He never told Faith about his magic, and yet she was a curious little thing, asking more questions than she should about everything. One day she trapped him, holding the bud of a lily in her hand, and wistfully wishing out loud that it open for her. Like the love-sick fool he was, wanting to impress his lady, Gabriel fell for that, and in less than a second the flower bloomed in her hand.
Faith had turned to him with wide, worshipping eyes. “I knew it!” she had said, waving the lily at him. “I knew it. I knew it. I knew it!”
From then on, Faith steadily encouraged him, steadfast in her belief that magic could do good, and that Gabriel was good. He’d desperately wanted to believe her, and yet he never truly embraced this “goodness” of which she spoke.
He knew what he’d done.
The day Faith had killed herself, when Gabriel had felt his whole world collapse and thought of ending his own life, he’d realized maybe his magic could have done some good, maybe his magic could have saved her.
Maybe his magic could still save her.
He’d taken all that magic then, gathered it in the very center of his being, letting its warmth spread out to his palms, the soles of his feet, as he made a single spell.
I will not age a minute until you come back to me.
Come back to me.
Come back to me.
He had released her soul, offering it to the wind, giving her the freedom she so envied of the birds, and hoped this time, he could do something good.
When she came back to him, he would let nothing keep them apart. He would let nothing harm her, nothing take her away from him.
“I’d die before he touches me,” Faith had told him, and God, how Gabriel regretted hearing those words. The first night of her forced marriage to that sonofabitch gangster, she had tied a rope around her neck…
Gabriel had gathered every single rope in town from then on, and spent years controlling them, moving them at his will, as if somehow that could bring her back.
It didn’t.
Sighing, he headed to the corner of the cave and reached out for the heavy, leather-bound book.
Sitting down on the ground and setting it on his lap, he traced the pentagram with his finger, whispered a prayer, and opened the Book of Shadows.
* * *
Stella should have known her mother wouldn’t let it rest after that confession. First, she became hysterical, then thoughtful, and then she called Kevin. Stella wanted to shake some sense into her mother, ask her why she insisted in pairing her with Kevin when her mother knew she was in love with another man. Then Stella realized her mother would never stop being a mother, even if what she thought was best for her daughter was the complete opposite of what Stella knew she truly needed.
So instead Stella asked Kevin to walk with her to the park, thinking she might as well tell him she wasn’t interested in marriage—at least not to him—and be done with it.
She found it rather hard to bring up the subject when he didn’t say anything personal, only went on and on about technology in the world, and how he planned to slowly modernize the town.
Several cars drove by, people returning from work in the city mostly, the motors humming softly. When Kevin signaled a bench under an oak and asked her to sit, Stella suspected the direction the conversation was heading. Finally.
“Stella, we’ve known each other since we were kids,” he said, and instead of sitting by her side, he went down on one knee before her.
Which was not good.
“Yes, you’ve been a good friend to me, Kevin,” she said cautiously, stiffening when he took her hand over her lap and gently squeezed.
Kevin was handsome, in his own way. Not sinfully handsome like Gabriel, not big and dominant and breathtaking, but there was a calm, simple look to Kevin that wasn’t altogether displeasing. His eyes were warm, a deep honey color, his light-brown hair neatly trimmed and soft.
“I’ve always liked to think of you as more than my friend, Stella,” he countered, his eyes searching her own.
Quickly retrieving her hand from his, Stella suddenly regretted she was having this conversation in the first place. “Kevin, I’m sorry, but I—”
“Marry me.”
Having expected those words did nothing to keep her heart from plummeting down to her toes. “Kevin,” she said, sighing dejectedly. She hated hurting people; it wasn’t in her nature at all. Oh, Lord, now how was she supposed to phrase her rejection to minimize the blow a bit?
“Kevin, thank you, I—I’m really honored you would even ask. I’m sorry if I’ve given you the wrong impression but I…well, I just don’t love you in that way.”
He took her hand again, this time between both of his as he gave her an eager squeeze. “You will. I know you will. Just say yes, Stella. Say yes, and I’ll make you the happiest woman in town.”
