by Stasia Black
“Come on,” Gabriel said, standing up. “Time for bed.”
“Just one more story,” Alex said, a whine entering his voice.
“Boys who want to be tucked in better get moving. Now.”
Alex’s shoulders dropped but the next second he’d hopped up off the couch. “Last one to the room’s a rotten egg!”
Tim had continued looking bored out of his skull for Bible story time, but all of the sudden he shot to his feet and raced after his brother.
“You’re a rotten egg!” he yelled, grabbing Alex by the shoulders at the last moment and slipping in the room in front of him.
“No fair. Dad. Dad, did you see that? He cheated!”
Gabriel shook his head. “Boys. How many times have I told you not to run in the house?” He looked exhausted as he crossed the room to deal with them. Alex and Tim just started arguing with each other about who was right. Which quickly devolved into a wrestling match.
“Boys!” Gabriel said sharply, but they ignored him. Gabriel hurried across the room and pulled them off each other, hauling them into their bedroom. As soon as he shut the door behind him, their voices cut off.
Okay, time to get Gabriel alone as soon as he got the boys settled.
She slid out from underneath Jonas’s arm. “Didn’t you say you were going to go check on your harvest or whatever after dinner?”
He pulled back, one eyebrow lifted. “You trying to get rid of me, gorgeous?”
She felt herself blushing. “No. I just—” There was no way to explain why she wanted the alone time with Gabriel. She waved a hand. “I—”
“You’re cute when you’re flustered.”
He pulled her close and landed a kiss on her forehead. Then his grip around her tightened and his lips moved to her lips. He kissed her deep, the bright, citrusy flavor of the orange he had for dessert sweet on his tongue.
When he pulled back, she was more than a little breathless.
“I should be back in about an hour. Try not to fall asleep before I get home.”
She licked her lips and nodded. “I’m suddenly feeling very awake.”
He grinned and her heart did a little skip. He gave her hip a squeeze and then he was off, heading for the front door.
God, how did she still feel like a schoolgirl in the middle of all the stress she was under? These men had her so addled.
She tilted her head as she watched Jonas go. The saying sad to see you go but happy to watch you leave popped in her head.
Because damn but that man had a fine ass.
She let out a little sigh as the door shut behind him. She picked up the plates she washed and was about to put them back in the cabinet when Gabriel came out of his and the boys’ room.
It was all quiet inside now. He’d obviously settled them down.
He was such a good father.
There was no way he could be Jason’s spy, no matter what she’d found. There had to be some other explanation for it.
Then she frowned. It was because she was a good mother that Jason had been able to so easily get her to work for him.
What if he was somehow doing the same to Gabriel?
She set down the plates and walked out to the living room. “Hey. Can we talk?”
“Sure. What’s up?”
Shay glanced behind him at the door he’d just closed.
“Maybe in the back yard. Or upstairs in the bedroom.”
Gabriel’s eyes widened. “The backyard sounds good.”
He still rarely joined her and the others in bed. What was holding him back? He’d come in the room a couple more times since the first, but he always stood by the wall and masturbated without ever touching her.
Could he not bear the intimacy of sex with her because he was keeping a big secret? Like the fact that he was working for Jason?
…Or—she swallowed as another horrible possibility struck her—or was it because he knew exactly how jealous Jason could get? Did he know that if he ever stuck his dick anywhere near her and Jason found out, Jason might—
The thought made Shay sick but she still pasted a smile on her face and held out a hand toward the kitchen and the back door. “After you.”
Gabriel cracked a smile. “I think that’s supposed to be my line.” But he passed in front of her, going to the back door and holding it open for her.
The sun was just setting but the air was still so hot that when you breathed in, it felt like you were being smothered in a blanket from the inside out. Summer was really settling in now.
Shay sat down on one of the lounge chairs that they kept a towel slung over so it wouldn’t burn your ass.
“Hold that thought,” Gabriel said, lifting a finger and then jogging back into the house. A couple minutes later he came out with two big glasses of water.
Shay’s heart melted a little. He was always so conscientious like this. Thinking of the little things.
He handed her one of the cups and sat down in the lounge chair beside her. He smiled at her and then looked out at the sunset. He didn’t say anything, just looked happy to be there sitting with her. She’d noticed this about him. He was never in a rush to fill the silences like Charlie or crack a joke like Rafe. He had a calmness to him she envied.
Could he really sit there looking so peaceful if he was secretly working for Jason? She frowned. He was a good man. A religious man. Surely if he was working for the enemy he’d feel conflicted about it.
Or would a man so devoted to his sons have made peace with the sacrifices he was forced to make if he felt his sons were in danger?
Her mind went back to what she’d found earlier when she’d searched his room. His had been the final one she’d looked in. Frankly, along with Charlie, he was the last she’d suspected.
Turned out she should have looked there first.
She almost hadn’t found it, either. Under his pillow there was a framed picture of a woman who looked like Alex. Obviously his mother. Gabriel’s wife. What had happened to her? Xterminate most likely.
