Page 29 of A Bride By Morning
He wanted it to be him.He wanted it to be him.
Something snapped inside Gabriel. His hand shot out to grasp Lydia’s wrist, and her soft gasp had him gentle his grip.
His eyes met hers for the first time since she’d entered the room. Christ god, he would never get that memory of her out of his mind: her dark hair loose and falling around her shoulders, her pale skin flushed pink with desire and anger, and her gaze defiant.
Gabriel slowly rose from the chair. Lydia watched him, alert now. Then, when he raised her wrist and pressed it to his lips, her eyes flared with need.
For him.
He ought to give her a memory to use when she pleasured herself. When she went to bed alone at night, it had better be his face she pictured in the darkness. Let him plague her thoughts, as well.
Tit for tat.
Gabriel dragged his tongue across her hammering pulse. The texture of her skin was like velvet. “Is that all you want? For me to make you come?”
A tremble went through Lydia. The pulse at her wrist quickened against Gabriel’s mouth. “Yes.”
That answer was all it took to shatter his final traces of restraint. He pushed Lydia into the chair he’d just vacated and dropped to his knees before her. A shuddering breath left her, but it wasn’t enough.
Gabriel wanted her to lose as much control as he. He wanted her shattered, as well. Wanted her sleepless, afflicted with the same temptations that had him roaming the halls of Meadowcroft. When she closed her eyes at night and set her weary head against a pillow, he wanted her to dream only of him.
Tit. For. Fucking. Tat.
Desire burned hot within him, demolishing ice in its wake. Gabriel shoved up her nightdress and set his hands on her underclothes. He was impatient—a savage need pounding through him to touch and taste her. To feel her bare skin.
He gripped her underclothes and tore.Riiiiip.
She made a soft, surprised noise—but Gabriel hardly heard it over the blood rushing through his ears. She lay open to him, her fucking beautiful quim glistening. And Gabriel lost control. He shoved her legs wider and set his mouth to her pussy.
Lydia’s cry of pleasure only further frayed his control. He wanted her vulnerable—for her to want him as much as he did her. He yearned to mark himself so deep in her bones that she’d never see anyone’s face but his every time she touched herself.
Gabriel devoured her. He moved his lips and his tongue across the peaks and valleys of her cunny and relished the taste of her, the soft, shuddering breaths she made as she shivered against his touch. She tasted of salt, like the sea. Of something else that was so uniquely her that he would never forget it for as long as he lived. And when he thrust his fingers inside of her, Lydia’s gasp imprinted somewhere deep inside him. Set itself in his heart, with all the other memories of her. He wanted to remember this, remember how her leg hooked around his shoulder to urge him closer. The way her hand gripped his hair and her fingernails scraped across his scalp. She came undone with the same animal desire reflected within him; he understood it on a basic, intrinsic level. Understoodher.
She shuddered beneath his lips. When she whispered his name, he heard it echo deep inside his soul: “Gabriel.Gabriel.”
Then she came apart with a harsh sound, a gasp that vibrated through her entire body. And Gabriel did not stop until she had collapsed against the back of the chair, her body shivering.
Only then did he pull away so that he could kiss her. So she could taste her pleasure against his lips. She kissed him back with an urgency that bordered on desperation, her hands grabbing at his clothes.
Gabriel responded by kissing her roughly, nipping at her lips. He was going to tear off her nightdress.
Roll her onto the floor.
Press her face to the carpet.
Fuck her.
Use her body to forget—
His lips tore from hers. Gabriel forced himself to back away, his hands pressing against the mantel as he tried to gather himself.
“Gabriel?” She stirred behind him. “Is all—are you well?”
Memories pounded through Gabriel’s skull, images of every time he’d killed with a knife. His life as Alexei Zhelyabov had been violent; pleasure had shifted to brutality. He could so easily become like that with her.
“Quite.” His voice came as if from afar. “As I said before, I’m not in the mood to fuck you.”
A soft noise left her. “I—very well.”
