Page 61 of A Bride By Morning
“When will you see to yourself?” she asked him, hoarse with weariness.
Gabriel’s large hands closed over hers, massaging. The pricks of warmth through the cold were painful, but Lydia concentrated on his touch. “When I’ve seen to you,” he said simply.
Lydia fought to keep her eyes open. She wanted to keep watching him. She was afraid that he would leave once she shut her eyes, his mind again departing England and into those places where she couldn’t follow.
“This marriage feels real to me,” she whispered.
Gabriel paused, his gaze meeting hers. Something incomprehensible passed through his features—a riot of emotions in mere seconds: denial, yearning, hurt. Perhaps more. His feelings toward her were all sifted through his past in Kabul and Moscow. But Lydia’s imagination was not so creative; what he endured during those ten years was beyond her.
He looked away and lowered her hands to the blankets, covering them. “Goodnight, Lydia.” Gabriel headed to the connecting door.
Lydia wanted him to stay. When she heard him fighting Medvedev’s men in the darkness, she worried that she would lose him. That she would never again kiss or touch him. That their second chance had been so ephemeral that it might as well have been a fantasy.
She worried that he would be the one lying dead on the roadside instead of Medvedev’s men.
“Gabriel,” she said softly.
Her husband paused. He seemed so weary now. He had taken care of her, and she had not been able to do the same for him. “Yes?”
“Stay with me.” She heard his soft intake of breath. To reject her? She couldn’t chance it—so she said the one thing she knew that would keep him there: “Will you hold me until I fall asleep?”
Gabriel shut his eyes briefly. But just when she thought he might still refuse, Gabriel shucked his sodden wool coat. A tremor went through his hands as he unbuttoned his waistcoat and then yanked his wet shirt over his head. Both items were tossed to the pile on the carpet. He fumbled with the fastening of his trousers and pushed them to the floor.
God, but he was beautiful. His skin was pebbled from the cold, and the firelight was generous to his form. Every angle of him was crafted with the eye of a masterful sculptor. Lydia relished this moment, the ability to see him in the light, but the instant was all too brief. Gabriel lifted the blankets and settled beside her.
“Come here, you curse of a girl,” he said, his voice tender.
He pulled her against his warm body. She could feel every angle, every hard muscle taut against her. And when his arm slipped around her middle, she had never felt so relaxed.
With a sigh, she whispered, “Thank you, Gabriel.”
He didn’t reply. But as she began to drift into dreams, Lydia thought she felt his lips on her skin.
27
Gabriel jolted awake.
His breathing heaved as he took in the unfamiliar room, seeking focus and finding none. His mind was a spiked weapon repeating memories of Moscow and all the terrible things he’d done. Driving each one through his skull like a forceful stab of a blade.
Stab.One victim.
Stab.Another.
Stab.Another.
You are Alexei Borislov Zhelyabov, the Beast of Moscow, and Gabriel St. Clair no longer exists. You are—
A soft noise came from behind him, and then Lydia’s arm slid around his waist. A breath exploded out of Gabriel. Every luscious, bare inch of Lydia’s naked body pressed against his back, warm and inviting.
A desperate thought came to him: he could lose himself in her. He could have her again, fuck her until she reminded him that he was not Alexei Borislov Zhelyabov. He was not the Beast of Moscow—not anymore. All he had to do was turn and wake her up. Then he’d get her permission, shove her against the blankets, and thrust his cock inside her until he found his release. Until he remembered his true name. Until—
Gabriel tore away from her arms and staggered to his feet. His blood roared in his ears as he set his hands to the back of a nearby chair to recover his balance. His cock was rigid. His mind pulsed with images—the violence of Moscow thundering through the heat of his arousal. The earlier killings on the road to Devon had flared more memories he’d tried for years to suppress, and the only solution he knew was the choice between brutality or hard sex. He hadn’t been like this since . . .
Since his return to England three years before, when Wentworth first found him scouring the streets for a fight. It had been at Wentworth’s suggestion that he choose a different bodily outlet, harness those memories into intimacies that chilled the raging heat in his blood. When Gabriel bedded a woman, he lost himself in it until the memories of his other life faded into the physical act of pleasure.
On nights like that, he was not capable of being gentle, so the women he’d bedded had a predilection for roughness. Each coupling suited their mutual needs.
But Gabriel did not want another woman. He wanted the one in the blankets, whose features were illuminated in the low glow of the fireplace embers. He wanted to fuck his curse of a girl until he recognized that his name was Gabriel St. Clair, and this was England, and he would never be anyone’s weapon again.
