CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Christ, he was a stupid bastard. He should be doing exactly what she said. He was as far as it was possible to get from being a saint and yet he’d always had his line in the sand. Hurting women had been that line.
But he was going to cross it if he kept on down the road he was traveling. And the woman he wound up hurting would be Honor.
She stood there with her arms folded, the very epitome of the smart businesswoman in her little pencil skirt, with the chic white blouse and the sexy blue high heels on her feet, same as the deep midnight blue of her eyes that he was starting to see in his dreams at night.
The color that darkened into black when she was aroused. Like they had when he’d had her against the door because he couldn’t keep his dick in his pants. Because he’d gotten impatient waiting for her to arrive and fucking lost his head, a part of him hungry for her heat, her softness. The feel of her skin, the tight clasp of her body. Her arms around him.
Hungry for someone who didn’t want to punch his face in for a start.
It had been too much. He had no idea why he’d suddenly been so desperate for her. Why his instinct had been to drown himself in her the moment she’d stepped into the hallway. It had only been a couple of days, after all. Yet he’d wanted her so badly he’d been shaking.
He still did. On a level he didn’t understand.
And that was the real fucking problem. He was in danger of letting this become too important. In danger of letting her become too important. Which couldn’t happen.
“Well?” she said into the silence. “Is my minute up yet?”
You can’t let her go. You know you can’t.
He’d thought he could have both his justice and her, and still be detached. Still be focused. But detachment wasn’t shoving her up against a doorway and screwing her senseless because he couldn’t wait. Or walking away because he couldn’t bear how naked he’d felt afterward. How raw.
Then if you keep her, you’ll have to accept what she does to you.
Yeah, he would have to. And hope whatever this need for her was, it would burn itself out in time. Because there was no fucking way he was letting her go.
“Yes,” he said curtly. “It’s up.”
“Good.” She took a step back and slipped off the coat she still had wrapped around her, slung it over one of the kitchen stools. Then she came close to him, reaching up to gently touch the bruise on his cheek. Her fingers were so cool he almost shivered. “Are you going to tell me who gave you this?”
He could lie but what was the point? “Alex.”
Her mouth tightened and her hand dropped. “I thought you two were friends.”
“We were.”
“So what happened?”
“He guessed what you and I are doing.”
“What? How the hell could he know?” She began to take a couple of steps back from him but he couldn’t help himself. He reached for her, sliding an arm around her waist and bringing her close, her warmth against his body. Jesus, he knew he was supposed to stay cold, but sometimes all he wanted was some heat. A little bit of human warmth because he’d never had it before.
Her eyes widened, but she didn’t resist and after a moment, laid her palms against his chest, a gentle pressure.
“I probably should tell you a few things,” he said.
“Such as?”
Slowly, he began to undo the little buttons of her blouse, one by one. “Alex and I are part of a very small, select group. Officially we call ourselves the Nine Circles club, but Alex prefers ‘the fucked-up billionaires.’ Eva King is part of it. And so is another friend of mine, Zac Rutherford.”
She said nothing as he pulled open the last button, her blouse falling open to reveal a long strip of pale skin. “We’re a kind of family more than a club; we watch out for each other.”
“He hit you.” Her hand touched his cheek again.
Gabriel brushed her throat then let his fingers trail down, her skin unbearably soft beneath his touch. “He was right to.”
She shivered as he stroked the gentle swell of one breast. “No, he wasn’t. What we do has got nothing to do with him.”
“He feels responsible for you.”
“He lost that right years ago.” She traced the line of his jaw, brushing his lower lip. He couldn’t remember the last time anyone had touched him so gently, so carefully. As if he would break. “I can’t think why he still thinks he has it.”
No wonder he always felt the need to tie her hands. If she kept touching him like this he probably would break. “He’s protective of you.”
Her mouth tightened. “I suppose he already knew about Daniel and the casino?”
“Yeah.”
“What a surprise. Can we not talk about him right now?”
Understandable. He didn’t really want to talk about Alex either. Or think about the disgust in Eva’s face. The look of disapproval on Zac’s. They hadn’t liked it when Honor’s name had come up.
