by Nalini Singh
She tried, but she tossed and turned for the next two hours, a jagged hole inside her formed of the knowledge that she couldn't give Gabriel what he needed. When she heard movement, she got up and stepped out to find him seated with his back to the wall of her bedroom, his head in his hands.
"What are you doing here?"
"Making sure you're safe. That fucking monster almost had you."
He was breaking her heart. "No," she said, "he didn't." Taking his hand, she tugged. "Come on. Since neither one of us is going to sleep, let's go lie on the couch and watch movies."
It was a rough night. Charlotte fell asleep in patches against him, and he dropped off now and then, but neither one of them could fully wind down. She was frustrated with herself, and he was still riding a wave of fury.
It was a good thing the next day was a Saturday when Gabriel's high school team didn't have a game. Grumpy and sleep-deprived, neither one of them was in the best of moods, and it didn't help when she came downstairs after her shower to find Gabriel already on his laptop working.
Seated at the dining table, he'd grabbed a cup of coffee from the pot she'd put on to perk before her shower, but hadn't bothered to get any food.
"Gabriel, it's Saturday!" She threw up her hands. "Can you not forget about work for a single weekend?" He'd already brought work home every night this week.
A scowl over his bare shoulder. He was dressed only in sweatpants, his hair rumpled, and his jaw shadowed. "I'm just checking my e-mail."
"Work e-mail." Tightening the belt on her thin red robe, she began to crack eggs to make omelets. "None of it urgent if I'm guessing right--and even if it is, you pay people to take some of the load off. Delegate."
He slammed the laptop shut and got up, shoving his chair back. "Jesus, Charlotte. You've always known how much I work."
"And I've always thought you were heading for an early grave." She began to whisk the eggs. "You didn't belong to me before, so I couldn't say anything, but now you do, so I am."
"I'm as healthy as an ox."
"You don't rest, you don't relax--"
"I feel very relaxed after we fuck."
"Stop trying to make me back off by using words like fuck." She poured the omelet into the pan, so angry that she didn't even blush at getting the word past her lips. "I want to have a life with you. I don't intend to have a life with your job as a silent partner."
He growled at her, actually growled. "I am who I am, Charlotte."
"So am I--doesn't mean you haven't helped me heal." She put the omelet on a plate, shoved it onto the counter. "Eat."
"I don't need healing." He ignored the omelet.
It just made her angrier. She found a fork, put it on the plate. "So you're telling me I'm the only flawed one in this relationship?" After all, she was the one who couldn't even sleep with the man she loved beyond life.
"Fuck." He thrust a hand through his hair. "That's not what I said."
"It sure sounded like it." When he continued to ignore the omelet, she picked it up and began to eat herself. "Go then, work," she said after swallowing the first couple of bites. "I'm going to go out."
"Where?" He came around to loom over her.
"Wherever the hell I want." Charlotte slammed the plate with the half-eaten omelet on the counter.
Gabriel followed her upstairs to her bedroom when she stalked off. "Damn it, Charlotte, this discussion is not finished."
"If you want to finish it, you can come with me. Otherwise, go stare at your laptop!" She slammed the bedroom door--or tried to. He'd blocked it with his hand. "Go away. I'm about to change."
"I've seen you naked, Ms. Baird, and I intend to keep on doing it." Folding his arms, he filled the doorway, a big, brooding male who didn't think she'd take the dare.
Infuriated with him, she shrugged her robe to the floor.
Fuck.
Gabriel's cock went as hard as rock between one heartbeat and the next. Charlotte hadn't been wearing anything under that robe, and now she was standing all sweet and curvy and flushed with temper in front of him, her hair tumbled around her face. He didn't even think about it, just strode to her and picked her up, then threw her on the bed.
She gasped, her eyes flashing at him. "What do you think you're doing?"
Coming over her after tearing off his sweatpants, he braced himself on his forearms. "Finishing our argument." He tore off her glasses and threw them in the vague direction of the nightstand.
