“Of course my mother.” He sounded like she was yanking out his teeth.
“Not ‘of course.’ I have no feelings for my father and terrible ones toward my mother. If you loved your mother and she loved you back, that’s good.”
“Well, I have grief over the loss of my mother, because I loved her. And terrible feelings toward my father. He couldn’t handle her loss at all. It was a nightmare. Because he loved her. He railed and wept and broke things. He told me love was agony and never to let myself feel it.”
For once Gabriel had stepped outside his jaded, impervious shell. He was breathing fire, snarling and showing his claws.
“I wouldn’t bother taking the advice of a man who was drunk and slurring from ten in the morning on,” he continued, “but he would grab me and cry against my chest, fall to his knees and tell me he loved me. He made me promise never to leave, never to get hurt or get sick or die. I was seven. I didn’t know how to promise that! And I don’t know if I loved him, but I do know it was agony.”
Oh, Gabriel. She swallowed, thinking of him being confused and grieving, then picked on at school. So alone.
Until he had money. Then everyone wanted to be his friend.
She abandoned her tea and went across to him, took off her earrings and made him give her his hand so she could put them in his palm.
“I love these. They’re beautiful. But I don’t want to keep them unless you want me to have them. You’ve given me things I need, Gabriel. You’ve given me someone who listens and draws me a bath and calls me intelligent. That’s far more valuable to me than anything you could buy me.”
She closed his fingers over the earrings, then ran her thumb across the hard bumps of his knuckles. She wanted to kiss his fist, which felt silly and too impactful. Emotions suffused her that she didn’t know how to express. There was gratitude, definitely, but other nameless things that urged her to reach out and offer, search for something in him, but give up to him at the same time.
“I have nothing to give you that equals any of that.” Her voice creaked.
His mouth opened in protest, but she squeezed his hand.
“Only me,” she continued. “And I want to. It’s okay if you don’t love me. But I want to touch you and hold you and feel those things you make me feel. I want to know what it might feel like if someone did love me.”
His breath hissed in and he pulled his hand from her touch, thrusting his closed fist into his pocket.
She set her hand on his chest. “I don’t want you to protect me from you or myself. I want you to let me become the woman I want to be.”
He made a strangled noise and pinched the bridge of his nose, eyes clenched shut.
“Please?”
“I’m only a man, Luli,” he said in a rasping voice. “When this all goes to hell, I want you to remember this moment. I tried to be honorable.”
CHAPTER NINE
“REALLY?” EXCITEMENT AND TREPIDATION and anticipation all came together in a war inside her.
“I’ve been wanting to tear that gown off you all night.” He opened his eyes and there was such atavistic light in his gaze, her heart stuttered.
“Don’t! I love it.” She looked down at her cleavage. “Plus there’s tape that will sting so bad if you pull it too fast.”
“You were put on this earth to drive me crazy. Go. Lock yourself in your room or meet me in mine. Now.”
She picked up her skirt and ran up the stairs, hearing him take them two at a time behind her. She let out a wild laugh, riding an adrenaline rush. She went straight to his room where she whirled to confront him.
He came in behind her, shirt open and pulled from his tuxedo pants, edges wafting like wings.
She gasped in awe at the sheen of his burnished skin stretched taut across lean muscles. He stalked her on panther feet and grasped her hips, dragging her into a soft collision with his bare chest. His mouth came down on hers in a blatant claim of ownership. His lips were hard. Devouring. Insatiable.
Her body responded in a flowering throb that made all of her hurt. She moaned at the pleasure-pain of it and he immediately dragged his head up.
“No?” he asked through gritted teeth.