CHAPTER NINE
Gabriel woke to find the room flooded with the kind of cold, bright light that always came with early morning on snowy days. He wasn’t alone, he knew that immediately because he could feel warmth nestled against his side, the scent of flowers and musk surrounding him.
A woman. Honor.
He turned his head and there she was, lying curled against him, her hair spread over the white pillow in a glossy black spill, her eyes shut, still fast asleep. Peaceful. So different from the flushed, panting woman he’d held in his arms. The one who’d screamed as he’d brought her to a second climax. Who’d sobbed as he’d given her a third.
Christ, it had been good. He’d made her lose control in his arms more than once, which was extremely satisfying and all according to plan. Except he couldn’t allow himself to get too carried away. He had to maintain his distance, keep himself separate and unengaged.
Nothing could be allowed to get in the way of his anger, and most certainly not lust. He’d never had any problems keeping his distance before, he shouldn’t be having any problems now.
He let out a breath. What he should be doing is getting up and going to the hotel gym, indulging in his usual early morning workout. Yet he found himself strangely reluctant to move.
It had been a while since he’d woken up with a woman. While his mother had been sick he hadn’t had the time or the energy to waste on sex. It had only ever been a release valve anyway. All he’d ever needed was anger.
He turned on his side, looking down at her.
She was motionless in sleep, her breathing even and deep, her lashes lying thick on her flushed cheeks. Her skin was fine and pale, and he remembered how it had felt under his fingers the night before. Soft. Smooth. Warm.
He let his gaze travel over the curve of her shoulder to the flare of her hips, then to the gentle swell of her thighs. She was lovely, delicate. Not the kind of woman he usually had in his bed. Yes, she had that perfectly put together, expensive look to her. And yet, there was a strength and depth to her other sophisticated women lacked. Behind that cool, calm front lay fire. Passion. A passion that apparently she’d never let out with anyone else.
Her lashes fluttered then they lifted, the deep blue of her eyes looking up into his. And for a second he couldn’t remember where he was or what he was doing, something painful constricting in his chest. Then she blinked, her face flushing, and the painful sensation was gone.
“How long have you been staring at me?” she asked.
“A minute or so,” he replied with absolute truth.
“Why?”
“Because you’re beautiful.” And that, too, was the truth.
“Oh.” Her gaze flickered away.
“I’ve been trying to decide whether or not to go have a workout or wake you up and make you scream again.”
The color in her cheeks deepened. “Why me? Isn’t it your turn to scream?”
He smiled, genuinely amused. “Baby, you’re certainly welcome to try.”
Her deep blue gaze came to his. “Are you serious?”
Ah, of course. Now he’d become a challenge. He found the thought made him even harder than he was already. “If you think you can do it, why not?”
The look on her face turned to one full of intent, her gaze sweeping down his body. She reached out, placed her palm on his chest over the cross he’d had tattooed there when his mother had reluctantly told him who he was. Where he’d come from. And why she was sometimes afraid of him.
He still remembered the cold pain of the tattoo. Like ice. A welcome respite to the anger that had burned in his heart after his mother had revealed what his father had done to her. Shattering his boyhood dreams of having a proper dad he could look up to.
The anger had cooled now, become sharp, an anger he’d honed over the years into a vicious edge.
But the warmth of her hand heated his skin, chasing away the ice. It made him shiver and he almost wanted to take her hand away. Cold was so much easier to bear than heat. Yet he didn’t. Because now her hand was moving down, over his abdomen, farther down, her fingers finding his cock, stroking him.
His muscles tightened, the sweet ache intensifying as she took his dick in her palm, gripping him. “I think I get to call the shots now,” she said softly, tightening her hold.
A thread of unease wound through him and he couldn’t figure out why. He liked to be in charge during sex because it gave him control, helped him to maintain distance. But plenty of women over the years had jerked or sucked him off and he’d never once lost it with any of them. One blue-eyed, black-haired woman wasn’t going to break the habit of a lifetime. Was she?
“Okay,” he said. “For now.”
Her fingers tightened. “Lie on your back.”
Hell, he’d do that. If it kept her hand right where it was. He rolled over. Honor pulled back the sheet and shifted, kneeling between his thighs, her hand still gripping his cock firmly. The sight of her hand wrapped around him shook him on a level he hadn’t realized he possessed.
The unease deepened.
She bent her head, the silky ends of her hair brushing his abs, sending chills racing through his body. Then she swirled her tongue around the head of his cock, licking him delicately, like he was her favorite ice cream.
