She bent and picked it up, shaking it out. Then she put it over her head and pulled it down. The cotton was soft and smelled of him, and even that had the power to make her nipples harden.
Damn, she was a lost cause.
She went to the doorway—which had no actual door—and out into a long, light hallway of exposed brick and skylights. There was a wide set of stairs at the end of it that led down into the open-plan lounge area she remembered from the day before.
Vaulted ceilings and crescent windows. More exposed brick and polished floors in a dark, pitted kind of wood. There wasn’t much in the way of furniture. A massive black sectional sofa, that rustic dining table where she’d lost her mind, a couple of other armchairs covered in worn, faded brown leather. There were no bookcases. No family photos. No knickknacks. Everything was as clean and spare as his bedroom.
Noises were coming from down one end of the huge space, where a wall bisected the area. She went toward it, past the dining table to what turned out to be another open doorway, and peered around the corner.
A kitchen lay behind it, sleek and industrial with lots of stainless steel. Gabriel stood at one of the benches with his back to her, cutting something up on a board.
Her mouth dried. He wore nothing but a pair of his usual jeans, worn low on his hips, the muscular, powerful lines of his back exposed. As was his tattoo, the one she’d only caught glimpses of the night before.
An angel with a flaming sword held aloft, wings outstretched, covered most of the upper part of his back, the words “Avenging Angels” scrolling beneath it. The motorcycle club he used to be a part of.
You shouldn’t trust me …
Honor swallowed. Too late for that now. She did trust him. Trusted him enough to let him blindfold her, tie her up. Do all those things to her. Give her what no one else ever had.
Freedom from control. From responsibility.
You could get used to that. You could get addicted …
“Are you going to come in or are you going to just stand there?” Gabriel said, not turning or pausing in what he was doing.
Honor shook away the snide voice in her head. “How did you know I was here?”
“I heard you.”
“Oh.”
“Come in. There’s coffee on the stove and I’m making breakfast.”
Honor moved over to the big stainless steel stove with an espresso maker on it, still steaming.
“Cups are in the cupboard above.” Still he didn’t turn around.
She found a cup and poured herself some coffee, adding some cream from the fridge. Holding the mug carefully in her hands, she turned and came over to the bench he was standing at, put her coffee down, and leaned a hip against it. He was cutting up mushrooms, his movements clean and precise, the knife held with almost professional confidence in his big hand.
“So, not only do you blindfold women, you cook them breakfast as well? I’m impressed.”
He flicked her a glance, brief and hot as he noted what she was wearing. “I like the T-shirt. It suits you. Keep it on.”
She smiled. “Since my clothes aren’t around anywhere, I’ll have to.”
“I had them taken to be dry-cleaned.” He looked back down at what he was doing. “They’ll come back in a couple of hours.”
“Oh…” Honor stared at him, nonplussed. “Thank you. That’s … thoughtful.”
“I also called your office. Told them you had an all-day meeting with me and wouldn’t be in.”
Oh, hell. Work. She’d totally forgotten.
Honor turned, her back against the bench, picking up her cup and taking a sip. The coffee was hot and strong, setting up a glow deep inside her. “Thank you for that, too, in that case. But I don’t think we’ll need all day.”
“We will,” he said with such certainty she felt almost duty bound to protest.
“Telling you about Dad, Guy, won’t take all day.”
“I’m not planning on hearing about him all day. There are a few other things I’d like to do, too.”
The glow inside became not so much about the hit of caffeine as of something far more primal. “You’re assuming I’m going to agree to those things,” she said, trying to sound calm. “Just because I was happy to stay last night doesn’t mean I want anything more.”
Gabriel finished cutting the mushrooms and put his knife down, looking at her. “I’m not offering you heroin, Honor. Only sex. Or do you genuinely not want to spend the day in my bed?”
She looked away, her heart thudding fast all of a sudden. So, he’d remembered what she’d told him back in Vermont.
“You were honest last night. Be honest now.”
“I told you,” she said. “You make me feel too good. And I don’t … want to want you like this.”
“But you do.”
Honor took a silent breath and met his gaze. ““Yes,” she said, unable to lie, “I do.”
