Gabriel's Mate

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Gabriel’s Mate

Copyright © 2010 by Tina Folsom

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All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

License Notes

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Acknowledgments

Many thanks to my critique partners Grace and Virna for their continued support, their invaluable ideas, their laughter, and their friendship. And to my husband Mark for his patience, his love, and support.

A big THANK YOU to the readers and bloggers who help support my writing by spreading the word, recommending my books, and reviewing them.

Prologue

Philadelphia, 1863

Only wearing his breeches, Gabriel gazed at the woman who stood before him in her virginal night rail. The lace trim around her neck and sleeves only accentuated her innocence. Earlier in the day, the minister had declared them husband and wife before God, but now it was time to make Jane truly his.

This was his wedding night, a night he had anticipated with the eagerness of a young buck ready to start his own brood. Except for a few kisses, he hadn’t been intimate with Jane. Her strict religious upbringing had demanded he wait to touch her until they were married. He’d waited because he truly loved her with all his heart, but also because he had his own inhibitions about making love.

Jane took a tentative step toward him. Gabriel met her halfway. His arms snaked around her back and pulled her to him. The fabric under his fingertips was soft and so thin it felt like touching her naked skin. As he lowered his lips toward hers, he inhaled her perfume, a mix of roses and jasmine which had been the flowers of her wedding bouquet. Underneath it was her own personal scent, the heady smell of Jane, a scent that had made him dizzy when he’d first taken it in. He’d been hard and ready ever since.

“My wife,” Gabriel whispered. The words felt right when they rolled off his lips and collided with her sweet breath. On a soft moan, he kissed her with all the passion he’d been holding back, waiting for her to become his wife. Her body clung to him more eagerly than he had expected, yielding to his touch, imprinting him with the love he’d seen in her eyes long before he’d asked for her hand in marriage.

Without breaking the kiss, he untied the little ribbons on the front of her gown, then brushed the garment off her shoulders and let it fall to the floor. With a soft rustle it pooled at her feet. She would never again need a nightgown: he would warm her every night from now on. The shiver he noticed go through her lithe body wasn’t from being cold. No, she was nearly as aroused as he was.

Gabriel released her lips and looked at her. Small round breasts topped with dark hard nipples stood firm. Her hips were wide, her skin soft and yielding to his touch. When he lifted her into his arms and carried her to the bed they would share for the rest of their lives, his desire for her spiraled.

Already, his breeches were so tight he could barely breathe, but now his cock expanded even further, impatient to impale her. He laid her onto the bed and watched her as he opened the buttons of his fly with trembling hands, his heart beating into his throat. Perspiration built on his brow. All the while his anxiety escalated. As he stripped, Jane’s loving gaze drifted from his face lower down his body. Then her expression suddenly changed. It was what he’d secretly feared most.

“Oh, God, no!” She jerked up, her gaze transfixed on his groin, horror distorting her features. “
Get away from me!
” she screamed and jumped off the bed on the other side.

“Jane, please, let me explain,” he begged and went after her as she ran out the door. He should have prepared her for this, but it was too late for that now. He’d hoped that if he was gentle and patient with her, she would accept him.

He caught up with her in the kitchen.

“You monster, get away from me!”

Gabriel snatched her arm and stopped her from running any further. “Please, Jane, my love, listen to me.” If only she would give him a chance, he would prove to her that inside he wasn’t a monster, that inside he was the man who loved her.

Her eyes wild, Jane darted frantic looks around the kitchen, before she struggled free from his grip and turned.

“Don’t ever touch me again!”

“Jane!” He had to get her to calm down and listen to him. Their future depended on it.

When she turned back to him, all he saw were her horrified eyes. Too late did he see the gleaming knife in her hand—too late to turn away and avoid its blade slashing his face. But what hurt more than the stinging blade cutting his flesh was seeing his wife recoil from him in horror.

“Now, women will shy away from you like they should—you’re a monster, Gabriel, you’re the devil’s creature!”

The scar that would form on his previously handsome face reached from his chin to the top of his right ear, and it would be a constant reminder of what he was: a monster, a freak at best—not worthy to be loved by any woman.

One

San Francisco, Today

The
click-clack
of her heels echoed against the buildings. Maya could barely see the pavement through the fog, which hung like a thick mist in the night air, amplifying every sound.

A rustle coming from somewhere behind her made her accelerate her already hasty steps. A chill so severe it felt as if an icy hand had touched her skin went through her. She hated the dark, and it was on nights like these that she cursed her on-call duty. Darkness had always scared her, and lately it did even more so.

She opened her purse as she approached the three-story apartment building she’d been living in for the last two years. With shaking fingers, she fished for her house keys. The moment she felt the cold metal in her damp palm, she felt better. In a few seconds, she would be back in bed and get a few hours of sleep before her next shift started. But more importantly, shortly she would be back in the safety of her own four walls.

