“Gabriel,” she whispered finally.
And then he positioned himself at her entrance but then waited again. As she tried to move against him, wriggle closer. “I like watching you so desperate,principessa.”
She huffed out a sound, frustration or amusement or both. “I would think you might like watching me come apart.”
“That too. I like it all.” He moved slowly. Drawing out the anticipation and pleasure. She was begging long before he was fully inside her, and even as his body demanded more, he stretched it out. Denied them both what they sought.
“Gabriel. Now.” It was not an order. It was a plea. But she spread her arms wide, arched her body, taking him even deeper. “Now,” she repeated.
And then something broke. Him. Both of them. Everything went wild and uncontrolled. Her screams, his demands, echoing through the house. The desperate sounds of bodies meeting. And her scent, still sweet and everywhere.
He felt her fall over that sensual cliff over and over again before he could no longer deny himself. He emptied himself into her on a primal growl of triumph.
Yes, this. Her, always her. His.
At some point, night had fallen, and they had dozed, sated and perhaps mind numbed by all they’d found in each other.
When he woke, it was pitch-black, and Evelyne was curled up next to him, fast asleep, like that was exactly where she belonged.
His heart cracked, but he had been down this road before. Maybe it felt different, but it would be the same obsession, the same madness. It would drive him to places he could not allow himself to go.
It would drive him to places she did not deserve to witness.
Didn’t all of this prove it? He should have never crossed this line. It was a betrayal of what Alexandre had asked of him, and it was a betrayal of all the promises he’d made to himself when he’d gotten his life back.
Even as need tried to find its way into his bloodstream once more at the feel of her warm body pressed to his, he felt cold. He could see it all clearly now. He slipped out of bed. She didn’t stir.
Had he known this would happen all along? Had hehopedthis would happen all along? He watched her sleeping form and accepted that, yes, if he’d truly wanted to stop this—he would have never returned after that kiss. He would have handled all of this from afar.
But he’d returned. He’d needed to see her one last time.
More though, he’d wanted just this. Her. And because he was weak, he had taken it. A mistake, but a fixable one.
He left her sleeping.
With no plans to ever return.
Evelyne had awoken to night outside her window and the unsurprising truth that Gabriel was gone.
Truly gone. He had left her. She knew he would not come back now. There was no doubt in her mind. Whatever he had allowed between them he viewed as an unfixable mistake. The heat, the passion, the glorious pleasure of it all was wrong in his mind. For whatever reason.
Evelyne sighed. She didn’t cry then—tears would come later as she sought to live someone else’s life. As she came to certain realizations. In this moment, she made a promise to herself.
She would make the best of what came next. She would live as Lina Marino. Shewoulddrive to town and make friends and build a life. Maybe it would be a lie, but it would beherlie.
So a few months later, when it finally occurred to her that the lethargy, the nausea, the tears that finally did come and didn’t want to stop was a sign that she might be pregnant, she did not ring the emergency number Gabriel had given her. She did not contact him.
She calmly put the color-changing contacts in—though she refused to dye her hair—and drove herself to the store in town, purchased a pregnancy test, figured out the self-checkout so no one in the village she’d come to know would see and took it home.
When the test was positive, she still did not call Gabriel.
No, he had left her. And this was no emergency. This was her life, and she got to live it as she saw fit.
So she would do this on her own.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Gabriel did notgo back. He was proud of himself for that. Because there were a few times over the course of the next six months that he had gotten close to breaking. Once, he’d even arranged for a plane.