Because they can sense what a prick you are at heart.
A weird feeling gripped him. Like the ground he walked on was unsteady. The group had been together for years and they fought and bickered and made up like a family. But Alex had never hit him. And Zac and Eva had never looked at him with disgust.
Until now.
He looked down at the line of skin revealed by her open shirt, trying to concentrate on that instead of what had happened with the others. He didn’t like the feeling that sat in his gut. Guilt.
Hell. He was turning into his mother.
Gabriel slid a finger under the edge of the white lace of her bra, stroking the silky skin underneath. “Anyway, we help each other out with things occasionally. Eva and Zac have been helping with Tremain. They have … particular skills that can be useful from time to time.”
Honor’s fingers came to rest near the neckline of his T-shirt, her thumb resting on his collarbone. “They know?”
“Yeah. Eva was investigating Tremain anyway, as you know, and she was the one who turned up the problems with the reservation system. She and Zac investigated further and found the money-laundering details.”
“I guess … Alex knows that, too, then?”
“I thought you didn’t want to talk about him?”
“I don’t. I just wondered.”
“Yeah, he does.” The guilt twisted a little tighter. He should have told his friend earlier and not in front of the other two, but he hadn’t. And he hadn’t missed the flare of pain in Alex’s eyes. That place, that casino, had so many memories for both of them and none of them good.
Honor’s thumb moved back and forth on his collarbone, the touch oddly soothing. Her gaze was on the movement, dark lashes hiding her expression. She was silent a long moment. Then she said, “I went to see my mother a couple of days ago. I only wanted to … see her. She used to suffer from depression and if she ever found out about Dad, I don’t know what that would do to her. Anyway, I went to see if she was okay and…” She stopped. “Dad was there.”
A sudden, intensely protective urge rose up in him. A feeling he hadn’t had since he’d been with the Angels and had a whole neighborhood to look out for. This time the feeling was centered entirely on Honor.
Tension flooded through him. “Did he do anything? Did he hurt you? What?”
She shook her head. “He’s not that type of man, Gabriel.”
“I don’t give a fuck what type of man he is. If he hurt you I’ll—”
Honor put a finger over his mouth, stopping the words. “He didn’t hurt me. And there’s no need to get all alpha about it, okay? But he did tell me that he wasn’t going to take your money. That he was going to find a new investor.” Her finger dropped away. “And that he didn’t want me to handle it anymore.” Pain moved in the depths of her eyes before her lashes fell again, veiling them. “Which I guess proves that you were right after all. He doesn’t want to save his company.”
There was an unfamiliar tightness in his chest, the protective urge clawing at him, squeezing him. And he realized he hated that she was in pain, and that he wanted to do something for her.
“Yeah, I got an email from him yesterday refusing my investment.” He paused. “Did you mention your own investment to him?”
“He told me not to worry. That I’d get my money back.”
“How much will you lose, Honor?”
Her thick, black lashes were still. “Everything. Which makes me a fool, right?”
Gabriel put a finger under her chin and tipped her head back. She looked up at him and this time, the anguish in her eyes wasn’t hidden. “No. You love him and wanted to help. He’s the one who’s a fucking idiot.”
“It’s not even the fact that I’m going to lose my company that hurts the most. It’s the fact that he knows what I put into Tremain, the risk I took on, and he’s going to run it into the ground anyway.”
“You don’t have to lose everything,” he said, stroking her chin with his thumb. “Not if you let me help you.”
“How?”
“I have money, Honor. You don’t need to lose your company if I invest in it.”
Something flashed across her face, an expression he couldn’t read. He felt her stiffen, her muscles tensing as if to pull away so he shifted his hands, gripping her hips to hold her in place.
“Gabriel,” she began. “I don’t want—”
“Listen to me.” He cut her off. “I’m not giving you the money. It’ll be Woolf Construction investing in a very promising up-and-coming financial consultancy. Shit, call it venture capital if you like. I’ve done that before with other companies. But if it’ll stop you from losing everything you’ve built then why the fuck not?”
She pulled her head away, but remained where she was, resting against him. “St. James is my business. I didn’t want anyone else to have a stake in it. Especially not…” She stopped.
