Tapestry of the Past

by Alvania Scarborough

  He arched, rubbing his cock against her thigh. He slid one finger inside, testing her readiness.

  Hot.

  Wet.

  Heaven.

  Aw, fuck. He couldn’t take it slowly if a gun was pointed at his head. “Good.” Gabriel clenched his teeth against a moan when her inner muscles tightened around his finger. Blindly, he opened the drawer on the nightstand and withdrew a small, foil packet.

  Unable to wait any longer, he shifted, replacing his finger with the head of his cock. He surged into the hot, clinging depths. Gritting his back teeth together, he stilled, just managing to hold still to give her time to adjust to his length inside her.

  “Next time,” he promised. “Next time I’ll take all night.”

  Kalesia locked her legs around his hips and smiled up at him, passion and understanding glittering in her eyes. “Less talk, more action.”

  The last shred of his control disintegrated. Fingers biting into her hips, he withdrew until just the tip of his cock was inside her, before surging back inside again. In and out. Faster and faster.

  He wasn’t being a considerate lover, Gabriel knew but damned it he could help himself. The fact that Kalesia had come to him, had trusted him, was the most powerful aphrodisiac in the world. He wanted to overwhelm her, drive from both their minds the harsh words of the last few days.

  His heart pounded. A drop of sweat ran down his temple. Leaning down, he took her bottom lip between his teeth and nipped sharply. Kalesia arched upward, her head thrown back, her eyes squeezed shut, a strangled scream of fulfillment escaping.

  Son of a bitch. Son of a bitch. Son of a bitch.

  The base of his spine tingled. He pumped his hips harder, pure animal instinct driving him. The first hot spurt of semen jetted from his cock and his vision grayed out. At last, he collapsed on top of Kalesia, his breath rasping out of his lungs in harsh pants.

  Oh God. His balls were broken.

  Long, slender fingers trailed up his spine and back down, petting and soothing him. A low, contented rumble broke from his throat. “Umm, now I know why Hannibal fights so hard to sleep in your bed. Your fingers are pure magic. Pet me some more and I might even purr.” Gabriel felt like tomcat after a busy night, all sated and lazy and content. He knew he should be a gentleman and get off her.

  He grinned in the dark. Good thing no one ever accused him of being a gentleman.

  Unable to resist the plump mound under his mouth, Gabriel dragged his tongue across the damp flesh, tasting salt and woman.

  Kalesia dragged her nails up to his nape, leaving a trail of goose flesh in her wake.

  Perhaps his balls weren’t broken after all.

  “Chaos?”

  “As in wild, primal, unorganized.” Gabriel smiled as Kalesia sifted her nails through the short strands of hair at the nape of his neck. “Like what you did with my living room.”

  “I resent that,” Kalesia defended, lazy amusement in her voice. “I am not unorganized. Just because I didn’t arrange things with surgical precision does not make me unorganized.”

  “I notice you don’t object to wild and primal.”

  She laughed and moved beneath him, a faint musical chime from the charm on her ankle accompanying the shift. She ran her hand down his side before slipping it between them so she could tease his stomach, halting within a hairsbreadth of his cock.

  It filled, reaching for her touch.

  “I like wild and primordial. It makes me sound exotic and exciting.”

  “Trust me, sugar, if you got anymore exotic and exciting, my balls would never recover.” An aching need that had nothing to do with sex sprang to life.

  “You weren’t a cop, were you?” Kalesia smoothed one finger over his eyebrow.

  Somehow, Gabriel met her gaze without flinching. “No.”

  “How much of it was true?”

  Pain flickered like the serrated edge of a blade across his soul. “Most of it.”

  Instant denial washed across Kalesia. “I don’t believe it.” She set her mouth in a stubborn line. It didn’t matter that it had taken her days to see beyond the façade created by the anonymous sender. Because now that she had, nothing would convince her that Gabriel was a soulless killer.

  “Believe it,” he told her harshly, surging to a sitting position. She sensed, rather than saw, him take care of the condom.

