Mine To Take (Nine Circles) (30 page)

The tips of her fingers moved on his chest, back and forth. “Maybe.” The word was uncertain. Clearly she didn’t believe him.

He put his hands over hers, holding them against his chest. “So that’s why you’re staying? Because you can’t help yourself?” He wasn’t going to ask the real question. The one that would betray a vulnerability he didn’t want to feel.

Yet she seemed to know anyway. “No,” she murmured. “I stayed because I think you need something, Gabriel.”

Yeah, he did. But if she thought she could fix him like she wanted to fix the situation with Tremain, she was wrong. He was broken. He’d been born broken.

He shifted his hands, sliding them around her waist to the small of her back, finding the small button on the waistband of her skirt, undoing it. “I know what I need,” he said, suddenly sick of talking. Sick of thinking. “I need you. Naked. Right now.”

*   *   *

Much later he woke to find a cold moon shining through his bedroom windows, Honor lying curled beside him, naked and warm. He didn’t know what had woken him but he knew he wasn’t going back to sleep anytime soon.

He got up, pulled on his jeans, and went downstairs. If he couldn’t sleep then he could work—he always had shitloads of work.

Pulling up his e-mail he found a message from Zac who’d apparently already gotten him an invite to the casino. He had to admit, the guy was fast.

After sending off a reply, Gabriel pushed his chair back and stalked over to the windows, restless and edgy.

The world outside was cold, snowy, the dark broken up with the sharp edges of neon lights.

What the hell was he going to do about Tremain? If he wasn’t careful his plans were going to go to hell in handcart. With the bastard running his own company off a cliff, Gabriel had nothing to hurt him with. Unless he could interfere with those plans himself. But then, perhaps he didn’t need to. He had all the information he needed to ruin Guy Tremain already.

Evidence of his money-laundering scam. Proof that he’d paid the debts his friend had run up managing what amounted to a sophisticated drug and prostitution ring. Confirmation he’d been paid by the casino involved in that ring. All of that was enough to take to the police if he wanted, or he could use it himself.

Definitely enough to ruin the man’s life. He had him by the balls, that was for sure.

And what are you going to do with her afterward?

A strange emptiness yawned wide at the thought so he shoved it away.

Fuck, no point in thinking about that yet. Once Tremain’s life was ruined, then he’d have time to consider what was next.

Gabriel let out a breath, put his hands in the pockets of his jeans.

Honor won’t like how you got close to her because you wanted information about Tremain.

Guilt lay heavy inside him. A massive stone he couldn’t seem to get rid of or ignore. So many people had lied to Honor, kept things from her. And she was still picking up the pieces. He would be just one more.

He stared at the snowy view outside the windows.

At this rate he’d be making his way to the confessional if he wasn’t careful.

Warm arms slid around his waist and he went still, tensing in surprise.

“What are you doing up?” Honor’s voice behind him sounded sleepy.

How the hell had she managed to creep up on him like that? Without him hearing? Shit, he’d been too busy staring outside and fucking brooding to hear. “I couldn’t sleep.”

Her fingers laced on his stomach, the heat of her slender body up against him seductive. A soft touch in the middle of his back. Her mouth in a kiss. “I wondered where you’d gotten to.”

There was something … good about the feeling of her arms around him. The warm glow of her resting against his back. Almost …
comforting?
Christ, that was a thought he did not want to follow. He didn’t need comforting. What he needed from her wasn’t a hug, that was for damn sure.

Yet he couldn’t bring himself to move. Because he liked her arms around him. Liked the soft brush of her mouth against his back. He hadn’t been simply held by anyone in a long, long time.

“You should be asleep,” he said.

“I know. But I woke up and you were gone.”

Move, you fucking idiot.

Slowly, reluctantly, he did so, turning around in the circle of her arms. She was wearing the T-shirt he’d taken off earlier that evening, the hem coming to mid-thigh, leaving lots of bare leg on show, the tips of her nipples pressing through the fabric.

She wasn’t looking at him but at his chest, her fingers brushing the tattoo of the cross over his heart. “When did you get this?”