“Me?” he finished. “You especially don’t want me investing, right?”
“I don’t know where this is going, Gabriel. You and I, I’m talking about. And I don’t like mixing business with my private life.”
“You crossed that line a long time ago, little girl. When you invested in Tremain.” He knew she wouldn’t want to hear that but it had to be said. “And as far as you and I go, my investment in your company is a separate issue from us sleeping together.”
She looked up and this time he could see the businesswoman behind her eyes. Cool and calm and in control. “The fact remains that you would still own at least half of my company. So what happens if … this all goes bad?”
“You trust me with your body but not your company?”
“I don’t want to be dependent on anyone. When Daniel’s debts were called in, before Dad came to the rescue, we lost everything. I don’t ever want that to happen to me again.”
“And yet you invested in Tremain’s company. Invested heavily, putting yourself knowingly at risk.”
Her gaze flickered. “I had to help fix it.”
Of course she would. She was that kind of person. The kind who wanted to help, no matter what it cost her. He’d seen those kinds of people back in his old neighborhood, the priests, the social workers, people who worked for the charities. Running themselves ragged helping. Such self-sacrifice for so little gain.
They hadn’t made a difference. The only thing that had was when he’d become president of the club and he’d made change happen himself. With force.
“You’re going to lose everything when he goes down anyway, Honor. You know this.”
“I can’t risk it, Gabriel. I can be in your bed, but that’s it. I can’t take anything else.”
He looked down at her, studying her expression. “Because you want it too much? Is that it?”
Her throat moved as she swallowed. “I already want you more than I should. If you offer me this, I’m going to want more. I might end up wanting … everything.”
“You’re not your father, Honor. You’re not Alex. And I’m not a fucking drug. I’m just a guy offering to help you.”
The tips of her fingers moved on his chest, back and forth. “Maybe.” The word was uncertain. Clearly she didn’t believe him.
He put his hands over hers, holding them against his chest. “So that’s why you’re staying? Because you can’t help yourself?” He wasn’t going to ask the real question. The one that would betray a vulnerability he didn’t want to feel.
Yet she seemed to know anyway. “No,” she murmured. “I stayed because I think you need something, Gabriel.”
Yeah, he did. But if she thought she could fix him like she wanted to fix the situation with Tremain, she was wrong. He was broken. He’d been born broken.
He shifted his hands, sliding them around her waist to the small of her back, finding the small button on the waistband of her skirt, undoing it. “I know what I need,” he said, suddenly sick of talking. Sick of thinking. “I need you. Naked. Right now.”
* * *
Much later he woke to find a cold moon shining through his bedroom windows, Honor lying curled beside him, naked and warm. He didn’t know what had woken him but he knew he wasn’t going back to sleep anytime soon.
He got up, pulled on his jeans, and went downstairs. If he couldn’t sleep then he could work—he always had shitloads of work.
Pulling up his e-mail he found a message from Zac who’d apparently already gotten him an invite to the casino. He had to admit, the guy was fast.
After sending off a reply, Gabriel pushed his chair back and stalked over to the windows, restless and edgy.
The world outside was cold, snowy, the dark broken up with the sharp edges of neon lights.
What the hell was he going to do about Tremain? If he wasn’t careful his plans were going to go to hell in handcart. With the bastard running his own company off a cliff, Gabriel had nothing to hurt him with. Unless he could interfere with those plans himself. But then, perhaps he didn’t need to. He had all the information he needed to ruin Guy Tremain already.
Evidence of his money-laundering scam. Proof that he’d paid the debts his friend had run up managing what amounted to a sophisticated drug and prostitution ring. Confirmation he’d been paid by the casino involved in that ring. All of that was enough to take to the police if he wanted, or he could use it himself.
Definitely enough to ruin the man’s life. He had him by the balls, that was for sure.
And what are you going to do with her afterward?
A strange emptiness yawned wide at the thought so he shoved it away.
Fuck, no point in thinking about that yet. Once Tremain’s life was ruined, then he’d have time to consider what was next.
Gabriel let out a breath, put his hands in the pockets of his jeans.
