Accompanying Alice (26 page)

“No, don’t wait,” she heard him snap. “Go to Scully, get clearance and get the damn warrants. This has gone on long enough. I’ll call you in a couple of days.” He paused again, then loosed another ugly obscenity. “Screw Markum. I’m going to take the bastard down.”

Frightened by the sound of his barely contained rage, Alice pillowed her face on her arms on the table again, pretending to be asleep, and watched the kitchen doorway. He appeared there, backlit by the shadows filtering through the unshaded kitchen window. Even in silhouette his anger was tangible, dangerous; it engulfed her. This was not the brown-eyed man
with
whom
she’d
shared her confusion, had wanted to hold her. This was the man with the vivid blue eyes who’d stopped her from taking his gun in the pawn shop. This was the man who knew how to make nice with killers, who was capable of anything. She watched him twist the phone receiver in his hands, felt the control he exerted not to smash it through the wall.

Saw him look at her without realizing she was awake.

Watched him drag air into his lungs as though that was hard work; saw him gently depress the phone’s plunger and dial.

“How did it happen, Markum?” he said evenly into the phone. “Who turned you? No, don’t tell me, I don’t give a rat’s ass for your excuses. But what you did to Nicky, I’m gonna damn well do that to you, too. You got that, Si? Personally, I’m gonna do it to you.”

“Gabriel, what’s going on?”

Afraid for him, Alice forgot the cautions of her dream, was out of her chair and at his back. She reached around him, wanting to hold him, to pull him back from the brink of whatever ledge he was standing on. To stop him from letting his anger consume and endanger him, by getting him off the phone and making him think. He twisted under her touch, crooked an arm about her neck and covered her mouth with his hand. Then he cradled the phone and grabbed her arms, shaking her.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing, Allie?” he demanded harshly. “Don’t ever do that again. If he finds out who you are, where I am, I don’t know if I can protect you.” He hauled her roughly against him, buried his face in her hair. “God, Alice, I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

“Gabriel, you were threatening someone on my phone.”

“I know.” He stroked her hair restlessly, ran his hands the length of her back. “I’m sorry. I let it get away from me.” He released her suddenly, strode back into the kitchen and began shoving things around on the counter, unsuccessfully trying to confine too much emotion in too small a space. “I hate this, Alice,” he said hoarsely. “I hate this stinking job, I hate the lies and the subterfuge, the damned personal agendas. I hate manipulating people, I hate using them, I hate spying on them. But the biggest crime I’ve ever committed is trusting someone else’s judgment over my own instincts. Letting them use me, manipulate me.”

“Gabriel...” Alice crossed the kitchen, reaching for him.

He eluded her, blindly wedging himself into the comer join of the counter, holding himself still by hanging on to its edge.

“He did it, Alice. Markum. Silas Markum. Not Scully. I’ve known him fifteen years. He got me into this business, he recommended me for promotions, he taught me what
I
needed to know to stay alive out there. His thirteen
year
old’s my godchild, damn it! The sonovabitch killed three
cops and a special agent, embezzled crime unit funds, stole drugs and drug money after busts. And I as good as let him do it.”

“You can’t blame yourself for what he did, Gabriel.”

The words meant nothing to him right now, and Alice knew it. She made the effort to say them, anyway, hoping he’d find at least a glimmer of truth. “He made the choices, not you.”

“Yeah? Well, I do blame myself, Alice. I live in a world of deception. I oughtta know when someone’s lying to me. I can’t wear blinders out of loyalty because he’s a friend.”

“Don’t—”

“You know what the worst part of it is, Alice?” Haunted, Gabriel stared into the darkness, continuing as though he hadn’t heard her. “You know the worst of it? At this moment, I don’t think I’m as angry over him stealing the public trust or killing Nicky and the others as I am over his betraying
me,
lying to
me,
using
me.
God, it makes me sick. I can’t believe how stupid I’ve been.” He shoved a hand through his hair in disbelief. “He killed them, Allie. Whether he pulled the trigger himself or just sent them out to die, the bastard murdered them.”

She didn’t know what to say. She knew how he felt. She’d felt the same way on a different scale with Ian and then with Matthew. It was hard to forgive yourself for being naïve and stupid in a world full of cynics. She opened her mouth to say something, anything, to alleviate the clustered silence. But there were no words, only feeling; a fullness and sadness and understanding that could only be conveyed by touch.

She went to him, outlined his jaw, stroked his chest, put her arms around him. He tried to disentangle himself from her embrace, to push her away, but she held on, anchoring him. He ceased struggling and wrapped himself around her, burying his face in her neck. His sobs were dry, silent shudders through him.

In that instant, the world and her self-designated part in it seemed to shift under Alice’s feet. After nearly twenty years of resolute denial, it took her heart barely a split second to acknowledge the irrevocable commitment her head would rather have ignored. She knew now what she’d been looking for in Matthew, what had made her feel like such easy prey for Ian. Gabriel was everything they hadn’t been and much, much more. Danger and safety, arrogance and vulnerability, unadulterated passion and generosity. He was adventure, larger than life. He was part of her blood. Not just in it, not simply a burst of adrenaline through her veins, but an essential ingredient of it, like white blood cells and iron.

Given time and opportunity, I don’t think I’d find it difficult to love you, Alice Meyers,
he’d said.