He wasn’t supposed to be sharing facts about himself with her and yet he found himself answering all the same. “When I was sixteen.”

“Why?”

“It was a reminder.”

Her fingers lightly traced it, raising a shiver across his skin. “Of what?”

“Of where I came from.” From rape. Violence. Fear.

“Why the cross?”

“Mom was Catholic.”

“Oh.” Her fingers drifted lower to the vow across his abdomen. Tracing the outline of the words. “Explain this then.
Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.
Romans 12:19.”

At her touch the muscles of his stomach tightened, more shivers chasing over his skin, his cock hardening. “You know your scripture.”

“I went to a Catholic girls’ school.” Her thumb brushed the Y. “What do you have to repay?”

You could tell her.

“Not what. Who.”

Honor looked up at him, her eyes dark in the shadowed room. “Who then?”

“My mother was hurt a long time ago. And I promised I would get justice for her. Justice from the man who did that to her.”

She didn’t say anything, just looked up at him, her gaze disturbingly perceptive. “She was hurt? How?”

“She was raped.” It sounded so stark, his mother’s secret guilt and shame.

Concern flooded her face. “Oh. How awful. I’m sorry.”

“It happened a long time ago.” But it had left its mark. Had consumed her. Like the cancer had eventually consumed her.

She placed a hand on his chest, the warmth of her touch spreading out. Dangerous, that warmth. It could melt things. Things that needed to stay hard and cold. Yet he couldn’t seem to make himself remove her hand, just like he couldn’t seem to make himself stop talking. It was surprisingly easy.

“She was very young. A maid at a hotel. She was raped by the owner while she was cleaning up one of the rooms.”

“That’s terrible.” Her thumb moved on his chest, a stroke over and over. And he was growing to like the way she touched him. Wished she wouldn’t stop. “They never caught him?”

“No. But I will.”

He saw her throat move, saw worry shift in her eyes as she looked at him. “You know who it is?”

“Yes.”
The stepfather you love. I’m going to ruin him.

More worry, the edge of fear creeping into her gaze. “Gabriel, what are you going to do?”

He put his hand over hers, stilling the movement. “Hurt him.”

“Gabe—”

“Not physically. I don’t do that anymore. But he will suffer, Honor. I’m going to make sure of that.”

Her gaze flickered and he felt her body stiffen against his, as if in preparation to move away. Well, that was probably good. She should understand truly what kind of man he was because she didn’t seem to see the truth. But he didn’t want to lose the warmth of her yet so he kept his hands where they were, covering hers. Pressing her palms to his chest, the glow of her heat like embers on his skin.

“She lost her job,” he went on, unable to stop the flow of words. “She was left with nothing after it happened. She tried to go to the police, but they weren’t interested. She was just another dirt-poor fucking immigrant with nothing and no one. Her attacker was rich and powerful and she couldn’t say a word against him that would be believed. Afterward, she couldn’t find another job. No one would hire her because he’d bad-mouthed her everywhere. She survived on welfare and the charity from her church, and on that only barely.”

“I … I’m sorry.”

“He has to pay, Honor. And there’s no one else who can make sure that happens but me.”

She looked away from him, resistance bleeding out of her. But he could see the pulse beating fast at the base of her throat. She was afraid.

Fucking finally.

“I told you I wasn’t a good man,” he said in a low voice. “You should listen.” He took his hands away from hers, expecting her to step back.

But she didn’t. She kept her palms on his chest, her gaze lowered. “What are you going to do to him?”

“Ruin him. Financially and emotionally so he knows what it’s like to have nothing.”

She looked up at him at last. “Who is he?”

Tell her.

Gabriel looked down into her pale face, into her shadowed blue eyes. “No one you know,” he said softly.

*   *   *

He was lying. She didn’t know how she knew, but there was something in his face, something in his voice that told her. But she didn’t want to think too deeply about it because the implications were too much for her to handle quite yet. Like the fact that if he was lying then the man he was talking about
was
someone she knew …

But no, she wasn’t going to think about it. Not now. Not when he’d given her a little piece of himself. That was the most important thing. The most precious.

