“No,” he says, his dark tone close to a demand. “I don’t intend to share you with anyone, Ms. Beckham.”
I bite my lip. “Not even eighty-year-old ladies bearing muffin baskets?”
The corner of his mouth quirks, but the rest of him is vibrating with sexual energy. “No one.”
The air between us shifts, as it has so often since we met. It doesn’t take more than a breath for his mood to change from playful and charming to sexual and commanding. It takes even less for everything female in me to respond to the storm gathering in him.
He reaches for my hand. Bringing my fingers to his mouth, he licks off the crumbs before sucking my index finger into his mouth. Slowly, he lets it go, his eyes full of carnal promise. “Do you remember what you told me last night?”
My mind buzzes with all of the desperate promises and breathless whispers he coaxed from me under the barrage of pleasure he delivered. I meant every one. Especially the one that sits perched on the tip of my tongue even now.
“I am yours.”
He inclines his head in a tight nod, his gaze scorching everywhere it touches me. Leaning over the countertop, he captures my mouth in a searing kiss, dragging me up off the stool and halfway onto the granite surface. I crawlup the rest of the way, impatient to put my hands on him. I kiss him in a frenzy, my fingers in his hair, on his back, clawing at him in raw lust and a need to be taken hard by him.
“I’m only yours, Gabriel.”
His eyes never leave me. They consume me as completely as a blaze.
With a sweep of his arm, he pushes aside my phone and the mug of coffee and the rest of the smattering of things on the countertop. Then he takes hold of me by my hips, dragging me across the granite to the opposite edge where he stands. My yoga pants and panties are yanked down with impatient hands, cool air rushing against the drenched seam of my sex as he parts my thighs.
The sound he makes as he looks at me, spread open and ready for him, is fevered, possessive.
His hand moves to the front of his pants, and I watch in rapt fascination as he pulls out his cock and guides it between my legs. He is fully erect, sliding along my wetness like heated steel, unyielding, demanding. He finds my center and I whimper with the need for him to fill me, to claim me.
Desire rules my voice and every fiber of my being. I toss my head back on a desperate cry. “Please . . .”
He captures my mouth in a brutal kiss and thrusts inside me. Hard and thick and unrelenting, almost more than I can bear. He lifts his head to watch me as he pounds into me, his strokes furious and deep and wild. His handsome face seems so tortured in that moment, awash with a hundred things he cannot, or will not, say.
So, I say the words for him.
“You’re mine, Gabriel.” With one hand bracedbehind me, I wrap my other around the back of his strong neck, our eyes locked on each other. “No matter what . . . you belong to me.”
My demand pushes him over the edge of his control.
Hauling me closer, he powers into me now. He doesn’t let up, not until I am crazed with sensation, tears leaking from my release breaking over me in an explosion of pleasure and emotion. He comes with me, my name boiling out of his throat like a curse and a prayer.
26
~ Gabriel ~
As appealing as I found the idea of keeping Evelyn bound to my bed for the entire weekend, eventually our stomachs overruled my plans.
Having spent most of my free time last week on the Upper East Side at her place, food options in my kitchen were limited to random breakfast items, a few frozen dinners, and the basket of blueberry muffins. Instead, Evelyn persuaded me into a trip to the farmers market and lunch at a neighborhood café.
We are seated at a table in the small green space out back, enjoying deli sandwiches and iced teas. A woven tote stuffed with fresh produce, including a carton of tiny wild blueberries, sits on the gray patio bricks at my feet.
“You realize this is setting a bad precedent with Mrs. Bernstein,” I tell Eve, my arm draped over the back ofher hard wooden chair next to me. Garbed in a breezy summer dress and flats, she turns a radiant smile on me, her pale green eyes sparkling in the sunshine. “I’ve made the occasional pharmacy run for her and carried up her parcels from time to time, but you’re really forcing me to up my game now.”
She laughs, leaning over to kiss me. “I couldn’t pass up the blueberries, and I’m sure she’ll appreciate having a few days’ worth of fresh vegetables.”
I make a skeptical sound, but I like that Evelyn thought of it. Christ, I like everything about being out with her today, doing things I see normal couples do every weekend. It’s a foreign concept to me, sharing my day and my neighborhood with someone. While I would have expected it to feel strange or awkward, with Evelyn it is neither of those things.
If anything, it is the sense of contentment I feel that alarms me the most.
It’s too easy to weave her into the fabric of my world when I look at her right now. Too easy to let down my guard and forget that someone has been watching her—someone who still has the benefit of hiding in the shadows, lurking just out of my reach.
Until I’m certain she’s safe and that every threat is eliminated, I have to be first and foremost the man committed to her protection. Not the man distracted by his desire for her . . . and the deepening affection that I can no longer deny, least of all to myself.
