Free Gideon by Jacquelyn Frank Page B

flushed cheek.
    The heat of her anger radiated against his touch and he recognized it long before she turned her face up to him.
    “Does this satisfy you, my lord Gideon?” she whispered fiercely, her eyes flashing like flinted steel and hard jade.
    Gideon found himself searching her face intently, his eyes roaming over the high, aristocratic curves of her cheekbones, the amazingly full sculpture of her lips, the wide, accusing eyes that lay behind extraordinarily thick lashes. He cupped her chin between the thumb and forefinger of his left hand, his fingertips fanning softly over her angrily flushed cheek.
    “You do enjoy mocking me,” he murmured softly to her, the breath of his words close enough to skim across her face.
    “No more than you seem to enjoy condescending to me,” she replied, her clipped words coming out on quick, heated breaths.
    Gideon absorbed this latest venom with a blink of lengthy black lashes. They kept their gazes locked, each seemingly waiting for the other to look away.
    “You have never forgiven me,” he said suddenly, softly.
    “Forgiven you?” She laughed bitterly. “Gideon, you are not important enough to earn my forgiveness.”
    “Is your ego so fragile, Legna, that a small slight to it is irreparable?”
    “Stop talking to me as if I were a temperamental child!” Legna hissed, moving to jerk her head back but finding his grip quite secure. “There was nothing slight about the way you treated me. I will never forget it, and I most certainly will never forgive it!”
    Gideon reached out, taking her by both of her shoulders, hauling her up with him as he regained his height. He unintentionally pulled her off balance, forcing her to sway into his body slightly in order to prevent herself from teetering further off center. Her soft curves skimmed against the harder planes of his torso for all of a second. The Ancient male felt a sensation shimmer through him that he couldn"t immediately define, his silvery brows knitting with his momentary confusion.
    The situation was too volatile to waste time on a cursory sensation, however, so he put it aside as he put Legna at arm"s length.
    “Legna, I do not need to explain to you the difficulties we all experience during the Hallowed moons. Especially the Samhain moon. I never meant to cause you pain. I have always been disturbed by my lack of control that night.”
    “Oh, I am sure you have,” Legna hissed, fighting back the embarrassing sting of tears that threatened to overwhelm her. “How awful it must have been for you to realize you had defiled your wondrous ancientness with the kiss of an infant.”
    Legna pulled herself out of his hold, turning her back on him violently as the back of her hand tried to press back the sound of pain brewing behind her trembling lips. She lost her battle with her tears, shamed to feel them skid down her flushed cheeks.
    They had barely spoken of that night—a mere nine years back—mostly because Legna could hardly stay in the same room with Gideon for more than five minutes at a time. But much of their gap in communication was because Gideon had been in a self-imposed exile for the past eight years, driven there by his shame over having stalked a human female and being forced to face the humiliating justice of the Enforcer as a result. The incident with the human female had taken place the very next Samhain moon after the one that had caused the rift between Legna and Gideon. To Legna it had only served to add insult to injury, forcing a shameful pain upon her that magnified that of the original encounter.
    And she remembered that night, that moon, the entire incident as keenly as if it had happened five minutes ago.
    She had been restless that particular full moon, much in the way she had been feeling only recently. But as expected, on that Hallowed night it was intensified a thousandfold. She had been pacing the gardens, chilled by the clouds that drifted over the bright moon, waiting impatiently