Honor won’t like how you got close to her because you wanted information about Tremain.
Guilt lay heavy inside him. A massive stone he couldn’t seem to get rid of or ignore. So many people had lied to Honor, kept things from her. And she was still picking up the pieces. He would be just one more.
He stared at the snowy view outside the windows.
At this rate he’d be making his way to the confessional if he wasn’t careful.
Warm arms slid around his waist and he went still, tensing in surprise.
“What are you doing up?” Honor’s voice behind him sounded sleepy.
How the hell had she managed to creep up on him like that? Without him hearing? Shit, he’d been too busy staring outside and fucking brooding to hear. “I couldn’t sleep.”
Her fingers laced on his stomach, the heat of her slender body up against him seductive. A soft touch in the middle of his back. Her mouth in a kiss. “I wondered where you’d gotten to.”
There was something … good about the feeling of her arms around him. The warm glow of her resting against his back. Almost … comforting? Christ, that was a thought he did not want to follow. He didn’t need comforting. What he needed from her wasn’t a hug, that was for damn sure.
Yet he couldn’t bring himself to move. Because he liked her arms around him. Liked the soft brush of her mouth against his back. He hadn’t been simply held by anyone in a long, long time.
“You should be asleep,” he said.
“I know. But I woke up and you were gone.”
Move, you fucking idiot.
Slowly, reluctantly, he did so, turning around in the circle of her arms. She was wearing the T-shirt he’d taken off earlier that evening, the hem coming to mid-thigh, leaving lots of bare leg on show, the tips of her nipples pressing through the fabric.
She wasn’t looking at him but at his chest, her fingers brushing the tattoo of the cross over his heart. “When did you get this?”
He wasn’t supposed to be sharing facts about himself with her and yet he found himself answering all the same. “When I was sixteen.”
“Why?”
“It was a reminder.”
Her fingers lightly traced it, raising a shiver across his skin. “Of what?”
“Of where I came from.” From rape. Violence. Fear.
“Why the cross?”
“Mom was Catholic.”
“Oh.” Her fingers drifted lower to the vow across his abdomen. Tracing the outline of the words. “Explain this then. Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord. Romans 12:19.”
At her touch the muscles of his stomach tightened, more shivers chasing over his skin, his cock hardening. “You know your scripture.”
“I went to a Catholic girls’ school.” Her thumb brushed the Y. “What do you have to repay?”
You could tell her.
“Not what. Who.”
Honor looked up at him, her eyes dark in the shadowed room. “Who then?”
“My mother was hurt a long time ago. And I promised I would get justice for her. Justice from the man who did that to her.”
She didn’t say anything, just looked up at him, her gaze disturbingly perceptive. “She was hurt? How?”
“She was raped.” It sounded so stark, his mother’s secret guilt and shame.
Concern flooded her face. “Oh. How awful. I’m sorry.”
“It happened a long time ago.” But it had left its mark. Had consumed her. Like the cancer had eventually consumed her.
She placed a hand on his chest, the warmth of her touch spreading out. Dangerous, that warmth. It could melt things. Things that needed to stay hard and cold. Yet he couldn’t seem to make himself remove her hand, just like he couldn’t seem to make himself stop talking. It was surprisingly easy.
“She was very young. A maid at a hotel. She was raped by the owner while she was cleaning up one of the rooms.”
“That’s terrible.” Her thumb moved on his chest, a stroke over and over. And he was growing to like the way she touched him. Wished she wouldn’t stop. “They never caught him?”
“No. But I will.”
He saw her throat move, saw worry shift in her eyes as she looked at him. “You know who it is?”
“Yes.” The stepfather you love. I’m going to ruin him.
More worry, the edge of fear creeping into her gaze. “Gabriel, what are you going to do?”
He put his hand over hers, stilling the movement. “Hurt him.”
“Gabe—”
“Not physically. I don’t do that anymore. But he will suffer, Honor. I’m going to make sure of that.”
Her gaze flickered and he felt her body stiffen against his, as if in preparation to move away. Well, that was probably good. She should understand truly what kind of man he was because she didn’t seem to see the truth. But he didn’t want to lose the warmth of her yet so he kept his hands where they were, covering hers. Pressing her palms to his chest, the glow of her heat like embers on his skin.
