Page 73 of Gabriel: Duke of Bencalor

Could she call this a re­la­tion­ship yet? It felt like one to her, but maybe that came from a false sense of fa­mil­iar­ity that had be­gun when she’d watched the hours of video as Mikel de­briefed Gabriel af­ter the kid­nap­ping. Gabriel didn’t have the same strange foun­da­tion of knowl­edge on his side.

“A ‘com­moner’?” Ir­ri­ta­tion laced his ques­tion. “Do you be­lieve that’s how I think of you?”

“Okay, a non-no­ble.” At least he hadn’t balked at re­la­tion­ship.

She slid off his chest as he rolled onto his side so he could look her in the eye. “I am not my fa­ther. I don’t cling to out­dated tra­di­tions and talk about how much bet­ter it was in Cal­eva’s golden past.”

Prob­a­bly not a good idea to point out that since his fa­ther was the royal his­to­rian, his job de­scrip­tion was to em­brace Cal­eva’s past. “But have you dated women who weren’t part of the no­bil­ity?”

“I don’t think I should dis­cuss for­mer girl­friends while in bed with my cur­rent one. It seems like it might be dan­ger­ous.” He smiled.

“If I prom­ise not to knee you in the balls, will you an­swer my ques­tion?” He’d called her his girl­friend. She shut down the happy flip of her heart.

He tilted his head back to glare at the ceil­ing in ex­as­per­a­tion, which made his hair cas­cade in a silky cur­tain. “I don’t choose my girl­friends based on their pedi­gree, so I’ll have to think about it.”

She gave him three sec­onds. “Well?”

“Yes. Yes, I have.” He sounded tri­umphant and re­lieved.

“How many?”

“That, I will not an­swer.” He smacked her bot­tom lightly. “I don’t want to think about any woman other than you right now.”

“Good strat­egy, us­ing flat­tery to get you out of a tight spot.”

He rolled to brace him­self over her as he purred with sex­ual in­nu­endo, “There’s only one tight spot I’m in­ter­ested in.”

She al­lowed him to dis­tract her with a long, ex­ploratory kiss that perked up all her in­ter­nal mus­cles again.

Gabriel stared at the blink­ing red light of the smoke alarm on Quinn’s ceil­ing, au­to­mat­i­cally count­ing the beats be­tween each pulse of red. Quinn lay curled against his side, her breath ruf­fling across his chest.

She seemed so small and frag­ile, yet she had yanked him out of his flash­back to the ter­ror of the sil­ver masks. With her body. With her words. With just her pres­ence.

Be­hind her nerdy glasses burned a tough, fierce in­tel­li­gence that at­tracted him like a moth to a flame. There was steel in her, like a fine sword, and he wanted to know how it had been forged.

He dropped a kiss on her tem­ple, in­hal­ing the fra­grance of sham­poo and woman. She stirred, and he tight­ened his hold around her waist, not want­ing even an inch of space be­tween them.

He might have an in­ti­mate phys­i­cal knowl­edge of her body, but her past was a closed book. Maybe she and Mikel got along so well be­cause they both held their se­crets close.

She had evaded all his ef­forts to find out about her fam­ily. More and more, he got the sense that she wasn’t hid­ing it be­cause it was dys­func­tional in a nor­mal way. There was some­thing be­yond that, some­thing that made her even more un­com­fort­able with who he was.

Mikel would know be­cause he knew ev­ery­thing about ev­ery­one. He had hired her to work on the kid­nap­ping case, which meant that he trusted her as much as he trusted any­one. How­ever, Gabriel re­fused to ask him to be­tray Quinn’s con­fi­dences. Quinn needed to share her truth with him her­self.

All he had to do was win her trust.

Gabriel scowled at the fire alarm. His ti­tle made her put a wall up be­tween them. She might crack jokes about curt­sy­ing, but she was both­ered by his duke­dom. She saw his ad­her­ence to duty as heroic, while he some­times felt that his com­mit­ment to his king and coun­try was a con­ve­nient ex­cuse not to take more risks in his life. The most re­bel­lious act he’d ever com­mit­ted was to study mu­sic at uni­ver­sity and con­tinue his stud­ies for two years at the pres­ti­gious Con­ser­va­to­rio de Lucía in Cádiz. His fa­ther had treated that as an of­fense sec­ond only to trea­son.

Af­ter school, he came back to Cal­eva to do the manda­tory year of ser­vice in the mili­tia as well as to shoul­der the man­tle of el Duque de Bencalor. Some­how Quinn thought that made him hon­or­able, not weak. She saw no rea­son why he couldn’t be a duke and a world-class gui­tarist.

He feared that be­ing a duke would make him a cu­rios­ity in the mu­sic world, like a talk­ing dog. The au­di­ence would come to see him be­cause of his ti­tle, not his tal­ent.

Sud­denly, he wished he wasn’t a duke. It was a strange feel­ing since his po­si­tion was wo­ven into his life like threads in a ta­pes­try. Now the ti­tle stood in the way…of the mu­sic he cared so pas­sion­ately about and this woman whom he was com­ing to feel an al­most equal pas­sion for.

Yet he could not walk away from be­ing el Duque de Bencalor. He would have to con­vince him­self and Quinn that when it came to pas­sion, noth­ing should stand in the way.

Chap­ter 20

Quinn’s phone alarm squawked, and she groped for the bed­side ta­ble, only to find a large male body in the way.

---