As she turned to the stairs leading up to the heavy entrance door, she noticed the darkness in the foyer. She glanced up. The light bulb over the door must have burned out. A couple of hours ago it had been burning brightly. She put it on her mental list of things to tell her landlord.

Maya felt for the railing and gripped it, counting the steps as she walked up.

She never reached the door.

“Maya.”

Her breath caught as she spun on her heels. Engulfed in the dark and the fog, she couldn’t make out his face. She didn’t need to—she knew his voice. She knew who he was. It almost paralyzed her. Her heart hammered in her throat as fear inside her gut spiraled.

“No!” she screamed and scrambled back toward the door, hoping against all odds she could escape.

He’d come back like he’d vowed.

His hand dug into her shoulder and pulled her back to face him. But instead of his face, all she could focus on was the white of his pointed teeth.

“You will be mine.”

The threat was the last thing she heard before she felt his sharp fangs break through her skin and sink into her neck. As the blood drained from her, so did the memories of the last few weeks.

***

“And you’ve tried surgery already?” Dr. Drake inquired without looking up from his notepad.

Gabriel released a frustrated huff and brushed an imaginary dust particle off his jeans. “Didn’t work.”

“I see.” He cleared his throat. “Mr. Giles, have you had this …”—the doctor winced and made a nondescript hand movement—“uh … all your life? Even when you were human?”

Gabriel squeezed his eyes shut for a second. After puberty, there wasn’t a day in his living memory that he’d not had this problem. Everything had been normal when he’d been a little boy, but the moment his hormones had started raging, his life had changed. Even as a human, he’d been an outcast.

He felt the scar on his face throb, remembering the moment he’d received it and jerked himself away from the memory. The physical pain had long since eased, but the emotional pain was as vivid as ever. “I had it long before I became a vampire. Back then, nobody thought of surgery. Hell, an infection would have probably killed me.” If he’d known how his life would turn out, he would have taken a knife to himself, but hindsight was always twenty-twenty.  “Anyway, as you probably know better than I do, my body regenerates while I sleep and heals what it perceives to be a wound. So, no, surgery hasn’t worked.”

“I assume this has caused problems with your sex life?”

Gabriel pressed himself deeper back into the chair opposite Dr. Drake’s, having ignored the coffin-couch with an internal shiver upon entering the practice. His friend Amaury had warned him about the doctor’s choice of furniture. Nevertheless, the coffin that had been fashioned into a chaise lounge by removing a side panel gave him the creeps. No self-respecting vampire would want to be caught dead in it. Pun intended.

“What sex life?” he mumbled under his breath. But of course, the doctor’s superior vampire hearing assured the words weren’t lost to him.

Drake’s shocked stare confirmed it. “You mean…?”

Gabriel knew exactly what the man was asking. “Other than with an occasional desperate prostitute who I have to pay outrageous sums of money to service me, I have no sex life.”

He dropped his gaze to the floor, not wanting to see the pity in the doctor’s eyes. He was here to get help, not to be pitied. Still, he needed to impress on the man how important this was for him. “I haven’t met a woman yet who hasn’t recoiled from my naked body. They call me a monster, a freak at best—and those are the kind ones.” He paused, shuddering as the memories of all the names he’d been called came rushing back. “Doc, I’ve never had a woman in my arms who wanted to be with me.” Yes, he’d fucked women—whores—but he’d never made love to a woman. Never felt a woman’s love or tenderness, or the intimacy of waking in her arms.

“How do you expect me to help you? As you said yourself, surgery hasn’t helped, and I’m only a psychiatrist. I work with people’s minds, not their bodies.” Drake’s voice was infused with rejection, every single syllable of it. “Why don’t you use mind control on human women? They won’t know any better.”

He should have expected as much. Gabriel leveled a glare at him. “I’m not a complete jerk, Doctor. I won’t use women like that.” He paused before he went on, bringing his anger at the dishonorable suggestion under control. “You helped my friends.”

“Both Mr. Woodford’s and Mr. LeSang’s problems were different, not …” —he searched for the right word—“physical like yours.”

Gabriel’s chest tightened. Yes, physical. And a vampire couldn’t alter his physical form. It was set in stone. It was the exact reason why his face was marred by a scar reaching from his chin to the top of his right ear. He’d received the wound when he was human. Had he been injured as a vampire, there would have never been a scar, and his face would be untouched.

Two strikes against him—already the hideous scar scared plenty of women away, and once he dropped his pants— He shuddered and looked back at the doctor who patiently sat in his chair.

“They both claimed you used unorthodox methods,” Gabriel baited him.

Dr. Drake gave a noncommittal shrug. “What one might call unorthodox, another might deem natural.”

That was a nonanswer if there ever was one. Subtle hints wouldn’t get Gabriel the information he sought. He cleared his throat and nudged forward on his chair.

“Amaury mentioned you had certain connections.” He emphasized the word “connections” in such a way the doctor couldn’t mistake what Gabriel was referring to.

The almost unperceivable straightening of the doctor’s body would have escaped most others, but not Gabriel. Drake had understood only too well what he was after.