At that moment, he drills his tongue into my clit, his arms like iron on my thighs. It was a warning. The pleasure was a warning. What comes next is a tidal wave. I get my knuckles to my lips just before my vision goes white. I’m nothing. Pleasure. Sugar. Nerves. Nothing.
Gabriel brings me down with long, slow licks. Kisses the crease at my thigh. Looks up at me from between my legs.
He’s still taking care of me.
It’s not how it used to be when we met, when he touched me and gave me pleasure to get something.
But it’s stillaboutme, and it has to be about both of us. That’s what I said the morning we brought Nate back from the hospital, and he agreed.
“I want to ask you something.”
“Hmm?” He drags his eyes away from my pussy.
“Do you really think I’m not a monster?”
He presses a soft kiss to my clit. I feel it all the way to the top of my head. “I really think you’re not a monster.”
“So…you trust me.”
Another kiss to my clit. His smile flashes when I shiver. “With my life.”
“What about…your body?”
Gabriel stills. “What?”
I don’t actually know how to ask this. “When Nate came home from the hospital, we were in the shower, and…you let me touch you.”
“Yes…”
“I think you were into that, because you camesohard. You were…” The memory’s vivid. It helps that Gabriel’s actually between my thighs at this moment. “You were shaking.”
“Elise, what are you—”
“You’ve been trying so hard to convince me that I’m a good person. That I’m not evil. And…I accept that. I accept that I’m a good person.” The sex-haze is, in a surprise twist, clearing my head. “I also accept that I’m willing to do evil things to protect the people I love. I won’t pretend I didn’t do those things. I won’t pretend I don’t love you enough to do what it takes.”
“Sweetness—”
“What I mean is that you don’t have to pretend, either.”
“I’m not pretending.”
“Holding back, then. Not confronting your sex hang-ups.”
He narrows his eyes. “I don’t have sex hang-ups.”
“If you can love me as a complicated person who sells baked goodsandcame up with two separate murder plots, why can’t I love you as a person who likes to…to fuck andbefucked?”
Gabriel’s mouth drops open.
I forge ahead. “I think youdolike that. You liked it when I touched you, and from context clues, you liked it before your parents died. And I totally understand why you didn’t want that after what happened to you.”
“After the guy attacked me in the alley.” His arms tense when he says the words, but he doesn’t disappear like he did the night of the initiation.
“Yes. After he assaulted you. But I would like to…to give some pleasure back to you. If you trust me. If you’d let me. I want to try it with you. I want to try everything with you.”
There’s a long silence. Gabriel runs his hands up and down my thighs.
“Youwant to do this.”