Forbidden (The Gabriel Lennox Series Book 1) by M.L. Desir Read Free Book Online Page A

husband.

CHAPTER 7
Gods or Devils
    GABRIEL GAVE A SMALL BOW of his head to Genevieve, then to Adele. “Thank you, Madame and Mademoiselle. But you must be flattering me in jest. Any man would prefer to be more attractive than a corpse.”
    Michel laughed. “Oh, Gabriel. It is you who jest. You know very well what my wife and her sister were speaking of.”
    Nathaniel sloshed the wine in his glass. “He always did know how to turn a compliment on its head. Pay him no mind.”
    “Perhaps it’s the wine. I’m not feeling like myself,” Gabriel replied.
    Nathaniel glanced at him and then looked away with a knowing smile.
    Michel raised his glass. “Like everything else, drinking too takes practice.”
    Genevieve rolled her eyes. “You would know,” she whispered.
    Gabriel turned to her. In his ears, her words had been loud and clear. It seemed as if no one else had heard, though. If her husband or sister had, they paid no mind. Strange that. It seemed as if trouble had trespassed in their paradise. Unsurprising. He knew how much she wanted him, but what did it matter? How did he know that she didn’t desire any other man? Every man? And then of course, she was married.
    Throughout the remainder of the evening, she loosely commented on Gabriel’s resemblance to George Meredith as Chatterton, again and again saying that he was much easier on the eyes, although she couldn’t look at him for long when she said so. And when he and Nathaniel exited the Delechevalier residence, Genevieve’s eyes were not the only ones he felt. He sighed as he entered the carriage. He hadn’t come here to make enemies.
    Nathaniel sat across from him while the carriage moved, at once, into the night.
    “Who will you Enlighten first?” Nathaniel asked. “Genevieve?”
    Gabriel remained silent.
    “Don’t act like a petulant child,” Nathaniel persisted, “or else Lilith may take you by the hand and treat you as such.”
    “Genevieve is married.”
    “And Voltaire is a vampire.”
    “What does that have to do with anything?”
    Nathaniel smiled. “My sentiments exactly. Genevieve wants you and anything you have to offer. Besides, it’s been nearly three hundred years, and you haven’t crossed anyone over. And you wonder why Lilith wants to kill you.”
    Gabriel sat forward. “What will she do? Stake me?” Abigail flashed into his mind, and he leaned back into his seat, sullen.
    “What do you think that we are, Gabriel?” his friend asked, changing the subject. “We live, and yet we prey on the living.”
    “Are you insinuating that we’re vampires?”
    “If not vampires, Gabriel, what do you say that we are?” He paused. “We drink blood on occasion. We avoid the sun as best we can. And it seems we can never die.”
    Gabriel smiled. “Seems. Then why does Lilith threaten me with death?”
    “As a mortal, you feared it.”
    “But we’re nothing like the legends,” Gabriel countered. “The legends speak of blood-sucking creatures whose reflection cannot be seen in mirrors. They are vulnerable to garlic and the herb wolf’s bane, thorny roses, wooden stakes and mallets, weapons made from silver, sunlight, holy water, crucifixes and other such relics, fire and even water from a moving stream. In some legends, they’re foul in form and odor. And in all the legends, they need blood to survive. Slaves to the red, liquid heat. Vampire. That is certainly not what we are. There is no name for who we are.”
    “Perhaps, but these legends, these myths remain as such for you and I. We do not need to drink blood for the sake of sustenance,” Nathaniel said. “But other Chosen would viciously disagree.”
    Blood. I could do without it , Gabriel thought, but I choose not to. I suppose the drinking of it gives me some kind of pleasure.
    The other man smirked. “So what would you have us call ourselves?”
    “Gods?” he replied with a mocking grin. Then he thought of Nathaniel’s fairy tale. It veiled a more sinister story,