Gabriel's Light (Doms of Chicago) (25 page)

“Damned
whore.” He cursed, jerking his arm away, his greater strength overpowering her
with ease. “You shall pay for that!”

“No, give me my baby!” She clawed at him, until sudden pain in
her head rocked her.
The son of bitch hit
me. I’m so sorry, Sophie. I wish I had been stronger for you,
was all she
could think of as darkness claimed her.

Chapter Twenty-Five

"Please come back to
me,
louloúdi mou
..."
The soft voice of her Master had her brown furrowing.
Why did he sound so scared?
Gabriel
was never scared.
Struggling to open her eyes, she came to in a blaze of
pain. Her head ached, her shoulder burned and...something about her daughter…

"Sophie!"
Sitting straight up, she looked around wildly. "He's got Sophie. He's got
my baby!" She grasped Gabriel's arms as he tried to guide her back onto
the exam table. She was obviously still in the same exam room where the man had
snatched Sophie. "I need to..."

Gabriel
gently restrained her with concern in his eyes. "Whoa, slow down. The
doctor’s coming to look at you."

"I'm
fine.” She pushed at his hands.” I have to get Sophie. He took her, he's going
to give her to Sebastene. I'll never get her back now!" She struggled
against his hold, fear and adrenalin making her abnormally stronger than usual.
Pleading with him seemed to be pointless, however.

"Stop
it this instant, Zhenya!" His Dom tone and hardening of his gaze seemed to
cut through her panic better than a splash of cold water to the face.
"There, there..." He soothed her hair back. "You're bleeding,
and until you've been looked at, there’s nothing you can do. You'll be no good
to Sophie if you don't take care of yourself. Don't worry, Jude is tracking her
signal. You did good, sweetheart." He pressed her fingers to his lips.

"Okay,
as long as we get her back," she whispered, her strength suddenly
deserting her

“We
will,” Gabriel promised, his resolve evident in every line of his body. The opening
of the door had both of their heads swinging to the left.

"Now,
look what happens when I leave you alone, young lady." Dr. Schneider
scuffled inside the room,
tsking
at Zhenya. He looked
a bit paler than usual, and there was a fresh bloodstain on the cuff of his
shirt where it peeked out from the crisp lab coat. As he flashed his penlight
in her eyes, she noticed his hand trembling.

"Are
you okay, Doctor?" This wasn’t the same confident pediatrician she’d seen
during Sophie’s checkup.

His
lips thinned, but he continued to test her reactions to the light. "I'm in
better shape than you are at the moment." He continued the exam,
tsking
here and sighing there. She winced as the doctor
dabbed at the wound on her shoulder. When he reached for another square of
cotton gauze, Gabriel looked at him expectantly.

"So
what's the prognosis?"

"Well,
she'll live.” He patted Gabriel’s shoulder. “I’d have been pissed to lose one
of my patients, along with Karen.” His eyes
teared
up. “However, judging by the way her eyes are responding, I’d say she’s got a
mild concussion for sure, but everything else seems to be in working order.”

Gabriel
nodded. “Yes, that’s good. It could’ve been a lot worse, Randy.” Relief crossed
Gabriel’s face.

“True,
however I need a better look at this wound on her shoulder.” He glanced around
the room. “There’s nothing in here that could’ve caused this.”

Zhenya
had to agree. The staff had definitely child-proofed this room. No sharp edges,
all the outlets covered, and nothing a child could possibly hurt themselves on.
There was another knock on the door and a grim Hark slipped into the room. If
her head hadn’t been aching so much, she’d have smiled at the man and told him
to lighten up, she wasn’t hurt that badly.

“Do
you remember what he attacked you with?” the doctor asked her, making her
realize he’d continued to prod at her shoulder. “It’s too wide to be a knife
wound…”

Hark
stepped closer. Glancing over the smaller doctor’s shoulder. “Why the hell
didn’t you tell someone you’ve been shot,
sh’da’zha
’
?” he asked softly, using the
Najavo
expression for ‘my sister’. It was something he’d started calling her during
her stay with him.

