“I have dreamed so many times,” she told him.
“Hush.” His hand shot out, curling around the back of her neck. His big body was so near, the blood in her veins seemed to sing for it.
His thumb stroked the delicate hairs on her nape, and her lashes dropped as she savored the touch, her sex pulsing at each gentle stroke.
“What is it that you want?” he asked, palming one breast with his other hand. His touch felt like fire on her flesh, his grip as it closed around her harsh and possessive. She forgot to breathe, to think, to speak, to do anything but stand there and let him see her, touch her.
A moan thrust up to her throat the same instant he growled, yanked her forward, and clamped his lips on hers. Oh she’d wanted this, his mouth on hers, kissing her—Stella McKenna—not a woman long dead. His tongue was almost violent, plundering into her mouth until she felt like he was fucking her with his tongue.
She rubbed her body against his, wanting to feel him, feel his sex stir awake for her. Both his hands fisted around her hair and pulled her head back as his mouth angled over hers.
The kiss intensified, and so did the burning heat inside her. Her head was spinning and she hadn’t even realized she was gripping his arms so tight until her hands began to shake. She moaned into his mouth, and in that same instant he tore away from her, his eyes blazing red as he bared his teeth. “Do you want to be fucked? Is that it?”
Her lips stung with his kiss and her weakened body protested for more. She trembled, her gaze searching the dark pools of his eyes as she whispered, “Yes.”
Didn’t he?
Every muscle in him seemed to contract at her admission. “I will not be fucking you,” he said.
She felt herself sway and she placed a hand over her drumming heart as if to steady herself. “Please…I need this so much.”
He snarled and with a quick, jolting movement of his hands sent two ropes flying upward. They snatched her wrists, jerking them up over her head toward the ceiling. Her toes still touched the ground, but barely, her and arms suddenly stretched.
There was an eerie spark in his eyes, and anger, so much of it. She could feel the rage inside him as if it was churning in her own stomach, and yet a part of her seemed to understand, know the origin of such anger, such desperation.
He advanced on her, kicking her legs apart. “Oh, you’ll get fucked all right,” he said in a deceptively soft murmur. “But it won’t be by me.”
It won’t be by me.
The words came back to him, and Gabriel r
ealized he must’ve done something very evil to deserve this.
In another life, another time, another circumstance, Gabriel would’ve loved nothing more than to run his tongue down that supple, curvy body and plunge his hardness into her cunt.
His senses, sharpened by his solitude, could pick up the tantalizing heat of her lust, the sweet tang of her want. Her pussy gleamed wetly, the pink lips puffed with need, the sight beckoning his lips. But Gabriel wouldn’t give Faith away. Not for madness, not for lust.
Faith would come back to him, and he would wait. Keep on waiting. Magic was all he had left, and if he stopped believing in that…
Summoned by his will, the thick, smooth scepter appeared in his hand, and he closed his grip around it, ascertaining himself of its presence. His gaze never wavered from Stella’s.
“You shouldn’t have come back,” he said thickly.
Her quiet reply, as clear as it was silent, was one he wasn’t expecting to hear.
You called me.
A wave of anger swept across him. “I did not call you.”
You called me, and I came.
Damn foolish woman! Yet he couldn’t help but notice how beautiful she looked now. Her skin was smooth and creamy, the tips of her breasts elongated and ready for a tug of his lips. Her belly rose with each of her breaths, and the V of silky hairs between her legs was trim enough to display the bright pink, swollen lips nestled between them.
He was sure the sight of her would haunt him forever.
“I want you so much,” she whispered, the gentle admission so poignant he felt it snake around his gut.
He didn’t want to want her, didn’t want to feel so goddamned contemptible for denying her, but he could not fuck her. Could not. Didn’t she understand this? What in the hell would it take to make her leave him alone, damn her?