"Hah! I'm--"
He swallowed her words with his mouth, one of his hands gripping her breast. She shoved at his shoulders. Lifting his head, he said, "What? You want me." She always wanted him, and that was the hottest thing on the planet.
"I am really, really, really mad at you!"
"Good, we'll have angry sex." He kissed her again, thrusting his tongue deep into her mouth and squeezing her breast harder than he'd ever done before.
Shoving her hands into his hair, she pulled.
He jerked up his head. "What?" It was a snarl.
"We are not having sex," she said, chest heaving. "I'm going out."
He nudged his hips into hers, his cock shoving against her passion-damp entrance. She whimpered, her throat arching. He kissed it, suckling hard enough to leave a mark before tugging on her nipple and rolling the plump nubbin between his thumb and forefinger. Then he gave in to the beast inside him and moved down to bite at her breast while he firmly collared her throat with one hand.
She wrapped her legs around him, opening herself up to his possession. "Gabriel."
"Yeah?" Stroking his free hand along the back of her thigh, he shifted his voracious mouth to her other breast, sucking hard on her nipple before using his teeth again. He scraped up her soft flesh to her moan, fingers digging into her thigh.
Sucking in gulps of air, Charlotte finally said, "Please."
"Please what?" he demanded, rocking himself against her so that the very tip of his cock pushed into her before he pulled back out. It was torture, her grip scalding and possessive and so, so good.
Her nails dug into his shoulders, her hips lifting toward him. "You know."
"Say it." Kissing his way up her chest and to her throat, he squeezed the hand around that slender column just enough to get her attention. "Say it."
She moaned. "Fuck me, Gabriel."
It was all he needed to hear. Gripping her under her knee, he shoved her leg up and wide before he thrust into her in a single aggressive push. She gave an erotic little scream, then hauled his head down to hers for a kiss as wet and as raw as the sex. He rode her hard, made her come with rough caresses of her clit while he pumped in and out of her, and then, while her body was limp and sweaty, he pushed up both her thighs, spread her even wider, and drove himself to the hottest fucking orgasm of his life.
37
Charlie-mouse vs T-Rex: Championship Round
Coming to on top of Charlotte, his body pinning hers down and his happy cock snug inside her, Gabriel finally started to think. Shit. "Charlotte?"
"What?" She bit him on the shoulder. Hard.
It made him grin. "You're okay."
Glaring at him, she tightened her legs around his hips. "I'm still mad at you."
Rocking into her, his cock in fine form today, he squeezed one swollen little breast again. "You'll wear some bruises." Faint, but very clearly from his hand gripping her breast. Then there were all the reddened patches on her skin where he'd marked her up with his stubble, the dark pink stripes his teeth had left on her other breast, not to mention the kiss-swollen plumpness of her lips.
She looked thoroughly used, thoroughly his.
"Can you feel your back?" was the sassy response, hazel eyes sparking.
"Some hellcat clawed the life out of me." He kissed that same hellcat, got his tongue bitten for his trouble. "And she bites too."
Charlotte scraped her nails up his back again, over the ridges she'd already created.
He hissed out a breath and thrust hard into her a
couple of times. When she shuddered, he kissed her throat before reaching down to fondle one of her ass cheeks. "That was fucking incredible sex." Hard and rough and primal.
"You didn't touch my nape."
"So? We'll work on that." He kissed her sulky mouth. "As long as I can throw you on the bed like a caveman and pummel you to orgasm with my love-club, I'm good."
Her shoulders shook, a little snort escaping her as she said, "I am not laughing."
"And I'm not about to give you a love bite on your pretty breast." Which he then promptly did.
She demanded a kiss after, tussling with him as she threatened him with a love bite where he couldn't hide it, then arched her back in shivering pleasure as he began to move in and out of her once more.
He wasn't as rough this time, the caveman satisfied enough to have mellowed out. Instead, he petted her all over, kissed the marks on her skin, bit her playfully, and generally had a great deal of fun driving his Ms. Baird crazy. She got her revenge by digging her heels into his butt, sinking her teeth into his shoulder, and coming so fucking hard around him that he had not a prayer in hell of holding out.
