Tempting Fate

by Kerrigan Byrne

  Unable to stop himself, he pressed his lips beneath her jaw and tasted the rich flavor of her skin. Soap and salt and something sweeter. Something undeniably Felicity.

  In that moment, Gabriel knew he had to taste all of her before he would ever be satisfied.

  Every inch.

  He didn’t know what he expected to find between her thighs, but these pleats of moist heat were better than anything his imagination conjured. To press his cock here, to locate the source of the wetness—

  Felicity’s fingers became gentle claws, scoring their way over the quivering ridges of his abdomen only to stop at the barrier of his waistband.

  Every thought he had deserted him like a flock of scattered birds at the shot of a rifle.

  She slipped a finger beneath his waistband, pulling his hips closer, drawing his body against hers as she arched up for another kiss.

  Those curious, devious hands ventured down the placket of buttons, finding the turgid ridge of his sex aching to reach her.

  At her first caress, his palms slammed to the shelf on both sides of her, holding the weight that his knees could no longer support.

  “It’s… so thick,” she marveled in his ear.

  Her testing of the length and girth of him only produced strangled, desperate sounds from his throat, as he fought not to unman himself right there.

  “Am I hurting you?” she fretted.

  He shook his head, and that seemed to embolden her to attempt to grip him.

  “Christ. Jesus. Fuck.”

  He should be ashamed of his blasphemy in her presence, but it exploded from him in helpless bursts.

  “What does it feel like?” Her hot breath was an erotic torment on his neck.

  “There aren’t… words.”

  “Not even one?” she pleaded.

  He searched through the cavern of his mind, swimming through lust-addled thoughts. “Sharp but aching… throbbing. Needing…” His words dissolved into a breathless groan.

  “I felt that too,” she admitted shyly. “Is intimacy always like this? So powerful?”

  “I— I don’t—” His forehead fell to her shoulder. He couldn’t take much more of this.

  “May I touch you?” She fiddled with the placket of his trousers, releasing a few buttons, apparently confident of his reply. “Your skin? Your—”

  “God, yes.”

  Her legs opened wider, and she released one hand from his trousers to pull the hem of her nightshift higher. “Will you touch me? As you did before?”

  This couldn’t be happening. It was like some sort of fantastical dream come to life.

  His hand fell to her bare knee and inched higher, discovering the especially delicate skin on the inside of her slim thigh.

  Just as Gabriel was about to start believing in God again, a carriage careened into the courtyard with a thunderous crash. It pulled to a stop next to the stables, just short of the greenhouse.

  Gabriel jumped back, securing his trousers and shirt while she belted her wrapper, gritting out every foul word he knew.

  He retrieved the pistol and gripped it with easy confidence, as he threw her nightshift over her knees, lifted her from the bench, and shoved her behind him.

  From between rows of lush greenery, Gabriel watched a tall form leap out of the carriage, and he aimed at the center of the broad chest with the barrel of his gun.

  He would happily shoot the interloper for the interruption alone.

  To his surprise, the man reached back into the carriage to collect something.

  Or someone.

  Out stepped a woman dressed in a smart tweed traveling kit, her hair gleaming gold in the lanternlight of the coach.

  A woman identical to the one behind him.

  “Mercy!” Felicity lunged around him, threw open the doors of the glasshouse, and dashed for her rather astounded identical twin. “My God, you’re here! You’re really back!”

  “Felicity!” Upon recognition, her twin’s face crumbled as she picked up her skirt and ran forward. They collapsed, sobbing, against one another, speaking in strange, weeping gibberish not even the most talented of linguists could have deciphered.

  Uncocking his pistol, Gabriel tucked it into the back of his trousers and finished buttoning his shirt to his throat, glad it was long enough to cover his deflating erection.

  “What are you doing back?” Felicity asked, the sisters seeming unable to release each other, even as they levered away slightly to take in the identical image before them. “And at this hour? Is everything all right?”

