his eyelids.
He was her soul mate. She'd known how she felt about him before they'd made love. It had been clear to her that she was well on her way to falling in love. Now it felt like their souls had bonded, like they really were two halves, each needing the other one to be complete.
"You're mine, Loraine."
Gabriel's rough voice brought shivers down her spine. His eyes were heated as he looked at her through lowered lids.
She stroked the side of his face. "I love you, Gabriel."
Maybe it was fast, but she felt it. She knew she was supposed to feel it. They'd been selected by Fate to be together and fight the Darkness, but Gabriel was so special. She knew if she'd just been a 'normal' girl and she'd met him in a bar she would have tried to keep him forever.
He sucked in his breath. "In my whole life, no one has ever said that to me before."
Unable to stop touching him, she ran her hand down his aristocratic nose. "I'm sure that's not true. I bet you parents said it to you as a baby."
"Okay, so no one I can remember has ever said it before."
She smiled, feeling deeply content and sated. Letting go of Gabriel's face, she stretched beneath him and closed her eyes.
"Hey, don't go to sleep."
He kissed both her eyelids, and she opened them. "Was there something you wanted?"
She wasn't sure she was ready for another round. And she'd heard men needed recovery time, but she was willing to give it a go if he was up for it already.
"I want to say it back."
Shaking her head, she touched the end of his long brown hair. She'd never thought of herself as a person who'd like long hair but if Gabriel cut his she'd mourn the loss of it.
"Say what back?"
He looked like he'd swallowed an egg. "I want to tell you—I love you too."
Tears filled her eyes, and she let them fall. She felt so safe at the moment; she knew it was okay to let herself give in to her tears and not fight them back. Besides, they were happy tears.
She'd known Gabriel loved her. But he was touchy. She had kind of thought it would take him a long time to convince himself it was okay to say it. The fact that he'd just shared his feelings so easily was huge.
"I knew you did. I was content to wait until you were comfortable."
"So you'd already decided I was going to be a mess about it?" He seemed to consider this for a second as he rubbed his nose. "Okay, I can see how you could have come to that conclusion."
"That's good." She paused. She loved him, but a lot of this was new ground for her. "We're not going to have another fight?"
"I'm not a twelve-year-old. I can decide not to have a fight."
She raised an eyebrow. "Really?"
"Very funny." He stood up and she immediately missed him on top of her. Moving off the bed, he looked over his shoulder, his long brown hair displaying over the top half of his back. Still, she got a very fine view of his firm ass. "I'm going to get a drink. What can I bring you?"
"What do you suppose he has in the fridge if he's been gone a month?" Or if he had anything in there, did she want to drink it?
"Good call." Beautifully naked, he strutted out of the room. It gave her a thrill to see him like that. She might even be brave enough to stand up and follow him. No, she amended the thought. She'd probably still want to cover up. "I think it's going to be water at whatever temperature it comes out of the tap."
She smiled and snuggled down into the pillow just as the Gabe's cell phone, still located in the pocket of his pants, started ringing. He didn't have one of those specialized ring tones, just a buzzing noise that was somewhere between a vibration and a ring.
"Could you get that? I'm sure it's Leonardo calling to find out where the hell we are," he called from the kitchen.
She had no idea what took so long considering all he had to do was fill two glasses with water. Grumbling, she bent over and picked his pants off the floor. Finally, she pulled the phone out of the pocket.
Not looking at the display since she'd have no idea who it was anyway, she answered it.
"Hello."
"Um, yes, hello." The person on the other end of the phone was male and had an accent. French, she thought, although she wasn't always good at telling.
"Hi, this is Loraine. Are you looking for Gabriel?" She assumed he was. She spoke, after all, on his phone. But it was one of those awkward situations where she just wasn'
t sure what to say.
"Well, Gabriel, yes, but they also gave me your name."
They gave her his name? Who? She opened her mouth to ask, but he continued speaking.
"I'm afraid there is a bit of a situation. I'm supposed to tell you to go to Sebastian's house. Your friends are there. You understand? He has them. The bad man, whatever he is. I couldn't tell from where I was hidden. He had her chained in the basement, and I'm not certain what happened to the two men."
