brown hair away from her face.
He lowered his head to her breasts, taking one of the reddish-brown buds into his mouth, pleasuring
her in a way that brought a breathy moan from deep within. “Always remember, you were my first
choice. The wife of my heart.”
Jean pushed him away, disrupting the pleasant attention he was giving her. “A lot of good that
does me when she’s screaming like an alley cat when you’re with her.”
“Am I sensing a bit of jealousy here?” Gabriel chuckled, grabbing her around the waist to bring
her underneath him once again. “I expect that from her, not you.”
Jean eluded his grasp and sauntered to the wine cabinet in her library. She poured herself a golden
goblet of 1955 Bordeaux—the product of one of their most successful California vineyards. She
looked at him over the rim while she took a long sip. “I’m not jealous, my husband, but she makes
it so damn obvious that she wants you all to herself.”
“Now sweetheart, you know that will never happen,” he said in a low tone. He crossed the distance
between them to capture her in an embrace, first kissing her shoulder, then the smooth curve of her
neck before parting her thighs to slip into the moist heat of her. The tightness sent his senses reeling,
but the sensation was short lived.
She turned, dislodging him from her heat. His eyes opened, and came to rest on the fireplace,
which flickered with a heat that matched his own. Somehow, he had not ignited that same flame
within his wife. Gabriel groaned his frustration. Four wives, and the only problem was with these
two sisters. No other man in the enclave encountered the headaches he had.
“I believe in what you’re doing, my husband.”
“What we are doing,” he corrected, now moving away to sit on the edge of her bed, waiting for
this redundant conversation to be done so he could get on to the business of pleasure.
“Right,” she said, drawing in a longer taste of the purple blend. She didn’t offer him any, knowing
he didn’t indulge after supper, when he did his best thinking—and love-making.
“I honestly think you should have pushed that scheming heifer out the door with her loudmouth
husband.”
“You know why she had to come,” he growled in a voice that signaled not only his mounting
sexual frustration but his dissatisfaction with Lucille for being the source of this dissension. He had
put off working on the next stage of the project to spend time with Jean, but it was not turning out
to be an enjoyable undertaking. “She posed questions that we both know many of the women were
thinking. We would have stirred up distrust if we had silenced her or if she just disappeared while
we were en route to Heaven’s Gate.”
“Then you should have had her killed the day after we arrived,” Jean snapped, placing her goblet
on the counter. “No one could leave at that point, so it would not have mattered.”
Startled by his wife’s deadly tone, Gabriel could only stare up at her.
After a long, drawn-out silence, Jean continued as though she had not just suggested ending her
sister’s life. “Lucille is creating disharmony among the women.” She moved almost soundlessly
NKLC Magazine | 57