Fallen (Seven Deadly Sins #2)(48)
Author: Erin McCarthy

“Yes. Mostly online.” Gabriel was no longer eating, but just shoving rice back and forth on his plate. “I have a bottle of it.”

“Why?” she asked him in surprise.

“Because I thought the same thing you did. That if I could know exactly what it felt like, I could determine for myself who was right. Thiroux maintained he was out cold and didn’t hear a thing. The prosecutor said that in a violent rage he sliced Anne Donovan to pieces. The coroner said a man under the influence couldn’t have exhibited the force necessary. I want to know. So I bought a bottle of absinthe.”

Sara stared at his profile. He was speaking with nonchalance, but she knew exactly what he was saying. “You can’t drink it and you know you can’t. It wouldn’t be worth it.”

“I know.” He dropped his chopsticks and pushed the plate away from him. “That’s why it’s sitting in my kitchen cabinet unopened.”

“I’m glad you didn’t.” Sara touched his knee, stroking the denim with her thumb, her heart aching for his pain, for hers. “But I can. I’ll drink it.” If he wanted to know badly enough that he had risked that kind of temptation, she could answer the question for him. Alcohol was not her demon.

“You don’t have to do that.” Gabriel looked at her in that way he did sometimes, where he just watched, and his brown eyes bored into her, unreadable, like he had a thousand thoughts that he wanted to share, but couldn’t, wouldn’t.

“I know I don’t have to. I want to.” Now that she had decided, she was determined. Sara stood up and headed for the kitchen. “Which cabinet is it in?”

Gabriel got up and followed Sara, torn between letting her drink his absinthe and forbidding her. He suspected if he told her flat-out no, that she couldn’t have it, she wouldn’t pursue it, and that was what his first instinct was. To just haul her out of his kitchen, put himself between her and the cabinets, break the bottle, and dump the drink down the drain. He had a slight panic in his gut at the thought of her going into his bottle, taking herself to that place he had loved so much and still craved. But Sara wasn’t him, and she wasn’t doing it to escape, she was doing it to understand. And he also suspected she was still shaken from the packet of pictures she had seen. Drinking the absinthe was a grasp at control, ironically enough, a way for her to express defiance in the face of death and two murder cases that appeared to be unsolvable.

He wanted to tell her no. Even said, “Sara, this isn’t a good idea.”

But when she found the bottle by opening all his cabinets, and pulled it down, he didn’t yank it away from her.

“It is a good idea. I need to know, Gabriel. Don’t you understand that? I can’t do anything else . . . I can’t bring my mother back and I can’t . . . with you, but this I can do. I can do whatever it takes to solve Anne Donovan’s case, at least to our personal satisfaction.”

The defiant and desperate edge to her voice forced him to realize that she did absolutely need to do this. She needed to let go of her fear, move herself out of the corner she had backed into, and allow herself to be bold, angry. The feral expression on her face had him contemplating the other way she could let go. They could have hot and sweaty sex. He could lift her onto the kitchen counter and hike up her skirt and plunge into her the way he ached to.

She wanted him to. It was on her face, in her words, in her body language as she held the bottle up against her br**sts. She licked her bottom lip, and he had a painful, throbbing erection that demanded release. There was no doubt in his mind it would be passionate, intense, fast, with grinding and pushing and gripping, a hot, hard slapping of their bodies together.

He wanted that.

He couldn’t take it. God help him, literally, but there was less danger from the absinthe than from sex.

“I’ll get you a glass.” He turned, away from that offer, away from that pleading, and opened his cabinet, pulling out a tumbler. They were supposed to be for juice, since he didn’t keep any glasses for alcohol, and no corkscrews, no ice buckets. No implements at all for alcohol. Except for his absinthe spoons.

“Thanks.” She was inspecting the bottle. “Do I just drink it straight? Is it like a shot?”

“You don’t want to drink it straight. It’s going to taste awful to you.” Gabriel set the glass down on the counter, right where he had pictured spreading Sara’s thighs. “We’ll dilute it with water and sugar, the traditional way. You can even pick one of my spoons to use if you want. Might as well have the full experience.” And if he sounded less than thrilled, it was because he was holding on to the edge of his own control. Not to drink. That wasn’t the temptation. He was struggling to prevent himself from touching Sara. He wanted to run his fingers down her shoulder, her arm, and grasp her hand in his. He wanted to lace their fingers together, draw her to him, and kiss her, better and longer than he had downstairs.

Instead, he unscrewed the cap and splashed two inches of absinthe into the bottom of the juice glass.

Sara leaned over and sniffed. She instantly recoiled. “Ugh. It smells like NyQuil.”

That almost made him laugh. “It has anise in it. That’s why I suggested diluting it.”

“I’ll go get a spoon.” She had her nose curled up and her arms tightly over her chest. “Though doesn’t diluting it just mean I’ll have to drink more of it?”

“You can try it both ways.” Gabriel went for the sugar and a glass of water.

Sara returned almost immediately, the most ornate of his spoons in her hand. It was carved with extensive curlicues on the handle, and it was elegant, had been expensive. She rinsed it off and dried it, then handed it to him. “I’ve always liked this one.”

Gabriel rested the spoon across the glass. A warm feeling of euphoric anticipation stole over him, an associative memory that this preparation was followed by a beautiful, impenetrable clarity. A confidence that he was brilliant and in control, achieving all his goals and all that had been asked of him.

It was all an illusion of course, and he was tempted to smack the spoon back down on to the table. Hurl the glass. Exercise his own mastery over life, destiny, emotion.

But the better way to express that control would be to pour for Sara and hand her the glass. To give it up, move it from his hand to hers, after seeing the water slide through the sugar and drag it down into the absinthe via the holes in the spoon. To watch water and absinthe blend in a beautiful cloud, to lift away the spoon, and hold the heavy glass in his hand, feel its weight, its promise.