Gabriel’s scowl had become darker with every word she spoke. “I own an enormous two-level penthouse, and you want to stay in a dinky downstairs place?”
“I have to do this on my terms.” She could see him gritting his teeth. Chancing a touch, she put her hand on his chest. “Try to understand.”
“I’ll go with you when you look at the apartment,” he said at last, the words ground out. “If there’s anything unsafe about it, you don’t stay there. Agreed?”
Charlotte nodded. “Agreed.”
“I need to kiss you.”
Her heart slammed against her ribs. Pulse a roar in her ears, she rose on tiptoe. When Gabriel cupped the side of her face, it felt so tender and protective that she shivered. He ran his thumb over her cheekbone, lowered his head to hers, and pressed his lips to her own. Despite the violent tension in his body, he kept the kiss gentle, licking his tongue lightly over her lips.
She shivered again, parted her lips, and he slipped inside. A thousand butterflies in her stomach, thighs clenching, she stroked up to close her hand over the warmth of his nape. He was so big everywhere, his neck thick, but it was all perfectly in proportion. Her touch made him wrap his arm around her waist, hold her close as he deepened the kiss, his tongue licking against hers until she whimpered and licked back.
He groaned, sliding one hand up her spine to close over her own nape.
Claustrophobia swamped her in a black wave.
GABRIEL WAS SINKING INTO the sweet sexiness of Charlotte’s kiss when he felt her body go stiff, the kiss no longer reciprocal. It took him a split second to release her, but it was too long. Her pupils were dilated, her skin pale, her breath so shallow it scared him.
It was almost as if she wasn’t there anymore.
“Charlotte, Charlotte.” He wanted to shake her out of it, but wasn’t sure she could handle any further contact.
Stiff, her eyes staring out at nothing, Charlotte didn’t react.
“Ms. Baird.”
A blink… and she focused on him. Her face seemed to go even paler. Swaying on her feet, she reached out as if for a wall. Gabriel took a risk and grabbed her hand before she could unbalance. To his relief, she didn’t jerk away, didn’t look at him with that terrible blank stare again. “Gabriel?”
“Shh, I have you.” Leading her to the black leather of his chair, he sat her down. “Breathe, sweetheart.”
Charlotte obeyed the order. It was too fast, too erratic, but it was better than before.
Crouching down in front of her, Gabriel braced one palm against his desk, his other one on her knee. “That’s it,” he coaxed. “Deeper, slower.”
It took at least five minutes before her breathing returned to anything close to normal, and his heart was in his throat the entire time, his body bunched as if to attack a predator. Except this threat was in Charlotte’s mind, where he couldn’t reach. He hated that he couldn’t protect her from her nightmares. “There,” he said, tempering his voice with sheer strength of will. “That’s better.”
Eyes huge and lower lip quivering, she stared at him. “I’m sorry.”
“Hey.” He squeezed her knee, being as gentle as he was capable of being. “Did I ask for an apology?”
NO, CHARLOTTE THOUGHT, HE hadn’t. He was too good a man to make her feel bad about going to pieces, but God, he had to be sick of it. “I thought I was getting better,” she whispered, the tiny seedling of hope that had grown inside her curling up and dying. “After yesterday. I thought I was getting better.”
“Charlotte, I was in your house most of the damn day yesterday.” Gabriel’s voice was the one he used in negotiations when he wasn’t about to budge from his viewpoint. “You really want to tell me that was nothing? If you do, I’ll call you a bald-faced liar.”
She swallowed and lifted trembling fingers to his hair, tears rolling down her face. “Why are you doing this?”
“You need to ask me that?” A growl of sound. “You haven’t figured out by now that I think you’re fucking amazing? You have a brain that won’t quit, a smile that lights up my soul, and a body I want to do dirty things to and with three ways to Sunday.”
A wet laugh broke through her tears. “You’ll probably have to wait till you’re eighty to do most of them at the rate I’m going.” Charlotte was terrified her words weren’t a joke but a prediction.
“We’ll be the most energetic couple in the old people’s home.”
She started to cry in earnest, the sobs wracking her frame as the entire morning came down on her like a brick wall.