Page 45 of Once Upon a Midnight Dreary
His voice, low and steady, wrapped around her.She clung to him.Not just out of fear from the near-miss, but something else.Something unspoken.Something deeper.
Affection.The beginnings of affection tugged at heart.
“What…what is happening?”she breathed.
She tilted her head up, their eyes colliding.In his gaze she saw it.Longing.Regret.Loneliness.A tenderness he didn’t try to hide that split her heart in two.In that instant, she understood.He felt the same.
Without thinking, she lifted on tiptoe, drawn by that longing and tenderness buried deep in his eyes.Her lips parted, her breath catching as she reached for him.
He pulled away, sharp and sudden, as though it pained him.
“No, Victoria.”
The words were barely above a whisper, but they cleaved through the air like a blade.He turned from her, his back rigid, his shoulders trembling ever so slightly.
It wasn’t rejection.It was something else.Something carved from guilt and centuries of solitude.
She stood there, suspended between desire and confusion, her heart hammering like a trapped bird.Something inside her saidhe wants this, too, but he believed he couldn’t have it.
“I’m sorry.I—”
He spun toward her, his eyes blazing brightly.“No.Forgive me.It’s not you.It’s…you don’t understand what I am.”
A breath shuddered through her lips, the image of the portrait flaring bright in her mind.“Idounderstand.I know who you are.You don’t frighten me.You didn’t then.You don’t now.”
He raked a shaking hand down his face, then turned away.Silence pressed around them.She remained rooted in place, her hands at her sides as the temperature shifted again.As though Lenore circled her.
“You don’t understand—” he started.
“You’re not just the caretaker,” she said, her breath pluming.“You’re something more.Something…else.”
She doesn’t deserve to know.
The words echoed around them.He spun back toward her, shadows pooling in his eyes.
“It’s this house.Once it snares you, it doesn’t let go.Victoria—” He stepped toward her, to close the distance, but the house groaned in response.
“It hasn’t let go of you?”Her voice shook in the shadowy darkness.
“No.It hasn’t.It won’t.”
He sounded so sad, so desolate it sent a pang right to her heart.Her throat tightened.
“Tell me.I want to know.”
Gabriel raked his fingers through his hair, making the ends stick up.“A ghost.But not the kind that fades.”
Not the kind that fades.The words echoed like a curse.A shadow trapped in flesh.A man on borrowed time.
That laugh followed.Maniacal.As though it—she—understood who and what he was.
“Go to bed, Victoria.I’ll clean this up.”His voice was terse, hard.Not at all like the man who spoke to her of fantasy worlds and swashbuckling pirates.
Terror lodged tight in her chest as she fled up the stairs.Behind her, the wreckage of the broken chandelier remained a shattered reminder something unseen watched, waited, and would not be ignored.
And below, Gabriel stood alone in the shadows, the firelight flickering across his face, illuminating the ache he could no longer hide.
Chapter 18