He spoke very fast, and his accent got in the way just about every other word but she could understand the gist of what he said. Somehow, this man, who still hadn't told her his name reported on the others who were trapped with the demon.
"What is your name?"
"I'm sorry. My name is Dr. Christophe Roux."
"Okay, Christophe." Her head hurt. She jumped out of the bed, unconcerned with her nakedness and made haste to the kitchen. "I'm confused. Can you explain to me…"
He interrupted her. "I'm afraid I can't. Look, I need to go. It's complicated. Please, your friends are in trouble. I would help but I don't know how. I'm… different."
Loraine sighed. "We're all different." But Dr. Christopher Roux had already hung up.
She ran into the kitchen. Gabriel stood over the stove. He looked like he was cooking pasta.
He turned as she entered. "Well, hello, naked gloriousness." His grin would have undone her if she hadn't been so worked up.
"That was someone named Christophe. He had your number. He said maybe Isabelle, Leonardo, and Kal are in trouble, if I understood him correctly, that they're locked in a basement. He claimed we had to go to Sebastian's house."
Gabriel turned off the burners. She felt panicked, but he looked remarkably calm. "Give me the phone, please."
She handed it to him, noting that her hand shook. Anything to do with the demon made her as anxious as anything. When she'd been in her wolf form, she hadn't been afraid. Stuck as a human, however, she'd been terrified so badly she hadn't been able to move even her legs to run away from him. And then he'd hit her with that heat. The scorching, blood boiling pain…
"Snap out of it. He's not going to hurt you."
Gabriel's voice in her head made her smile. At the moment, at least, she was safe. Just then she became acutely aware of her nakedness. Her cheeks got hot as she ran to the bedroom to reclaim her clothes from where they'd taken up residence on the floor.
She covered herself up one piece at a time. First, her underpants followed immediately by her pants and then finally her shirt. She'd just gotten the last button done when Gabriel stalked into the room.
He grabbed his boxers and threw them on. "I'd hoped we'd have time to shower together. However, it looks like we're needed to perform a miracle."
"So, you think it's legit."
"I can't reach Leonardo or Kal." He paused as he pulled his shirt over his head. "No one is picking up at the number where the person calling himself Christophe phoned from. I think we've got no choice but to check this out."
Loraine felt two very conflicting ways about what he just said. First off, she was happy that he thought enough of her to have included her in whatever plans he made. On the other hand, if he'd pulled one of his 'you will not come, you will not be put in danger' moments, she might not have objected.
God, she was such a scaredy-cat.
Gabriel slipped on his shoes, and she did the same. He sat down on the edge of the bed and pulled her onto his lap. She rested on his legs, and he kissed her cheeks, one and then the other.
"There's nothing wrong with being afraid of a demon."
She laughed, closing her eyes and letting herself breathe in Gabriel's spicy, male scent. "Am I that obvious?"
"To me. Listen, I don't want you anywhere near this anymore than you want to be, but it's clear I can't do this alone."
Opening her eyes, she hugged him tightly. "I don't want you to do this alone. I'm your partner, remember?"
"I know that, which is why I'm bringing you with me even though it's killing me to do so. But here's the thing, I think if you weren't afraid then you wouldn't be as smart as you are. Only someone really, really dumb could have gone through what you went through on the street with Sebastian and not be terrified to go back. As for me, I guess I'm just what Leonardo would call a warrior, a dumb warrior."
"You're built for it." She kissed his soft lips. "And, you're not dumb. I don't like that word, and I especially don't like hearing it in relation to you."
His grin made her heart leap. "All right, look, I'm going to try to keep you the fuck away from him. The first signs of things going badly, I want you to become a bird and fly away."
"I'm not going to abandon you. I don't care how frightened I am."
Anger at the thought surged through her blood. The very idea that he thought she would leave him made her want to smack him over the head with a pillow.
"Either you leave or I'll send you away like I did earlier in the parking lot."
She narrowed her eyes. "That's playing dirty, Gabriel."
"Where your life is concerned, I don't fool around."
Standing, she moved off his lap to cross the room. "And how do you think I would feel if something happened to you? You think I'd just be fine to move on?"