“She lost her job,” he went on, unable to stop the flow of words. “She was left with nothing after it happened. She tried to go to the police, but they weren’t interested. She was just another dirt-poor fucking immigrant with nothing and no one. Her attacker was rich and powerful and she couldn’t say a word against him that would be believed. Afterward, she couldn’t find another job. No one would hire her because he’d bad-mouthed her everywhere. She survived on welfare and the charity from her church, and on that only barely.”
“I … I’m sorry.”
“He has to pay, Honor. And there’s no one else who can make sure that happens but me.”
She looked away from him, resistance bleeding out of her. But he could see the pulse beating fast at the base of her throat. She was afraid.
Fucking finally.
“I told you I wasn’t a good man,” he said in a low voice. “You should listen.” He took his hands away from hers, expecting her to step back.
But she didn’t. She kept her palms on his chest, her gaze lowered. “What are you going to do to him?”
“Ruin him. Financially and emotionally so he knows what it’s like to have nothing.”
She looked up at him at last. “Who is he?”
Tell her.
Gabriel looked down into her pale face, into her shadowed blue eyes. “No one you know,” he said softly.
* * *
He was lying. She didn’t know how she knew, but there was something in his face, something in his voice that told her. But she didn’t want to think too deeply about it because the implications were too much for her to handle quite yet. Like the fact that if he was lying then the man he was talking about was someone she knew …
But no, she wasn’t going to think about it. Not now. Not when he’d given her a little piece of himself. That was the most important thing. The most precious.
She looked away from the dark, brutal charisma of his features to the black ink on the hard planes of his abdomen. A promise of personal vengeance.
It made a violent kind of sense. Gabriel Woolf wasn’t a man to sit by when others got hurt, she’d learned that about him if nothing else. And even if his version of justice was twisted, she could understand why he might feel that way. Hell, if anything similar had happened to her mother she would feel the same. Except luckily for her and her mother, she’d had Guy, not to mention the fact that she hadn’t been born into poverty the way Gabriel had.
“He will suffer, Honor.”
Presumably the way his mother had suffered. An eye for an eye.
“It’s a little bit Old Testament, isn’t it?” she said.
“He committed a crime,” Gabriel said, his dark voice slightly rough. “He has to pay for it.”
“So what does that make you? Judge, jury, and executioner?”
“Yes.” He said it without hesitation.
Honor touched the words on his skin again, feeling his muscles tighten under her fingers. This was the thing that was driving him, that lay at the root of his anger. It had to be. “Do you have proof?”
“Of his guilt? Yeah, I’ve got all the fucking proof I need.”
“How does your mother feel about it?”
“My mother is dead,” he said flatly.
Honor looked up at him at that. The expression on his face was the one she saw so often. Hard. Cold. But underneath she sensed his anger. Hot. Burning.
“I’m sorry,” she said again, a useless, stupid phrase, but it was the only one she had.
“She died a few weeks ago. Cancer.”
So recent. God, she hadn’t known. “Gabriel, I’m so—”
“No,” he cut her off in that same flat tone. The one she was starting to think concealed something more. “Don’t say that again. Don’t be sorry. Death was a mercy.”
“She was in pain?”
Darkness flickered in his eyes. “She was always in fucking pain.”
Stillness settled inside her. “You’re not talking about the cancer now, are you?”
“Cancer isn’t the only thing that hurts.”
Beneath her palms she could feel his heartbeat, strong and sure. He was so powerful, this man. On the surface so icy and emotionless, but he wasn’t either of those things. There was heat inside him that he only ever let out when he was in bed with her. And in it lived his anger.
“What else hurts?” she asked, moving her fingers over the smooth, tanned skin beneath her hands.
“Guilt.” His voice was almost a whisper. “Shame. Fear.”
She’d bet everything on the fact that he wasn’t talking about his mother now. That he was talking about himself.
There was no sound in the room, the silence broken only by the sirens and horns of the night traffic of the outside world.
Honor slid her hands apart and put her arms around him. Rested her head on the muscled wall of his chest. “Tell me, Gabriel,” she murmured.
