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Could she call this a relationship yet? It felt like one to her, but maybe that came from a false sense of familiarity that had begun when she’d watched the hours of video as Mikel debriefed Gabriel after the kidnapping. Gabriel didn’t have the same strange foundation of knowledge on his side.
“A ‘commoner’?” Irritation laced his question. “Do you believe that’s how I think of you?”
“Okay, a non-noble.” At least he hadn’t balked at relationship.
She slid off his chest as he rolled onto his side so he could look her in the eye. “I am not my father. I don’t cling to outdated traditions and talk about how much better it was in Caleva’s golden past.”
Probably not a good idea to point out that since his father was the royal historian, his job description was to embrace Caleva’s past. “But have you dated women who weren’t part of the nobility?”
“I don’t think I should discuss former girlfriends while in bed with my current one. It seems like it might be dangerous.” He smiled.
“If I promise not to knee you in the balls, will you answer my question?” He’d called her his girlfriend. She shut down the happy flip of her heart.
He tilted his head back to glare at the ceiling in exasperation, which made his hair cascade in a silky curtain. “I don’t choose my girlfriends based on their pedigree, so I’ll have to think about it.”
She gave him three seconds. “Well?”
“Yes. Yes, I have.” He sounded triumphant and relieved.
“How many?”
“That, I will not answer.” He smacked her bottom lightly. “I don’t want to think about any woman other than you right now.”
“Good strategy, using flattery to get you out of a tight spot.”
He rolled to brace himself over her as he purred with sexual innuendo, “There’s only one tight spot I’m interested in.”
She allowed him to distract her with a long, exploratory kiss that perked up all her internal muscles again.
Gabriel stared at the blinking red light of the smoke alarm on Quinn’s ceiling, automatically counting the beats between each pulse of red. Quinn lay curled against his side, her breath ruffling across his chest.
She seemed so small and fragile, yet she had yanked him out of his flashback to the terror of the silver masks. With her body. With her words. With just her presence.
Behind her nerdy glasses burned a tough, fierce intelligence that attracted him like a moth to a flame. There was steel in her, like a fine sword, and he wanted to know how it had been forged.
He dropped a kiss on her temple, inhaling the fragrance of shampoo and woman. She stirred, and he tightened his hold around her waist, not wanting even an inch of space between them.
He might have an intimate physical knowledge of her body, but her past was a closed book. Maybe she and Mikel got along so well because they both held their secrets close.
She had evaded all his efforts to find out about her family. More and more, he got the sense that she wasn’t hiding it because it was dysfunctional in a normal way. There was something beyond that, something that made her even more uncomfortable with who he was.
Mikel would know because he knew everything about everyone. He had hired her to work on the kidnapping case, which meant that he trusted her as much as he trusted anyone. However, Gabriel refused to ask him to betray Quinn’s confidences. Quinn needed to share her truth with him herself.
All he had to do was win her trust.
Gabriel scowled at the fire alarm. His title made her put a wall up between them. She might crack jokes about curtsying, but she was bothered by his dukedom. She saw his adherence to duty as heroic, while he sometimes felt that his commitment to his king and country was a convenient excuse not to take more risks in his life. The most rebellious act he’d ever committed was to study music at university and continue his studies for two years at the prestigious Conservatorio de Lucía in Cádiz. His father had treated that as an offense second only to treason.
After school, he came back to Caleva to do the mandatory year of service in the militia as well as to shoulder the mantle of el Duque de Bencalor. Somehow Quinn thought that made him honorable, not weak. She saw no reason why he couldn’t be a duke and a world-class guitarist.
He feared that being a duke would make him a curiosity in the music world, like a talking dog. The audience would come to see him because of his title, not his talent.
Suddenly, he wished he wasn’t a duke. It was a strange feeling since his position was woven into his life like threads in a tapestry. Now the title stood in the way…of the music he cared so passionately about and this woman whom he was coming to feel an almost equal passion for.
Yet he could not walk away from being el Duque de Bencalor. He would have to convince himself and Quinn that when it came to passion, nothing should stand in the way.
Chapter 20
Quinn’s phone alarm squawked, and she groped for the bedside table, only to find a large male body in the way.
