Page 4 of Only for You
She remained planted on the barstool.
“And who are you looking for?” Janelle sing-songed, poking Gabriella in the arm, giggling.
“Oh, you already know the answer to that question,” her sister-in-law, Wendy, piped up from the other side of her cousin. “You don’t really think she came out here just for us, do you?” She smirked, arching an eyebrow high. Damn. Gabriella should’ve remembered her sister-in-law always released the reins on her inner mean girl when drunk. Wendy snickered. “If you knew what your man’s been up to, I don’t think you’d be so gung ho to see him.”
Ignoring the urge to shout“He’s not my man!”and give the women more ammunition, she instead focused on the last part of the comment. “What are you talking about, what he’s been up to?” A sliver of unease slipped between her ribs. Didn’t this club mean Killian had gone legit? Was out of the mob?
Again, Wendy laughed, the edge to it a clear warning Gabriella wasn’t going to appreciate the other woman’s answer. “Aside from tearing up the underground fighting scene, rumor has it that Killian Vincent has been”—she paused, grinned—“tearing up the sheets, too. Like,hard.”
Pain stabbed Gabriella like a hot poker straight to the heart. It’d been five years since they’d been together—of course he hadn’t been a monk. He didn’t owe her any loyalty. She had firsthand knowledge to how “hard” in the bedroom—or in the kitchen, or the living room, or a dark corner in the storeroom of her uncle’s bar—Killian could be. He’d introduced Gabriella to an eroticism she’d never experienced…and hadn’t since him. He’d been the first to push her sexual limits, teach her how the bite of pain could intensify pleasure, heighten it. Been the first to take her ass and make her love it. Crave it.
The first…and the last.
“Wendy,” Janelle hissed. “Shut up.”
“What?” Wendy held up the hand not holding a drink, widening her eyes. “If she sticks around long enough, she’ll hear the gossip, too. Besides, we’re family, so she should hear it from us.”
Janelle shoved her face into Wendy’s, their noses almost bumping. “It’s none of our bus—”
“Be right back. Bathroom.” Gabriella launched off her stool before either woman could object or offer to come along. Space, she needed some space. From the cattiness. From the memories of her and Killian. From the images of Killian and other, faceless women.
As if the hounds of hell snapped at her heels—including one wearing Wendy’s features and containing a knowing, leering gleam in its glowing, red eyes—Gabriella weaved a path through the crush of bodies toward the back of the club and the restrooms. She checked the urge to pull aHulk, smash!and, gritting her teeth, steadily continued forward, her focus centered on the Exit sign at the rear of the warehouse. As she skated across the dance floor, someone bumped into her shoulder, almost knocking her over.
“Damn,” she mumbled, quickly righting herself before turning and glaring a fist-sized hole into the back of the offender’s head. Not that the guy seemed to care or notice that he’d almost made her ass meet the floor. “What a jerk…”
Her voice trailed off as a door on the far wall opened, and a tall, wide figure stepped out. Shadows and distance obscured his face, but that didn’t stop a low hum of electricity from entering her body. That current hadn’t sizzled in her blood in five years. She waited, feet rooted to the floor. A stampede of people could come crashing toward her, but she wasn’t moving. Not until she saw his face. Not until she knew for certain…
Oh God.
Killian.
Her heart pummeled her chest, like a beast trying to fight its way free of its cage. Thunder crashed and roared in her ears, deafening her to everything but the harsh rasp of her breath.
She should’ve been prepared—she’d come here hoping to catch a glimpse of him. But God, had she been naive. Nothing could’ve equipped her for this moment, this first look at this man who had claimed her at the age of nineteen with his particular brand of lust and love. He’d branded her, had searedMineonto her soul, and time and distance couldn’t change that fact.
It also couldn’t change her body’s ingrained reaction to just the hint of him. The hope of him. The impact of him.
Desire thickened and slid through her veins like hot, delicious molasses, swelling her breasts, tightening her nipples, before winding south and pooling between her legs. Her chest rose and fell, her breaths already deepening. When was the last time she’d experienced that painful but sweet ache? No, she hadn’t been celibate in the years since she’d left Boston, but no man but him had ever incited this throb that rode the razor-sharp edge of pain and bliss. No other man could have her body readying to be stroked, penetrated, and pleasured with just a look.
No man but Killian.
Greedily, she devoured him. The big body that seemed to hum with a vitality and barely leashed frenetic energy—an energy that reached out to her even halfway across a packed warehouse, as illogical as that sounded. The wide shoulders and chest that would’ve had Bill Belichick selling his soul to have on the Patriots’ offensive line. The narrow, taut waist that her fingers had dug into, her thighs had embraced. The thick, muscled legs that reminded her of powerful, marble columns charged with supporting massive structures.
Joy, sadness, and lust wrapped her in their freezing, paralytic embrace. She couldn’t move, could barely breathe as he stalked toward her. Even with his brows jacked down in a fierce, dark vee that sent shivers trampling over her skin, and his mouth firmed in a grim, straight line, she was frozen to the spot. He didn’t slow in his focused, intent stride; he moved forward as if he expected people to scamper out of the way for him…and they did.
God, if she possessed even an ounce of self-preservation, she would cut a path through the crowd and try to shake him before he reached her. But this was what she’d wanted, right? To see him? To maybe talk to him? Indecision swirled inside her, panic tickling the back of her throat. Yet something more eddied low in her belly, pulsed in her clit, heated her deep inside where no man but him had ever touched. Desire. Arousal. Need.
In a club bursting with people, she burned.
And shook. As he closed in on her, she shook like a shock victim. That face. How many nights had that hard, harshly sculpted, beautiful face haunted her? Like a man stumbling upon a banquet after being denied food for years, she hungrily traced the dark slashes of his eyebrows, the sharp thrust of his cheekbones, the lush curves of his mouth, the solid jut of his jawline. At one time, she’d had permission, the freedom to caress that face, to wake up to it. Now… Now, she had to force her hands to remain down by her sides because trying to touch him would be courting danger. Like sticking her hand into the cage of an angry beast.
Ten feet.
Run, fool.
Six feet.
Oh shit, this is not going to end well.