"I land on my feet, Loraine. One way or the other, I will get to you, eventually."
She shook her head. "Not good enough."
"It's going to have to be." He stood and extended his hand. "Come on, I guess I'm going to get to show you where I lived as a teenager."
She took his hand, and he pulled her against him before picking her up into his arms. Carrying her outside, he took two running steps, which jolted her around a little bit, before taking off into the sky.
"Do you ever worry about getting spotted doing this?" she shouted to be heard over the wind in her ears.
"No. I never have been. People only see what they want to see, and Leonardo tells me that most of what we do seems to be protected by the magic that we do it with."
"In other words, I could shift into a wolf on a crowded street and no one would notice."
He was silent for a moment, and she wondered if he'd heard her. "They might not notice the shift; they would probably notice the wolf running around."
That made an odd sort of sense. She still needed to adjust her thinking to the idea that she was involved in magic of any sort. Maybe she'd been engaging in a lot of cognitive dissonance, but she'd never considered her ability to speak to animals to be anything other than odd. Everything about her life had to shift in her mind if she was going to make order out of any of this.
She had so many questions. Which ones to ask? "How did Sebastian make those people do what he wanted in the parking lot?"
"I don't know. Truth is, even though I've spoken to Leonardo every day since I last saw them, I asked him very little about the Outsiders. I was a little consumed with spying on Sebastian and trying to convince Alexa to leave him."
"She was your priority. You're loyal to her."
The wind made Gabriel's hair fly all over the place. Her own hair flapped in the wind and occasionally hit her in the face. She suspected she didn't look as cool as Gabriel did, and if anyone could see them, they probably saw a blur of orange flying here, there, and everywhere. Fortunately, it was night.
"I am loyal to her. Having said that, I think it might be time to ask her to choose."
"You or Sebastian?"
He squeezed her arm. "Yes."
She hated to ask him what she knew she needed to say. "And if she chooses him?"
"Then I've lost a friend I've had since birth and…" His voice tapered off.
"And what?"
"God help us all, because as powerful as Leonardo is, Alexa puts him to shame."
With those words still ringing in her ears, they landed on the ground with ease. She'd flown with Gabriel a few times now, and each time she was amazed by the ease with which he did it. Asking him how he did it would be fruitless;
she couldn't explain to him how she became an animal. She just did it.
Loraine stared up at the house they landed in front of. It looked kind of normal. The street was beautiful, but then she found all the architecture she looked at in New Orleans to be stunning. Gabriel had called it 'Uptown', which meant they weren't in the French Quarter but in the part of the city near the universities that displayed traditional old southern wealth.
Up and down the street, the houses had wrap-around porches and lit lanterns reminiscent of a time long since passed. In the distance, she heard the sound of a streetcar rumbling a few blocks away.
"This is where you lived?"
He nodded. "It is."
She looked left and right before whispering. "Should we be keeping our voices down?"
"No. Unless he's hugely distracted, Sebastian knows we're here."
"Are you going to ring the bell?"
"It's my house. I'm going to walk through the front door."
She gulped but followed in his footsteps as he walked forward.
"When we get inside I want you to go immediately to the room that is all the way at the end of the hallway on the left."
She tried to compute what he said. Directions weren't her strong suit, but she thought she could handle that much.
Down the hall, to the left.
"What am I looking for in that room?"
"The books that we came here to get." Gabriel had his hand on the door handle. "If I'm not with you when you collect them, run out of the house."
"We discussed this. I'm not leaving you in there."
"Honey, we need those books. This entire thing will be in vain if we have to get out of New Orleans without them."
"I'll get the books out of the house. I'm not promising to not come back in after you."
Loraine suspected he gritted his teeth due to the way she could see his jaw muscles clenching. "Fine. You are being so stubborn."
She grinned despite the terror she felt forming in her stomach. If they got through this, she might never eat again.
"You'll get used to it."
Gabriel swung the door open. She followed close on his heels and entered the house.
The front hall opened up to the living room. A large room with fine looking furniture, all Loraine could see was Sebastian lounging on an ottoman. He glanced up and smiled at them as they came into the house.
Love Beyond Loyalty Page 14