An hour later, he finished washing the soap off his body while watching Charlotte dry her petite one. He'd made her deliciously sweaty and sticky. Sated, he wanted nothing more than to just sprawl on the couch with her, but she'd given him an ultimatum. Either they went out together, or she was going to go out on her own.
Gabriel didn't react well to ultimatums, but Charlotte seemed to think she was doing this for his own good. He had to set her straight.
Dressing in jeans and a striped rugby jersey while she put on a pretty yellow sundress teamed with a sky-blue cardigan, he ate the rest of the cold omelet as well as three pieces of toast. Then they went out.
He stopped at a coffee place to buy her a frothy thing, getting himself a plain black one.
"You should try this," she said to him. "It's yummy."
"Black coffee puts hair on the chest."
"In that case, I'll keep on avoiding it. But you go right on ahead, Mr. Love-club."
God, he loved her wit, loved even more that she trusted him enough to let down all her walls. "Where do you want to go?" he asked once they were back in the SUV.
"How about the Wintergardens?"
He pointed the car toward the Auckland Domain, the sprawling green space in the center of the city. Coming in through the entrance nearest the two huge old greenhouses known collectively as the Wintergardens, he drove past a small pond with a fountain and found a parking spot down the hill from the museum.
The majestic building at the top of the hill dominated the skyline, the lawns sloping down from it sheets of manicured green. Beyond the landscaped areas, complete with playing fields that included a cricket pitch, the Domain was full of old trees, the limbs thick and twisted and interesting.
"I love it here," Charlotte said, slipping her free hand into his with a cheerful smile.
Suddenly, it didn't seem so bad that he wasn't working on the files he'd intended to go through. Breaking the handclasp, he wrapped his arm around her shoulders instead. "Are you over the mad?"
"Nope." She drank more of her coffee. "We're going to talk about this."
"About what?" Finishing off his own coffee, he dropped the cup in the trash can right before they walked into the first greenhouse.
"Funny, Gabriel." Her face lit up at the profusion of blooms inside the glass structure built in the early 1900s, the vaulted ceiling high enough to be home to a number of large trees alongside the flowers.
"Oh," Charlotte said, "look at the daffodils."
Gabriel wasn't really a plant guy, but he was a Charlotte guy. He enjoyed her enjoying the plants, got rid of her disposable coffee cup when she was done, and made her stand under a hanging fern so he could take a photo with his phone. Laughing, she pretended the ferns were her hair, the resulting image making him grin.
"Let me see," she said, tucking herself under his arm.
"I demand payment." Leaning down, he took a sweet, hot kiss before the two of them walked out of the first greenhouse and outside. The long, rectangular decorative pool that separated the temperate greenhouse from the humid tropical one was full of lilies, the sunshine bright on the green of the lily pads.
The area around it was relatively empty except for a small girl who leaned on her hands and knees at the edge of the pool, looking intently within while her parents watched over her from a nearby wooden seat. Vines wound through the large pergola behind them. Running parallel to the pool, it offered fleeting glimpses of the marble statues within.
"You want to go into the other greenhouse or the fernery?" he asked Charlotte.
"Fernery."
Turning left, they walked into the cool enclosed garden covered only by crosshatching beams and filled with native ferns and trees, the pathway spiraling down in a gentle slope. An enthusiastic tui, the bird's song distinctive, was their sole companion. Charlotte didn't say anything as they walked around, then down the steps to the wooden bench on the second level.
"Sit with me."
Going down beside her, his arm along the back of the seat, Gabriel stretched out his legs. "I have to admit, this was a good idea." He felt no urge to go for his phone, the peace of the cool quiet seeping into his bones.
Charlotte put her hand on his thigh as she turned to face him. "Of course it was a good idea," she said, face solemn. "You needed to take a breath."
He frowned. "I like working, Charlotte."