Which wasn’t saying much at all, since everyone was so depressed around here; even the little dogs walked droopily across the grass. Oh, how she wished to disappear. Where was a witch when a woman needed one?
“I bought a ring.” Kevin reached into his pants pocket, somehow making Stella feel even worse. A ring! All that trouble he went through only to take it back.
“It’s a whole carat, too,” he said. He flicked the burgundy box open.
Stella stared down at it without truly seeing it, feeling lower than low. “Oh, Kevin.” She felt absolutely horrible. First she’d made Gabriel’s life hell, and now, it was Kevin’s turn. She lifted her lashes to him, desperately searching for the right words.
“I’m sorry to interrupt, but I believe this is my cue.”
Stella jerked her head back as that husky voice poured over her like honey. A looming figure stepped out of the shadows of a tree and into her line of vision. Oh, my God, Gabriel, in broad daylight, looked bigger than a live Paul Bunyan. If Stella had thought he would die like some kind of vampire under the sun, she needed to think twice.
Gabriel looked just as at home under the light as in the darkness in which he hid, every inch of his long, sinewy body exuding maleness and strength. As Kevin rose and turned around to scowl at him, Gabriel’s presence made him look pale in comparison. Gabriel was tall, broad-shouldered, and in command even of the space around him, while Kevin looked slim and unimportant.
“Umm. Do you mind?” Kevin asked, looking both confused and irritated by the interruption.
Gabriel eyed Kevin in derision, measuring his height and breadth. “Yes, I do mind,” he finally said. “The lady’s spoken for.” Then those piercing black eyes clashed with hers. “Hello, Stella.”
Stella had gone mute, and hoped to God Gabriel couldn’t hear her thoughts, for all she could think of was being ravaged, pilfered…robbed completely of her innocence again, by none other than the town villain.
If he ripped her clothes off and took her, right there on the bench, she wouldn’t have summoned up a protest. She stifled a shudder, her nipples brushing against her shirt, aching for his mouth, her sex pulsing so hard she had to press her legs shut to still it.
Kevin was too outraged and offended to even notice her turmoil. He was staring at Gabriel with a scowl, hands balled at his sides. “Spoken for?” Kevin said. “By whom?”
Gabriel smiled, a smile for her alone, one that made her heart trip. “By me.”
Stella blinked, nearly choking on a breath, as Gabriel let his gaze wander deliberately over her body. I want you too. Right there on the bench, spreading your legs for me.
Realizing he was indeed reading her thoughts, Stella blushed crimson. How embarrassing! She was grateful for Kevin’s interruption.
“And just who in the world are you?” Kevin looked disgusted by Gabriel’s soiled clothes, and though Gabriel was taller, Kevin somehow made it appear as if he were looking down his nose at him. “I haven’t seen you before in my life!”
Gabriel spared Kevin as much attention as one would to a fly, instead cocked an eyebrow at her and crossed his arms over his chest. “Care to exp
lain to him, Stella?”
Now what exactly was it that she should explain? she wondered. That, even now, as she stared at him, in broad daylight, she felt like fainting from sheer, mindless lust? That she’d taken his body and offered her own in trade, for all eternity?
“Are you going to explain me to him, or should I?” Gabriel prodded, his eyes glimmering darkly. His words oozed sex almost as much as every one of his pores did, and she blushed down to the roots of her hairs when her mind began to wander again.
She remembered. Exactly. How his kisses felt. His hands felt. The way he fucked her: hard and bad and deliciously.
She rose slowly, her feet unsteady. “Gabriel, what are you even doing—”
“Stella, who is this creep?” Kevin asked.
“Yes, Stella, who am I?” Gabriel repeated. “More importantly, what am I to you?” Gabriel seemed as eager to know the answer as Kevin, his jaw harsh with determination. What on earth did Gabriel expect her to say? She’d barely been able to admit to her lust in the darkness; now he wanted her to do so in public? He really was a villain!
“He’s nobody you know, Kevin,” she said.
“Oh, I’ll bet he knows me,” Gabriel told her. “I’ll bet he knows a whole lot about me.”
