AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Wait here.”
He disappears from the bathroom. Seconds tick by, and my eyes start to close. Then I flinch awake when he steps back into the room. My lower lip retreats between my teeth as he sets a mug of tea down on a little table next to the clawfoot tub.
He turns and hands me a glass of water and two extra-strength ibuprofens.
“Take these,” he orders.
I nod, still biting my lip as it curls up a little at the corners. I raise my eyes to his, shivering as his hazel and golden orbs pierce into me. He watches me swallow the painkillers, then takes the glass away and turns off the faucet.
He picks me up in his powerful arms again and before I know it he’s stepping into tub and settling down into the steaming hot water with me, holding me. I groan as the heat and his arms envelop me.
Slowly, as I drift back to reality, I twist my head. Our eyes lock as the moment that’s been coming for weeks arrives at the point of no return.
“You knew,” I whisper.
For weeks, I’ve been feasting on this delicious little secret inside me. Looking at him at work, or at a campaign thing, I’d feel this spark, knowing that I knew his dirty little secret, getting off on the fact that he was mine.
Except now it’s like someone’s yanked back the curtains and exposed all those dirty little secrets to the naked light of day.
It’s different when I chase you and you’re not expecting it, isn’t it?
Yeah, it fucking is. And I can’t tell if I want to shrink away with embarrassment or laugh.
Gabriel nods, and my pulse skips. “Yes, I knew.”
“When did you?—”
“The night you hid behind the curtain at the entrance before following me in.”
My heart drops.
That first time. He knew that first fucking time, when he put me on my knees, reached inside me, wrapped his fist around the darkest, most depraved part of my soul, and never let go.
He’s known all along.
I stare at him in the quiet darkness of the bathroom, steam and the scent of lavender curling around our faces. My throat works painfully, and my breath stutters as he reaches up to cup my jaw.
Turns out, it wasn’t just that he was my dirty little secret.
I was his, too.
“That means…” I blink. “The auditions… You let me win.”
“Maybe I wanted you to win,” he growls, his eyes capturing mine. “Maybe I wanted it to be you.”
His lips sear to mine, kissing me fiercely as I sink against his chest.
Monsters don’t bring you water and painkillers. They don’t run you bubble baths, or kiss you like you’re a precious treasure they’d rather die than lose.
At least, most don’t.
But mine does.
23
GABRIEL
I could have lost her the other night.
