Tempting Fate

by Kerrigan Byrne

  He’d never had a woman. Never been a lover.

  Never been loved.

  He was a weapon, and she was nothing of the sort.

  Everything said and left unsaid between them surged from her breath and broke on the barrier of the door. What would this conversation look like? When they were both so overwrought and frustrated by everything from desire to circumstance. Would he be kind, now that the lie was uncovered?

  Would he stay?

  She lowered her hand back to her side, calling herself nine shades of coward.

  Not tonight. If things went terribly between them, she’d not have the fortitude to withstand his rejection or abandonment.

  With a frustrated sigh, she slunk away to the stairs, heading down toward her father’s study across from her parlor in the front hall.

  There, in the extraordinarily masculine space, she used her lamplight to search through what little paperwork had been left in his enormous desk, deemed personal by the solicitors and accountants. If they’d not found anything of note in the more official documents, perhaps she could find a clue in the personal effects she hadn’t yet gotten around to sorting out.

  After more than an hour of reading records with financial or legal language she barely comprehended, she slid off her spectacles and rubbed at her tired eyes. All she had left were the household accounts. Opening that book, she squinted down at the tedious figures beneath her, written in her father’s decisive script.

  Here was his life in integers. In money, the thing he’d valued over his own family.

  With a wistful sort of resentment, she ran her fingers over the long sheet. Past payments for stable feed and servants’ salaries going back years. She found where he installed the broiler that now heated their running hot water, and her eyes bulged at the expense. She found her sisters’ allowances, and where they stopped when they’d each taken husbands without his consent.

  But what was this? Quarterly payments by banknote to an M.W. Goode at Fairhaven House, in a staggering amount.

  If Felicity had yearned for anything in her life, it’d been extended family.

  Her parents were both only children, so far as she knew, and neither of them had come from prolific stock. Had her father been helping some distant relative? Someone far more removed than even Bainbridge?

  Encouraged, she frantically went through several files, coming up with nothing. On a whim, she searched through all the drawers, shelves, and even his cigar box, finding them infuriatingly empty.

  Blowing out a faint curse on a frustrated breath, his bookshelf caught her eye.

  Of course. The family Bible. Her father had been a zealous man, perhaps M.W. Goode would be mentioned in the records of family births and deaths.

  She lifted it down, turning through centuries of names with no little amount of awe, finding no one with those particular initials.

  But an edge caught her attention, the outline of thick paper snared beneath the thin pages of gold-leafed scripture.

  Extracting it, she unfolded what happened to be a deed to an estate.

  Fairhaven House.

  Apparently, a modest manor with acreage on some benighted moor in the north. She could find no income from agriculture or tenants, which wasn’t at all like her father…

  So who was this M.W. Goode?

  Heavy boots landed at the bottom of the grand staircase and angled back toward the courtyard.

  Only one man in this household walked with that rhythm.

  And he was going out into the storm.

  Felicity abandoned her discovery as she dashed out the study and down the hall after Gabriel, her bare feet flying over the chilly marble floor.

  He was already halfway across the courtyard when she reached the threshold and threw open the door. “Gabriel, wait!” she called after him, gripping the frame and blinking against the mist blown in from the deluge, dotting her spectacles.

  He froze, massive shoulders hunched beneath the upturned collar of his coat. His fists remained locked in his pockets, and he made no move to face her.

  “Where are you going?”

  His chin touched his shoulder, revealing the strong profile of his visage. “I’m going to find Marco… or perhaps that solicitor, I haven’t decided yet.”

  “In the middle of the night? In this storm? It’s ludicrous.”

  “It’s the best time to scare the truth out of someone… or get rid of a body.”

  She held out a hand he couldn’t see, stepping forward beneath the eaves. “Don’t do that,” she entreated. “The solicitor was only doing his job.”

  “And I’m doing mine, the one you hired me for.”

  “No. This is not what our contract entailed.”

  “Our agreement is that I keep you safe,” he said over his shoulder before resuming his march toward the stables.

  “Then stay here and protect me!” she demanded in an authoritative voice she didn’t quite recognize as her own.

  He ignored her.