  Kalesia sat up too, finding and pulling the sheet across her legs. She pleated the starched cotton as she considered Gabriel, her head tilted to one side. “I believe you’re capable of killing but not as an assassin interested only in money.”

  “Trust me, I earned my paycheck. Whether you’re working for the government or freelance, you are getting paid to kill,” he grated. “It’s all the same.”

  Although she disagreed, Kalesia held her tongue, sensing that arguing would cause him to clam up. “Tell me about it.”

  He shot her an enigmatic look. “Are you sure you want to know? You might find in this case that truth is worse than fiction.”

  “I need to know. You tried to hide the truth before and look where we wound up.” Nothing, absolutely nothing could be worse than imagining. She shuddered.

  “Once I tell you, we might very well be in exactly the same situation. Or, this time you might run from me.”

  “Trust me,” she said without thinking.

  Though Gabriel didn’t say a word, Kalesia could see he remembered her previous avowal of faith. She placed a hand on his arm, feeling the hard tension in the muscles beneath her palm. “I believe in you, Gabriel. Please believe in me.”

  He went utterly motionless. Even his breath seemed to stop. Suddenly, his hand shot out to cover hers, almost crushing the bones of her fingers.

  It was the only sign of his agitation. Still, it shocked her as Gabriel was always unfailingly gentle with her.

  “I have to. But God help us both if what I tell you drives you away.” He paused, looking uncertain. “I don’t know where to start.”

  “The beginning. Start at the beginning. It won’t drive me away,” she promised, a burning sensation in her chest. She braced herself, knowing it must be bad.

  His hand still gripping hers, he took a deep breath. “The beginning. Okay. I was a loner as a kid and didn’t mingle well, not even with my parents. Hell, they didn’t know what to do with me but they tried. They were good people. Everyone always commented on how much they loved each other. It must have been hard on them to have a kid like me. After a while they quit trying to understand me. Honestly? I can’t blame them.

  “I had a reputation for looking for trouble. Nothing really serious. Fights mostly. But I scared the other kids because I’d do whatever necessary to win. One of a long line of counselors recommended the military.” Gabriel shrugged. “He probably saved me from prison.”

  A stray gleam of moonlight highlighted the wicked, curving scar on Gabriel’s shoulder as he shrugged again. A wry smile twisted his lips. “My parents were more than willing to sign the necessary papers. So, I upped with the Army. I liked it, liked the sense of order, discipline it gave me. As much as I liked it, I still felt something was missing. That changed when I was approached while in jump school. It seems I caught the attention of one full bird in particular. The Colonel thought I had the makings of a Ranger.”

  “I take it you accepted?”

  Gabriel gave her a look that questioned her intelligence. “Hell, yes, I accepted! Here I was, a boy from backwoods Florida, being given the opportunity to be part of the elite branch of the Army. It meant that for the first time in my life somebody thought I was special. You bet your ass I jumped at it.”

  It had meant more than that, Kalesia thought, a peculiar lump jamming her throat. Even now, years later, there was something in the timbre of his voice. It took her a moment to place it. When she did, she almost smacked her own forehead it was so obvious. For all of Gabriel’s prosaic recitation of his family life, it was easy to see he hadn’t felt wanted. His parents had each ot
her, they didn’t really need a kid. The Rangers, however, wanted him.

  They gave him a home. A sense of belonging.

  “Took to the training like a duck to water. I was good, very good. Rifle, knife, or hands, it didn’t matter but I had a special affinity for rifles and an eye that allowed me never to miss. It was inevitable.” He let go of her hand and clenched his into a fist until the knuckles shone white.

  Kalesia frowned. She’d missed something. “What was?”

  He speared her with a hard glance. “Are you sure you want to hear this?”

  “Yes.”

  “Remember, you asked.” He took a deep breath and, one by one, straightened his fingers. “I became a sniper.”

  The blunt statement managed to catch Kalesia off-guard. God, she hoped the darkness hid the look of utter shock she was sure was on her face.

  “For the first couple years we did more training than missions. The Rangers hadn’t long undergone restructuring. Still there was enough action to satisfy a young man’s yearning for excitement that I was determined to re-up.”

