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My heart squeezes. “Okay,” I whisper, and his lips curve, his eyes lightening despite the shadows cloaking the car.
He releases me and starts backing up. I settle into the leather of the seat and inhale. I can’t wait for him to make this go away. I have to make it go away and I know what that means. I know that dark, horrible place I have to travel to make it go away. And before someone I care about, Gabe included, gets hurt.
Chapter thirty-six
Abbie
The ride to Gabe’s place is short and the awareness between us rich with sexual tension and a budding understanding that doesn’t require words. We’re both in this to stay. We’re both ready to be alone again.
He pulls us into his driveway, parking under a huge oak tree. “I’ll come around and get you,” he says, as he kills the engine and the lights.
I don’t argue. It’s been a long time since I was in a place where a man could come around and get me and actually did so by choice. And not because I live in Manhattan where cars aren’t feasible with parking fees, traffic, and pedestrians overflowing in the roads. My ex never did anything to be a gentleman. Not for a long time. Not for years of the marriage. And yet I stayed.
I flash back to that spontaneous moment when I’d kissed Gabe by the bathroom and thanked him for waking me up. He did. He keeps opening my eyes, and my heart, wider. He exits the vehicle and rounds the truck and my hand runs over the soft leather interior, the seat warmer a perk of the luxury vehicle that somehow doesn’t define the man. He has money. He has powerand success. I know it’s in abundance because he felt no fear of my ex and Jean Claude, but I know this from his actions. He doesn’t walk around wearing his money and power as a weapon. He is his own weapon.
A weapon.
Gabe has so many layers I want to understand.
He opens the door and I rotate my legs, my feet hitting the gravel and Gabe offers me his hand. I stare at it, preparing myself for the jolt of his touch when that is nothing I have ever felt before. This man undoes me without even trying. I reach out and press my hand to his and his long fingers close around mine. His powerful arm eases me to my feet, and in a breath, I’m standing directly in front of him.
He reaches up, his fingers brushing my cheek, goosebumps lifting on my skin, and they have nothing to do with the cold breeze from the nearby ocean. It’s this man. It’s the way he turns me ten kinds of inside out. “You know what happens if I take you inside, right?” he asks softly, his voice a low, rough rumble of masculine heat.
“Take me to the shower because I smell like dog and I’m pretty sure horse and hay?”
His low, soft laughter that follows chases heat through my body. “A shower it is, but I won’t promise we’ll make it there before I undress you. I might just have to fuck you in the hallway.”
Fuck me in the hallway.
Yes.
Please.
Do it.
I have not had a man want me so much that he had to fuck me in the hallway in a lifetime, it seems. “That sounds like a self-control issue to me,” I tease.
He doesn’t laugh and then as a groan of thunder sounds somewhere in the nearby sky, starlight beams through the clouds, and illuminates his face, the depths of desire in his eyes as he says, “Control. Yes. It’s definitely a control issue.” He brings my hand to his mouth and kisses it. “Let’s go see who has it.”
Had anyone else said this to me, I’d back away. I’ve given away the control of my life for far too long. I need to own it. I need control. But this man owning my body and my pleasure that hardly seems like me giving up anything. It seems like it’s a reward for walking away from the past. I already know it’s pleasure. He’s pleasure, not pain, and I want the escape he offers. I want to forget the hell facing me in the morning light with my mother, legal issues, an ex that I swore my lifetime devotion to only to be burned and bruised emotionally.
Gabe guides me toward the house and we walk up the steps. The minute we’re at the door, he pulls me in front of him, his body encasing mine, his lips at my ear, a warm breath, a warm promise of pleasure tickling my ear and my neck. My nipples tighten, my breasts ache for his touch. My sex is a tight knot, thighs already slick with the certainty that he will soon be there where I need him, between my legs.
He unlocks the door, shoves it open, and together we walk inside. He flips on the light and when I would turn to face him, he holds me where I’m at, kicking the door shut. Dexter barks, but the garden room door is shut. Gabe calls out to him, “It’s us, Dexter. Chew your bone.” He nuzzles my neck. “I’m going to owe him a steak or something for not saying hello.”
I laugh at the way this man says things that make you laugh in the most intense moments. “Yes,” I agree. “Or maybe a pizza.”
He doesn’t laugh. He pulls my coat off and tosses it and his hoodie hits the floor right after mine. I’d laugh at the way he’s just tossed them, but now I’m the one who can’t laugh whenperhaps I would at another time. Because he’s touching me again. He presses his hand on my belly and nuzzles my neck again. “We aren’t making it to the shower.” He steps into me, his thick erection nuzzling my backside. His hand caresses up my waist, and over my breasts where he squeezes. I lean back into him, moaning softly with the pinch of my nipple.
“That’s what I wanted,” he confesses, his breath tickling my neck again, and I don’t know if he means the moan or the way I’m now leaning fully against him. The way my entire body is against his. The way, I realize, I’m trusting him to hold me up. To protect me from a fall even as he takes me to the most vulnerable place ever. That place where you give up everything you are to pleasure, to the person who is giving it to you and that you want to give it to.
“Definitely not making it to the shower,” he says, and suddenly he’s pulling my T-shirt over my head, tossing it as he did my coat. My bra is gone before I even register where my shirt has fallen. His hands are on my breasts, his eyes raking over my nipples before they meet my stare.
“I’m going to lick you, fuck you, and repeat, and then we’ll shower.”
“I think we should shower first.”
“No, Abbie. We’re not showering first.” He turns me to face the door, and presses my hands to the hard wooden surface, his body framing mine as he says, “How many orgasms will it take for you to trust me?”
