Page 100 of Love What's Left
“Three, two, one.” He dragged me off by my hair, his eyes wide.
I grinned up at him and wiped my chin with the back of my hand. “Again.”
The memory makes me bold. There’s nothing tentative about the way I worship his body.
He smooths my hair away from my face, not controlling my head tonight but petting me, praising me with his touch.
He bucks, shudders, and whimpers, never leaving me in doubt about how I make him feel. No stoic silence in bed for Gabriel McRae.
Partially sitting up far enough to grab my hips, he rearranges my body into the 69 position.
At the first touch of his tongue, a muffled cry escapes my lips. I lose my rhythm and lift my head. “You know I can’t concentrate when you do that.”
He chuckles against my clit, sending a delicious vibrating shiver from my toes to the top of my head. “I’ll make you a deal. Whoever comes first takes bottom afterward,” he says.
“Hardly seems fair to you. I have a head start.”
There goes that laugh again. He gives me a light slap on my butt. “You’re going to need it. Now, put that pretty mouth back on my dick.”
It’s probably for the best that he “wins.” Holding that position for any length of time would have been a struggle for me. Before long, exhaustion was bound to take over. I suspect he knew that all along because the lovemaking afterward is slow and gentle, filled with tender words and quiet intensity as he braces himself over me and pushes into me.
Later, he holds me in the darkness, my body draped over his as perspiration dries on our skin, and his heart thuds steadily beneath my cheek.
His fingers trail up and down my spine. “Why did you shut off your phone earlier?”
I should cringe at the memory, but I’m too sleepy. “When we went to bed originally, the battery was almost dead. It hadn’t charged for very long before I had the idea to look at photos, then I forgot to pack a charging cord.”
“If I hadn’t followed you, where would you have gone after here?” he murmurs.
“After I made arrangements, I’d have gone back to get Rufus from the staff at the house, then probably gone to my old apartment in New York to see what I could remember. You told me about it, but I forgot until Annabel reminded me and said they could take me there. I was thinking I wanted to start with the lab. Earlier today, I had Ben send me the company emails of everybody I worked with from the last three months. It’s going to take me forever to read them all, and it’s probably stupid. I know if there was anything there to catch, your people would have already, but I thought maybe it could prompt memories. He sent me the footage from the entire day when I took the laptops, and from the new cameras in the lab too. Even watching it sped up is going to take a while, but maybe I’ll notice something no one else does.”
“You could do that from here. Do you still want to go back?”
I nod against his chest and yawn. “It’s time.”
“The doctors say the things that happened while you were drugged will probably never come back, the same way people lose their memories while under anesthesia. If you don’t remember, it’s not something to feel guilty about, no matter what my brother said to you.”
“I hate that. Even my short-term memory still sucks for some things. What if I go back into the lab and forget I was even there the way I do with the doctor’s visits or when Clarissa and Janessa came to see me in New York?” Orthe times I asked Gabriel for answers about our past, then not only forgot them afterward, but, according to him, zoned out right in the middle of hearing them.
“Then we deal with it,” he says.
“You’ll come with me?”
He scoffs. “Where you go, I go.”
Sleep tightens its warm embrace, but I manage to answer before succumbing to the comfort of darkness.
“Where you go, I go,” I echo.
35
Gabriel
Two Weeks Later
“Happy birthday, Sydney!” The moment we step through the front door of my parents’ Gothic Revival home in the Hamptons, our closest friends and family converge on us.
Beside me, Sydney squeezes my hand and smiles.
