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If my father had simply wanted me to find a partner who’d make me happy, regardless of what their bloodline was. If no one in the Assembly had wanted to restrict who witches took as their consorts. What a beautiful thing. The thought of it brought a pang into my chest.
“What do you imagine?” I asked, snuggling closer. “Tell me how it would have been.”
He hummed to himself. “We’d have had wonderfully awkward dinners-with-the-parents, me in that grand old dining room of yours and you up here with just me and my dad. He’d probably have had a rule about my bedroom while I was still living here: ‘The door stays open if there’s a girl in there!’” Gabriel chuckled. “So we’d have gone out lots too. I’d have…” He paused. “Come here. I’ll show you. That’ll be even better.”
His fingers twining with mine, he led me out the apartment door and down the stairs. My pulse thumped with eager curiosity. Why shouldn’t we lose ourselves in a bit of fantasy for a little while? But when he came to a stop in the shadowed interior of the garage by my Buick, my legs locked. I hadn’t been in that car since the day he’d stopped it at the gate and told me he couldn’t stand to be near me one moment longer.
Gabriel’s hand tightened around mine. “I don’t know if I could ever completely write over that memory,” he said, “but we could at least make some new ones to compete?”
I dragged in a breath. My lungs had tightened, but maybe he had the right idea. “Okay,” I said. “Let’s try.”
He opened the passenger door for me and got into the driver’s seat, not bothering with his seatbelt since he wasn’t starting the engine.
“I had my own car pretty soon after I turned sixteen,” he said, gazing through the windshield as if he could see the alternate past he was conjuring in the darkness beyond the glass. “This old clunker I bought for pocket change and then fixed up to something halfway decent. I’d have driven you out to the theater in Hermiston to see movies, or into town for the closest thing I could afford to a fancy dinner out, or just to cruise around the countryside.”
I pushed aside all thought of the last time I’d been in this car and focused on the picture he was painting. “We could have gone out to the reservoir. Better swimming than my little pond here. At least, that’s what I’ve heard.”
Gabriel glanced over at me. He took my hand again. “We could go out there sometime for real. All six of us. For a bunch of married folks, we sure haven’t done much dating.”
I had to laugh. “No, we really haven’t.” The warmth of his hand and the glide of his thumb across my knuckles sent a shiver of a different sort of longing through me. “Where would we have driven out to if we’d wanted a little privacy?”
The corner of Gabriel’s mouth curled up. “Oh, there are a couple of popular spots for that sort of thing. There’s a picnic spot in the woods off the highway where no one much goes in the evening unless they’re teens looking to make out. And the pond just east of town—too mucky for swimming, but great for bonfires and smuggled beers and pairing off.”
All the teenage experiences I’d never had. “Which did you prefer?” I asked.
“Not either of those. I used to imagine where I’d take you, if you came back and I could see you again, even back then. There’s a spot along the river where there’s not really enough room for people to park for it to get popular, but if you go at the right time you can see the moon shining in the water and the crickets get going… I used to drive out there just to think.”
“Always by yourself?” I teased, even though my heart pinched at the thought of him with some other girl.
“I was saving that spot for you,” he said, his voice so low it sent a tingle through me.
“And are you going to show me what you imagined we’d have done out there?”
His smile grew. He leaned over and cupped my face, tipping my jaw up to meet his kiss.
It was the first time we’d kissed since he’d come back to me, but it felt as sweet as always. The moment his mouth brushed mine, I didn’t know how I’d ever get enough of him. I ran my fingers into his hair and kissed him harder, as if I could mark him with so much love and desire it would hold this happiness with us forever.
A pleased sound reverberated from Gabriel’s throat. He met my passion with his own, his lips coaxing mine apart so our tongues could tangle, his hand slipping down over my neck to my chest. He traced the curve of my breast through my clothes, and I arched to chase that contact. Even that muted touch left me shivering with need. To feel him everywhere, to claim him, to remind myself how much he was still mine—and how much I was his.
Gabriel eased back just far enough to say, “Back seat?” in a breathless voice. I nodded and scrambled back there with no further encouragement needed. Gabriel’s side bumped the seat as he followed, and he winced, but before I could ask if he was okay, he was there with me, lying me down on the leather seat beneath him as he kissed me again.
Our mouths crashed together hot and hungry, and his thigh slid between my legs with a rush of delicious friction against my core. Like another day, another car, when we’d collided in a haze of longing until Gabriel had wrenched himself away from me.
Maybe we were writing over more than one painful memory today. Remaking every moment he’d pulled back, replacing them with this expression of his desire.
He broke the kiss to tug my shirt up over my head, and I yanked his off in turn. His hand dipped beneath me to unhook my bra as we fell back into each other. His mouth branded mine, and his fingers teased my nipples into peaks. His thigh rocked against my core until I was gasping. He bent over to slick his tongue over my breast, and I moaned, clutching his head.
When he slid lower, my grip tightened. “No,” I said. “I want you here with me.”
Gabriel looked up at me, understanding gleaming in his eyes in the dim light. He undid my jeans, and I kicked them off at his tug. Then he was leaning over me again, his lips finding mine for another searing kiss.
He caressed one breast and then the other through that kiss and the next and the next, until I was squirming with need, my whole body burning with pleasure. My hands skimmed up and down the hot solid planes of his chest. I rocked up to let my clit brush the bulge in his jeans, and he groaned against my mouth.
I jerked his fly open, and he helped me peel off the jeans between breathless kisses. A shudder ran through his body when I trailed my hand over his erection.
“You’ve always been the one for me, Rose,” he murmured. “You always will be. No matter what happens. No matter what you do. I was meant for you.”
“And all I want from you is for you to be here with me,” I said, choking up.
