Betrayals (Cainsville Book 4) (14 page)

He reached for her chin, pulled her face to his, over hers. Her eyelids fluttered. Then they opened. Her lips parted, and she croaked, “Gabriel.”

“I’m here. I’m right here. You’re safe. We’re—”

Her eyes shut again.

“Olivia?”
He gripped her shoulder and gave her a shake. “Olivia? You can sleep in a moment. Just tell me you’re all right.”

Her head lolled to the side.

“Olivia.”

He shook her harder while his free hand checked for a pulse, for breathing, and found both. Her eyes opened a sliver.

“Gabriel.”

“Yes, right, now stay with me. Just for a moment. Tell me—”

Her eyes closed again.

“Goddamn it!”

He wanted her to sit up, talk to him. She seemed to be all right, but it was difficult to tell with a wet jacket and jeans plastered to her. Taking them off didn’t seem wise. When she began shivering, he looked around for something to put on her, which was foolish, of course. They were on a concrete platform barely big enough to hold them—there wasn’t a hidden stash of emergency blankets.

Olivia was shivering now. Hypothermia.

As further proof that perhaps he was not quite mentally alert himself, he found himself reaching into his nonexistent jacket for his phone to look up the treatment for hypothermia.

What did he know about hypothermia …?

Absolutely fucking nothing. Why would he?

I must know something.

Warm up the victim.

Oh, yes, helpful indeed, as if he hadn’t already been trying to do that. He had to go for help. But if he left Olivia unconscious, she could roll off the platform. Or wake, confused, and stumble off in the dark.

He had to rouse her first. So he shook her. Talked to her. Talked
sternly
to her. When his voice snapped with frustration,
she tensed, her face screwing up, as if she was, on some level, aware.

Talking gently made her shift toward him, bringing her further out of whatever subterranean mental world trapped her. The best response, though, came when he touched her hands or her face, bare skin to his. Her lips would part then, in a soft sigh, and while it would be somewhat flattering to think his touch earned such a response, he realized it was the
heat
she sought.

He reached under her jacket, as circumspectly as he could, and laid his hands on her bare stomach. Olivia sighed and pushed against the source of the heat.

Careful, Gabriel. Be very careful.

He silenced the voice with a growl of annoyance. She was unconscious, nearly drowned, and his mind was certainly not going to slide
that
way.

He gingerly removed her wet jacket. That left her wearing only her bra, but he avoided looking at her torso. He draped the jacket across her legs and then rubbed her bare arms, being careful of the slice in her arm. She wriggled toward him again, as if she could feel his body heat, like a fire just out of reach. He stripped off his shirt and put it around her shoulders. Then he lay down on his side.

Careful, Gabriel …

He pushed the voice away. He was not a fifteen-year-old boy with a half-naked girl. Olivia was shivering, possibly sliding into hypothermia. He lay down beside her and rubbed her arms, keeping her just close enough for the heat of his body to warm her. Which was a fine plan, except that the moment she felt his body heat, she moved toward it, and then she was snuggled against his chest, her arms pulled in for warmth, her head tucked under his chin, her face pressed against him.

That felt … Gabriel couldn’t even process how it felt. Except good. So good, Olivia snuggled against him, her breath warm against his collarbone, his face in her hair, smelling her, holding her.

Just until she stops shivering. I need to get her warm. As soon as she stops shivering, I’ll move away.

And then she did stop shivering, but she stayed pressed against him, and when he removed one hand, tentatively and reluctantly, from her back, she tensed, and he laid it back against her skin to feel her relax and snuggle deeper, sighing softly.

I’ll let her get a little warmer. Maybe then she’ll wake up. In the meantime, I’ll think of what to do when she does wake up.

Again, a fine plan. Except he did not think of the next step. Thoughts fluttered through his brain where they usually raced. It was like a slow, drowsy waking.
I’m warm. I’m safe. I’m happy. Just let me stay here for a few more minutes, and then I’ll get to work.

He buried his face against Olivia’s hair, tightened his arms around her, closed his eyes, and relaxed. Just for a moment. Just a moment.