Pleasure uncoiled, stroking over nerve endings that he’d thought deadened long ago. He’d always found physical pleasure a faint, dulled thing but this … This wasn’t dull. It was sharp, hot. Last night he’d managed to handle it by staying in control of her, but this time, there was no such distraction.
She was making it all about him.
As the realization hit, Honor’s mouth opened, almost swallowing him whole. The sensation of slick heat was astonishing. “Jesus…” He found his fingers were gripping the mattress, holding onto it as her hand tightened. As she increased suction.
Pressure began to build.
Fuck. He couldn’t seem to tear his eyes from where she knelt, the sight of his cock disappearing into her mouth so erotic it left him breathless. She hadn’t done this before, or at least not very often, he could tell, and yet somehow that only made it hotter.
Then she looked up at him as she sucked him, blue eyes deep and wide. And with her other hand she touched him, running her fingers up his leg, over his abs, his chest, and back down again. A light, tantalizing touch that shouldn’t have been as fucking erotic as it was.
You don’t deserve this. You’ve never deserved it. Not after all the things you’ve done …
Darkness lurked just at the edge of his vision, an old pain slicing deep.
Gabriel groaned and reached for her, twining his fingers in her hair. This was wrong. He’d made a mistake. He had to control this somehow. He tried to tug her head up but she shook his fingers away. “Do that again and I’ll stop,” she said thickly, her breath washing over his aching cock. Then her mouth covered him again and she made a hungry sound at the back of her throat, her movements becoming faster.
Something tight began to crack inside him.
He tried to fight back, gain some semblance of control but there was nothing to hold onto. Nothing except her.
Gabriel arched back on the bed, his hips thrusting into her mouth, his fingers buried in the softness of her hair as the pressure built to intolerable levels.
“Fuck,” he groaned. “Honor…”
Then it smashed apart and he broke with it, his ragged cry of release echoing through the room.
He released his hold on her hair, just lying there for long minutes, staring blankly at the ceiling, his mind utterly empty of thought. He could feel her fingers tracing lazy circles on his stomach, her body shifting as she sat up. “I think I’ll take that as a scream,” she said, sounding pleased with herself. “Which means I win.” She leaned over him, frowning as she touched the back of his hand where it rested on his chest. “Where did these scars come from?”
He tried to swallow, his mouth dry. “Knife cuts. I did a lot of fighting.”
Her fingers drifted lower, moving to the tattoos over his abdomen, the words he’d put there when he was eighteen. The last time he’d demanded his mother tell him the name of his father and she’d refused.
“‘I will repay,’” Honor said softly, her fingers tracing the letters. “That’s from the Bible.”
His skin felt tight, like something was pressing down on him, squeezing all the air from his lungs. It had been years since he’d felt like this. Years since he’d felt anything at all except anger. Yet she’d broken through his guard, cracked the ice he’d surrounded himself with. Made him feel something else …
What was it the Reverend had told him? “Hold onto your anger, Church. But make it cold. That way it lasts. You gotta have something to drive you and stone-cold anger is the best fuel there is.”
Fuck, he needed to breathe. Get out.
Before he could even think straight, he’d brushed away her hands, slipping off the bed, bending to pick up his clothes.
“Gabriel?” she asked softly.
Fighting for breath, he began to dress in sharp, jerky movements. “I’m going for a ride,” he managed to force out.
“What? Now?”
He pulled on his T-shirt. “Yeah, now.”
“But … Did I do something?” An edge of hurt had crept into her voice. “Say something?”
He couldn’t look at her. He had to get out. Into the air, where it was cold and clean and sharp. Where the ice would freeze out the heat she’d made him feel.
Where he’d reclaim his fucking detachment.
“Gabriel,” Honor said. “What’s wrong?”
But he ignored her. Without a word, he turned on his heel and strode from the room.
* * *
“What’s happening, Honor?” Guy’s cool voice held an edge to it. “I thought I would have heard by now.”
Honor turned from the windows and walked back across the room, her heels sinking soundlessly into the thick carpet.
“It’s okay, Dad,” she said soothingly. “Woolf is going to come to the party.”
There was a silence down at the other end of the phone. “Are you sure?”
“Yes.” Gabriel had promised her and she was going to hold him to that promise, come hell or high water. “End of this week, we’ll have the money.” At least, she hoped so.
Another silence. Which wasn’t what Honor had been expecting. “Dad?”
“Yes, I’m here.” Her stepfather sounded less than excited. He wasn’t a demonstrative man but she’d expected more than this.
“This is good news, honestly.”
“Of course. Yes. And I’m … relieved, obviously.”
