Challenging Gabriel (Knight Security 2) (7 page)

“Gabriel—”

“No more talking.” He pulled aside that small lace barrier and parted silky, trimmed dark curls, gazing hungrily at the swollen lips to her channel and the pulsing clit above before slowly lowering his head and running his tongue along the seam of her sex all the way up to the exposed nubbin above. He groaned as he felt her clit pulse and swell against the rasp of his tongue.

“Gabriel…” Angel’s hands moved to grasp his shoulders for balance, fingers digging into his flesh.

“I am going to make you come so hard and so many times, you won’t know where one climax ends and the next begins,” he promised harshly before his tongue flicked remorselessly against her clit at the same time he thrust a finger inside the tight heat of her channel.

Angel cried out as she came instantly, clit throbbing as her channel contracted tightly and her juices flowed over his still-thrusting finger.

Gabriel hooked his fingers into that scrap of lace and ripped it from her body, baring her completely, then added another thrusting finger, pumping into her as his tongue continued its assault on her clit. Over and over again until she cried out a second time, and then a third, her juices flowing copiously over his fingers before he lapped them up greedily.

Pure, addictive, fucking nectar.

“Part your legs more,” he ordered harshly. “Do it, Angel,” he growled when she hesitated too long.

She parted her legs without further protest, allowing Gabriel the access he wanted. He continued lashing her pulsing clit with his tongue and pulled his fingers from her channel, spreading her juices all along the seam of her sex before doing the same to the rosette of her bottom.

“Don’t fucking fight me,” he warned when she jerked away at this intimacy. “Every inch of you belongs to me,” he reminded her harshly. He eased a finger inside that tight ring of muscle. “Who do you belong to, Angel?” He worked his finger into her slowly but surely. “Answer me, damn you!”

“No one. I belong to— You,” she groaned as he began to thrust inside her. “I belong to you!”

“Too damned right you do.” His thumb pressed and then flicked against her clit in the same rhythm as his finger thrust inside her, stretching her. “Don’t ever forget that again,” he warned before he plunged his tongue deep inside her still-contracting channel and continued to work her remorselessly until she came. “Again,” he ground out forcefully.

Angel climaxed again and again on Gabriel’s command as he explored and reclaimed every inch of her, knowing he was punishing her as much as making love to her. That this sexual onslaught was the outlet for the anger he felt toward her. For denying him Daniel all these years.

She took it all, part of her reveling in the punishment when it stopped her from thinking or feeling anything else. Until she couldn’t take any more, her legs no longer supporting her as she collapsed forward over Gabriel’s shoulder.

“I’m not finished with you yet,” he warned as he rose to his feet with her draped over his shoulder. He walked down the hallway to what turned out to be his dimly lit bedroom. Her first indication that so much time had passed, it had grown dark outside.

Angel was barely aware of the cream, tan, and gold décor of the bedroom, as she was placed on the tan silk coverlet of the king-size bed. Gabriel opened the bedside drawer and took out protection before rolling it on the fullness of his cock. His much larger body completely enveloped hers as he leaned on his elbows and looked down at her.

His large hands cupped either side of her face. “Tell me again who you belong to?”

Angel knew her hair must be tousled, eyes wild, cheeks flushed, lips puffy. “You.” How could she deny what was, after all, the truth? He was all she had ever wanted. All she had ever needed. And he was here, with her, about to claim her completely again.

“Say it again as I enter you,” he ordered harshly as the bulbous top of his cock nudged against her entrance. He stilled completely at her silence. “Say it! And keep saying it until I tell you to stop.”

Their lovemaking had always been wild, but Angel had never seen Gabriel quite this wild before, so fiercely demanding and so totally remorseless and lacking in warmth.

She looked up at him in appeal. “You’re out of control, Gabriel.”

“You don’t think I could stop this whenever I want to? If you do, then you have no concept of what I could do if I really lost control.” His laugh was hard, bitter. “No fucking idea what I’m capable of.”

After these past few hours, Angel was beginning to understand, to realize why he had made such a formidable weapon for the British army all those years. Gabriel had just never revealed this side of himself to her before.

Because right now,
she
was the enemy. The woman who had denied him his child for the past seven years. The woman he must surely hate more than he desired. But Gabriel was incapable of physically harming a woman, and so he had made Angel’s punishment this remorseless demand for her surrender. Over and over again.

Angel was barely aware of the tears as they began to fall down her cheeks. “I did what I thought was best at the time.” She renewed her plea for understanding. “It was never meant to hurt you.”

Gabriel felt as if he were emerging from a dream. Or, more aptly, a nightmare. Angel had come back into his life, but only because her son,
their
son, had been taken from her and she didn’t know how to get him back. Gabriel would never have seen her again if that wasn’t the case. Would never have even known he had a son.

He rolled off her and to the side of the bed before standing, his back toward her. He looked over his shoulders, eyes narrowed as he heard her gasp. “What?”

“I… Your back…?”

He had forgotten about that six-inch scar down the left side of his back. A scar Angel had never seen because it hadn’t been there eight years ago. “Go back to your own bedroom,” he bit out evenly.

“But—”

“I said go!” he repeated coldly as she remained unmoving on the bed.

Naked and unmoving.

Gabriel’s control would carry him only so far, and right now it was stretched to the breaking point. He didn’t want to continue making love to Angel in this mood, had no idea what he would do to her if he did. What further cruelty he might inflict on her.

She gave another sob as she moved lithely to her feet, her footsteps light as she ran across the bedroom to open and then close the bedroom door behind her.

Which was when the tension left Gabriel’s body and he sank down onto the side of the bed to bury his face in the palms of his hands.

Chapter 4

“Where do you think you’re going?”