There was no satisfaction on his face at that, only a look in his dark eyes she couldn’t interpret. “Good,” he said. “Then that’s settled.”
It wasn’t, but she couldn’t find the will to protest. She was halfway down that slope already. Might as well fall all the way.
Picking up the board he’d been cutting on, Gabriel turned and went to the stove, sweeping the mushrooms into a frying pan sitting on top of it. They began to sizzle. “Tell me about your father and Tremain,” he said, his gaze on the frying pan. “Tell me everything.”
Honor stared at his broad, powerful back. At the tattoo on it. Avenging Angels. Another shiver went through her. “You … won’t hurt him, will you?” She hated the uncertainty in her voice but although she knew he wouldn’t hurt her, she had no such reassurance about her stepfather. “I mean, I know you probably wouldn’t but—”
“Don’t make any assumptions about me, Honor,” he said, his voice flat. “Not when you don’t have any idea about the things I’ve done.”
She clutched her mug. The hot ceramic burned her fingers but she held it tightly anyway. “And what have you done?”
“You don’t want to know.”
“Maybe I do. I know the rumors about the drugs. About—”
“The rumors are true.”
Despite the heat of the coffee mug and the warmth of the central heating, a spike of ice went through her. Because it wasn’t only the rumors of drug selling she’d heard about. There had been murder, too. Reprisals ordered. People killed. God, had he…?
She didn’t want to ask, wasn’t sure she wanted to know.
You knew he wasn’t a good guy. He told you. A man like him, with his background, is never going to be pure as the driven snow.
But she wasn’t a coward. And she didn’t want more secrets coming out of the woodwork. So she made herself ask, “Even the ones about how you had people murdered?”
Gabriel shifted, muscles rippling over his naked back, somehow making the angel’s sword look even more menacing. “I was called Church in the MC. Not because I was good, but because I used to go to St. Sebastian’s a lot to meet my mom. There was a pimp who used to hang out around there, abusing his girls. Hurting them.” His voice deepened, became cold. “Men like that don’t deserve mercy and God’s justice didn’t extend that far. So, first chance I got, I took that motherfucker out. I was sixteen.” He paused and she couldn’t help shivering. “Those guys weren’t people, Honor. They were animals. Drug dealers and pimps, hurting my neighborhood. It was my duty to protect my patch and I did. Besides, they knew what they were getting into when they tried to take a cut of the Angels’ territory. They went into it with their eyes wide open, so don’t make the mistake of thinking they were innocents.”
There was detachment in his voice but underneath, she could hear a note of something else, something he hadn’t quite managed to hide. Anger.
She shouldn’t be relieved to hear that. Murder was murder however you looked at it. And yet … Did it make it better that he’d done it protecting people? That the people who’d died were criminals?
She took another sip of her coffee, her hands shaking a little. “Did you … always do it yourself?”
He didn’t say anything for a long moment. “Yes. I wouldn’t get someone else to do something I didn’t have the balls for. But it wasn’t murder, it was an execution.”
“Gabriel,” she said hoarsely. “That’s—”
“Semantics. They killed my people. They hurt them. It was justice.”
The silence in the kitchen was thick with tension, the sizzle of the cooking food a strange, domestic counterpoint.
Honor gripped her mug like it was a life preserver. She didn’t know what to say, ice moving slowly down her spine.
“I don’t regret what I did,” he said after a pause. “And I don’t expect forgiveness for it. I did what I had to do to protect people the only way I knew how. What I regret is that I even had to do it in the first place.” A note of weariness had crept into his cold, dark voice. A bleakness that made her eyes prick with strange tears. “I was seven when I was first given a package by one of the men in the club to take to some guy on a corner,” he went on. “I got money for it, a lot of money. My mother found it hard holding down a job so I kept doing it. Who would say no to that much money? It wasn’t until I was ten that I figured out what was in those packages. I kept doing it though because we needed to eat.” He raised the spatula he was holding, moved the food around in the frying pan. “The old man who gave me the packages, he looked out for me. Taught me things. I didn’t have a dad so he was kind of like one to me.” Gabriel paused. “And when I was old enough, he asked if I wanted to be part of his club. I said yes. He was the president, you see.”