by Skye Warren
“There’s supplies there. Not that I need much for a scratch.”
I hold my fingers up to the flicker from the streetlights passing by. Red flashes under each glare, turning dark and inky when we reach downtown Tanglewood.
An inch. That’s all that separates life from death. The only reason he’s alive.
“What happened?” I ask softly.
I can’t shake the dreamlike feeling from when I was on the floor, huddled beneath the dinner table like it was my mother’s vanity. Even before that, walking the halls of Gabriel’s mansion like it was a place that exists only in my mind. The only thing that grounds me is the hard, heated body beneath me. He’s holding me in his lap, his grip strong enough that I don’t think he’ll let me go anytime soon.
“We’re still figuring it out,” he says, clearly furious. “He got the drop on an ex-SEAL on the left side of the building.”
My stomach clenches. “Is he—” Dead?
“Unconscious.”
I shake my head, uncomprehending. “Are you sure this was Jonathan Scott? There were a lot of important people there. A lot of people with enemies. Someone else could have been the target. And how would he be able to knock out someone trained like that?”
“He could have had hired help, but he likes to get his hands dirty.”
“I don’t understand.”
Gabriel sits for a moment, the secrets almost tangible in the air. “Jonathan Scott—he’s not really a man. Not an animal, either. That’s what makes him so hard to pin down. He’s like a shadow.”
“You make him sound supernatural.”
“Most people believe in God. Would it be so hard to believe in the alternative?”
I think of the myths that I study. They’re just stories to us now, but the ancient Greeks believed them. They meant something then. They mean something now, because stories are important.
“Yes,” I say honestly.
He gives a low laugh. “He’s real enough, Avery.”
“I know.” And that knowledge sits deeper than I’m willing to admit.
I curl into Gabriel’s arms, shivering at the words. Maybe it would be more comforting to think of him like a ghost. Maybe he could haunt us without actually hurting anyone. The slick blood against my temple, dripping from the wound on Gabriel’s neck, proves the threat is real.
“He knows this city better than anyone, every crack, every corner. And he’s fearless. Other people behave in certain ways, even when they’re well trained. Instinct. Human nature.”
“Then how will you find him?”
Gabriel doesn’t answer, but maybe that’s answer enough. How can he find something he can’t see? How can he fight a force that doesn’t breathe or walk or eat, at least not like any regular man does? At least that’s how he sounds.
In that way maybe the myths are true.
There could have been a man powerful enough to seem like a god, calloused enough to play with humans like they were toys, strong enough to defy death.
A sense of inevitability overcomes me, the same as watching the moon rise in the sky. There’s no way that we can change the tides. All we can do is cling to the mast, the way that I’m clinging to Gabriel now. He’s my ship, my center. My only hope for surviving the night.
Chapter Nine
The night of my auction there was a man in the Den, his eyes a frosty blue and his hair white-blond. It might make another man look soft, but his broad shoulders strain his white dress shirt, muscles bulging beneath the fabric. He looks like some kind of Nordic warrior, pillaging a village.
He takes one look at Gabriel and scowls. “Sit down before you fall down.”
It’s a sign of how affected Gabriel is that he actually listens. He takes two steps into the nearest sitting room and reclines his body on a leather armchair. It could be casual comfort. Only a scratch, like he wants me to believe. But the way he closes his eyes proves it’s more than that. He can finally lower his guard now that we’re somewhere safe.
Blood stains a dark line down the front of his crisp white shirt.
I wring my hands together, torn between wanting to help him and not wanting to make it worse. “You said there’s a first-aid kit?”
“Anders will get it,” Gabriel says without moving.
Blue eyes flash with ice. “It would serve you right to bleed out.”
I take a step forward. “I don’t know who the hell you think you are, but he needs you to help him. And that’s what you’re going to do.”
One pale eyebrow rises. “Your kitten has claws, Gabriel.”
