Page 128 of Gabriel: Duke of Bencalor

“Ay, car­iño, what would I do with­out you?” he said, pulling her in closer so his face was pressed against her breasts.

That froze her breath. They would find out the an­swer to that ques­tion all too soon.

Gabriel twined his fin­gers with Quinn’s as the jet jinked through its usual eva­sive ma­neu­vers en route to cruis­ing al­ti­tude. One par­tic­u­larly abrupt turn sent his stom­ach side­ways while Quinn made a sound some­where be­tween a moan and a gasp.

“I thought they only did ex­treme aer­o­bat­ics when Raul or the king was on board,” she mut­tered.

“Un­cle Luis and Mikel are be­ing cau­tious with all that has got­ten stirred up.” He glanced over to see that she had her eyes closed. Her smooth skin was even paler than usual, mak­ing the touch of sun­burn on her nose and cheek­bones stand out. She said she’d got­ten it at the shoot­ing range the day be­fore. The pil­lowy lower lip he loved so much was flat­tened into a ner­vous frown, and her chest rose and fell in quick, pan­icked breaths be­neath her gray T-shirt.

“I guess you don’t like roller coast­ers,” he said, try­ing to lighten her mood.

“Hate them,” she grit­ted out. “Life is scary enough with­out vol­un­tar­ily adding to the ter­ror.”

Guilt flashed through him. It was his fault she was white-knuck­led with fear. He should have com­pelled her not to come, ex­cept that he needed her be­side him to face what­ever ver­dict awaited him in New York.

He was dis­ap­pointed in all the con­straints on the trip, even as he un­der­stood the need for them. He had seen the sparkle of ex­cite­ment in Quinn’s eyes when Gabriel had men­tioned sight­see­ing in the city. She must miss her home coun­try. He couldn’t imag­ine tear­ing his roots out of Cal­eva to go live in a for­eign place. But Quinn had said she had no roots, so per­haps it wasn’t as hard for her.

He had also hoped that she might re­veal more about her­self when she was on her home turf. On Cal­eva, there was noth­ing to evoke a mem­ory that might lead to an un­guarded com­ment.

The jet’s nose dipped abruptly, then jerked up­ward, and Quinn moaned again, mak­ing him want to pull her into his lap so he could wrap his arms around her to re­as­sure her.

How could he care about some­one so deeply, yet know so lit­tle about her? All he re­ally had to base his trust on was that Mikel be­lieved in her. Mikel, though, was not a straight­for­ward per­son. He saw the world and the peo­ple within it in a mil­lion shades of gray. Her boss might for­give Quinn some of her shad­ows if he felt her use­ful­ness out­weighed them.

No, Gabriel be­lieved in her too. She had hid­den her past, but she had never hid­den her­self. She gave him hon­esty, pas­sion, and that blaz­ing in­tel­li­gence with­out hold­ing back any­thing.

The plane stopped its crazed lurch­ing and set­tled into a smooth, easy as­cent.

“Thank God!” Quinn mut­tered as her grip on his hand loos­ened. “I’d hate to throw up all over the dragon car­pet­ing.”

Gabriel glanced down­ward, sur­prised to see that the car­pet un­der their feet had a sub­tle pat­tern of frilled drag­ons wo­ven into it. “Tío Luis went over­board on the cus­tomiza­tion, didn’t he?”

“I’m guess­ing he had a de­signer,” Quinn said. “I can’t pic­ture him re­quest­ing a dragon rug.”

Gabriel grinned. “Don’t un­der­es­ti­mate his de­vo­tion to the fam­ily mythol­ogy.”

That got a snort out of her. She let go of his hand to lift her cof­fee from the cupholder. He flexed his fin­gers.

“Sorry,” she said, her rue­ful gaze on his hand. “I hope I didn’t do any dam­age.”

“It’s com­pletely func­tional.” He wig­gled his fin­gers.

“I should have re­mem­bered that these ap­pendages are too valu­able a com­mod­ity to treat like nor­mal hands.”

Panic crashed through him, squeez­ing his lungs. He forced him­self to breathe in and out nor­mally. “Their value is still in ques­tion,” he man­aged to say.

“Not to me. I can think of lots of very worth­while things they do.” She gave him a las­civ­i­ous look that stirred his cock even though he knew she was try­ing to take his mind off the au­di­tion.

As long as he was play­ing the gui­tar, he could fo­cus on the mu­sic and shove wor­ries about his fu­ture to the back of his mind. Once he fas­tened the gui­tar case closed, his mind was free to con­jure up Marisela’s imag­ined look of dis­gust as he butchered the first piece he’d pre­pared.

He squeezed his eyes shut as though that could erase the im­age.

“Gabriel, just pic­ture Marisela Alejo in her un­der­wear.” Quinn’s teas­ing voice broke his spi­ral of self-doubt. “No, scratch that. She’s gor­geous, and I’d be jeal­ous.”

“How did you know what I was think­ing about?” he asked in as­ton­ish­ment.

“You looked like you were about to throw up, so I fig­ured it was per­for­mance anx­i­ety.” She gave him an­other of her slant­ing glances of se­duc­tion.

“I did not look like I was go­ing to throw up,” he protested with a laugh, even as he won­dered.

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