Angel froze in the dimmed light of the hallway, fingers gripped tightly about the handle of her suitcase as she slowly turned to face Gabriel.

He stood in the open doorway of the sitting room, naked down to the waist, faded denims resting low on his hips, a glass of amber liquid in his hand. Not the first or even the second since they had parted the previous evening, if the weariness about his eyes and mouth was any indication.

“I’ve been waiting for you to try to leave. Care to join me?” He held up the glass. “While I tell you all the reasons that isn’t a good idea.”

Angel left her suitcase out in the hallway as she followed him tentatively into the sitting room. There was a half-empty bottle of whisky on the coffee table in front of the sofa, to show Gabriel had been sitting there. It gave him a clear view out into the hallway as he waited for her to leave.

She had waited until almost three o’clock in the morning to make her move, the silence in the apartment lulling her into the false belief Gabriel was asleep in his own bedroom.

She had heard the ringing of the telephone several times a couple of hours ago, followed by the sound of Gabriel in the kitchen, and then silence. She had assumed—wrongly—that Gabriel had gone to bed. What was the saying?
Assumption is the mother of all fuckups?
Something like that anyway.

Gabriel collected a second glass from the side dresser before pouring an inch of whisky into it and offering it to her. “Drink it,” he advised. “You’re going to need it.”

She took the whisky glass in both her trembling hands, sitting down in an armchair before taking a sip, conscious of the fact she hadn’t had anything to eat since the lunch they had shared the previous day. The whisky warmed her throat on the way down before roiling as her stomach protested at the arrival of the strong liquor.

She rested her head back against the chair. “Has something happened?”

“Depends what you mean by
happened
.” Gabriel shrugged as he sank onto the sofa to sit watching Angel through narrowed lids as he lifted and placed his bare feet on the rim of the coffee table. He felt exhausted. So exhausted he couldn’t even raise the energy to remonstrate with Angel as to how stupid she was to think he was going to just let her walk out of here. “Jonas called. They’ve located Sinclair at his villa in Majorca.”

Her expression brightened. “But that’s good, isn’t it?” Her eyes widened in alarm. “Unless Daniel isn’t with him?”

Gabriel had never doubted Angel’s intelligence, only her taste in men. God knows he was no prize, but Sinclair was way out of his league when it came to bastards. Jonas might have discovered Sinclair’s whereabouts, but Ethan had made an in-depth check into Sinclair and his business dealings. Not through the usual polite—and sanitized—channels, but through the contacts they had in the Russian and Italian underworlds. Gabriel knew
so
much more about Sinclair now than he had a few hours ago. Most of which he wished he didn’t.

“As far as we know, Daniel is with him.”

“As far as you know…?”

He shrugged. “No one has seen him— That doesn’t mean he isn’t there, Angel.” He dropped his feet to the carpeted floor as her face paled, sitting forward. “The security around the perimeter of the villa is tight, much more so than usual, so we’re assuming Sinclair and Daniel are there.”

She stood abruptly. “But you don’t know for certain?”

“No.”

“I know the villa well. We’ve spent whole summers there. The security is… I can help by telling you what I know about it.”

“You can, yes.”

“We have to find out if Daniel is there!”

“And we will.”

“When? I can’t just sit around here—”

“Sit down, Angel.” He kept his voice low and authoritative, waiting until she had done so before continuing. “What you need right now is to be made aware Sinclair is into some seriously twisted shit.” He scowled.

“I told you that—”

“It’s worse, Angel, so much worse than you even thought it was. Which is why it seriously isn’t safe for you to leave here and be on your own.”

Even her lips had gone pale now. “Why not?”

Gabriel sighed heavily. “Because the longer you hold out against him, the more chance there is of Sinclair losing patience and actually hurting you. He’s a sadist, Angel. He enjoys watching other people’s pain, physical as well as emotional.”

“I… No.” She shook her head in denial. “I would have known that about him. Wouldn’t I…?”

Gabriel’s mouth set grimly. “Not if he didn’t want you to and you never angered or went against him, no. I’m guessing you didn’t?” He hadn’t seen any signs of abuse on her body earlier, but that didn’t mean there weren’t emotional scars, ones that couldn’t be seen.

“There was never any reason for me to do so. Clive was a good fath— He always treated me with the utmost respect.”

“And you were happy with that?” Gabriel scoffed, knowing exactly what she had been going to say.
Clive was a good father to Daniel.
Well, the fucker wasn’t being a good father to him now!

“It was what it was,” she defended. “I was content as long as Daniel was safe and happy. As I said, Clive was always courteous and kind toward me.”

“Courtesy and kindness aren’t emotions I would have thought him capable of!”

She gave a pained frown. “Why not?”

“Because Sinclair was responsible for not only supplying the arms but also funding the coups in several…less than civilized countries. He was even present in one of those countries when hundreds of people were rounded up and shot, and then buried in mass graves. Some of the children are allowed to live, if you can call it that.” His mouth curled up with distaste.

“What do you mean?”

“Boys not much older than Daniel are turned into soldiers for the cause. The girls are given to the army as sexual playthings, some as young as—”

“Stop!”

“They’re just babies, Angel. Little girls who should still be playing with their toys rather than—”

“I’m going to be sick!” Angel slammed the glass down on the coffee table before running out of the room.

Gabriel slowly followed her down the hallway to the bathroom, his expression softening slightly as he saw her sitting on the tiled floor, bent over the porcelain, as she noisily expelled the contents of her stomach.

He collected a towel from the warming rail after she had flushed the toilet, wetting the towel beneath the tap and then moving to place the cool towel against her forehead. “I didn’t enjoy telling you any of that stuff, I only did it so that you realize how much danger you’re actually in. Sinclair really isn’t your usual disgruntled ex-husband.”