Forbidden (The Gabriel Lennox Series Book 1) by M.L. Desir

masking his snickering in the disguise of a cough.
    He sighed. “My goal? My goal is simply to be left alone. Be my own person. My own god.”
    Colin stared at Gabriel for a full minute before he shut his eyes in silent mirth. He bent over, holding his stomach as the laughter seemed to rise from there and into his chest coming out with such force that it must’ve hurt because Colin began to shed tears. He fell onto the floor, hysterical with laughter. “Oh, ow. Ha, ha, ha. That’s funny, but you’re serious —ha, ha. I want to believe you, but—my stomach! It’s so empty! Ow!”
    He nudged him in the side with his boot. ”All right. That’s enough. Get up and stop acting like a child.”
    * * *
    Gabriel recommended an elegant restaurant in London, but Colin wanted beer and an atmosphere where he could feel more “at home.” So he drove Gabriel and Nathaniel to a pub in the East End where he ate plate after plate of shepherd’s pie and polished off several pints of beer, his cheeks barely flushed with the alcohol coursing through his veins. His bright laughter filled the pub as he sang bawdy songs at the top of his lungs. No one seemed to mind, but Gabriel couldn’t help but cringe.
    When they returned home, a young boy waited outside, tapping his foot impatiently. Just as the boy prepared to sit down on the steps, Gabriel slipped out of the carriage. The boy looked him up and down and grinned.
    He removed his low-crowned felt hat, revealing a mass of brown curls, and bowed at the waist. “Are you Gabriel Lennox, sir?” he asked.
    “Depends on who wants to know.”
    The boy grinned. “You must be him! She said that you’d have wine-red hair. And if I hadn’t seen it with mine own eyes, I’d never believed anyone could have hair like that,” he said, voice cracking and nasally.
    Poor brat. Gabriel remembered with loathing his voice changing from a boy’s into a man’s. He stared into the boy’s freckled face. “And who is she ?”
    “Why, Lady Genevieve Dele-something-or-other. She has a message for you.”
    Gabriel’s heart sped up.
    Out of his pants pocket, the boy slipped an envelope sealed with a red wax insignia. “Here you are, my lord.”
    He took it and stared at Genevieve’s invitation before thanking her messenger and sending him on his way with a generous tip.
    The envelope smelled of perfume, and the words were scrawled in red ink upon white paper. The word “urgent” held his attention. The ink had smudged before it dried so that it looked like blood. She had signed it with an elegant “G.”
    Urgent? What could she possibly need or want? Gabriel tucked the letter into his frock coat.
    “What is it?” asked Nathaniel at his back.
    “I don’t know yet.” He began walking back toward the direction of her home, a series of suspicious thoughts steering him closer to a confrontation he didn’t look forward to. The sooner he arrived, the better. What did she want from him?
    He told neither Colin nor Nathaniel where he was going, and they didn’t ask.
    He traversed several streets before he heard a voice calling his name. He stopped and turned around to see Genevieve standing beneath a tree, her lacy, gloved hand beckoning to him. It seemed as if she wasn’t the only impatient one. He assumed she had rushed out of her home to meet him along the way. How lovely she looked, her blonde hair brushed back in an elegant chignon and her blue-green eyes large and innocent.
    She almost looked afraid.
    Afraid of what?
    Eve must have looked this way when she tempted Adam to taste the Forbidden. All Genevieve needed to make the image complete was a piece of fruit. And she should not be clothed.
    He had once thought Adam foolish. Now, he wasn’t certain.
    He closed the space between them.
    * * *
    The setting sun looked like a dragon’s eye twinkling in a haze of clouds. Genevieve took Gabriel’s bare palm in her gloved hand.
    “The mist,” she said, “is beautiful.”
    Gabriel raised his