Shay had almost stopped right there. It hurt to see how obviously he still loved her. Which was ridiculous. Of course he should still love the mother of his children.
And Shay hadn’t gotten married so she could fall in love.
She’d gotten married so she could betray an entire town and serve them up on a platter to Colonel Arnold Jason Travis.
If she was going to put a stop to it, she had to put aside hurt feelings and continue. Leave no stone unturned.
So then she’d lifted up Gabriel’s mattress and searched underneath. At first there was nothing. But when she kept reaching?
There, in the center of the mattress, she felt something. Her heart sank as she pulled out the small notebook and started flipping through it.
It was a detailed accounting of crop rotations, what was planted when, and the locations and amounts of ration stockpiles around town. Along with detailed drawings of the irrigation system.
All extremely valuable intel Jason would need when he took over.
Her stomach dropped the more pages she flipped. It was all in Gabriel’s handwriting, too. He’d made all these notes. Some pages were filled with math calculations in addition to notes, stuff Shay couldn’t follow at all. Gabriel obviously had a lot more potential than just as a day laborer.
Was that Jason’s angle in with him? Had he promised Gabriel a position as director of architectural operations in the territory or something?
Or was it like Jason had done with her—both threaten and promise?
Both would fit with Gabriel’s central goal of helping his kids have the best life possible. If he had a better job, he could give them more. And keep them safe from whatever Jason might have threatened.
Shay turned to Gabriel as he took a long drink of water.
“Why’d you put your name in the lottery, Gabriel?”
He looked over at her, surprised. “For my boys,” he said. “I told you.”
She stared at him. He was t
he sort of man you looked at and just thought, masculine. His hair was so thick and dark and he always had a five o’clock shadow growing in by the time he got home from work, even though he shaved meticulously every morning.
“You work hard for them. Jonas told me that before we got married, you used to work seven days a week trying to give them all the best in life.”
He nodded, gaze going back out to the orange and purple sunset. “I want them to have all the things I never had growing up. My parents came here from Mexico determined to make a better life for our family. I’m determined to do the same thing.”
Shay frowned. “But if your parents spent their whole lives trying to give you a better life than they had, and you spend your whole life trying to give your sons a better one than you had, well… when do any of you get to actually enjoy life while it’s happening?”
“Well that’s not—” He broke off. “They’re all that—”
“Matter?” she asked softly, completing his sentence. “What about you? Don’t you matter?”
He paused, blinking. “I mean, I do, I guess. But they come first. Always.”
Shay nodded. She understood it, the way he was thinking. After all, it was how she’d justified so many of the things she’d done.
Marry five strangers?
If it was for Matt and Nicky, fine.
Plant bugs in people’s houses, all right, she’d do that too.
Help Jason take over an entire territory, even knowing the terrible, terrible things that would happen in the process?
Shay looked back out at the sunset. The purple-blue was overtaking the orange as the sun dipped below the horizon line.
“So you’d do anything for them?”
“Anything.” His answer was immediate.
She glanced his way. “Eat a scorpion?”
He chuckled. “Yes.”
“Jump off a cliff?”
“Yes.”
“Kill somebody?”
There was a moment’s hesitation and he looked disturbed by her question, his eyebrows furrowing. But he didn’t blow her off. Finally, he nodded. “If it meant saving Alex or Tim’s life, then…” he swallowed. “Yes. I’d do whatever it took to keep them safe.”
Whatever it took.
Shay swallowed, looking down at the dried-up grass of the lawn. Grass in Texas never stayed green. Before The Fall, some of it was green, but only because people had extensive sprinkler systems. It was hard enough to keep the crops irrigated with river and spring water, and that only worked because of some clever engineering.
But she was just stalling now. Anything to avoid the matter head on.
She took a deep breath as she looked over and found him watching her. Their gazes locked. “But if you did that, if you killed someone for them. And they found out about it…” she trailed off, not knowing how to put what she was trying to say. “Well, wouldn’t that sort of ruin their lives? Them knowing you’d sacrificed your morals for them?”
“Especially since they’re little mirrors of us. The biggest impact we have on them isn’t what we tell them, it’s what we show them. The way we live our lives.”
This time when she looked back at Gabriel, it was to study him for any little tell. A tic in his eye. The slightest twitch of his mouth.
Anything that would give her the tiniest hint that her words resonated with him in a significant, possibly Jason-related way.
She got nothing. Just that slight crease in his brow.
“What are you getting at with this, Shay? Do you think me working so much is fucking them up or something?”
He didn’t sound mad but he was definitely more than a little on the defensive side. Was his question a deflection?
How else could she find out what she wanted to know without just coming out and asking?
Would you go as far as feeding information to the enemy? Will you be reporting back about this very conversation?
Shay knew she should keep pushing. Maybe if she told him she’d found the notebook? That she just came across it accidently while she was cleaning?
Yeah, you lifted his mattress up and shoved your arm all the way underneath to the armpit… accidently. While you were dusting.
Because that was believable.