“I…”
She flinched when Gabriel jerked back, fury in his eyes. She could just see the
wheels turning in his head, and she was just angry enough and hurting enough to
be
pissy
. “Don’t you even go there, Master. I just
came to. I was supposed to tell you I was shot when all I could think about was
the pain and Sophie?” To her horror, she burst into tears.

“Zhenya…” His shoulders
slumped then he reached for her hand as the doctor poured what felt like acid
over her wound. She inhaled sharply, gripping his hand. He lifted it to his
mouth, pressing a kiss to her knuckles. “I wasn’t mad at you,
louloúdi mou,
just at the man who shot you.”

“As am I. Another thing this asshole
will have to answer for when I get my hands around his throat. Only a coward
shoots a woman and takes her baby.” Hark’s tone was flat, and for some reason
it scared Zhenya more than the barely banked fury in Gabriel’s eyes.

“Hark…” She didn’t know what she was
going to say, but there was another knock on the door. The room was becoming
Grand Central Station. Dr. Schneider must’ve obviously agreed with her when a
plain-clothes police detective stepped in.

“I’m sorry to bother you, but I’m
Detective Zak
Bobrow
, and I need…” The man seemed
apologetic, but Dr. Schneider still snapped at him, his previous gentle
treatment of Zhenya morphing into outright irritation.

“Now what? Can’t you see I’m treating my
patient? I already gave you my statement. I’ll be contacting you later about
whatever paperwork I need to fill out for this gunshot wound…this is why I went
into ‘
peds
’ instead of emergency room medicine.”

The detective stilled, his eyes more
alert than they’d been when he walked into the room. “Who’s been shot?”

“This young lady. It’s only a graze over
the top of her shoulder, but when they catch the son of
a bitch, they can also charge him with attempted murder, along with my nurse’s
murder."

“Count on it.” Detective
Bobrow
reached for the tablet in his front pocket. As he
drew it out, he gazed at Zhenya. “So why don’t you tell me what happened,
Ma’am, so I can go catch the bastard who thought shooting up a pediatric office
was a good idea.”

She nodded and began to
explain, never letting go of her Master’s hand. His presence grounded her as
she relived one of the worst moments of her life.

* * * *

“Sophie!” Zhenya jerked
upright in bed, breasts heaving and her hands strangling the blanket, startling
Gabriel out of his light slumber. Rubbing his gritty eyes, he pulled her into
his arms. It had been a long night, waking her every hour to check on her,
asking questions to make sure her concussion wasn’t worse than the doctor had
thought. But he wasn’t surprised she was having nightmares, after all that had
happened.

“
Shh
,
it’s just bad dream, baby. He can’t hurt you
any more
.”
He brushed his hand over her hair. Pressing his lips to the crown of her head,
he whispered soothing words. “We’ll find her, I promise. If anyone can find
someone, it’s Jude. He’s relentless as a dog with a bone. Between him, Jackson
and Hark, the ass who took her is going to regret he ever took the job from
Sebastene.”

“But they found her binky
and tracker on the ground in the parking garage. How are they
gonna
find her now?” She buried her face in his chest,
trembling as her tears wet his skin. Rocking her slightly, he never realized
how much a part of his life the tiny infant had become until some asshole had
snatched her away. He found himself even missing the early morning feeding. He
idly wondered if Hark or Ethan, who’d taken to camping out in his living room,
had heard her cries. Not that he’d objected to their presence in his condo.
They would do a lot more good in his home than across the hall in Mrs.
Siems
’ old condo. Then, as if he’d conjured him up, there
was a sudden knock on the door, before Hark stuck his head inside the room.

“Is everything okay?” With
the hall backlighting him, Gabriel could only make out a vague outline of the
man without his glasses, but he knew by the timber of the voice it had to be
Hark.

Gabriel shook his head. “Bad
dream. We expected them though.” He continued to stroke her. “Anything yet?” It
was six in the morning, but Jude had told him he had some friends who worked
odd hours that might be able to help them.

