Page 25

“Gabriel.” Harsh and needy, she asked with a few syllables, and he turned her to face the mirror fully and settled on the bed with her in his lap. With her legs spread and straddling his knees, he had the perfect view of her pussy and the right angle to give her exactly what she asked for.
Sliding one hand up to her breast, he caught a nipple between his thumb and forefinger. A pinch of pressure as he increased the speed of his hand on her clit and she came, a low half-formed note bursting from her throat. Raw emotion spread across her face, and her smile devastated his senses. The sheer beauty in the silent orgasm stole his breath. Her cheeks flushed. The ruddy color spread down her chest and gave her an almost rosy hue beneath the deep tan. Her eyes gleamed. He could have eased off the pressure, but he increased the stroke of his fingers until her back arched. When she cried out this time, he heard her gasp.
Satisfaction flooded him, and his cock ached, but he ignored its demands. Copper’s eyes drifted to half-closed, and she shuddered, wide open and vulnerable in his arms. She’d given him the fucking sun and the stars in her reaction.
“Definitely personal,” she whispered, and he nuzzled a kiss to her temple, petting her down.
“I know,” he said.God, did he ever know.
Chapter 7
Still trying to catch her breath, Copper sagged against Gabriel. His hand against her pussy was the most erotic thing she’d seen in a long time. The view hardly compared to the heat he continued to stoke through her. Her inner muscles clenched at the emptiness, and she was very aware of his cock pressed against her ass. Instead of angling for entry though, he simply stroked and soothed her.
Covering his hand with hers, she concentrated on reclaiming some control. Gabriel peeled it away from her, layer by layer, until she wanted to give it to him.Fuck wanting, I did give it to him.Whether she could ever admit it aloud or not didn’t matter. Actions spoke far louder than words. Twice now, she’d let her feelings for this man seduce her.
Feelings.
What. The. Fuck.
“Easy.” He murmured the word and rubbed his cheek against hers gently. The bruises from his interrogation darkened the skin below one eye. Bruises weren’t supposed to be sexy. “I’m not going to hurt you, remember?”
“I’m not afraid of you.” She’d told some really big damn lies in the past, but nothing compared to that whopper. Gabriel Danvers scared the hell out of her.
“I didn’t say you were.” Her erstwhile white knight was also a gentleman for letting the big stinking pile she tried to shovel go. “I said easy. You’re getting tense. You’resafehere. No one is getting to you without going through me.”
Believing him proved far simpler than she cared to admit. She didn’t want him to be between her and danger, however. The people she was after didn’t play games. Killing? Well, Red Wolf had killed plenty. They’d paid a steep price in blood. She didn’t want his blood on her hands either.
“Nothing professional,” she reminded him, shifting her thoughts away from the dark and treacherous path.
“Trust me, my mind is not on work at the moment.” The teasing words accompanied his fingers dancing over her body. “Look at you. I love that look on your face.”
Raising her eyebrows, she glanced up from his hands to study herself in the mirror. She didn’t see anything special. She’d seen the same face for three decades now—the woman who could vanish in a crowd. The woman no one could pin down to an ethnicity. She’d listed three different ones during school, usually picking whichever one suited her mood, and no one ever questioned her choices. Her lips were moist, and her eyelashes dipped with her eyelids half down.
The stubble on his cheek left hers a little flushed where he’d rubbed against her. She enjoyed the rasping sensation of it, the raw reality. The intensity in his gaze, however, captivated her. “What do you see?” Yes, she’d just wasted a question, but she didn’t give a damn.
“I see you.” He smiled, and her bruised heart squeezed in her chest. “I see intelligence in those hazel eyes. A crafty, clever, and vividly brilliant intelligence. There’s a softness in those lips, one that doesn’t come out and is well hidden, but when you smile…like that.” He grinned as her mouth seemed to move in reaction to his words. “It takes my breath away. I want to do everything I can to bring that smile out. Then there’s your chin. It’s a very stubborn chin.”
Laughter bubbled out of her before she could swallow it away. “How the hell can a chin be stubborn?”
“You lift it—see, there you go. You raise it when you’re irritated or considering a move. It’s not quite a tell, but you don’t like to be challenged. So, when you think I’m going to, you raise your chin. It’s telling me you’re ready, that you can handle whatever bullshit life throws at you, because you’re above it.”
Shock piled atop shock. Why wasn’t he furious with her?So what did you get out of him?Merc’s words drifted through her.Did it ever occur to you he played you?
“Where did you go?” Gabriel frowned, and his hands drifted to rest on her thighs. The need to turn around and fill herself up on his cock warred with the need to answer his question. She’d come here to get information. Instead, they were playing at sex again. How the hell did he keep turning her inside out?
No, why am I letting him do it?She wasn’t an idiot. She wanted to participate, or she wouldn’t still be in the room. The text she’d sent Cobalt had been straightforward. She was going dark to work Gabriel over, she’d check in with him in the morning. The plan made sense—then.
“Copper.”
“Don’t do that.” She eased forward on his lap, and at her resistance, he let her go. Rising, she wanted distance between them.
“Don’t do what?”
“Don’t talk to me like youknowme.” She pivoted to face him. “You don’t know me.”
“I know I don’t.” The easy agreement deflated her argument. “I don’t know you, Copper. Iwantto know you. Do you think it was easy to accept you were working with people who knocked me out? Kidnapped me? Interrogated me? Worse, that you were the one who injected me?”
Every indictment was true, so… “Why do you still want to know me?”