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How the fuck do I protect my family from someone who can disguise herself as me?
Gabriel
The high of the show buzzes in my veins for the rest of the night. No amount of Claudia telling me she nearly saw me get shot could dim the buzz. If that was to be my last moment on earth, what a way to go. On stage with my girl, singing the song I wrote for her, for us.
Broken Muse return to the stage to perform another set, this time without me. There’s nothing we can do to find Mackenzie now – she’s slipped away into the shadows once more. So Claws and George and I ignore Antony’s fatherly advice to go home, and we dance until the last trembling note, swept up in the raw power of the music until the lights go up and the spell is broken. The club is once again a big, echoing room with rubbish and bodily fluids caked on the sticky floor.
I want to chase the magic in my veins as long as I can – I want to believe I really am this version of Gabriel and not the fuck-up who lives inside my head and steals all the booze. I round up the family and shove them into the limo. Claws isn’t even fully inside the car yet when I start to snog her. She tastes amazing, like Champagne and savagery. I want to crawl inside her skin and live there forever.
I’m starting to understand my place in Claws’ world. I can’t wade into bloody battle for her, like Noah. I’m never going to be the brains of the operation – that’s Eli. But I can be the heart.
I can remind her what she’s fighting for.
I sing to Claudia, letting my breath touch her skin as I slide the spaghetti straps over her shoulders. I kiss her forehead, my lips moving as I hum the melody under my breath. She moans, arching her back and clamping her arms around my waist to pull me closer. I will write the song of her body. I don’t care that I’ve just elbowed Noah in the face or that George is cowering in a corner. I need this woman to know how amazing she is right the fuck now.
Yara bangs on the glass separating us from the driver. “Can you go a bit faster? I don’t want to be stuck in this tin can when this lot start at it like rabbits.”
I don’t remember the rest of the car trip; I have my tongue buried in Claudia’s hot, perfect mouth and nothing else matters. As we walk into the house, Eli looks at Claudia hopefully, but Noah shoves him toward the ballroom. “Tonight is for Gabe and Claudia. Go play with your kittens.”
My friends have my back.
I sweep Claudia into my arms and carry her to her room. She clings to my neck, her eyes boring into my soul.
“You’re unusually coordinated tonight,” she murmurs. “You haven’t stumbled once or knocked an ugly painting off the wall.”
“I haven’t had a drink,” I reply, planting kisses on the top of her head. “A feat worthy of a fine medal, or at the very least to the right to call myself the singer of Broken Muse.”
The singer of Broken Muse. It sounds strange and wonderful on my tongue. When I called Dorien a few weeks ago to play him my new song, all I was looking for was a bit of support from a fellow musician. Claws will like everything I write, and Eli and Noah are heathens when it comes to the arts, so I trusted Dorien to tell me if I have my mojo back or if I’d written the Gabriel Fallen equivalent of “MMMbop.” He suggested I come into the studio and jam the song with the band. I thought he was just being nice, but I should’ve known Dorien doesn’t do things just to be nice. The minute Faye picked up her violin and played my melody, we all felt it. The spark. The stars falling around us as the music flowed from our fingers.
I haven’t felt that way about music for a long time, not since Dylan and I wrote our first songs hiding in the tower of Blackwich Castle. I didn’t think I had the right to feel this way again, not after I took our pain and used it to make us famous, to get us record deals and groupies and drugs and shenanigans, so I never, ever had to deal with the growing gap between my heart and the boy I loved.
I don’t think I’ve forgiven myself, but I think I’m starting to realize that regrets are meant to be lived. That instead of running from the pain of losing Dylan, if I run headlong into it, I won’t crash and burn. Claws gave me the strength to carry it with me.
And the band is great – Dorien, Faye, Titus, Ivan. They flow. They’re all in a relationship like I am with Claws, Noah, and Eli. They understand my life in a way I never thought possible. Titus is a beautiful soul, and Ivan has a dry Romanian sense of humor that cracks me up every time. All it took were three jam sessions and Dorien was arranging a summer tour. Every piece fit. I fit.
I know that part of the plan we worked out is that I quit music to be here for Claws, but I don’t have to do that just yet, do I? She will sort out this shit with the Triumvirate, because that’s what she does, and I’ll have the summer to tour. Everything will be fine.
I kick the door of her bedroom – not Mackenzie’s old room, but a guest bedroom downstairs she long ago claimed as her own. The wood cracks against the wall, sending Queen Boudica darting for safety. I lay Claudia down on the bed. She stares up at me like I’m a god, and my heart wants to burst out of my chest. I want to be the person she sees when she looks at me. I’m not there yet, but after tonight, I feel like I could be.
“Gabriel,” Claudia reaches up and pulls me down to her. I’m surprised to feel tears streaking her face. “What you said on stage tonight, that was the most raw and real I’ve ever seen you. You showed me the real Gabriel. I don’t know if I’ve ever truly seen him on display like that before.”
I throw one leg over her, shifting my weight so I’m straddling her. I gaze down at the perfection that is Claudia August. My heart grows three sizes like a fucking Dr. Seuss character. I no longer feel the crushing weight in my chest of not deserving her. All I feel is this bright, brilliant love.
And horniness. My cock feels like it’d quite like to be inside her, thank you very much. I may be an immortal rock god capable of superhuman feats, but she’s looking up at me all heavy-lidded and licking her lips, and ‘restraint’ isn’t in this god’s vocabulary…
I bend down and kiss her. Kissing Claudia August is like standing under the waterfall at my apartment – calming and grounding and also likely to drag me under. I drown in her intoxicating scent, in the way she mewls like a kitten when I stroke my stud across her tongue.
My hands roam over her body. Every touch is like touching her for the first time again. And I realize that so many of the times we’ve been together – including that first, magical night at Midnight Grotto – I’ve been drunk. I’ve had a screen of alcohol to shield me from her brilliance, but now that I’m sober(ish, let’s not get carried away), it’s as if I’m trying to stare directly into the sun – she dazzles. There’s too much of Claudia to take in at once. I have to enjoy her in bite-sized pieces – the gentle slope of her shoulders, the dip in her collarbone that makes her squirm when I kiss it, the gorgeous dent under her armpit, the tiny swirl of skin in her belly button.
I kiss and touch and caress until she’s writhing beneath me, until our touches are no longer tender but a needful grinding.
I slide my fingers under her green dress and push it up, tugging it over her head and tossing the offending fabric aside. Claudia watches me with an indulgent pout. I run my finger along her entrance, feeling the wetness already pooling there. The scent of her reaches my nostrils – heady and sweet, for me. For me.
Because I sing the stars for her.
And suddenly I can’t take it anymore. We’re talking about the real Gabriel Fallen tonight, the one I’ve been so afraid to let her see. Well, he’s about to say something potentially very stupid.
“I want to have a child with you,” I whisper. “I know you think I haven’t thought about it, but I have. I hardly think about anything else. And if it has to go by some other dude’s last name, but that means we can have a baby, a family, if it means that we’re safe, then I’ll do it. I’ll do anything for you.”
