"Not even love?"
He couldn't speak for a second, caught off guard by her frank question and unwilling to consider where it might lead. He had no experience with that particular emotion. The way his life was going currently, he didn't want to get close to anything resembling it, either. "Love is for the males who choose to lead soft lives in the Darkhavens. Not for warriors."
"Some of the others in this compound might argue that with you."
He met her gaze with a level stare. "I'm not them."
Her chin dropped at once, long lashes shuttering her eyes from his view. "So, what does all of this make me? Am I just a way of passing time for you between killing Rogues and trying to pretend you've got everything under control?" When she looked up, tears were swelling in her eyes. "Am I just some little toy that you turn to whenever you need to get off?"
"I haven't heard you complain."
Her breath caught, a tiny gasp snagging in her throat as she gaped at him, clearly appalled and having every right to be. Her expression fell, then hardened into something as brittle as glass. "Fuck you."
Her contempt for him in that moment was understandable, but that didn't make it any easier to swallow. He would never take such a verbal beating from anyone. Before now, no one had ever had the nerve to try him. Lucan, the aloof one, the stone-cold killer who tolerated weakness in no form whatsoever - least of all in himself.
For all the conditioning and discipline he had mastered in his centuries of living, here he stood, being torn wide open by the only woman he had been foolish enough to let get close to him. And he cared for her, too, far more than he should. Which made hurting her now seem all the more repugnant, regardless of the fact that last night made it clear to him that it was necessary he push her away. It was unavoidable, and he would only make it worse by trying to pretend she would ever fit into his way of life.
"I don't want to hurt you, Gabrielle, and I know that I will."
"What do you think you're doing right now?" she whispered, a slight hitch in her voice. "You know, I believed you. God, I actually believed every lie you've fed me. Even that bullshit about wanting to help me find my true destiny. I really thought you cared."
Lucan felt helpless, the coldest kind of bastard for letting things get so out of hand with her. He strode over to a bureau, took out a fresh shirt and put it on. Heading for the door that led to the hallway outside his private apartments, he paused to look back at Gabrielle.
He wanted so badly to reach out to her, to try to make things better somehow, but he knew that would be a mistake. One touch and he would have her in his arms again.
Then he might not be able to let her go.
He opened the door, about to walk out.
"You have found your destiny, Gabrielle. Just like I said you would. I never told you it would be with me."
Chapter Twenty-four
Lucan's words - all the astonishing things he'd told her - were ringing in Gabrielle's ears as she came out from under the steaming water in his bathroom shower. She cut the tap and toweled off, wishing the hot water could have melted away some of the hurt and confusion she felt. There was so much to deal with, not the least of which was that Lucan had no intention of being with her.
She tried to tell herself he hadn't made any promises to begin with, but that only made her feel like a bigger fool. He had never asked her to put her heart under his boot heels; she'd done that all on her own.
Leaning in toward the mirror that ran the entire width of the bathroom suite, Gabrielle moved her hair back to have a closer look at the crimson-colored birthmark below her left ear. Or rather, the Breedmate mark, she corrected herself, peering at the little teardrop that appeared to be falling into the bowl of a crescent moon.
By some twisted sort of irony, she was connected to Lucan's world by the tiny mark on her neck, and yet, it was also the very thing preventing her from being with him.
Maybe she was a complication he didn't want or need, but it wasn't like meeting him had made life a bowl of cherries for her, either.
Thanks to Lucan, she was involved in a bloody underworld war that made the worst inner city gangbangers look like playground bullies. She had all but abandoned one of the sweetest condos in Beacon Hill and would lose it altogether if she didn't get back and get to work so she could pay her bills. Her friends had no idea where she was, and telling them now would probably only put them in danger of losing their lives.
To top it all off, she was half in love with the darkest, deadliest, most emotionally closed-off man she'd ever known.
Who just so happened to also be a bloodsucking vampire.
And, what the hell, since she was being honest, she wasn't half in love with Lucan. She was full-on, flat-out, head-over-heels, never-going-to-get-over-this-one, in love with him.
"Way to go," she told her miserable reflection. "Just frigging brilliant."
Yet even after everything he'd said to her, she still wanted nothing more than to go to him wherever he was in the compound and wrap herself in his arms, the only place she'd ever found any kind of comfort.
Yeah, like she really needed to add public humiliation to the very personal one she was still trying to deal with. Lucan had made it pretty clear: whatever they had together - if they'd ever truly had anything beyond the physical - was over.
Gabrielle walked back into his bedroom and retrieved her clothes and shoes. She dressed quickly, wanting to be out of his personal quarters before he came back and she did something really stupid. Well, she amended, glancing at the mussed bedsheets still in disarray from their lovemaking, something even more stupid.
With the idea that she would look for Savannah and maybe try to find a phone line out of the compound, since Lucan hadn't seen fit to return her cell, Gabrielle ducked out of his bedroom. The corridor was confusing, no doubt by design, and she had taken several wrong turns before she finally recognized her surroundings. She was near the training facility, judging by the sharp staccato crack of rounds hitting targets.