Challenging Gabriel (Knight Security 2) (2 page)

When they met all those years ago, Gabriel had still been in the army and hyped up from the years he had spent on special ops all over the world. He’d been the one to plan and execute dozens of those successful missions.

One of them had been to hunt down and capture the woman he wanted.

This woman.

He shrugged. “I’m eight years older.”

She quirked a brow. “And wiser?”

“One would hope so.”

Angela wanted to reach across Gabriel’s desk take him by the shoulders and shake him, hard, all while screaming at him that he had to help her. Had to help Daniel.

She didn’t, of course. Too many years of guarding her emotions, expecting nothing and so never suffering disappointment when nothing was given, held her back from displaying such uncontrolled emotion.

Besides, Gabriel wasn’t only those eight years older, he was no longer the same man who had chased her down until he caught her.

The man she had never been able to forget, no matter how hard she tried.

She knew from her search for him that he had never married. Not for want of trying on the part of the women who had shared his bed, she was sure. At thirty-eight, Gabriel was not only everything that was tall, dark, and handsome, but the joint ownership of Knight Security with his three brothers had made them all extremely wealthy men.

Instead of the mellowing that marriage and having a family could have given him, those intervening years had made Gabriel even harder, with a more dangerous edge. His body was raw, defined muscle beneath the perfectly tailored suit he wore, but it was also leaner, more finely honed, and filled with a restless energy no amount of sitting behind a desk had succeeded in taming. His hair was still short, but the darkness was now tinged with gray at his temples. There were also fine lines beside his mesmerizing green eyes and chiseled lips.

But Gabriel still looked ready to take on the world with the absolute certainty that he would win. Because he always won. Losing had never been an option for Gabriel. It wasn’t even in his vocabulary.

Which was the reason Angela was here. The only reason she was here. She
needed
someone who would win, no matter what the odds were against him.

“Tell me why you’re here, Angel?” He snapped his impatience with her lengthy silence.

Angel.

God, hearing that name again, after all this time, was almost enough to drive her down to her knees. Only Gabriel had ever called her that. To everyone else, her husband, friends, she was always Angela. To the staff in the Sinclair homes, she was, respectfully, Mrs. Sinclair. She had never ever been Angel again after Gabriel left her life.

But she was determined to be Angel again now, an Amazon warrior, despite her short stature, to match Gabriel’s combat training.

Even so, and despite having steeled herself for this meeting, seeing Gabriel again was affecting her far more deeply than she would have wished. She felt an ache deep inside her. Remembered things she would rather not. Naked and sweaty bodies intimately entwined. Hot breath against her skin and between her thighs. Hands caressing, igniting desire wherever they touched, as Gabriel took possession of every part of her. She even imagined she could hear those words,
“Angel mine!”
reverberating inside her head. Those same words Gabriel had murmured over and over again as he thrust inside her, claiming and marking her as his forever.

Except she hadn’t been.

She wasn’t.

Angel pushed those thoughts of the past to the back of her mind as she faced Gabriel. “I’m here because I need your help.”

“With what?” His gaze swept over her with obvious scorn. “Did you lose a diamond earring? Crash your sports car and you’re afraid to tell Hubby? Or maybe you lost your pet poodle Fifi?” His tone dripped with contempt. “Knight Security deals with real security issues, Mrs. Sinclair, not the whims and fancies of a spoilt and pampered socialite.”

Rage bubbled up inside her, fierce, overwhelming, unlike anything she had ever experienced before. “How dare you!” She was shaking with fury. “You don’t know me. Don’t know anything about me. You certainly don’t have the right to sit behind your desk making contemptuous assumptions about me or my life.”

“They were educated assumptions.” His emerald gaze swept over her from her head to her toes and back again. “Your hair is professionally styled. Your makeup is top of the range. Your dress cost thousands rather than hundreds. Shoes likewise.” His gaze met hers. “Were any of those
assumptions
incorrect?”

None of them, Angel conceded heavily. Not a single one.

Gabriel still had that ability to dissect a person merely by looking at them. To know more about them than they might ever have been willing to tell him. Or be comfortable with him knowing.

Obviously, he had looked at her and decided
rich bitch
.

She wasn’t either of those things.

She still had some of the money left to her by her parents, which was how she had been living these past few weeks, but if Gabriel decided to take on her case, she had no idea how she was even going to pay the Knight Security fees. And, even if she might have good reason, she sincerely hoped her years as Clive’s wife hadn’t turned her into a bitch of any kind. Her air of cool self-confidence was worn as armor, not arrogance.

“No,” she conceded quietly. “But I reiterate, you don’t know anything about me or my life now.”

Gabriel regarded her through narrowed lids as he leaned back in his chair and swung his feet up to rest on his desktop—something he would have lambasted any of his three younger brothers for doing in front of a client. It was a disrespectful attitude that seemed wholly appropriate to the present situation. “Is it the earring, the car, or the missing poodle?”

“You judgmental prick!” she burst out, hands clenched at her sides.

His mouth thinned, gaze steely. “I seem to remember you were once very fond of that
prick
,” he mocked.

She gave a disgusted shake of her head. “This was a mistake. I’ll find someone else to help me.” She turned on her heel and walked toward the door. “You are obviously as much of a self-centered bastard as you ever— Gabriel!” She gasped as, having crossed to her side in two long strides, Gabriel caught hold of her arm before she could open the door.

He spun her around, capturing and holding both her hands in one of his before lifting them above her head. He pushed her back against the door.