“Yeah, I just got off the
phone with him, when I heard her cry out.” He sighed. “You know she sometimes
cries in her sleep? I’d love to have five minutes alone with the bastard who
hurt her.”

“Me too. What he did to her
was criminal. Did you know he never discussed safe limits with her?” Gabriel
tightened his hold briefly on her.

“And ‘her’ is getting tired
of being spoken about if she wasn’t here.” Zhenya stirred in his arms, before
sitting up. He released her reluctantly. “And the bastard is dead, so don’t go
looking for him.” She ran her hand through her hair, the sheet pooling around
her waist, baring the lacy top of her nightgown. Gabriel jerked it back,
immediately aware what the sliver of light from the hallway showed. If he could
see the dusky outlines of her nipples through the semi-opaque material, Hark
could as well.
No matter that he calls
her his sister. No man is going to get a glimpse of her pretty little nipples
without my permission.

“You said you heard from
Jude?” She pushed at the sheet, her eagerness obvious to Gabriel and Hark.

Hark cleared his throat
before finally speaking. “Why don’t I let you both get dressed, and we’ll talk
about this in the living room. I’ll make a pot of coffee.”

“Good idea,” Gabriel
retorted darkly as the door shut behind Hark, throwing the room into the
shadows once more. Before Zhenya could scramble away from him, he pinned her to
the bed with his weight, allowing her to feel every inch of him against her,
but being careful to not jar her shoulder. As he rocked his erection against
her inner thigh, she whimpered and clung to his shoulders.

“Master?” Her fingers dug
into his muscles in reaction.

“That’s right. I’m your
Master, Zhenya. And as such, I choose who you tease with your pretty little
breasts.” He tweaked one nipple, not hard enough to hurt but sharply enough it
would get her juices flowing, before tugging and rolling it between his
fingers. He kept it up until it drew tight and hard from his ministrations,
then he released it to flick at it with his fingernail. When she arched and
moaned, he stopped, abandoning her hard little peak. At her softly uttered
protest, he smiled. Withholding pleasure seemed to get his point across, and he
was just sadistic enough of a bastard to enjoy watching her squirm.

“I…wasn’t trying to entice
him, Master. I was in a rush because he had word from Jude…”

He gave her other nipple the
same treatment as the first, loving how she moaned and jerked against him, the
prick of her nails driving him crazy too but in a good way. “Which is why I’m
going to make to take it easy on you.”

“Take it easy on me…” She
squirmed against his hold, her hips rocking up against him, as she rubbed her
bare folds against his belly. Lying as he was with his hips resting on the
bedding between her thighs, she couldn’t find the friction she needed to come.

“Yes - easy. You apologize
nicely, and I won’t keep you pinned to this bed until you’re screaming what a
sadistic bastard I am for the whole world to hear.” It was true, too. As much
as he loved tormenting her, doing scenes with her, this time was for her, not
him. He wanted to get her mind off Sophie for a brief moment, before she was
thrust back into the hell their lives had become. He wanted to see the sexy
little smile she had after he made her come for him. He pressed a kiss to her
parted lips. “I’ll even let you come.” He slipped his hand between their bodies
to rub her clit in small tight circles, loving the way she cried out.

“Master, please!” Even with
the bandage on her shoulder and the shadows below her eyes, she was one of the
most beautiful women he’d ever had the pleasure to be with.

“Say the words,
louloúdi mou.
They’re so easy…” He abandoned
her pussy, knowing from experience she would cave. She craved his touch as much
as he enjoyed giving it.

“Oh, god. I’m sorry, Master.” She
babbled. “I won’t show my breasts again without…your permission.

A satisfied smile crossed his face.
“Good girl.” His fingers found her slippery nub once more, brushing over it
before gently capturing it between his fingers and thumb. Imitating a milking
motion, he sent her soaring. Her gasps and groans told him so. “Come for me,
Zhenya. Take your pleasure.” He stifled his own groan as she obeyed, her hips
canting upward as she exploded. He caught her scream of release with his mouth,
savoring the way her body trembled under his, while fighting the need to come
himself. This was for her.