The Gates - By Rachael Wade Page 0,3
at him. By then, I’d plastered a no-nonsense expression on my face. He stopped laughing. “I want to be with you,” I said. “And if it weren’t for your stubborn ‘I-need-to-be-human-first’ thing, I’d have that ring on my finger and you in my bed by now.”
“What? I’m already in your bed.”
I rolled my eyes at him, not in the mood for stalling games.
“I’ve told you how I feel about this. Sleeping with you isn’t just about that.” He pulled me aside, ducking into a hallway. I complied, but my impatience was escalating. I already knew what else it was about. The guy had been around for centuries; he wasn’t celibate. And yet he wanted to marry me first. Which is why we were here.
“I have every reason to be concerned,” he said. “With your history, being knocked around—”
“Gavin. Don’t go there, please.”
He stuffed us into a sitting room that smelled of warm mint tea, and shut the door. “It matters to me, can’t you understand that? You know, the grandest gesture of respect and all that … for you to know you’re different. It’s important to me to give you that, the opposite of what every guy who came before me didn’t give you … preferably when I’m human and don’t want to sink my fangs into you. And when you feel you’re ready to let someone else put their hands on you. Is that so much to ask?”
“And I appreciate that, which is why I’m ready to do this.”
“We still have so much to deal with. We have to go back to Paris and see Arianna, construct a plan to get back to Amaranth and face Samira again. Let’s plan this the right way, at the right time. Don’t you want Audrey and Gabe with us for this?”
“Right now, I can’t even look at Arianna, Gavin. I didn’t have time to prepare, I could barely come up with a proper apology. As for Audrey and Gabe, we can have a formal ceremony later, when this nightmare is over. And we don’t even know if …” I felt tears well up at the possibility they were dead, but pushed them back.
He took my chin in his hand, forced me to look at him. “Let’s go back to Paris, love. We’ve given Arianna time to cool off. Besides, we’re running out of time. We need to make preparations before the Amaranthian portal opens again and Samira sends more guards after us. God knows how many are already here on earth, looking for us … we don’t know how many followed us through the portal after we escaped. And Marie’s still on the loose …”
Marie. Joel’s mother. She was here on earth, on a mission to capture me. He has a point. The clock began ticking when we escaped Amaranth, our safety critical. Samira, the ruler of Amaranth, would surely see to it that we paid our debts from our last visit. The next crescent moon was imminent, which meant the Amaranthian portal would soon open, giving her guards access to earth again, and plenty of opportunity to find us.
“Exactly,” I said. “We’re running out of time.” Already I’d spent so much of that time riding on an emotional roller coaster, by the time I finally figured out what the hell I wanted, I was ready to fight for it. “I don’t want you to treat me like damaged goods. And I appreciate your concern, but there’s no need for you to have this aversion to sleeping with me. Unless you don’t want to be with someone who’s been— with someone like me.”
His eyes widened and he stumbled backward. “Camille.” He took a deep breath. “Do you have any idea how hard it’s been this past week? We’ve been all alone in the countryside. You’ve been prancing around in the sexiest pajamas I’ve ever seen. They didn’t make that stuff back in the day.” He let out a laugh, moved toward me. His hands on my waist, he shifted me backward, up against the door. “You don’t think I want you? Every second, of every day?” His sly smile lured me in.
“Well, I guess I understand …”
“Do you, really?” He kissed me, made sure he had my attention. “Do you understand that every time I do this,” he dragged his lips across my neck, “and this,” slid his fingers under the hem of my shirt, “that it’s torture?” He grazed my earlobe with his teeth, then skimmed my collarbone.
Breaking a sweat, I