Page 164 of Gabriel: Duke of Bencalor

Ground­ing. He needed some­thing to hold on to.

“I should cut your fin­gers off so you can never play again,” the voice said.

Frozen, he watched Odette swing the black eye of the gun bar­rel to­ward Quinn and pull the trig­ger.

“Noooo!” he gasped out be­tween pants.

Move.

He stag­gered out of the kitchen and to­ward the front door, brac­ing his palms against the walls to keep mov­ing.

Then he saw it. Quinn’s leather jacket. He lurched over to the stairs and seized it, bury­ing his face in the satin lin­ing, in­hal­ing the fra­grance of the woman he loved. He bunched the soft leather in his hands, the sup­ple­ness of it al­most like her skin.

She was alive. Not struck down by a sniper’s bul­let. Not shot by a mad­woman.

He was free. Not in the tent. Not in the op­er­at­ing room.

He took a slow, deep breath. And an­other.

His heart­beat slowed.

The sweat dried.

And he was flooded with a sense of peace and deep cer­tainty. He in­haled again and then lifted his head from the folds of her jacket.

He would do ev­ery­thing in his power to con­vince Quinn that they be­longed to­gether.

Quinn tugged on her fa­vorite soft, faded jeans.

The truth was that she hadn’t needed the king’s pri­vate per­mis­sion.

She had known in the heart-stop­ping mo­ment when Gabriel had hurled him­self at Odette that she loved him too much to quit on him. If this man died, she would want to die too.

She was go­ing to give this re­la­tion­ship ev­ery­thing she had, no mat­ter how rough it got.

She padded down the stairs bare­foot to find Gabriel stand­ing in the hall­way, her leather jacket crum­pled in his hands. Strands of hair clung to his fore­head, and his eyes blazed with a strange light.

“Gabriel, why are you hold­ing my jacket like that?”

“Be­cause you were up­stairs, and I needed you,” he said.

“You needed me for what?” She couldn’t read his ex­pres­sion.

He hung the jacket on the newel post and held out his hand. “Come sit with me.”

It sounded close to a com­mand, but she wanted to touch him, so she went with it. He led her to the sec­tional and ges­tured for her to sit. Once she did, he re­leased her hand and sat in a chair across from her.

“Why don’t you sit here?” She pat­ted the cush­ion be­side her.

The cor­ners of his mouth lifted briefly, but he did not move. “I do not want to pres­sure you.” He shook his head. “That is not quite true, but I wish the pres­sure to be of a dif­fer­ent kind.”

“What the hell are you talk­ing about?”

“Quinn, car­iño mío.” He rested his el­bows on his thighs and laced his fin­gers to­gether as though to re­strain him­self. “I un­der­stand that it is not easy to be with me. But you have shown that you have the courage of a li­on­ess. I am beg­ging you to give me the chance to fight along­side you for our love. Be­cause you are my heart and my soul, my com­fort and my strength. With­out you, I can­not find joy. With you, the world shines with ra­di­ance.”

Ela­tion, re­lief, and in­credulity skit­tered through her, but ela­tion won. She launched her­self off the sofa but stopped just be­fore she threw her­self into his arms. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

“With you in my arms, I will feel no pain.” He pulled her onto his lap, and she took his head be­tween her hands so she could kiss the mouth that had spo­ken those beau­ti­ful words. His em­brace was so con­vul­sive that she could hardly breathe. But she didn’t care.

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