  Mercy squeezed her and planted a hasty kiss on her cheek. “I know we got in on the late train, but I simply couldn’t stand to be away from you a moment longer. Besides, I received a letter from Morley stating that he’d made it safe for us to return and— Felicity, who is this?”

  Mercy narrowed her eyes at Gabriel as he ducked out of the greenhouse, her quick mind making the correct assumptions that drew the corners of her lips lower and lower.

  Felicity brightened, despite a blush creeping over her cheeks. “Oh, this is—”

  “Gabriel?” Raphael’s incredulous voice both elated and destroyed him.

  His beloved brother had returned to him.

  And because of that, it was all over.

  Lean and satirically handsome, Raphael sported duskier skin and incrementally lighter hair than when he’d left. But that wasn’t the most obvious change.

  He seemed relaxed. Happy. It glowed from him as if even the dull English weather couldn’t dim whatever sunlight he’d absorbed in paradise.

  Because paradise traveled with him in the form of his wife.

  “Gabriel, my God, it’s you!” Raphael came to him in long strides, seizing him in a strong, backslapping hug. One he could do nothing but return. The assessment his brother gave his features filled him with trepidation.

  “You look incroyable.” His brother had been the only human who’d meant anything to him.

  Until her.

  “What is the matter, mon frere? You are not happy to see me?” Raphael nudged him. “Don’t tell me you—”

  “Gabriel?” Felicity pronounced his name— his real name— in the French accent his brother had used before she switched back to her own English translation of the word. “As in… Gabriel Sauvageau?”

  A lump too large to swallow formed in his throat.

  “What is my brother doing—?” Raphael turned to Felicity, and one glance at her expression wiped the smile from his lips and drew the color from his face.

  Felicity answered no one, looking only at him. “Not… Gareth Severand?”

  As if aware he’d stepped into a pile of excrement while wearing the wrong shoe, Raphael quickly did his best to cover his tracks. “Well, we’ve the papers, n’est-ce pas? New identities to keep the police and our enemies unaware of our existence. I’m Remy Severand, for example.”

  “You still didn’t know?” Mercy’s mouth dropped open.

  “I didn’t recognize him…” Felicity adjusted her spectacles, staring at him as if he’d become a stranger.

  Or a monster.

  “Well, look, he’s almost handsome now.” Raphael gripped both of his shoulders, standing before him to study the work he’d had done. “Christ, man, that Titus Conleith is a bloody genius.”

  “Titus did this?” Felicity’s voice climbed an octave higher and a decibel louder. “He— he told me you had died. That you’d been shot saving me.”

  “I know.” The condemnation in her eyes felt like a nail in Gabriel’s coffin. One he was ready to craft right now and climb into, just to avoid that look of betrayal. “And every word Titus told you was the truth. He simply… omitted that I’d survived the ordeal.”

  Mercy clutched her tighter. “Morley decided it was safer, darling, the fewer people who knew about Gabriel’s survival, for the time being. And when the information was deemed safe, our parents had that dreadful accident and everything was chaos. Right after that settled somewhat, Nora broke
the news of her pregnancy and… well… Gabriel was supposed to have left the country by now.” She shot him a withering glare. “None of us knew his existence would mean a jot to you, nor that you would end up so scantily clad with him in the middle of the night.”

  Felicity wrenched away from her sister, her fists balled tight and her face breaking out in a bloom of angry red. “I was the only one of you who didn’t know? You— my own twin sister! My closest confidant. You kept it from me?”

  “Only to protect you,” Gabriel blurted, suddenly able to crawl out of the tar pit of guilt that’d nearly dragged him under.

  She whirled on him. “I don’t need protection.”

  He pressed his lips closed, knowing that now wasn’t the time to disagree.

  Her expression flattened as she crossed her arms over her chest. “I realize I hired you for your protection physically. But I don’t need to be protected from information, is what I meant.”

  “But, Felicity.” Mercy stepped forward, her hands reaching out in a penitent gesture. “You’d just been through something so traumatizing. The fire at the Midnight Masquerade. Being shot at, kidnapped, and attacked. The subsequent head wound. We didn’t want to burden your delicate constitution with anything that might add to your fear.”