Stella stared at Gabriel, her brow marred in a scowl. “What are you doing?”
His voice dropped, the tone a silky whisper as his eyes fell to her mouth. “I want to know what it is I am to you. I want to hear it from your lips.”
She glared at him. As if he didn’t know!
You’re the man I offered my body to.
Gabriel was silent for a moment, as if that wasn’t exactly what he’d wanted to hear. “Is that all?”
Stella would not spill her guts this easily to him. Not now, and certainly not with Kevin here. She would not even think it or else he’d see right through her. Instead she kept her mind busy, concentrating on the present. “Is that what you’re here for, Gabriel, to collect?” she asked.
“When I come to collect, Stella, you will have no doubt about it.”
Shifting from looking at one to the other, Kevin demanded, “What the hell is going on here?”
“You stay out of this,” Gabriel spat.
“Now wait a damn minute here—” Kevin began, but then his glare vanished, and his face began to pale. “It’s you! You’re that pathetic, crazed lunatic… You’re him!”
Gabriel grunted. “Please. Call me Villain. Everybody else does.”
“You’re the asshole who cursed this town and dragged it with you to your personal, stinking hell!”
“Kevin, stop!” Stella told him.
Kevin was beyond listening, beyond reasoning, his warm eyes now reddened and angry and wild. “You’re the bastard who killed my uncle! You’re the fucking loser who’s been haunting this town ever since that silly girl killed herself over you!”
“Kevin!”
It was too late, for Gabriel grabbed Kevin by the collar and slammed him back against a tree trunk, his teeth bared. “You can call me anything you want, and I don’t give a fucking shit, but don’t ever speak of her again, or I swear I’ll think nothing of killing you, too.”
Stella rushed forward. “Gabriel, please,” she said, pressing a shaky hand to his arm, his bicep bulged and tight with tension under her palm. “Just let him go. He’s been fed stories all his life, and he knows no better than to believe them.”
Gabriel was panting, his nostrils twitching.
Slowly, his dark, glimmering eyes moved from a panting, sweaty Kevin, to settle on her. “I need to talk to you.”
She could have melted right then, in a warm, liquid pool of all that was mushy.
“I can’t now,” she said, glancing past her shoulder, worrying what would happen if anyone passed by and word spread out that the Villain was out harassing the townsfolk. “I’ll try to come by tonight.”
“That’s not good enough.”
“Stella, don’t listen to him,” Kevin told her. “He’s a murderer, a killer. He’ll kill you, too!”
Gabriel pulled Kevin forward then slammed him back again, his knuckles white from the tight grip he held on Kevin’s collar. “If I were you, I’d keep my mouth shut.”
“Gabriel, go now,” Stella insisted. “I’ll be by as soon as I can.”
He looked troubled, desperate. “No. I need to see you. Now.”
“I—” She colored everywhere. “I need to see you, too, but I can’t now.”
“Son of a bitch, you killed my uncle!”
Gabriel turned, eyes narrowed into slits, his face inching so close to Kevin’s it made him cringe. “Yes! It’s me. I did all those things and then some. How about adding one more sin to that long list of mine, hmm?”
“You didn’t really kill his uncle, did you?”
Gabriel turned to face her, his face deadly solemn. “I burned him.”
Chapter Five
That night, everyone in town had heard the Villain was out of his hole, and they locked and barred their doors to keep him away, including Stella’s mother.
That afternoon, after the incident at the park, Kevin had successfully proved to Stella what a complete sorry judge of character she was. He had followed her home only to humiliate her in front of her mother, calling her names and getting himself slapped in the face when he’d called her a “fucking whore.” Stella hadn’t ever slapped someone, but because it had been well deserved, she had to admit it felt very, very good, even though her palm stung.
Shocked by all that was transpiring, Stella’s mother had drawn herself up as high and tall as she could, and with a hard, steely gaze, told Kevin, “Leave. You’re no longer welcome in my house.”
Kevin had left almost foaming at the mouth from his rage, the front door slamming behind him. Stella had stared at her mother and whispered a very fervent, “Thank you.”