“Hey,” I snap. “He’s not talking to you. I am. And I’m telling you to get a first-aid kit now.”
After a long look Anders stalks down the hallway.
I kneel beside Gabriel and take his hand in mine.
His eyes slit open. “I liked that.”
“Him calling me a kitten?”
“I liked you standing up for me.”
My heart aches. He’s been so alone, without even knowing it. These men at the Den, they’re his friends. But they’re also tough assholes, used to hurting each other as much as helping. A group of lost boys, all grown up but still searching for a home.
Gabriel hasn’t had anyone to look after him.
Now he has me.
Anders returns with a black leather bag. I expected something small and white and plastic, maybe with a strip of gauze and a small tube of Neosporin. Instead he pulls out a stainless-steel tray that contains metal tools wrapped in plastic, like some kind of portable surgical table.
Gabriel moves to take off his shirt, apparently unsurprised by the setup.
“You said it was a graze,” I accuse.
“It is,” Anders says, wiping away blood with a wad of gauze. “A graze that needs stitches.”
Gabriel shrugs and then winces. “You don’t have to watch. Wait upstairs for me.”
I’m not going anywhere. “You’ve done this before?” I ask Anders even though he handles the tools with a cool efficiency clearly born of experience.
He doesn’t bother looking up. “Once or twice.”
“He’s a doctor,” Gabriel says.
“Was a doctor.” Anders snaps on a pair of plastic gloves. “My license was revoked.”
My mouth drops, though I’m not sure what’s more shocking—that this large, rough-hewn man, a hint of violence in his every move, once made a living healing people, or that he lost his license. “What for?”
“What else? Killing patients.”
I move to stand between him and Gabriel. “Wait. Are you serious? Should you be doing this?”
“He went to medical school, little virgin,” Gabriel says from behind me.
“You should go to a hospital,” I say without turning. “Where the doctors still have their licenses!”
Something dark passes over Anders’s expression—maybe grief. Maybe fury. But when he speaks, his tone is droll. “Well, sure. He’ll lose another pint of blood in the process and the hospital will have to report the gunshot wound, which will lead to the police knocking on your door.”
“Better than you chopping him up,” I snap back. I don’t know where this protective instinct comes from, but it’s hard and hot. I want to stand up for Gabriel the way no one ever has before. I want to stand up for him the way no one did for me when I needed help.
Large fingers take mine. I turn to see Gabriel holding my hand, his mouth taut with pain, his eyes bright with a shared fervor. “Little virgin.”
I can’t even mind him calling me that, not with blood slick on his neck. “I’m sorry,” I whisper because it feels like my fault. His blood. My fear. Everything that’s happened since the auction.
He pulls me close, until I’m standing between his legs. It should make me feel vulnerable, being small and captive within the confines of his body. Even injured he could hurt me a thousand times over. Instead I feel like he’s worshipping me. I always thought of the men as gods—powerful, angry. He makes me feel l
ike a goddess, beautiful and divine.
“I’m one hundred percent fine,” he murmurs, echoing my words.
Only then do I realize the breath I’ve been holding. Gabriel worried about me, but I wasn’t injured. He was, and the knowledge pains me in the deepest way. I step aside without another word, clinging to Gabriel’s hand even as Anders pulls up a chair.
“He warned me about you,” I say, dropping onto a smooth leather ottoman a few feet away, my fancy emerald dress wrinkled and ruined above my knees.
“Did he?” Gabriel says, sounding unconcerned.
“He told me I should run away from you.” Sex for money. I guess it’s more honest work than your daddy did, but just as dirty.
“You didn’t listen.”
“No. I spent the first eighteen years of my life listening to men tell me what to do. And then I realized that they were going to judge me no matter what I did. They were going to sell me and buy me and do whatever they wanted, so I may as well get a cut.”
Gabriel’s golden eyes glint with pride. “That’s right.”
