He let her go again almost immediately, and Leonora curled her fingers over her palm as if to keep the sensation of his skin on hers a little longer. But it wasn’t enough.
In the elevator on the way up she could feel the tension pulsing between them. Like a heart. Beating. A live thing. She studiously avoided looking at Gabriel but she could smell him. Sense him. Imagine him. Touching her, removing her clothes, devouring her...transporting her to a place where the pain didn’t exist.
The bell chimed, signalling the elevator’s arrival at the apartment, and Leonora flushed at her wayward mind.
She stepped out and was acutely conscious of Gabriel behind her. His sheer size and bulk.
This was her first time back in the apartment since that night. She stopped at the entrance to the living area, almost as if she could see in her mind’s eye how events that night had unfolded, like a movie. He’d seduced her from the moment their eyes had locked that night at the hotel. Even though she had been about to be betrothed to another.
She turned around and saw him yanking at his bowtie, opening the top button of his shirt. Their eyes met and his movements slowed to a stop.
The words Goodnight, Gabriel were stuck in Leonora’s throat. She’d said them after every other event. Every night. As she’d made her escape. But tonight...she couldn’t say them.
Gabriel frowned. ‘Leo...?’
She was breaking apart inside. All the ice was melting and flowing into the whirlpool of emotion she’d been holding back.
She struggled to say something. Anything. ‘I can’t... I don’t know...’
He moved towards her, taking her arms in his hands. His touch burned.
‘Leo...what is it? What do you want?’
She couldn’t speak.
He came closer. ‘Shall I tell you what I want?’
Weakly, she nodded, needing him to articulate the turmoil inside her.
He said roughly, ‘I want you, Leo. I want you so much it hurts.’
He lifted a hand and cupped her jaw. It took every ounce of strength she possessed to try and hold firm. Resist. Not to turn her face into his palm and taste his skin.
‘But what’s the point?’ she asked.
He took his hand away from her face. Something flickered in his expression. Hurt?
‘Does there need to be a point? I want you and you want me. That hasn’t changed.’
After a long moment of silence he stepped back, and immediately she felt bereft.
He said, ‘Go to bed, Leo. It’s late.’
He was walking around her and into the apartment and suddenly everything in her rejected him moving away from her. Even though she knew she was the one who had caused him to do it.
She turned around. ‘Wait...stop.’
He had taken off his jacket and thrown it aside. She could see the powerful muscles of his back through his shirt.
He turned around.
‘You’re right,’ Leonora said. ‘There doesn’t need to be a point... I want you, Gabriel.’
For a long moment Gabriel said nothing. It looked as if he was wrestling with something. But then he said, ‘Are you sure?’
No.
Yes. She wanted him too much and the floodgates had opened. She needed him to set fire to the emotional turmoil inside her so it would be transformed into something other than this...pain.