  Kalesia slipped her hand back into his. He closed his fingers about hers with desperate strength.

  “I was asked to volunteer for a black mission. We were to infiltrate and bring home captured soldiers from a leftist camp. What we were going to do was not sanctioned by the military or the government as officially we were not involved in that conflict. The long and short of it is we were sold out and I was captured.”

  Kalesia gasped but Gabriel didn’t seem to hear.

  “The rest were killed.” His hand spasmed, squeezing her fingers until the bones ground together.

  Kalesia bit her lip to muffle the tiny, involuntary sound of pain.

  “You’re trained to cope with the possibility of capture,” he drew an unsteady breath, “but the reality is something else again. I wanted to die. There are so many ways to inflict pain, ways a normal mind can’t comprehend.”

  It was as if a dam had burst, the words just kept flowing out of Gabriel in an unstoppable flood.

  “Small things, innocuous in themselves, can be the worst,” he whispered. “Mosquitoes on bloody flesh. The agony of river water sliding down a throat raw from screaming.”

  A hard shudder went through Gabriel as he seemed to pull himself back to the present. When he continued, his voice was devoid of all emotion. “After a while I no longer wanted to die. I wanted to kill. Kill the shadowy figure behind my torture. I lived for the moment I could put my hands around his throat. Dreamed of it, held onto it by sheer force of will when the knife cut my back, when the wire around my wrists, wrapped so tight I couldn’t bleed, cut to the bone.”

  Kalesia’s stomach roiled and she swallowed convulsively. But she didn’t say a word, unwilling to risk Gabriel pulling back inside himself. As painful as she found it to hear, she knew he needed to tell her.

  “After two weeks I escaped. Managed to make it back to the alternative rendezvous point, more dead than alive.” His thumb stroked the back of her hand. He stared straight ahead, unblinking. “He broke me. Damn near killed me with his torture. The doctors expected me to die. I didn’t, though. I couldn’t. He had given me a reason to live.

  “Before I was even out of the hospital, the CIA recruited me.” Gabriel looked down at the rumpled sheet, avoiding her gaze. “It seemed the perfect hunting ground for tracking down a traitor. Each lead was investigated with meticulous care but the bastard always managed to elude me. Along the way, however, I gained the reputation as the best. When you come right down to it, our friend behind the anonymous packet is damn close to the truth. I was an assassin. The fact that it was for the government doesn’t change the fact that I killed for a living.

  “You know,” he continued in that same flat voice that sent chills down her spine, “after a while you learn to push the faces into a closet deep in the back of your mind, close the door and go on to the next job. But night,” Kalesia heard him swallow, “night has a way of creeping up on a man. A way of sneaking in and making you remember—the heat, the stifling smell of rotting vegetation in your nostrils, the scarlet lace of blood, the faces captured in death.”

  Kalesia slid her hand free of his, wrapped her arms around him. She stroked his back, the scars beneath her fingers tiny brands that seared. He didn’t resist but buried his face in the side of her neck. One long, hard tremor racked him.

  What could she say? Her visions of murder didn’t even begin to compare to what Gabriel had gone through. As personal and real as each one seemed, when you came right down to it, they were still secondhand. Tears burned her eyes as she hugged him fiercely to her. She buried one hand in his hair, kneading his scalp, as the other stroked down the muscled length of his spine. Beneath her palm, his skin was damp. At last Gabriel spoke.

  “Do you hate me?”

  “God, no. No. I don’t hate you. I could never hate you. Oh God, Gabriel, haven’t you realized yet?” She framed his face in both hands. “I love you.”

  Shock jolted through Gabriel with the force of a live wire. “What did you say?” he asked hoarsely, not daring to believe his ears.

  Love reflected in her gentle gaze as she touched a forefinger to his mouth.

  “I said I love you,” she repeated, her breath puffing against his lips.

  His eyes slid shut. An aching hunger woke. He’d never thought to hear those words. He cleared his throat. “I-I…” Frustrated, he trailed off.

  “Shh, don’t. I don’t need words.”

