The Lawgivers: Gabriel (19 page)

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Lexa didn’t know why it was that she
hadn’t been able to convince herself she had no interest in fucking
Gabriel. Beyond the fact that he was so damned certain he was
superior to humans and so obviously looked down on them, it
shouldn’t have even crossed her mind, ever, that she might want him
to do that to her. She’d hated every minute of it when Ralph had
rutted her. It didn’t always hurt—unless he was just trying to hurt
her. Sometimes it was just disgusting and uncomfortable, but she
would never have imagined that she would ever think that she would
want a man to do that to her!

And yet she’d been thinking about it
ever since she’d realized the villagers thought that he’d claimed
her.

Of course Gabriel wasn’t a man, but she
couldn’t imagine that it would be different with him.

Unless, of course, he wasn’t like a man
there.

He’d suggested that they did it pretty
much like humans did, though, which also suggested that they were
made pretty much the same … there.

Well, she thought, he actually hadn’t
suggested that. He’d told her that he never fucked women unless
they wanted him to, though, and it seemed to her that he was saying
it was the same except, for some reason, women wanted him
to.

As bad as she hated to admit it, even
to herself, she was dying to find out why women wanted him to.
There was just no getting around it. She hadn’t been able to forget
it even when he’d told her that it was something she should discuss
with the women of his people.

The problem with that was that by the
time she got to the place where she might have that opportunity,
Gabriel would be gone and it seemed unlikely she would see him
again.

She thought that was probably a good
thing in a lot of ways. She didn’t like being a prisoner even
though he hadn’t treated any of them badly. She didn’t like being
told what she could and couldn’t do or where to go. She couldn’t
deny that it was nice to have someone else worry about where she
would get food and water for a change, and to produce it when she
needed it, but she didn’t think she would’ve taken it if she’d had
a choice.

She’d spent a lot of time being lonely
and scared after she’d left Ralph, but she supposed she’d gotten
used to it because she didn’t feel like she belonged with the
people that had been captured with her.

They didn’t think she did either
because they shunned her.

Of course, they shunned her because of
Gabriel, partly because he was around her too much for their
comfort and they were terrified of him and partly because … well,
she didn’t think she’d imagined that they thought she was his woman
or at least that he’d fucked her and that was sort of a
contamination thing as far as they were concerned. She wasn’t fit
for human company because she’d been fucked by an
angel-demon.

And they hated the angel-demons as much
as they feared them.

Or maybe they hated them because they
were afraid of them?

In part, she supposed her inability to
forget about fucking Gabriel was because everybody seemed to think
she already had. She’d heard them mutter about it under their
breath whenever he wasn’t close enough to hear.

She wasn’t sure why they thought that,
but there didn’t seem to be any point in trying to tell them she
hadn’t. Even if they’d given her the opportunity, which they didn’t
because they’d already made up their minds, she didn’t think they
would believe her. She’d arrived in their village at the same time
he had and that had settled the matter as far as they were
concerned. She was with him therefore she must be fucking
him.

She supposed that ought to have been
enough by itself to turn her off the idea of doing it. It was plain
to see that she was going to be an outcast forever more if she did,
that there would never come a point in time when they finally
stopped hating her and thinking of her as an outsider.

On the other hand, she was already an
outcast just because they thought she had and there didn’t seem to
be much point in worrying about their opinion when it was already
done and there didn’t seem any way to convince them
otherwise.

In any case, she hadn’t been able to
convince herself that it wasn’t anything she wanted any part of. In
point of fact, it seemed the more she thought about it the more she
wanted to—and the closer they got to their destination and the time
when Gabriel would leave, the more desperate she felt.

She decided she just wanted to know if
fucking could be something a woman could like to do. Men certainly
seemed to like doing it. She didn’t really believe, deep down, that
it could possibly be something she would like to do, but the
possibility was certainly intriguing since she’d been basically
running from it for years. If she at least didn’t hate it, wasn’t
it possible, then, that she might find a human man that she didn’t
hate fucking and could stay with and breed children?

Or would fucking Gabriel eliminate that
possibility forever because she would then be ‘tainted’ and no
longer acceptable to human men?

Actually, that thought wasn’t
particularly unappealing, either. If all she had to do was make
sure they knew she’d fucked one of the angel-demons to discourage
them from wanting her, that wouldn’t be a bad thing
either.

It seemed a good enough reason to
approach him and ask him about it, anyway, and it still took all
the nerve she could muster to do so. She was running out of time,
though. She couldn’t afford to be a coward about it.

So she waited until they stopped for
the noon rest when Gabriel had settled a little apart from the
group as he generally did. She didn’t like the fact that that
circumstance made it all the more noticeable when she approached
him. At the same time, it made it possible to talk to him without
the others hearing, though, and that was highly desirable when she
thought there was a really good chance that he would completely
reject the idea.

She almost lost her nerve when he
looked up at her with those cold blue eyes of his.

“You wanted something?”

That didn’t sound very promising! Lexa
considered retreating immediately, but she reminded herself that
running away wasn’t going to get her what she wanted this
time.

Besides, her knees went weak. She
settled ungracefully to the ground close enough to talk without
being overheard and far enough to beat a quick retreat if it pissed
him off that she’d asked.

“Uh ….” She broke off, frowning as it
occurred to her that she hadn’t actually figured out how to broach
the subject. “Do you remember that night you caught me you said
….”

“Yes.”

