Gideon leaned down, capturing her lips gently with his. Probably just to shut her up, she reflected for all of two seconds. And then her body took over, responding to his on a fundamental level. Her lips parted of their own accord, and her tongue swept out to tangle with his.
Gideon gave a deep groan and swept the first aid kit to the floor. His mouth firm on hers, he dragged her across his lap. He anchored one hand on her hip to hold her in place, and tangled his free hand in her hair. He claimed her lips, slanting his mouth over hers again and again, tongue plunging, plundering, staking claim.
Lost to a whirlwind of sensations, Maggie looped her arms around his shoulders and melted into him. Just as the hand on her hip began angling up beneath the hem of her shirt, the door of the den swung open.
“Maggie, I think I heard Gideon’s motorcycle,” Carly called as she swept into the room. “Oh! I’m so sorry!”
Maggie tore her mouth from Gideon’s and glanced at the doorway, slightly dazed. She looked back at Gideon just in time to see him staring down where his hand rested on her abdomen. He flinched, and then she found herself rudely deposited on the sofa while he beat a hasty retreat behind his desk.
Mortified to have given in to his kisses so easily, humiliated to have been rejected—yet again—in front of his friends, Maggie struggled to her feet. Leaving the contents of the first aid kit scattered on the rug where they’d fallen, she walked with as much dignity as she could muster toward the door. She would not run.
But oh, how she wanted to.
“Excuse me,” she said to Carly, edging around her as she headed for the doorway.
“Maggie, I—”
“I’m very tired,” Maggie said, unable to meet the woman’s sympathetic brown eyes. “I think I’ll turn in. I’ve had quite enough excitement for one day.”
She slipped from the room, closing the door behind her. She paused for a moment just outside the room to collect herself, her dignity in tatters.
But she must not have gotten the door all the way closed, for she heard Carly softly admonish, “Why aren’t you going after her?”
Despite her better judgment, Maggie found herself leaning toward the door, straining to hear his response. A ball of something hot and uncomfortable swelled in her chest making it difficult to breathe.
Gideon heaved a deep sigh she could hear all the way across the room and through a mostly closed door. “It’s better this way.”
Carly pressed, “Why are you working so hard to put so much distance between the two of you?”
“Who said it’s hard work?”
Maggie heard the clink of glass and the slosh of liquid.
“Gideon, I love you like a brother, you know that. But right now you’re behaving like a spoiled jackass.”
Maggie’s eyebrows shot up and she clapped a hand over her mouth, silently cheering Carly on. There was a firecracker with a mighty bang hidden inside that tiny little body. Unfortunately, Gideon was behaving like a wounded bear.
“Sweet sentiments from candied lips,” he remarked.
Maggie just barely restrained herself from leaning against the door in despair. Carly would give up now and Maggie would never hear his answer—the real one that actually mattered.
“Why?” Carly demanded with dogged determination, raising another notch in Maggie’s esteem. “Maggie’s got to be feeling pretty scared right now. Think about it from her perspective, Gideon. She can’t go home, and it’s probably best if she doesn’t go back to the career she so obviously enjoyed. She has no family but for a father who can’t, or just plain won’t, acknowledge her. A very pissed off Archangel father, I might add. She’s pregnant and surrounded by strangers. You’re the one solid thing in her world right now, Gideon, like it or not. And you’re pushing her away. Why?”
Maggie’s head snapped back. Niklas’s mate was human. And yet, Carly had managed to understand her far better than all these supernatural beings combined. Maggie would have died then and there of embarrassment if it hadn’t been for the fact that she desperately needed to hear Gideon’s answer.
A long beat of silence followed. She could hear the squeak of the chair behind Gideon’s desk as he plopped down.
“Gideon, talk to me,” Carly coaxed so softly Maggie almost didn’t hear her. “What are you thinking?”
Maggie held her breath.
“I didn’t give her a choice, darlin’. When I took her, I didn’t give her a choice. Not when I took her from Portland, and not when I…when I claimed her. And not when I got her pregnant. I won’t take her choice from her again.”
“Is that it?”
“What do you mean, is that it?” Gideon demanded, incredulous. “Isn’t that enough?”
“Oh, sweetie,” Carly murmured. “I don’t exactly see her beating you off with a stick.” There was a shifting, shoes shushing over carpet.
Maggie realized the footsteps were coming closer. She spun around and scurried through the foyer, sprinting up the stairs, not stopping until she had the bedroom door closed behind her.
Wasn’t there some old adage about eavesdroppers? Well, it seemed she’d just gotten a heaping helping of serves-her-right.
Chapter Twenty-One