“And how’s that working out for you?” Anders asks, his voice dry, the unspoken answer obvious as he unspools a length of suture tape.
“Things weren’t exactly safe before he came into my life.” I can’t quite shake the memory of the mystery man outside my window when I was alone in the house with my father bedridden. Was he sent by Jonathan Scott? Or someone else who hated my father? I didn’t get a good enough look at his face.
For all I know it could have been Anders.
The only reason I know it wasn’t Jonathan Scott himself is because I would be dead.
Your father stole from Gabriel Miller, and nobody gets away with that. That’s why he got knocked down. But Gabriel wasn’t the only person he stole from.
“I won’t hurt him,” Anders says without looking up.
“I know,” I say. Gabriel wouldn’t let the man near him if he wasn’t competent. He wouldn’t be at the Den at all. “I’m sorry I freaked out.”
He glances at me briefly before dabbing a solution over the area, wiping away bright blood onto a cotton swab. “I’ve done this a hundred times before, on Gabriel alone.”
“You know, surprisingly that doesn’t make me feel better.”
Gabriel slants me a taut smile. “No bullet can bring me down, little virgin. So don’t get any ideas.”
I have the sudden realization that he’s teasing me to take my mind off the shooting. That’s how much he cares about me, how much he cares for me. That he would protect me, covering my body with his. That he would pull me out of a dangerous situation and take me to safety. That he would joke with me so that I wouldn’t be shaking with anxiety while his injury is tended.
“Gabriel,” I whisper.
His expression doesn’t change, but I feel the moment when Anders pushes the needle through his wounded flesh. The pain pulses through my body like it’s my own. “Take me home. After this, take me home. I won’t fight you anymore.”
I don’t care how much it hurts me to stay in the gilded prison. In this moment I don’t even care how crazy I might become, the voices that I shouldn’t hear.
Chapter Ten
Gabriel refuses pain medicine during the stitches, the only sign of pain his eyes darkening to bronze.
Anders holds out a small pile of pills. “Antibiotics.”
A frown. “I don’t need medicine.”
Anders rolls his eyes. “You can’t even let your guard down for a motherfucking second.”
Gabriel glances at me, his golden eyes bright with promise. “Not if I can help it.”
Worry makes my stomach turn. He’ll run himself to the ground like this, refusing medical attention, putting himself into danger to protect me.
I put my hand on his arm. “If you get an infection, you won’t be any use to anyone.”
His eyes narrow like he wants to refuse. Instead he takes the medicine and swallows them dry.
“Now go lie down,” Anders says, sounding surly. “And don’t fuckin’ argue.”
Gabriel stands, his large body swaying before I move to support him. The air rushes from my lungs as I realize how much of his body is pure muscle. My own legs shake as I help him over to a long brown sofa, the leather crinkled and worn.
He collapses on the soft leather. “You fucker,” he says, voice slurred.
“Stubborn,” Anders says, a look of dark satisfaction on his face.
Golden eyes disappear beneath heavy lids.
“You slipped in pain medicine,” I say, torn between relief and guilt. Guilt, because he wouldn’t have taken any pills if I hadn’t urged him to.
Anders shrugs. “He would kill himself to stay awake.”
Gabriel’s large body lies faceup, one knee up, the other foot on the floor. He still wears the dress pants from dinner, a black belt across his abs. Tan skin stretches over ridged muscles. A sprinkling of silvery brown hair covers his chest. The blood has been cleaned from his skin, leaving only a small line of stitches on his shoulder.
Anxiety strums through me. “He’ll be okay, though, won’t he?”
“If he rests,” Anders says with a low growl.
He gathers his supplies with rigid order and disappears without another word.
I turn back to Gabriel, nonplussed to find myself alone with him.
His lips have kissed so many places on my body. Those large hands have touched me everywhere, but I’ve never really examined him. He’s never let me. The realization hits me with a dark sense of betrayal. He exposed his secrets to me, portioning them out like bread crumbs. But when it came to sex, he held me down, he turned me around. He subsumed me in pleasure, rendering me boneless and satiated.