  Gabriel wished she’d yell. That she’d lose her temper and throw things, berate and abuse them; it was what he deserved. Instead, her shoulders sagged and bitter tears sprang to her eyes.

  “I know I am always afraid,” she said in a voice all the more devastating for its softness. “But that doesn’t mean I cannot be brave. I fear the unknown most of all. It is a cruelty to keep me in the dark. I thought you knew that, Mercy.”

  She whirled away from her sister before she had to endure an explanation or an apology, pinning Gabriel with her pain.

  “I— I mourned you.” She shook her head as if she couldn’t believe it. “I planted a flower for you in there, and tended it in your name. What a gullible, infantile fool you must think I am. A complete idiot.”

  He stepped forward. “Felicity, I—”

  “How did I not know? Where is your accent?”

  Deflating, he decided that from there on out, he’d never again tell her a lie. “I practiced an English accent while I was recovering from all the surgeries… I couldn’t sound like myself if my identity were to change.”

  She nodded as if she understood, though the look of pure misery threatened to crush him into the dirt before she covered her face with her hands in mortification. “We would have… You were going to… And I didn’t even know your real name.”

  “Felicity…” He reached for her, but she shrank away.

  “I can’t look at you. At any of you…” She shoved past him, fleeing into the house.

  All three of them flinched as the door clicked shut. She’d not even slammed it. It wasn’t her way.

  Something inside of Gabriel hollowed out. His life had been a slog through so much gore and horror and inhumanity. People had been afraid of him, spat at him, humiliated and reviled him.

  But not until today had he ever felt small.

  Raphael stepped up to stand shoulder to shoulder with him. “What are you doing here, Gabriel? With her?”

  Mercy marched around to face them both, looking like a furious school mistress. “Are you lovers?” she demanded, her eyes sweeping over his state of dishabille.

  Gabriel was not in the habit of explaining himself, but in this case, he knew one was owed. “We are not lovers.”

  “That’s not what it looks like.”

  “We kissed, that is all.”

  “What did she mean about protection?”

  Right, her letter would not have reached them in Iceland, if they’d decided to sail home.

  “Someone left a threatening letter in the house, and she was accosted in the streets a few weeks ago, so she hired me— well, Gareth Severand— as a personal guard.”

  “Who accosted her?” Increasingly distressed, Mercy paced this way and that. “Who sent the letter? What did it say? No one knew of this!”

  Gabriel sprang to her defense. “She wrote to Reykjavík to tell you. But Sir and Lady Morley were in France, and she didn’t want to visit her troubles on Conleith and his wife, who I understand is suffering a difficult pregnancy. So, while she was left to her own devices by her family, to select a husband from the twats in the ton, she put an advertisement in the paper through a security service.”

  “And you answered it?” Raphael asked quietly, understanding dawning in his eyes. “To protect her.”

  Gabriel dragged a hand over his tense features. “I was— in the neighborhood and she assumed I was one of the applicants. She hired me on sight, but she did not recognize me. I… thought it would be safer if I did not divulge my identity.”

  “Safer for whom, exactly?” Mercy snapped.

  “My plan was to leave when I— removed the threat, and she’d be none the wiser.” He sent Raphael a grave look. “We were attacked last week at a ball. I… I fought Honeycutt and Smythe.”

  “You gutted them, I hope.” Mercy sliced right through his attempt at discretion for her sake.

  “I crushed them, and we were long gone before questions were asked. No one would even look in Felicity’s direction.”

  “You don’t think Marco is sending old Fauves after you?” Raphael queried.

  “I don’t see how.” Gabriel blew out a breath. “But I’ve been wondering the same thing. If he didn’t before, he might now, as I’ve made a few inquiries. I refuse to sit and wait for the next attack. I’ll bring the war to him, if that is the case.”

  Raphael shook his head, squeezing at tension in the back of his neck. “How would Marco Villanueve even know we’re alive, let alone that you’ve been watching Felicity?”

