Page 315 of Summer Heat
“He said he wants to get back together.”
Gabriel comes to stand directly over me, his gaze intense. “That’s not happening. I bought you. You’re fucking mine. Got it?”
I giggle. “He’s going to be so mad once he finds out. Men are always so mad.”
“He can fucking deal with me if he has a problem with it.”
My fingers form a frame in front of me, and I look at him between them. “You’re handsome for a monster.”
“Thank you,” he says through gritted teeth. “Do you want to get up off the floor now?”
I manage to sit up, but then the world spins. “I’m thirsty. I need more of that moonshine.”
“No.”
“Are you saving it?” I whisper. “Since it’s the last moonshine your daddy made?”
“I was,” he says, his voice dry.
I nod. “I can drink the Crown Royal instead. Or the tequila. I’ve never had tequila.”
“No more drinks for you. It’s bedtime.”
“What? That’s so unfair.” I haven’t had a bedtime since I graduated from high school. And even though I usually went to bed by curfew at college, he doesn’t have to know that. “I’m not even sleepy.”
As the words leave my lips, a wave of tiredness washes over me. It feels like more than the normal amount of sleep that you feel at the end of the night. This feels like I’ve been walking through the desert for days. It weighs down my eyelids until I’m looking at Gabriel through half-mast.
He shakes his head. “Do not throw up on me.”
I don’t know what he means until his hands slide under my legs. Then behind my shoulders. And I’m in the air, held only by his strength. I curl myself against his linen shirt, breathing in the musky scent of him. “You smell good.”
“You smell like a distillery.”
He’s taking me somewhere upstairs, and I close my eyes. “It will hurt less like this.”
“It won’t hurt at all,” he says, softer now. “I’m putting you to bed.”
“Because you want to own a virgin,” I say, repeating him.
He doesn’t answer, nudging a door open. I glance around to see heavy brocade curtains and a high bed in the middle of the room. Lavender flowers adorn the thick down comforter, setting off the pale yellow vertical stripes on the wall. Pretty.
“Too pretty for you,” I murmured.
“You’re probably right about that,” he says, sounding amused.
“I’m going to kill you.”
“Is that right?” he says, sounding less amused.
“With a sword.”
“And where are you going to get a sword?” He lays me down on sheets that feel outrageously cool against my heated skin. Then he pulls up the blanket. I think it’s going to be too hot, but once they’re on top of me, they feel just right.
“I haven’t figured that out,” I say with a sigh. It’s a puzzle, that’s for sure. “But I don’t want to kill you. I just don’t want to die.”
He’s silent a moment, and I peek one eye open at him. He’s looking at me with a strange expression. I would almost describe it as tender if he didn’t have the head of a bull.
“Give me the jacket,” he says gently.