  “I don’t deserve you,” he rasped and gripped the soft flesh of her upper arms. Gabriel knew he was probably bruising her but couldn’t seem to make his fingers turn loose. The feel of Kalesia under his hands was the only thing that anchored him in the storm of emotion buffeting him. “But, dear God, I can’t bear to let you go.” His mouth crushed hers as he pulled her to lie on top of him.

  She opened her mouth, giving him everything he demanded and more.

  His breath rasped painfully from his lungs when he lifted his head. “You won’t regret loving me.”

  “I know.”

  Something inside Gabriel was soothed and reassured by the quiet promise. He tucked her face into the crook of his neck and ran his hand down the silky length of her hair, patiently untangling knots his passion had put there.

  Love. It was such a foreign concept. His world knew much of death, of betrayal. He understood and valued honor and loyalty. They were the codes he lived by, had survived by. But love? Gabriel felt totally inadequate when it came to that emotion.

  Against the side of his neck, Kalesia’s breath slid into a slow, steady cadence as she fell asleep. His heart turned over at the utter trust it showed after what she’d learned tonight.

  Could he learn to love?

  A hard knot formed in his stomach. Hell, he wasn’t even sure the damn thing existed.

  The woman in his arms stirred sleepily, her hand falling over his heart.

  Kalesia believed in love.

  She had come to him, believed in him, when by all rights she should have run screaming in the other direction. Freely confessed her love after hearing his horror story. She hadn’t demanded proof.

  The knot slowly eased to be replaced by wonder. Perhaps such a thing as love existed, after all.

  Was he capable of it? Feeling it. Giving it.

  Or had all softer emotions been burned from his soul?

  It was a tangled question, one for which he lacked an answer. All he knew is that he wanted it. Wanted the woman in his arms to love him.

  Hungered for it.

  Hungered for her belief in him—even if he didn’t deserve it. Or her.

  Would he be dragging her into the black pit where his soul lived if he accepted her love?

  His heart stopped.

  Could he do that to her? Kalesia lived in the light. Wasn’t of the night as he was.

  Maybe he should let her go once she was safe.

  Denial, instant and harsh, scorched through his blood
, seizing and stopping his heart at the thought of living without her. Of night without her light, of utter blackness without the promise of sunshine and laughter.

  A small hand, warm and soft, petted his chest. Came to rest directly over his heart.

  Even in sleep, she sought to soothe his pain.

  Gabriel, careful not to wake her, lifted her hand and kissed her knuckles before folding it back over his heart and covered it with his own scarred paw.

  Content, Gabriel started to drift off to sleep. A man would kill for Kalesia’s love. He’d like to get his hands on the bastard who had sent her that damn package.

  Gabriel’s eyes shot open. “I wonder how he knew to use my past against us?”

  “Shit.” He had screwed up. He should have seen this angle sooner. That the discord between him and Kalesia had distracted him and that he’d been busy tracking down the murdered man from two years ago, was no excuse. Gabriel ground his teeth together, biting back a blistering epithet.

  Kalesia stirred against his side. He felt the instant she woke fully.

  “It would mean that whoever it is, knows you’re helping me. It means,” her voice trembled, “that now you’re a target.”

  Gabriel brushed her concern for his safety aside, the deeper meaning behind the act more important. “I can take care of myself.” He turned on his side to face her. “My cover was very deep.”

  She grasped the implication at once. “You mean…”

  “Yeah. Someone has power. The kind of power that has access to restricted files and can convincingly alter them.” He sat up. “He knew you were here. With me. Son of a fucking bitch.”

  “I don’t understand,” she said, but he could tell she did. Horror strangled her voice. “Only the sheriff’s office…”

  Every nerve in Gabriel’s body was tipped with fire and there was a familiar tightening in his gut. It had been well over a year since he had felt the sensation but Gabriel had no doubt what it was. Every hunter instinct he possessed was screaming to life.

  “Yeah, only the sheriff’s office. I find it odd that the day after we go see Harley about another vision, a packet designed to make you distrust me arrives. In fact, the timing stinks.” He thought for a moment. “But if someone on the force is involved, why now? Why not two years ago when you reported the murder?”