  “What do you mean watching her?” Mercy’s eyes narrowed on her husband, then turned on Gabriel, flaring with temper. “In the area, were you? Have you had designs on Felicity all this time? Have you been lurking about, waiting for the chance to swoop in on her affections and seduce a sweet, vulnerable, romantic girl who is obviously much too young for you—”

  “Mercy…” Raphael caught her hand and brought it to his lips. “Please.”

  “No, no!” She snatched her hand back and shook a furious fist at both of them as they stood before her diminutive frame like enormous, scolded boys. “Felicity knows nothing of men but what she reads in those damned books, aside from our overbearing father, who made her feel like her very existence was a mistake. He belittled and berated her because of her clumsiness as a child. And when it was discovered she was good as blind, we all sheltered her because she couldn’t see when danger was coming at her. She’d never see you coming for her until you owned her gentle heart. You were her first kiss, I hope you realize. The first man she let into this house alone. And you deceived her. A woman’s heart doesn’t forget that.”

  “I know.” Gabriel stood and let her truth batter against him. It was what he deserved, what he’d wished Felicity had said and done.

  “I’m going to go check on her,” she announced.

  Her husband reached for her hand and gave her a gentle tug before she could storm away. “Let me, mon chaton?”

  “Why would I? You’re a man. Don’t think that this isn’t somehow also your fault.” She waggled a finger at him.

  “It’s all of our faults…” Gabriel muttered, seizing their attention. “Felicity is right, you know. We never should have lied to her. I thought to protect her, but I realize that was a high-handed, devious, self-serving thing to do.”

  “Mercy,” Raphael said with a bit more fervency this time. “My brother never had designs on your sister, he had feelings for her. Always. Since the night we all met.”

  Mercy’s mouth clamped shut. Fell open. Then shut again. She blinked at him as if she needed a moment to reassess her view of the entire situation.

  Raphael’s knuckles grazed his wife’s jaw. “Please, darling. Go get comfortable an
d cleaned up from your travels and allow me to talk to your sister. Trust me. I know a thing or two about calming a distraught Goode girl.”

  She snorted, but relented. “If you upset her further or make her cry, I’ll hang you both by your bootstraps and decapitate anyone who dares try to cut you down.”

  Raphael watched as Mercy marched to the ornate courtyard entrance, her skirt swishing in angry little motions behind her. “I adore her vicious threats. She’d have made an excellent crime lord, don’t you think?”

  Gabriel let out a low whistle of agreement. “She’d have been the most ruthless the underworld has yet seen.”

  “Do not worry, mon frere.” Raphael put his hand on Gabriel’s shoulder, and the weight comforted him mightily. “We will put this to rights.”

  “I should go to her,” Gabriel said. “It’s my apology she deserves first and foremost. She should take anger out on me.”

  “Gabriel.” His brother turned to him, searched his face as if he still couldn’t believe it. “I have some things to say to her that need to be said. The woman said she did not want to see you, and… at least for tonight, I think you should respect that.”

  Gabriel nodded. “You’re right.”

  “Get a drink, yes? You look like you need one.” Raphael sauntered into the house with his signature loose-limbed confidence, leaving him alone.

  An abysmal shame and agony welled up from so deep within, Gabriel whirled and put his fist through one of the panes of the greenhouse, shattering it beneath the blow.

  Feeling only nominally better, he inspected the damage to his fist, which was astonishingly minimal. Only a few small cuts and barely a drop of blood. He stretched the skin with a curl of his fingers, testing it, ripping it further. Needing some sort of pain to ground him back into his body.

  This was why he didn’t belong with Felicity Goode. Because she wanted a gentle palm in which to place her tender heart.

  And he only knew how to make a fist.

  Chapter 13

  Felicity paced the room, shaking with every elemental emotion. First with the hot lance of anger, then with the whirlwind of shame for that anger. Thereafter, the scorched earth was flooded by hurt and then buried beneath humiliation.