He waited there, motionless.
Honor shut her eyes. If he pulled away she would understand. It would hurt but she’d understand. Their relationship—or whatever the hell this was—probably didn’t allow for confidences, but she had to try. She wanted to try. Everyone needed someone to talk to, even a man like him. Especially a man like him.
“She had no one to turn to but that church,” he said roughly. “No one else to talk to. And I used to sit outside the confessional when I was a kid and I heard what she said. How ashamed she was. How guilty. She was a single mom as well so she got shit from people about it. She told the priest every day she lived with the evidence of her shame and how she could never get rid of it.” He stopped all of a sudden and she could hear how fast his heart was beating. Feel the sudden rush of breath as his chest expanded. Like he was afraid.
But how did that work? What was a man like Gabriel Woolf even afraid of?
Honor didn’t speak because if she did, this moment might end and she didn’t want it to. She wanted to hear whatever it was he still had to say. So instead she tightened her arms around him. Held him.
“I didn’t understand at the time what she was talking about,” he went on, his voice hoarse. “But it hurt to hear. I felt … responsible.”
A lump rose in the back of her throat. “How old were you?”
“Seven, I think. Yeah, must have been.”
She could picture it. Seven-year-old Gabriel outside the confessional. Waiting for his mother. Listening in and hearing … that. No child should ever have to bear that kind of burden.
“I wanted to help her. Do something to make her not feel so guilty or ashamed. But I didn’t know what to do. Because I didn’t know why she felt that way.”
“What about your father?” Honor asked thickly. “Where was he?”
The big body in her arms stiffened. “He was out of the picture.” The finality in Gabriel’s voice suggested that not asking any further questions on that particular subject would be a good idea.
She swallowed, her chest tight with sympathy. “So, what happened?”
“We survived on church handouts. And when I was old enough I took the packages from the Angels’ club members and I delivered them for cash.”
“Because you wanted to protect her,” she murmured, understanding. “You wanted to fix it.”
There was a silence.
Then Gabriel said, “There are some things you can’t fix.”
Honor took a silent breath then lifted her head, looking up into his face. “But you’re trying to fix it now, aren’t you? This vengeance thing is part of that, isn’t it?”
There was no expression at all on his features but she could see the burning in his dark eyes. “Yes.”
She lifted a hand, touched his cheekbone and the bruise on it. “What are you so angry about, Gabriel?”
“I think that’s enough fucking questions for one night, don’t you?”
The cold was back. In his voice, in his eyes. Like a mask he wore. It made her hurt for him. Made her ache. Because he was hiding something. The thing he was so angry about. That had driven him to tattoo into his skin the reminders and vows. The shame and the guilt wasn’t only his mother’s, it was his, too. And she wanted to know why.
Her hand drifted down to the waistband of his jeans, undid the button. Slid her hand inside his boxers to where he was already hard and hot and heavy.
His breath hissed as she wrapped her fingers around him. “I don’t think you want to play that game with me now, sweetheart,” he said roughly.
“Why not?” Her hand tightened. God, she loved the feel of him. Warm silk over steel.
“Because you won’t get any answers from me that way.”
“This vengeance you want,” she said, ignoring him. “Has it got something to do with the casino?”
“It might.”
She met his gaze, brushed her thumb over the head of his cock, felt him shudder. “What aren’t you telling me?”
He stared back. “You don’t want to know.”
And that wasn’t a lie. This time he was telling the truth.
God, she was so close to understanding him. Like he was a locked door and she could see the key right there in front of her. But the look on his face told her she did not want to know what lay behind that door. Did not want to know what would happen if she unlocked him.
But ever since her father died, she’d hated secrets. Hated the power they had. Hated how her world always felt fragile. Like glass and anything could shatter it. Anything at all.
Such as this man. He could shatter not only her world but her along with it.
If she let him. If she gave him that power.
What do you mean “if”? You’ve already given him that power.
Yeah, she had. Which meant she had nothing left to lose.
Honor ran her thumb over him again, watching as the fire in his eyes burned higher. “Actually,” she said. “I think that this time I do.”