She looked away from the dark, brutal charisma of his features to the black ink on the hard planes of his abdomen. A promise of personal vengeance.

It made a violent kind of sense. Gabriel Woolf wasn’t a man to sit by when others got hurt, she’d learned that about him if nothing else. And even if his version of justice was twisted, she could understand why he might feel that way. Hell, if anything similar had happened to her mother she would feel the same. Except luckily for her and her mother, she’d had Guy, not to mention the fact that she hadn’t been born into poverty the way Gabriel had.

“He will suffer, Honor.”

Presumably the way his mother had suffered. An eye for an eye.

“It’s a little bit Old Testament, isn’t it?” she said.

“He committed a crime,” Gabriel said, his dark voice slightly rough. “He has to pay for it.”

“So what does that make you? Judge, jury, and executioner?”

“Yes.” He said it without hesitation.

Honor touched the words on his skin again, feeling his muscles tighten under her fingers. This was the thing that was driving him, that lay at the root of his anger. It had to be. “Do you have proof?”

“Of his guilt? Yeah, I’ve got all the fucking proof I need.”

“How does your mother feel about it?”

“My mother is dead,” he said flatly.

Honor looked up at him at that. The expression on his face was the one she saw so often. Hard. Cold. But underneath she sensed his anger. Hot. Burning.

“I’m sorry,” she said again, a useless, stupid phrase, but it was the only one she had.

“She died a few weeks ago. Cancer.”

So recent. God, she hadn’t known. “Gabriel, I’m so—”

“No,” he cut her off in that same flat tone. The one she was starting to think concealed something more. “Don’t say that again. Don’t be sorry. Death was a mercy.”

“She was in pain?”

Darkness flickered in his eyes. “She was always in fucking pain.”

Stillness settled inside her. “You’re not talking about the cancer now, are you?”

“Cancer isn’t the only thing that hurts.”

Beneath her palms she could feel his heartbeat, strong and sure. He was so powerful, this man. On the surface so icy and emotionless, but he wasn’t either of those things. There was heat inside him that he only ever let out when he was in bed with her. And in it lived his anger.

“What else hurts?” she asked, moving her fingers over the smooth, tanned skin beneath her hands.

“Guilt.” His voice was almost a whisper. “Shame. Fear.”

She’d bet everything on the fact that he wasn’t talking about his mother now. That he was talking about himself.

There was no sound in the room, the silence broken only by the sirens and horns of the night traffic of the outside world.

Honor slid her hands apart and put her arms around him. Rested her head on the muscled wall of his chest. “Tell me, Gabriel,” she murmured.

He waited there, motionless.

Honor shut her eyes. If he pulled away she would understand. It would hurt but she’d understand. Their relationship—or whatever the hell this was—probably didn’t allow for confidences, but she had to try. She wanted to try. Everyone needed someone to talk to, even a man like him.
Especially
a man like him.

“She had no one to turn to but that church,” he said roughly. “No one else to talk to. And I used to sit outside the confessional when I was a kid and I heard what she said. How ashamed she was. How guilty. She was a single mom as well so she got shit from people about it. She told the priest every day she lived with the evidence of her shame and how she could never get rid of it.” He stopped all of a sudden and she could hear how fast his heart was beating. Feel the sudden rush of breath as his chest expanded. Like he was afraid.

But how did that work? What was a man like Gabriel Woolf even afraid of?

Honor didn’t speak because if she did, this moment might end and she didn’t want it to. She wanted to hear whatever it was he still had to say. So instead she tightened her arms around him. Held him.

“I didn’t understand at the time what she was talking about,” he went on, his voice hoarse. “But it hurt to hear. I felt … responsible.”

A lump rose in the back of her throat. “How old were you?”

“Seven, I think. Yeah, must have been.”

She could picture it. Seven-year-old Gabriel outside the confessional. Waiting for his mother. Listening in and hearing … that. No child should ever have to bear that kind of burden.

“I wanted to help her. Do something to make her not feel so guilty or ashamed. But I didn’t know what to do. Because I didn’t know why she felt that way.”

“What about your father?” Honor asked thickly. “Where was he?”