Rock Hard (Rock Kiss #2)(65)

He didn’t say anything for several minutes, his jaw working and his eyes on the water that had turned choppy with the rising wind. “For you,” he said at last, “I’ll try not to focus on the bastard.” He put one arm around her shoulders to draw her in against him, making sure not to hold too tight. “But Charlotte, I’m not a good guy when the people who matter to me are threatened. If he comes near you, all bets are off. I will crush him and bury his f*cking body where no one will ever find him.”

Charlotte shuddered, realizing she’d need to watch him. Because Gabriel was intensely protective, intensely determined. He was also ruthless and very, very smart. She had to make sure he didn’t concentrate those instincts on eliminating Richard for good in a preemptive strike, but on her.

“If you won’t move in with me,” he said while she was still working through her thoughts, “I’ll move in with you. Or I’ll hire security for you. Whatever you want. But you have to let me protect you.”

Charlotte’s eyes were on the water, but her attention was firmly on the man who held her, his rage a heartbeat away from exploding and his voice raw. He’d just given her a roadmap of how she could get him to focus on her, keeping him from falling into an abyss of hate and retribution.

Petting his chest with one hand, his body heat searing through the fine cotton of his shirt, she said, “I need a few minutes, okay?”

When he didn’t move, she touched her fingers to his jaw. “Gabriel.”

Steely eyes locked with her own. “Fifteen minutes. Then I’m coming to find you.” His hand lifted as if he would shove it into her hair, haul her in for a kiss, but he curled it into a fist before dropping it to his side. “Fifteen minutes. Not a second longer.”

Heart heavy at the sign he was leashing his nature for her, she watched him walk away. Gabriel was a physical man; had she not been so screwed up, she knew full well they’d be in bed right now. She’d have eased his rage with her body, and he’d have focused all his primal instincts on her pleasure.

But she was screwed up. And f*ck it, she’d had enough. She wanted him to be able to go caveman on her if he needed it, wanted to be able to haul him to bed herself if he was being stubborn and uncommunicative, as with those phone calls. Her instincts told her that getting physical with Gabriel would fundamentally alter things between them in a good way. The man was heavily tactile, would speak with his body if she let him.

Turning back to the water only when he was no longer in sight, a knot of angry frustration in her gut, she took out her phone and called Molly. “Hey,” she said when her best friend answered sounding a little flustered. “Was Fox doing naughty things to you?”

A guilty laugh. “Maybe, but he has to go meet Noah now anyway, so I’m shoving him out th—”

“Hey, Charlie,” said the distinctive, gritty voice of Schoolboy Choir’s lead singer. “Miss Molly will be a minute.”

“Fox!” came Molly’s faint voice. “Give me the phone.”

The sound cut off, as if someone had put a hand over the speaker.

Smiling at the image of a kiss-rumpled Molly trying to deny a man against whom she had no resistance, Charlotte waited until her friend came back on the line. “Sorry about that,” Molly said, breathless again. “He’s in a mood today.”

“I can guess exactly what kind of mood he’s in, Miss Molly.”

“Oh, shut up.” Molly laughed. “Soooo? How was your second date with T-Rex?”

“Wonderful.” The memory of the hours she’d spent with him yesterday made her want to sigh and go all gooey-eyed.

“Then why do you sound like that?”

“Do you have X-ray vision? How can you know something’s wrong across a phone line?”

“Because I know you. What is it?”

Charlotte told Molly about Richard’s forthcoming release, rubbing at her forehead with her fingers. “I know I need to take my security situation seriously, but I hate feeling like Richard’s backed me into a corner.”

“You could look at it another way,” Molly said after a small pause.

Eyes on a catamaran coming in to dock on this side of the marina, Charlotte said, “What other way?”

“Last time, Dick was in control, manipulating and scheming.” Her best friend’s anger was a scalpel. “This time, you’re the one in charge. You make the decisions.”

Charlotte hadn’t considered it from that point of view. “I’m still reacting to him.”

“So don’t,” Molly replied. “Decide what you want. Not what will make Gabriel happy or what will roadblock that pathetic monster. What will make you feel like you’re handling the situation?”

“The thing is, Molly, I want to make Gabriel happy.” Seeing him laugh, smile, it lit up her world. “I can’t bear for him to be so torn up.”

“That’s a choice too, you know.” A smile in Molly’s voice. “And it’s one I understand—I like making Fox happy too. Same way I like doing things to make you happy. There’s nothing wrong with caring for the people we love; the problem only comes when it’s one person giving all the time. When it goes both ways, you have love.”

Charlotte flushed and pushed away from the railing to start the walk back to the office. Dropping her sorely abused takeout cup in a trash can along the way, she said, “I’ve just started dating him.”