It might have been more than a moment. But he did snap out of it. No, he pushed himself out of it, mentally kicking and screaming, lifting his head and loosening his arms and saying, “Olivia?” She tried to get closer, and he had to grit his teeth to resist letting her.

She’s unconscious. She needs help. Focus on her. Get her awake. Get her help.

“Olivia?”

He pulled back a little more, took her chin in his hand, and tilted her face to his.

“Olivia?”

He rubbed her back with his free hand, his grip on her chin tightening.

“Olivia? Can you hear—?”

Her eyes snapped open, wide with surprise, and he tensed, waiting for her to shake her head in confusion and pull away from him. But she looked up into his eyes and smiled and said, “Gabriel.”

And then she kissed him.

He would later replay that moment—more times than it needed to be replayed—telling himself he had to revisit it to be sure he hadn’t taken advantage of her confusion. He had not. She kissed him. There was no doubt of that. There was also, he would admit, no doubt that he kissed her back without even a split second of hesitation.

There wasn’t even a
thought
of hesitation. Nor a thought of whether he
should
kiss her. It was like seeing her fall from the bridge and leaping after her. She started, and he followed, and there was no other choice, because that kiss …

That kiss …

If there was a part of sex that Gabriel could happily do without, it was kissing. The rest was about satisfying biological urges, much the same as eating or sleeping, and therefore it could be handled in the same way he ate or slept—dispassionately and perfunctorily, getting it out of the way. Kissing was different. It served no purpose other than intimacy and therefore, to him … No. Simply no. Fortunately, he’d discovered that if one picked the right partner, kissing was not required.

That did, however, lead to a problem. One he had never considered until he’d experienced another first for him:
wanting
to kiss someone. On the beach, with Olivia, too much wine drunk, hearing her laugh, watching her in the moonlight, and thinking, unbidden, that he wanted to kiss her. He hadn’t, of course.
That would be a violation of trust, an unwanted trespass. He had thought it, though, and then, upon thinking it, he’d felt a surge of panic, as he’d realized that if it did somehow happen …? Well, the problem with avoiding kissing? He was almost certainly not very good at it.

But now she kissed him, and he kissed her back, and it was like hearing about ice cream and thinking it sounded revolting, and perhaps getting a taste or two of some cheap ice milk and agreeing it
was
revolting, and then tasting the real thing and realizing this was not what you’d imagined at all, not what you’d tasted before, that even to give it the same name seemed a sacrilege. Because that kiss …

That kiss was a blazing fire in an ice storm. It was a clear running stream in a desert. And yet it wasn’t quite that. It was finding something that you didn’t know you wanted, didn’t know you needed, and then suddenly it was there, and you couldn’t believe you hadn’t been looking for it all along.

Gabriel had spent his life knowing exactly what he wanted. Pursuing his goals with single-minded determination. And then along came Olivia. She’d stopped him in his tracks, and he’d circled tentatively, questioning, unsure, thinking that maybe this was something he wanted but the urge was too foreign to be taken at face value. Perhaps he was wrong, misinterpreting, confusing a need for companionship for a need for more. And then she kissed him, and he knew he wasn’t wrong. He was not wrong at all.

What he wanted to do most at that moment was seize it. Immerse himself in that kiss because that’s what it demanded—no thought, just feeling. And for the first few minutes, he was able to give it exactly that. But then he felt the spark of an emotion never properly developed, never truly part of his admittedly flat emotional landscape until recently. Until Olivia. The emotion he liked, perhaps, least of all.

Guilt.

It was not guilt at kissing another man’s lover. Gabriel could fathom such a response in only the most abstract way. A lover was not property. If Olivia chose to kiss him, that was her business. Perhaps, though, he should feel some guilt at the betrayal of someone who was—yes, admit it—a friend. For now, though, he really didn’t give a damn about Ricky. No, the guilt was for the niggling and growing acknowledgment that Olivia
did
give a damn about Ricky. That Olivia was not the sort of woman who’d kiss a man when she’d made a commitment to another. That if Olivia had not pulled away by now, then Olivia was not truly present, not truly awake, not truly and mindfully kissing him.

No, that’s not true. She opened her eyes. She looked at me. She said my name. Goddamn it, she said my name. Not Ricky. Not Gwynn. She knows exactly who she is kissing.