The moment Gabriel pressed the length of his body against hers, his senses were assaulted anew by that perfume of citrus and spice. Followed by breathing in the hot femininity he knew was all Angel. It caused his cock to throb. “When was I ever a self-centered bastard with you?” he demanded harshly, his face only inches away from hers. “When?” He pushed her hands higher above her head, thrusting her breasts forward as he glared down at her. “I gave you every fucking part of me there was to give, and it still wasn’t enough.”

Angel had forgotten how tall Gabriel was, at least a foot taller than her own five feet and five inches in the three-inch heels. His body pressing so intimately into hers also allowed her to feel the hard strength of his muscular chest and defined abdomen, and the length of his engorged cock pressing against her. He smelled of the lemon soap he had always used in the shower, and the same spicy, masculine cologne. And beneath those was the heated, seductive musk that was all Gabriel.

Breathing him in caused those memories of hot, sweaty bodies to slam into her again, limbs entangled as they each fought for dominance over the other, not really caring which of them won, knowing in the end they would both win. That together they always won.

Angel shook her head to clear it of those memories. They had no place here.
She
had no place here. Having seen Gabriel again, spoken with him,
breathed him in
, she now knew this really had been a bad idea. A mistake. Beneath the suit and silk shirts, he was still the same warrior. A man who took no prisoners and gave no quarter.

A man she now realized had no intention of giving
her
quarter. He almost seemed to hate her, and she had no idea why when he had been the one to walk away from her.

What had she been thinking when she decided to come here?

Had she been thinking at all?

Truthfully, she had been too desperate to think, to reason. Too driven to realize, if she let this man back in her life he would destroy her by his mere presence.

A presence that was causing her body to melt into awareness of his. Her nipples were engorged, the heat pooling, dampening, between her thighs.

She avoided meeting the fierceness of Gabriel’s gaze. “I really do have to go.”

“I don’t think so,” he murmured, his breath stirring the hair at her temple. “You not only searched for and found me here at Knight Security, but you also made an appointment to see me personally. You aren’t leaving here until I know the reason why.”

“It isn’t important.” Angel blinked to ease the sting of tears at her understatement, the absolute
lie
of the words she had just uttered.

The reason she had come here to ask for Gabriel’s help was
everything
. Her sole reason for being. For getting up in the morning. For going to bed at night. For every breath she took. Everything.

But the man in front of her, this Gabriel, wasn’t the same man she had known eight years ago. He was harder. Colder. In body, heart, and soul.

“Now that I’ve seen you again, I realize you can’t help me,” she said dully.

“How the fuck can you know that when you haven’t told me what the problem is?”

“You can’t—” Her words were cut off abruptly as Gabriel’s hand curved about her chin and held her firmly in place before his mouth came crashing down on hers.

Oh God…

Angel was powerless to fight against the overwhelming need that flooded every part of her as Gabriel kept her hands pinned above her head and took full possession of her mouth. His lips savagely claimed and devoured. He kissed her long and deeply, every part of her mouth explored and laid siege to, his body hard and unyielding as he kept her pinned against the door.

Her body responded to this man, as it always had—always would? Her nipples became harder, her breathing shallow, between her thighs now a hot and liquid ache.

She gave a sob when Gabriel finally wrenched his mouth from hers. Unsure if it was a sob of need or simply relief at the ceasing of that physical onslaught.

He was breathing heavily, his eyes glittering down at her. “Why are you really here? Was it for this?” He pressed the length of his cock against the heat between her thighs.

She gave a choked laugh. “Don’t be ridiculous!” How could she have known, guessed, that Gabriel would want her? He had stopped wanting her eight years ago, so why should she have ever thought he would want her again now? And yet he did. That desire was unmistakable in the physical evidence of his body, the heated glitter in his eyes, and the flush along the sharp edges of his cheekbones. He looked nothing like the urbane man who’d been sitting behind his desk when she arrived, his expression having turned almost feral and out of control. “Release me, Gabriel,” she instructed quietly.

He bared his teeth. “Why the hell should I?”

“Because I asked you to.”

He gave a scornful laugh. “And you seriously think I have any interest in doing anything you might ask me to do?”

“Obviously not.” She sighed. “Which means this conversation is over.”

His eyes narrowed to glittering slits. “It’s over when I say it’s over.”

“No.” Angel had no idea how she managed to speak so calmly, when her whole body was still shaking from the onslaught of sensations created by that unexpected kiss. “I have no idea why you’re so angry with me, but you are, and that anger means you can’t help me.”

“
You have no idea why I’m so angry with you…!
” Gabriel drew in several deep, controlling breaths before releasing her hands and stepping away from her, a nerve pulsing in his tightly clenched jaw. “You’ve walked back into my life—for whatever reason—after eight years of silence, and you have no fucking idea why I’m angry with you?” He gave a disgusted shake of his head. “You never used to be obtuse.”

“I never used to be a lot of things,” she said evenly before sighing heavily. “I didn’t come here to argue with you.”

Gabriel snorted. “You didn’t come here to fuck. You didn’t come here to argue.
So what the hell are you doing here?
” He was at the end of his considerable patience. Seeing Angel again so unexpectedly was guaranteed to do that!

Kissing Angel again had been…incredible. Her lips were as soft, and she still tasted of something delicious he couldn’t name or describe but obviously still craved. Like a man dying of thirst in a desert.

He’d thought he was over this woman. That all those years of silence had killed any last lingering feelings he might have had for her. A few minutes in Angel’s company, and he had turned into a ravenous caveman. Or an addict desperate for his fix.

He didn’t want this again. Didn’t want to want Angel again. It had consumed him last time, almost killed him when she walked away, and he wasn’t about to lay himself open to that type of pain again.