That night Stella had trouble falling asleep, and for hours considered stealing out of her window to go to him. She’d said that she would, and she knew he must be waiting for her.
Instead she kept to her bed, filled with apprehension that any angered townsfolk would follow her if she were caught wandering the streets. She was scared of what they might do to her—to Gabriel. Their hate had been festering for far too long, and after realizing with a shock how mean Kevin could be when angered, she might as well expect that of everyone else, too. For years, the town had seemed to be waiting for a reason, one single, valid reason to go after him. All that held them back was fear, that same chilling feeling that kept Stella in her bed that night.
When sleep finally claimed her, it lacked dreams, her thoughts filled with a bleak, black nothingness. She woke up in the middle of the night, facedown and moaning into her pillow.
Stella was being deliciously fucked.
“Wake up, baby,” a murmur whispered behind her ear.
She fisted her hands over the bed as a wave of heat washed over her. “Don’t stop,” she pleaded, feeling the length of a thick, long cock slide up to her center.
“There you go,” a silky voice purred in her ear before a sinful tongue swirled across her neck and shoulders.
She craned her neck, exposing it to his mouth as it trailed upward and moistened the skin along her jaw, the shell of her earlobe.
He was shafting her hard, her pussy so moist she could hear the wet, slick sounds of his cock slipping in. She squeezed her eyes shut. “Don’t stop, don’t stop, don’t you dare stop.”
Grabbing her pelvis, he pulled out, and then slammed back in again. “I’m not stopping.”
Oh, she’d truly gone to heaven now.
She gasped when he withdrew and took his cock in his hand, rubbing the tip along her cleft. The swollen, pulsing head stroked her lips, her clit, and then all the way back to the pink, ringed entrance of her ass.
“Please tell me this isn’t a dream,” she moaned.
“It’s not a dream,” he murmured, pressing his cock to her wet, needy pussy. “No dream.” He f
illed her again with a single thrust delving all the way in.
Oh, dear this was wonderful. Then a shocking thought came to her. “Gabriel…who am I?”
“Hush, Stella.” His lips touched her ear, hands smoothing up her sides then cupping her breasts. “Let me fuck you.”
She was still herself, and he was fucking her. How incredible. How delicious. Oh, let this night never end. “Yes, oh, Gabriel, fuck me.”
He groaned, gripped her hips tightly and pulled out. “Say it again.”
“Fuck me.”
“My name, Stella. Say it.”
“Gabriel.”
He thrust inside. “Louder, Stella. Shout it.”
“Oh, Gabriel!”
He shafted her once more.
“Please, oh, God, Gabriel, faster!”
He plunged so deep her spine curved, and her eyes rolled backward as she came. Waves of pleasure rocked through her, her cunt pulsing around him, and he pounded faster, pummeling her through her orgasm. As her trembling receded, she felt the warm spurt of his cum inside her, and another wave of shuddering rocked through her.
“Oh, God,” she breathed.
He nuzzled her neck, his lips moist on her flesh. “You’re mine.”
“Oh, Gabriel, I do want to be.”
“You are. You’re mine.” He tilted her face to kiss her lips. “Come to me tomorrow.”
“I will. Oh, yes, I will, I’ll come to you tomorrow.”
“Go to sleep, baby,” he murmured, giving her a slow, languorous kiss on her lips, then spreading that same hot kiss up to her ear.
He’d called her baby.
Baby.
This couldn’t be happening.
“Will you stay a little, Gabriel?” she whispered, feeling drowsy already, his lips weaving a lullaby magic on her earlobe.
“Yes, I’ll stay a while, but sleep.” And holding onto that thought, she fell asleep, this time to dream only of him.
Gabriel Hunter, waiting for her tomorrow. Gabriel Hunter, calling her baby. Gabriel Hunter, telling her she was his.
Then Gabriel Hunter, standing before the flames, his eyes glowing red as he watched the house on Hill Street yield to the flames. He was uttering something as he watched, the same verse over and over again. “Burn, you son of a bitch. Burn to hell.”