He clamped his mouth shut, knowing he didn’t have the right words anyway. Hadn’t he already proven that on the beach, sending her into a tailspin with his questions? Hurting her more with every word?
“All we’re doing is pretending,” she continued, the words slicing through his heart. “In your eyes, I’ll always be a dark witch. That’s what you see first, before you see the woman—the person—beneath. Sure, you’re attracted to me. The sex is… fucking epic. And maybe you evenlikeme, despite yourself. But you don’t know me. Not at all.”
He waited a few beats, not wanting to interrupt. When it was clear she had nothing more to add for the moment, he said softly, “But Idoknow you, little moonflower.”
She winced, as if the name he’d been calling her for months—the name he whispered even when she wasn’t there, just to bring it to his lips—physically hurt.
“The fact that you believe that only proves my point, Gabriel. It means you canneverknow me because you’re already so sure you’ve got it all figured out. There’s no room for curiosity. For exploration. There’s no room for anything but assumptions and the lies you tell yourself to justify your attraction to me. Because how terrifying would it be if the Redthorne prince—the vampire whodespiseswitches—actually had feelings for one?”
His heart thudded, his mouth filling with the taste of salt and bitterness.
She fucking nailed it.
Gabrielwasterrified. No, maybe he didn’t know her. Maybe he never would. Maybe she held secrets so dark, so deep, no man—mortal or immortal—would ever unearth them.
But hewantedto know her. Not as a witch. Not as a woman. Not as whatever else lie deep in that fiery heart of hers. But as everything, all of it, all at once, everything that made her the woman who’d set his soul on fire.
“Jacinda, I… You… There’s so much, and…” He fumbled for the words again, the right ones this time, the simplest expression of the most complicated fucking thing he’d ever experienced, yet there on the dark stretch of highway, heart jammed in his throat, none of them came.
So he reached for her instead, brushing his knuckles along her jaw, hoping the tenderness in his touch conveyed what his broken speech could not.
Jacinda shook her head and turned away from him, her rejection crashing over him like the ocean that’d nearly drowned them both.
Gabriel waited for her to speak. To shout. To climb over into the driver’s side, take his face in her hands, and finally kiss him, confirming that he wasn’t alone in this fathomless ocean after all.
But his feisty, fiery, sassy witch was all out of words. All out of everything.
With a heavy sigh, he turned his eyes back to the road, following that cold black ribbon home.
* * *
By the time Gabriel pulled into the underground parking garage back home, Jacinda was sound asleep, mouth parted, her breathing deep. After everything they’d been through tonight, Gabriel didn’t have the heart to wake her. As carefully as he could, he extracted her from the passenger seat and hauled her close, bumping the door closed with his hip.
She’d asked him to take her home, but she wouldn’t be going to her place tonight.
She’d be going to his. His penthouse. His bedroom. His bed.
He wasn’t letting her out of his sight.
Up on the fifteenth floor, the moon shone like a jewel through his windows, casting the normally dark gray bedroom in a wash of light. In the quiet peace of his room, it seemed impossible that the moon that hung in the city sky now was the same moon that had watched them cheat death hours earlier.
Gabriel set Jacinda on the bed, gently rolling back the blankets. Her dress was dry now, crusted with salt, but no longer ice cold. He unbuckled and removed the one shoe, the jewels from her neck, the few clips that still clung to her hair. Silvery locks spilled down over her shoulders, unleashing the salty scent of the sea.
Memories crashed over him like waves, dark and dangerous, filling his chest with sharp, jagged fear.
But that’s all they were. Memories. Ghosts, just like all the rest. Jacinda was safe. They were both safe. From mages, from magic, from rogue waves, from demons and darkness.
He figured she’d be more comfortable in his shirt, but he didn’t think he could take the dress off without unleashing his own desire, a raging thing she’d dug out of the ice and brought back to life with the fire of her touch.
So instead, he left her clothed, pulling the blankets up to her neck and tucking them around her body.
She murmured slightly, but her eyes never opened.
Gabriel sat on the edge of the bed and held her hand, watching her sleep for a long time, fighting back the images of that cave.
Frantically searching for her in the conference room, he could hear her heartbeat. Scent her adrenaline. And when he finally blurred into that cave and found her kneeling on the floor, the mage touching her, he’d seen it—that look. It was the same look he’d seen in every monster he’d ever tormented. In the end, they all knew when death was near. And no matter how terrible they’d been in life, no matter how much death they’d meted out themselves, they always feared its arrival.
And in that moment, when he saw that look inhereyes, for the first time in his pathetic immortal life, Gabriel felt that same fear chewing through his fucking heart.