Was he sure?

Yes.

Then he shouldn’t mind checking.

Gabriel had witnessed children’s tantrums. In school. In shopping malls. In restaurants. A child howling at the universe because it did not give him what he wanted. Gabriel had never, even as a child, thrown such a tantrum, because he had not lived a life where he could presume the universe was in any way inclined to give him what he wanted. That wasn’t how life worked. But now he felt like those children, stomping his feet and clenching his fists and raging at the unfairness of it all.

She said my name. Mine, mine, mine.

And how would he feel later, if he discovered he’d been mistaken? What if, instead, she’d had too much to drink? If she’d been drugged? If she kissed him then, would he claim she said his name and that was enough?

No. He would not.

He could do many things to many people, but that was one offense he had never been remotely guilty of. However uncomfortable the act of seduction, however much he wished to get what he needed and disappear into the night, he had never even been tempted to walk into a bar and choose someone too inebriated to make a conscious decision to leave with him. If he wouldn’t do that to a stranger, he certainly wouldn’t do it to Olivia.

He pulled back then, cupping her face and holding it away from his own.

Her eyes opened.

“Gabriel,” she said, and smiled.

There. See?
See?

The child in him pointed in glee. That “proof” was enough, wasn’t it? He wished it was. But the adult in him looked into her eyes and saw that they weren’t quite focused, felt the awareness, in the pit of his stomach, that she wasn’t quite there.

“Olivia?”

She closed her eyes and pushed her hands into his hair, trying to pull him back to her.

“Olivia? I need to ask you something.”

She wriggled in his grip, frustrated that she couldn’t get back to him.

“Olivia? Can you open your eyes?”

She did not.

“Olivia? Do you know where you are? Do you know what’s happened?”

No answer. She started shivering and whispered, “Cold, so cold.” Her hands fell from his hair, and she pulled them between their bodies, shivering against him, and when he released her face,
she pushed her head under his chin, finding warmth there and snuggling back into his arms.

“Cold,” she said.

“I know.”

“Gabriel,” she sighed, and nuzzled against him.

“I know,” he said. And
that
he did have—the knowledge that wherever Olivia was, whatever she was imagining, it was with him. Not mistaking him for Ricky. Not mistaking him for Gwynn. She might not realize where she was or what had happened, but she knew she was with him, contentedly curled up in his arms, and that was, for now, enough.

“Ma-til-da!”

A voice shouted, somewhere deep in Gabriel’s brain. No, not just a voice. Arawn. Gwynn stirred, annoyed, and felt Matilda curled up against him, his face buried in her hair, the summer sun beating down on them, lying in the meadow’s long grass.

“Ma-til-da! Gwynn!”

Go away. Just go away.

You have to get up now. Before he finds you. Before he sees you like this.

Gwynn tossed in half sleep, knowing the voice was right, that they had to get up, couldn’t let Arawn see them together.

And there was more, too. Something else … Something had happened … Water? Why was he thinking of—

“O-liv-i-a! Ga-bri-el!”

Gabriel started awake, and pushed up on one forearm, blinking against the darkness. Why was it dark? There’d been sunshine only a moment …

He squeezed his eyes shut, and the thought evaporated, leaving him even more confused. He was lying on cold concrete, but warmth pressed against him, so familiar and …

He
looked down to see Olivia in his arms. A bridge. A fall. Olivia, not breathing. Olivia, breathing. Olivia, shivering. Olivia, kissing …

Oh.

He didn’t move away then. Didn’t feel any inclination to move away, just pulled her tighter to him, telling himself it was still cold, which it was. He shook off the last threads of sleep. He hadn’t meant to doze off. He
shouldn’t
have dozed off. Olivia might be breathing and warm, but she was still unconscious, and to simply drift off to sleep while she needed help was unconscionable. He pushed up again.

I need to …

Thought was still slow in coming. Damnably slow, like swimming through molasses.

“Ga-bri-el! O-liv-i-a!”

Ricky? That did have him pushing away from Olivia, the guilt that had failed to come earlier now surging. Well, if not quite surging, at least prickling enough for him to move back an inch or so.