“Really? You don’t sound it.”
There was a noise in the background, a car’s engine. “Look, I’m going to have to go. When are you back in New York?”
She looked down at her watch. “Tonight probably.” At least she would once she’d finished packing.
“Tonight? Your mother said you were there for the week?”
Honor glanced at her mostly packed case. “I was, but … there was a work emergency. I’m needed back sooner than I thought.”
“Well, get in touch when you get back, okay? We need to discuss this.”
Honor frowned. Hadn’t they had enough conversations about this already? Still, maybe it was better not to press it now. Face-to-face was better anyway.
“Sure,” she said.
“Oh and Honor?”
“Yes?”
“Best not bring Alex up to your mother again. You know how upset she gets.”
Honor opened her mouth to protest, then shut it. There wasn’t anything to say. Guy tended to get protective when her mother was upset. “Yes, well. I’m sorry about that.”
“Something to bear in mind for next time, hmm?”
They spoke for another couple of minutes then Honor ended the call. If she wanted to be back in New York by that evening she had to get on the road before it got too late.
Walking into the bedroom, she took a last look through the drawers and bathroom before going over to the chair where she’d put her case, flipping it shut and clicking down the clasps.
She tried not to look at the tangle of sheets on the bed. Or think about what had happened in that bed.
The hard warmth of his skin as she’d traced the Gothic lettering of the tattoo on his stomach, the shift of muscles beneath her hand, the musky taste of him in her mouth, the sound of his ragged cry as she’d made him come …
Honor shivered. She’d felt so good making him shake like that. Making him cry her name. She’d only gone down once on a man before and it hadn’t been the most pleasant of experiences. But doing that to Gabriel had been … intensely powerful and more arousing than she’d ever thought possible. She’d felt so pleased with herself afterward.
Until he’d got up and walked out. And she still didn’t know why. Whether she’d given him the world’s worst blow job or whether it was something else. He certainly hadn’t liked her mentioning the words of his tattoo, that was for sure, so possibly it had something to do with that.
She set her jaw, lifting the case off the chair and putting it on the floor.
A moot point now anyway since she wasn’t going to be waiting around until he decided to show his face. She’d spent the morning hoping he’d come back but he hadn’t.
Which was fine. They weren’t in a relationship and he didn’t owe her any kind of explanation, even if she’d wanted one. And she didn’t. What she wanted was to get back home, get back to work. Get back to her life where she was the one in control. Basically anywhere where he wasn’t because it was better to be away from temptation than keep trying to prove herself against it.
Trying and failing.
Turning on her heel, Honor towed her wheeled case out into the hallway just as the front door of the cottage opened and Gabriel came in, bringing in a whirl of snow and cold air.
She stopped dead.
He was in his bike leathers, snow dusting his shoulders and glittering in his blond hair. And the cold that came in with him wasn’t only from the outside world. There was no warmth in the brown eyes that met hers, none of the heat that had been there last night. Only a detached, flat darkness that chilled her down to the bone.
He flicked a glance down at her case. “You’re going?”
Honor braced herself for an argument. “Yes. I know you wanted a week, but I’m not sure staying longer is going to be in our best interests.”
“Fine. Leave the bill with me. I’m going to be leaving today myself.”
So, no argument then. Why was that so inexplicably disappointing?
“I can settle my own bill, thank you,” she said coolly, ignoring the feeling. “I trust our agreement with regard to the investment is still good?”
The look on his face was absolutely unreadable. “Yes. You’ll get your money.”
“Great. Well, I’m sorry I can’t stay but…”
“As you say, it’s not in our best interests.”
“No. And I have quite a lot of work stacking up back in New York.” She gripped the handle of the suitcase tightly as tension charged the air between them. “Well, good-bye then, Gabriel. And thank you.”
“For what?”
“For considering Tremain as an investment.” And because he was just so damn impassive and she wanted some kind of reaction from him, she arched an eyebrow and added, “What else could there be?”
Something flickered in the darkness of his eyes. Then it was gone. “Nothing. I’ll see you again in New York to finalize the details.” He reached for the cottage door and opened it for her. “Drive safe.”
She wanted to say something else. Something about the night before. Something about this morning. But she didn’t know what and he gave her no clues. It was like he was a stranger.
He’s always been a stranger, you fool.
Of course he was, and yes, she was a fool for feeling so disappointed. The night before should have satisfied her craving for him and she definitely shouldn’t want more. It was over. Done with.
She would move on and so would he, strangers still.
Honor gave him a polite smile.
And walked through the door and out into the snow.