If Gabriel was working for Jason and she tipped him off, what would happen then? What would Jason do if he thought she was poking her nose where she shouldn’t?
“If I get even a whiff of you blowing off this mission or fucking it up…” Jason said, and that was when Jason had motioned the bastard holding Matthew to nick his throat with the knife.
“Forget about it,” Shay said, standing up abruptly. She hadn’t thought this all the way through. She could all too easily fuck everything up.
She’d regroup and figure out another approach.
“Shay? What the hell?” Gabriel stood up too. When she tried to move around him to go back in the house he got in her way.
She stopped short, looking up at him.
“Why did you really bring me out here to talk, Shay?”
His brown eyes were intense as he looked down at her, his face shadowed in the dim light of the setting sun.
She searched his eyes. “Why won’t you sleep with me?” she blurted.
He let out a quick breath and took a small step back. Like he was afraid of her.
Her? Or Jason?
The thought pissed her the fuck off.
“Wow,” Shay said. “You can’t even bear to be too close to me, can you?” She closed the small gap between them, laying her hands on his warm chest. “Why is that, Gabriel? Do you not find me attractive?”
Gabriel barely seemed to breathe as she slid her hand down from his chest to his stomach. And then lower.
His entire body jerked when she made contact with his cock through his jeans and her eyes widened in surprise. She thought she’d have to rub him a little bit but he was already fully hard, cock straining against the denim.
But yet again, he pulled back. When she looked up, he was shaking his head. “You don’t understand. I made a promise.”
Shay’s mouth dropped open.
“To who?” To Jason?
Gabriel took another step away from her, hands up. “God.”
“God?” Shay felt her eyebrows shoot to her hairline.
He nodded fervently. “I promised him if he would just give the boys a mama, I’d spend the rest of my life obedient and celibate.”
Shay crossed her arms over her chest. He had to be kidding. Everyone made rash promises to God when they wanted something. No one ever took them seriously afterwards.
No, her Jason hypothesis was much more likely.
And screw that. Screw Jason and screw Gabriel if he was working for Jason.
She kept eye contact with Gabriel as she reached down and took the hem of her dress in her hands. Then, without another word, she lifted it up and over her head.
By the time she was free of the cotton fabric, there was just enough light left to see the dumbstruck expression on Gabriel’s face.
She undid her bra next, letting it fall down her arms and drop to the ground at her feet. Then her panties until she was standing completely naked right as twilight fell.
Gabriel shook his head even as she stepped closer. And when she reached for the arm hanging limply at his side, he only stared at her hand as she grasped his wrist.
His hand stayed mostly limp but he did lift it when she urged him to. And when she pulled it so that his palm curved around her breast, he squeezed like it was an instinctual response.
A long, low breath hissed out through his teeth. “Te deseo,” he whispered under his breath. “Quiero besar todas las partes de tu cuerpo.”
Shay’s brows furrowed. “What does that mean?”
But he just shook his head, his thumb skimming ever so gently over the tip of her nipple.
Now it was Shay’s turn to gasp.
She’d ripped all her clothes off to make a point. Or something. She’d been p
issed, anyway. And looking for control, if she was honest.
Was it fucked up that the way she kept doing that was to flaunt her sexuality. Yes, of course it was. But the more Gabriel flicked her nipple, the more all her fury was finding a very different focus.
The need that rose up inside her like a sudden wave caught her completely by surprise.
Friction. She needed friction.
She hiked one leg up and wrapped it around Gabriel’s hip, grinding her center up against his hardness.
And when he sat back down on the reclining lounge chair, she was only too happy to follow him.
She climbed over him and ripped his shirt open, not caring that the buttons went flying. It was even hotter, in fact.
She just had to get at his skin. Had to touch his skin. The skin she knew would be burning for her.
When she slid her hand down his chest to the inside of his jeans, he was whispering in Spanish again, but this time it sounded like he was cursing.
He had his hands clenched on the side rails of the lawn chair but when she looked up at him, she saw his eyes were focused on everything she was doing as she lowered her head, kissing down the path her hand had just taken.
His stomach was hard and muscled, and she felt him suck in a sharp breath when she licked the trail of hair leading down from his belly button into the top of his jeans.
When she yanked the button loose, he let out another string of Spanish. This time Shay could make out two words, repeated over and over. Dios mio, Dios mio, Dios mio.
But when she got her hands in his boxers and pulled out his ramrod stiff cock?
He fell completely silent.
The only sounds were the crickets, the wind, and Gabriel’s heaving breath as she jacked his shaft up and down several times while teasing her tongue along the small slit at the tip.
She decided to stop torturing him, though, and give them what they both wanted.
She popped his crown in her mouth and felt his whole body go tense. God it was intoxicating to have so much control over a man. To know that in this moment, his very existence balanced on the flick of her tongue or the twitch of her hand.
But then his hand dropped to her head. She wasn’t wearing her hair in a ponytail today, thank God. And even so, Gabriel wasn’t trying to pull her hair.