"I know." Charlotte folded a leg up on the bench. "But you don't give yourself any time to just enjoy life. You're always going ten thousand miles an hour."
She could see the annoyance on Gabriel's face, feel the tension gathering in his thigh. He always got like this when she pushed him about how furiously he worked, but this time, she wasn't about to back down. "I love you," she said quietly, "and--"
Steely gray eyes locked with her own. "What did you say?"
It was so easy to say because it was him. "I love you."
Hauling her into his lap, he smiled, his cheeks creasing in that wonderful way she adored. "I love you too."
Bubbles of sunshine in her blood, she cupped his face. "I love you," she repeated. "That's why I can't bear knowing there's something inside you that hurts you." She had a good idea what it was, but he had to confront it himself if they were to make any headway.
The smile faded into masculine exasperation. "I'm fine, Charlotte."
"Hey." She wrapped her arms around his neck. "Don't do that. Don't shut me out." When he stayed stubbornly silent, she decided that since gentleness wasn't working, she'd take a page from his own book. "You're acting like the chickens."
That got her a narrow-eyed look. "Say that again."
She smiled. "Say what?"
"You're a riot, Ms. Baird."
"You know why you work so hard," Charlotte said. "Don't tell me you don't."
He blew out a breath. "I need to walk."
Getting up, they headed out of the fernery and the gardens altogether. Charlotte gave him the lead and he took them toward the beautiful old trees in the Domain, leaves rustling in the wind as they walked.
He spoke without warning. "It broke something inside my mother when we ended up in the shelter."
In him too, Charlotte thought--he'd been made utterly helpless, his foundations stripped away. It made her so angry at Brian. Never had she been more aware of Gabriel's strength and heart in finding a way to allow his father back into his life. "How rich are you?"
"Thinking of the divorce already?"
Elbowing him, she said, "I know you have lots of zeroes after your name. The apartment was a giant flashing sign, even if I didn't realize what you must've been paid as a sportsman, and what you're paid as a CEO, forget about your property portfolio and the stock options."
"Your point?"
"I'm getting there. A lot of your money, is, I'm guessing, either in banks, or in stable investments no one can touch wi
thout your consent."
That got her a curt nod.
Stopping, she came around to face him. "You can afford to take a breath," she whispered, her hands on his chest. "You don't need to constantly keep making money. Even if I decide to demand a diamond bracelet every month, I'm pretty sure it wouldn't make a dent in your zillions."
Lips tugging up slightly at the corners, he gripped her hips. "You can have a diamond bracelet every month, but you have to wear them all at once, naked in bed--no wait, I have a better idea. You have to take dictation while wearing only diamonds."
"Gabriel."
He ran his thumbs across her hip bones. "I'm not sure I know how to stop."
"So," she said, "we'll work on it."
The echo of his own words had him smiling. "Meanwhile, you'll drag me out to look at flowers and canoodle in a public park?"
"We aren't canoodling."
"We will be." However, instead of a kiss, he reached into his pocket to pull out a piece of paper. "It's a prenuptial agreement."
Mouth dry, she said, "You're asking me to marry you?"
"No. You are marrying me." Taking her hand, he thrust a ring onto her finger. The diamond was huge enough that she could've used it to bash Richard over the head, the design around it so delicate and the size so perfect that she knew it had been made to suit her bone structure.
"These," Gabriel said, holding up the paper again, "are the terms."
She scowled at him and took the folded piece of paper. "I have nothing against signing a prenup, but that was the least romantic non-proposal in the universe." Opening up the single sheet of paper, she found a handwritten list.
Prenuptial Agreement between Gabriel Bishop and Charlotte Baird
You (Charlotte) will wear your engagement ring and/or your wedding ring at all times so other men do not hit on you.
If a man hits on you regardless, you are to tell your husband so your husband can kick his ass.
You will change your last name to Bishop.
You will agree with everything your husband says and never argue with him.
You must never wear anything but black lace underwear.
You agree to take dictation half-naked at least once so as to fulfill one of your husband's office fantasies.