Page 62 of A Bride By Morning
But when his hands thought of touching anyone, they were not gentle. Violence was too vivid in his mind, and his hands had been instruments of brutality for too long. He was no husband.
He was an assassin.
Gabriel flinched, his fingernails biting into the chair’s upholstery. He’d reacquaint himself with his hand and find another task that demanded punishing his body. He didn’t give a damn.
But then Lydia’s voice sounded behind him, soft and slurred from sleep. “Gabriel?”
God, but her voice caressed him like soft fingertips dancing along his skin. She’d sounded like that after he’d brought her to climax the previous night. Her eyes had gazed at him with an undeniable tenderness, and Gabriel felt the ground beneath him shift. For a man like him, unsteadiness could be fatal.
Gabriel stared at the carpet, trying to gain some command over his body. He could not face Lydia. He might not have the strength to leave; already, he was trembling with the desire to return to the blankets and take her in his arms. Set her on her knees. Take her from behind.
“Time for me to return to my room.” His voice was cold, and he knew it. That little sense of control was all he had remaining.
Blankets rustled with her movements. When she spoke again, it was from directly behind him. “Where are you right now?” she whispered. “Kabul or Moscow?”
Gabriel’s eyes squeezed shut as memories erupted through his mind. His past was another identity warring with the husband she knew; those images in his mind were so real, she seemed like a dream. He feared he might awake in his flat in Lyubertsy—an instrument for both the British government and Medvedev. They hardly differed. And all this—kissing her, marrying her, making love to her—was an existence he’d crafted to escape the man he’d become.
“Moscow,” he whispered.
Tell me you’re real,he didn’t say.Please, god, tell me you’re real.
Then he felt her warm hand against his shoulder, followed by the petal-soft touch of her lips there. “Then take me with you to Moscow, the way you did Vienna.”
Something in him splintered at the thought of her in Moscow. Her seeing everything he had done as Alexei Borislov—worse than what she had already witnessed.
He whirled on her, seized her by the wrist. Held it in a firm grip. “I told you that Moscow is somewhere you can’t follow.” His tone was harsh; it did not reflect the need that flooded his body.
Her eyes flickered over him, desire flaring across her features. That response gratified the animal lust that surged through his veins. She was getting under his skin, making him want things he couldn’t have and coveting a life he didn’t deserve.
Lydia raised her chin. “I won’t leave you alone with your memories. Not tonight.”
Gabriel’s breath heaved as his control unraveled at the edges. “You don’t know what you’re asking. I don’t even know if you’re fucking real right now.”
Her features softened. “I’m real enough to matter,” she whispered, taking his hand. She pressed soft kisses to his fingertips. “Real enough to kiss you. Real enough to touch you.”
Every press of her lips fractured him more. “Lydia.”
“Take me with you, Gabriel,” she whispered. “Don’t bury yourself in your mind. If I want you to stop, I’ll use the wordEngland, understand?”
Then she stepped into his arms and pressed her body against his.
And Gabriel shattered.
28
Lydia knew the moment Gabriel’s control broke. She gasped as his lips met hers in a desperate kiss, plundering her mouth with his tongue. He backed her hard against the bedpost, his hands shoving into her hair.
Lydia accommodated him. His body was hot against hers, his hard cock jutting between them.
Gabriel drew back. “You are not to touch me,” he said in a fierce growl.
Then he spun her. Shoved her to the bed until her backside was bent to him, her face pressed to the mattress.
Lydia flushed at the position. At having her body bared to Gabriel in such a vulnerable way. His hands fisted in her hair as he plunged his fingers inside of her.
Lydia gasped with pleasure. She was beyond words. Beyond thoughts of England or Moscow, her entire body fixated on that point of contact. She heard Gabriel’s harsh breathing behind her. He did not speak, not like the other night. Instead, he positioned himself over her with a feral noise, his green eyes intent—lost in memories? Or in her?
Gabriel kicked her legs apart as his fingers worked her, coaxing sounds that betrayed her mounting desire. She wanted to beg him. But she could mutter nothing coherent as he pressed her face into the bed. Then she felt the hard heat of his cock as he shoved into her. Lydia would have arched off the bed if he hadn’t kept his hand pushed to her back, holding her in that vulnerable position.