Alice shut her eyes and clenched her fists on Gabriel’s back. She didn’t need time to know that she already felt what she’d promised herself not to feel for him,
with
him. She didn’t want to live a safe uneventful underdeveloped life anymore. She wanted to be foolhardy. She wanted to be reckless. She wanted to risk her heart on the basis of the last forty hours, to be part of Gabriel body and soul. No matter what kind of future, pleasure or pain that meant.

It won’t happen, Alice,
he’d said.
We’re in the middle of the main drag and I’m not an exhibitionist.

She opened her hands and hugged him harder, reaching up his bare back to the long hair curling over the base of his neck, tangling her fingers in it and the rough chain that held his St. Jude medal. There was, she thought, nothing quite as impossible as this felt right now. She pressed her face tightly into his neck. Gabriel stilled.

“Alice?” He shifted in her arms, whispering her name first as a question of concern, then as a knowing caress, soft and erotic. “Alice.”

“Gabriel.” His name was drawn out of her like a sigh of despair, like an anguished plea.

He rubbed his hands down her back, roughly up, twisting them in her hair, tilting her head back. “I’ll take care of you, Alice, I promise,” he whispered raggedly. “You won’t be hurt. I won’t hurt you.” His lips, teeth, tongue tasted the taut curve of her throat, left heated imprints along the open V of her blouse.

“Gabriel, please.” Alice’s breath sobbed in her throat. She raked her fingers down his back, into the rough denim at his hips and tugged, arching to fit him. “Please, Gabriel, I need you. Please.”

Her hunger entranced him, spurred him on. Where his heart ached, she soothed it. Where his mind cried out, she answered the call. Where his muscles knotted with anger, she eased them, then built in them a new kind of tension. Where his gut twisted with self-loathing and disgust, she filled him with surety and heat.

He lifted his head to look down at her, letting the beauty his eyes saw quench the thirst in his soul. Her lips parted.

“Please, Gabriel,” she whispered again, and unable to stop himself, he bent his head and buried his tongue deep in her mouth. He would give her what he could in this shadowed room at the heart of her house where he couldn’t give her all of himself, where he couldn’t protect her from the consequences of their loving, couldn’t trust himself to let her touch him, comfort him, the way she wanted to. The way he needed her to. Not when he couldn’t offer her a forever-and-always guarantee. Even though he wanted to.

Her body twisted in his arms, reaching for the union his tongue mimicked. Gabriel dragged his mouth from hers and bent his knees, keeping them from that most intimate contact even as he pulled her blouse from her skirt, freed its buttons from their buttonholes. “No, Alice, not like that, not here. Not now. Like this, love. Let me...”

He parted her blouse and slipped a hand up her back to release her bra, pushing the hindrance aside to expose the fullness of her breasts, to shape, tease, and mold. Alice gasped and arched toward him again, moaning softly. He eased her back against the kitchen wall and dipped his head, brushing his tongue across her belly and up between her breasts as he hiked her skirt up her thighs, over her hips. Then, while his mouth outlined her breasts and his hands shaped her
bottom, he sandwiched one jean-clad thigh between hers.

Alice’s eyes widened and she inhaled sharply, tightening instinctively on him. Gabriel kissed her again, rocking her hips gently. “It’s all right, love,” he murmured against her lips. “It’s all right, Allie, trust me. Let me love you.”

Wordlessly, thoughtlessly, Alice tangled her fingers once more in his hair, brought her mouth to his. He tasted hot and sweet; his teeth were sharp and smooth, his tongue rough-textured, rough-playing, sliding against her own. She felt one of his hands massage the small of her back in tiny nerve-tingling circles. The other lightly claimed her breast, stroking it so it swelled to his touch, tracing her nipple without quite touching it until she strained upward in frustration.

Tension coiled inside her like a spring about to burst.

Whatever he was doing, she needed more of it now. When he tucked an arm about her waist and slipped his fingers down her stomach and along the elastic waistband of her panties, she surged toward him with relief. When his teeth nipped an enticing passage down her throat and breast, then paused, Alice pressed forward eagerly, begging him to continue. As though of their own volition, her hands roved down his chest to find that he’d left the buttons of his fly undone when he’d pulled his pants on. She parted the denim fabric and reached for him, bent on releasing him, touching him, involving him. Loving him.

With a groan, Gabriel caught her hands, pushed them away. He was already too close to the edge of taking her; if she touched him, he was lost. He wanted this moment to be for her; his pleasure would come from hers.

He flexed his knees and drew her nipple into his mouth at the same time as his fingers found and invaded the damp secret part of her body. Alice gasped and folded mindlessly around him, burying her face in his shoulder as she parted her thighs to his hand. His touch was exquisite. Each intimate stroke made her bu
rn
, melt, tighten. Her hips moved to quicken the rhythm, and he turned her slightly, deepening the caress as he turned his attention to her other breast, flicking his tongue across its excited tip until he felt the tremors begin inside her.

Alice bit her lip to keep from crying out her satisfaction when he drew in her nipple deep and hard. The tension inside her built to a peak. She felt herself trying to hang onto it, to keep herself from falling, but she couldn’t. Gabriel wouldn’t let her. He touched her, and she felt herself let go for him, splinter and float. He captured her mouth, catching the cry she couldn’t hold back, holding her while the earth trembled around her. Trembled with her.

“Gabriel,” she whispered brokenly, “Gabriel.”