Page 74 of Gabriel: Duke of Bencalor

Gabriel.

It was Sun­day morn­ing, and he was still there. He had wanted to stay. Flut­ters of joy danced in her chest.

“Buenos días, car­iño,” he rum­bled in a husky morn­ing voice that sent shiv­ers of plea­sure skit­ter­ing through her.

“Hey,” she said as she tried to reach over him to si­lence the alarm. But he didn’t move, so all she man­aged to do was to mash her naked breasts against the mus­cu­lar planes of his chest. “You’re not help­ing.”

“Why would I when this is work­ing out so well for me?” Laugh­ter laced his words. Then he rolled away to grab the shrilling phone and hand it to her.

Af­ter she si­lenced the alarm, she searched his face, ex­am­in­ing the sil­ver-gray eyes for shad­ows, the sculpted mouth and jaw for ten­sion. She found none. “Did you sleep all right?” she asked.

“You don’t need to worry,” he said. “No sil­ver masks haunted my night­mares be­cause my dreams were all of you.” He nuz­zled a kiss against her neck.

“Wow, you are good, even be­fore cof­fee.” She loved his ridicu­lous com­pli­ment, but she laid her hand on his cheek to force him to look at her. “Are you re­ally okay? Last night was rough.”

She caught a flash of an­noyed pride in his eyes be­fore he shook his head. His voice was raw when he said, “I al­most slipped into a flash­back. I should have been pre­pared, but I wasn’t ex­pect­ing the masks.” He shifted her closer to him. “You pulled me back from the edge. Not just by let­ting me lose my­self in your body, but by show­ing me that I am not alone.”

“How could you ever feel alone? You have such a close fam­ily. I mean, a real, live king loves you like a son.”

“He does not un­der­stand my ex­pe­ri­ence. None of my fam­ily does. I do not fault them for that, but I can’t share it with them,” Gabriel said. “You grasp what I went through in a way that al­lows me to be open with you. I trust you. I hope you can trust me too.”

There was al­most a plea in his voice at the end. Guilt sat on her like an evil troll. Gabriel was ask­ing her to stop evad­ing his ques­tions about her past. But she couldn’t do it yet, couldn’t bear to see the dis­gust in his eyes when he learned the truth…or what she could tell him of it.

“Of course I trust you,” she said. “You wouldn’t be in my bed if I didn’t.” She trusted him as a man but not as a duke. It was a shame that the two came in one pack­age.

He looked as though he was go­ing to push harder on the is­sue but changed his mind. In­stead, he bent to whis­per in her ear, “I must ded­i­cate my­self to de­serv­ing that trust.” His fin­gers feath­ered down from her hip to slide be­tween her legs, and for an­other hour, she for­got that he was a duke.

As they lay tan­gled with each other on the bed af­ter­ward, Gabriel’s stom­ach grum­bled loudly. “Now I’m ready for break­fast,” he said.

“I’ll fix us some eggs,” Quinn said, hop­ing there were enough in her re­frig­er­a­tor.

“I meant go out to eat. There’s a place near here that makes the best tostadas with olive oil, tomato, and Iberian ham. And the chur­ros are dipped in hot choco­late.” Gabriel’s stom­ach com­plained again.

“You’re talk­ing your­self into be­ing hun­gry,” Quinn said, throw­ing back the cov­ers and scram­bling off the bed. “I can make tostadas here.”

She rum­maged around in her dresser and pulled on an over­sized gray T-shirt and a pair of white lace panties.

Gabriel lev­ered him­self up on his el­bow to watch ap­pre­cia­tively. Once she added a pair of jeans, he rolled to the side of the bed and stood in all his glo­ri­ous naked­ness. His mus­cles flexed and shifted as he stretched be­fore he cupped his hands around her shoul­ders and smiled. “No need to cook for me when there are trained pro­fes­sion­als two blocks away.”

Quinn shrugged out of his grasp. “The truth is that it’s not smart for us to be seen to­gether in pub­lic.”

“Mierda! Then it is dan­ger­ous for you to be in­volved with my case.” Guilt flick­ered in his gray eyes.

“No, not dan­ger­ous, but I need to keep a low pro­file.” She pic­tured Dupont’s flat, ugly gaze in Lis­bon and felt a shiver of un­ease. Maybe Mikel wasn’t be­ing para­noid when he’d in­sisted that she learn to use the Glock. “You’re a celebrity who re­ceives a lot of me­dia at­ten­tion. It could com­pro­mise my abil­ity to carry out the in­ves­ti­ga­tion if it looks like we’re in a re­la­tion­ship.”

“We are in a re­la­tion­ship,” he said with a flare of im­pa­tience.

“I don’t think two nights of ad­mit­tedly great sex con­sti­tute a re­la­tion­ship.” Quinn waved her hand again. “That isn’t im­por­tant. Be­ing seen with you will put me in the spot­light, and I shouldn’t be there when I’m try­ing to track down your kid­nap­pers.”

If they got wind of her ex­is­tence, the me­dia would want to know all about the Duke of Bencalor’s new girl­friend. They would find the sor­did truth she’d fled to Cal­eva to es­cape…and maybe even what she had sac­ri­ficed her fu­ture to pro­tect.

“That’s why you parked the Spano around the cor­ner,” he said, look­ing thought­ful. “Do you swear this has noth­ing to do with that non­sense about me be­ing a Cal­e­van duke and you be­ing an Amer­i­can com­moner?”

“That’s not in­signif­i­cant, but it’s sec­ondary to keep­ing my anonymity in or­der to pur­sue the in­ves­ti­ga­tion.” She turned to­ward the bed­room door. “Let me get some cof­fee go­ing.”

He caught her wrist and pulled her back around to face him. “Wait! I want you to know some­thing.” He used his free hand to tilt her chin up so he could look her di­rectly in the eye. “This is more than just sex for me. I want to be­lieve it is more than that for you too. Am I wrong?”

“Wow! You ask the hard ques­tions,” Quinn said to stall. She should lie to him and end it right here and now. All she had to do was say that she was in it for the sex. But ev­ery­thing about him—all that damned tra­di­tion and honor and courage—de­manded truth. So did her stupid, mis­guided heart. “No,” she whis­pered. “You’re not wrong, but it’s a bad idea.”

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