Lexa frowned when he cut her off before
she could finish her thought. She cleared her throat. “I mean the
part ….”

“I remember.”

Anger surged through her and then
disappointment when it occurred to her that he might have cut her
off because he did remember and he didn’t want to talk about it. “I
was just thinking ….”

“Don’t.”

Lexa suddenly felt like crying. She
swallowed convulsively a couple of times. “Ok.” He’d pretty
effectively trampled all over her pride and she wanted to leap to
her feet and tell him to go to hell. She didn’t quite dare. He’d
never actually offered to hurt her, but she’d never actually seen
him lose his temper either and she was pretty sure she didn’t want
to.

On the other hand, he had trampled her
pride and she didn’t want him to know. “I guess you’ll be heading
out again as soon as we get to where ever we’re going, huh?” she
said after a moment.

“Yes.”

She nodded. “Good.”

She didn’t know if that shaft had
stabbed home or not, but she was just sorry she couldn’t think of
anything more hateful to fling at him. She wasn’t happy when she
finally nerved herself to steal a peek at him and saw that he
looked almost as amused as irritated.

She didn’t know what he thought was so
damned funny, but she felt like punching him. Surging to her feet,
Lexa turned to stalk off.

He caught her wrist as she whirled away
from him angrily. The amusement in his eyes had vanished when she
turned to glare at him. “I can’t take you as my woman,
Lexa.”

Chapter Eleven

Lexa felt like her cheeks had caught
fire. It distressed her all the more because it was damned hard to
salvage her pride and act like she didn’t care when her face lit up
like that! “I don’t want to be your woman,” she lied, not realizing
until she’d said it that that was what she’d really hoped
for.

She was curious about it. She was
hopeful that it at least wouldn’t be hellish so that she could bear
belonging to him, but more than anything she was desperate to find
a place for herself. She hadn’t realized just how hellish her life
was always being afraid and hungry, not having a place where she
could relax and let down her guard. She was tired of being alone,
of having no one to talk to, ever, but herself. She was tired of
carrying the entire burden of her survival, always having to do
everything herself without any help from anyone, always having to
fight or escape to survive because any man that had no woman was
liable to decide to take the one thing she could hardly bear to
give—herself.

She’d hoped that he would decide to
keep her if she let him fuck her because, as scary as he was in
many ways, especially when he was angry, he hadn’t tried to force
her and he hadn’t even looked like he wanted to knock her down and
beat her senseless when she made him angry let alone done it.
Except for Sir, he was the only man she’d met that was like
that.

She finally understood why her mother
had stayed with Sir instead of trying to run away. Sir had often
bellowed when he was angry. He’d even thrown things around at times
when he was really, really angry, but he hadn’t thrown things at
her mother and he hadn’t slapped her and knocked her around. He’d
made her feel safe from harm, even from himself.

Gabriel made her feel like that and
she’d hoped, without ever consciously acknowledging it, that he
would think she was worth keeping and she would finally have a
place of her own where she could feel safe.

“It’s a very bad idea, Lexa,” Gah-re-al
murmured after a moment.

Right up until the moment she’d come to
him and offered the one thing he hadn’t been able to get his mind
off of, he’d believed that he could do it with impunity—as long as
he was discreet and his superiors didn’t find out that he’d been
fraternizing with the natives. He’d been thinking about fucking her
entirely from his point of view as if it would mean no more to her
than it did to him—a few moments of pleasure and relief.

He knew as soon as he looked into her
eyes, though, that that wouldn’t be the way of it. She would expect
more than he was willing or able to give.

He still wanted to take her up on the
offer, desperately, but he didn’t believe her claim that she didn’t
expect to be his woman and he couldn’t take her up on her offer on
those terms.

Anger flickered through him. As far as
he’d ever been able to see, before, they fucked like
animals—without attachment, commitment, or emotion of any kind. It
was as natural to them as breathing and meant no more. Women were
no more to the human male than a possession, something they used
when they felt like it and discarded when it suited them and it
didn’t seem to him that the women expected any more from them. They
expected that the first time a stronger male came along that wanted
them they would be passed on.

So either he’d completely misunderstood
their customs regarding sex, or he wanted the one woman among them
who didn’t see it the same way as everyone else.

Lexa wrestled with her discomfort, but
discovered she couldn’t give up the hope that he would change his
mind. “What is?”

“If even half what you’ve told me is
true, it wouldn’t be what you’re expecting it to be,” Gah-re-al
responded with brutal honesty.

Lexa sent him a sharp look. “But you
said ….”

“I was talking about women of my own
kind—women who’ve never been mistreated let alone raped. From what
I understand, it isn’t something that anyone ever really recovers
from. That’s why the penalty for rape is so harsh—and also because
rapists can’t be reformed.”

Doubt began to gain the upper hand.
Lexa realized that she hadn’t really believed that coupling with
him would be some miraculous experience that would change the way
she felt about it, but she’d hoped. She needed it to be true. She
wanted to belong to someone.

But then he didn’t seem to believe that
he could make it not horrible for her and he didn’t want her to
belong to him. The disappointment she felt was horrendous and it
made her angry. “You don’t want me because you think I’m a savage,
right?”

Guilt and discomfort wafted through
Gah-re-al. He’d never really tried to hide his contempt of the
humans, but he’d thought they were too stupid, or savage, to know
or care. How much good would it do, at this point, to try to
convince Lexa that he’d never looked at her as he had the others,
he wondered uncomfortably?