I climb onto his body, my knees split over his hips.
Guilt twinges inside me. He would never let me do this if he were awake. He would be hard and thrusting, his hands wrapped around my waist, flipping me over. Instead I rest my palms over the flat of his stomach, positioning myself where I can study him.
A lock of mahogany-brown hair falls onto his forehead.
Lashes rest against his cheek.
Gabriel’s eyes have an intensity that always captivates me. So it’s a novel experience to look at him with his eyes closed, like reclaiming my power. I know he’d hate to be vulnerable like this, unable to protect me, unable to shield himself from my curiosity.
I touch my forefinger to the taut skin of his stomach. His muscles ripple beneath my touch, hyperaware even when he’s asleep. The skin is smoother than I expect, smoother than it feels when he pounds into me, his body hard around me. I trail my finger along the valley of his abs to his broad chest.
Higher, higher. To the rough bristle over his chin, to the soft pad of his bottom lip.
My gaze lifts to find his eyes slitted open.
“How do you feel?” I whisper.
“Like flipping you over,” he says, his voice like gravel.
“You’re in no shape to do that,” I say, alarmed. It would be just like him to do it anyway. Even though he doesn’t look capable of it. Even though he’d probably rip his stitches out even trying.
“Don’t look like her,” he mumbles.
Surprise clenches my stomach. Everyone knows I look like my mother. So much that no one noticed that her portrait had been swapped out for a new painting of me, an elaborate and quietly terrifying threat. Jonathan Scott succeeded in breaking my mother, but it seems like he won’t be content until he has me too.
“A little different,” I answer, uncertain.
There are slight differences to our appearance, besides the different clothes she would wear. Her nose was a little stronger, more aristocratic, her overall face thinner and more defined. Her hair was a pale blonde, like spun gold, instead of the dirty blonde I have.
“Hannah.”
My heart thuds. “Who?”
“So pretty.”
A hot burn streaks through me, sudden and strange enough that it takes me a
moment to catch my breath. Jealousy. Which is pretty messed up, considering Hannah’s probably the name of the poor dead girl, the one he didn’t manage to save.
He’s delirious from drugs. That’s why he’s spilling secrets he never would before. If it was wrong for me to look at him while drugged, it’s even worse for me to question him.
“Hannah’s the girl from the brothel?”
His eyes are glazed, in another time and place. “You can’t have her.”
Suddenly I realize how little I know about him. Before it had seemed like enough, to know that he cared about me, that I trusted him. I didn’t know all his secrets, but it was almost a game to uncover them.
This doesn’t feel like a game. There’s something in the air—desperation, yearning.
God, did he love her? That makes her fate even more horrifying.
I stand back up, taking a few steps away. A few feet to breathe.
Anders returns to the room with a fresh pair of gloves and a crisp white bandage. He applies it with surprising care, using medical tape to secure it. “With any luck he’ll actually let them heal.”
“I’ll make him rest,” I say, but even I don’t believe I have that power.
“He’ll be out for a few hours. I’ll take you to a bedroom upstairs.”
I shake my head. “I’m staying with him.”
Anders looks at me with begrudging respect. “You’re less of a spoiled little princess than I thought.”
My eyes narrow. “You’re just as much of an asshole as I thought.”
He laughs, folding the rest of the bandages over, turning away to leave.
“Wait,” I say, unease churning in my stomach. “Will you answer something for me?”
“Depends on what it is.”
“Who’s Hannah?”
Confusion crosses his expression, and it appears to be genuine. I’m not sure why he would pretend with me anyway. He glances at Gabriel, his eyes hard. “If you’re asking about an ex, he’s never been with anyone. Not seriously and not for more than a few nights.”
“Okay.” I’m convinced it was the girl he protected at the brothel.