  “Please, Gabriel,” she resulted to begging. “Come inside. Wait until the storm passes, at least. You’ll catch your death. You must be freezing.”

  “No!” He whirled on her with such fury, she took a retreating step back into the house. Even from here, she could see his eyes were no longer grey, but molten quicksilver, snapping with unrestrained emotion.

  “No, dammit,” he snarled. “I’m not cold. I’m on fire. Do you understand? I have to escape this fucking house before I burn alive. Do you really expect me to sleep with only a wall separating us after—” The words died beneath a clash of thunder, but they each glanced toward the hothouse.

  He stood like a warrior before an advancing army, rather than a man against a much smaller, unarmed woman. Feet planted, fists and jaw clenched, nostrils flaring. Rain sluicing down the grooves and scars of his savage face like the tears of an angry god.

  Say something, Felicity ordered herself. Say something. Don’t be a coward.

  For some terrible reason, her jaw had locked shut.

  He deflated with one endless breath, lifting a hand to slick back the wet gathers of his hair. “Felicity… I was wrong to deceive you. I’m just… so damned sorry. Your family is here now, and Raphael will keep you safe while I hunt for the threat on your life. It is time— it’s better— that I go—”

  “I’m on fire too.” The words tripped from her mouth and fell into the gathering puddle between them.

  He didn’t blink. He didn’t breathe.

  And to her ultimate relief, he didn’t leave.

  “I’m on fire too,” she repeated, more breathlessly this time, as the visible vapor produced by the heat of her words reached out to him. “I… I want what you want.”

  He took one threatening step toward her, jabbing a finger in her direction. “You can’t even imagine what I want.”

  She stepped down again, on the thin line of dry cobbles beneath the eaves. “What if I could?”

  “Don’t.” He swiped a hand in the air as if to erase the sight of her. “Don’t follow me.” He turned and strode into the shadows between the courtyard gas lamps.

  In what might have been her first impulsive decision of her lifetime, Felicity plunged into the frigid downpour and ran to catch up with him.

  Seizing his arm with both hands, she spun him back to face her. “I’m not letting you leave like this,” she cried over the storm. “What if I never see you again?”

  Something in the grim set of his jaw told her that’s exactly what he had in mind.

  “Goddammit, Felicity, get inside where it’s warm.”

  The rain drenched her almost immediately, gathering her hair into soaking strings. Plastering her nightgown and wrapper to her skin.

  The drops stung, but she barely felt the pain.

  “Come with me,” she tugged again.

  His gaze dropped to her body for only a moment as she stood blinking against the drops that ran down the surface of her spectacles, obscuring some of his expression from her v
iew.

  Swearing in his native language, he shrugged her away, only to rip his coat down his shoulders and thrust it around hers. It engulfed so much of her, it might as well have been a cloak.

  “It’s not safe.” He jerked away once she was swaddled. “Don’t you understand? Thirty years. Thirty years I’ve never— I’m simply not meant for a girl like you.”

  “Woman,” Felicity corrected. “I’m a woman. I want you to acknowledge that, Gabriel Sauvageau. I am a woman, and just because I’m innocent does not mean that I am incapable of desire. Of understanding and expressing it just as well or better than you.”

  She swallowed as a familiar shy mortification crept into her cheeks, and she fought the instinct that screamed for her to sink into the coat and disappear.

  No more.

  She was tired of being invisible. Insignificant. Silent. If she didn’t say her piece now, she might never get another chance. “I— I think about you often. In that way. All the time, in fact. And… when I’m in a room with you, I can look at no other man. For none compare.”

  She ventured forward on feet threatening to go numb, encouraged by the answering color of his own drenched skin. “When other men gleam brilliantly in the light, I look for you in the shadows. I yearn to join you there. Because you are beautiful.”

  He whirled away from her, giving every indication of a stallion about to bolt.

  Rushing around him, she reached up and cupped either side of his jaw in her hands. Forcing him to face her, extraordinarily aware that he could toss her aside and disappear into the night should he take it in his mind to do so.

  It didn’t matter, she had to bare her heart to him or she’d never forgive herself.

  “I am not being kind,” she insisted, reading the admonishment in his eyes. “To me, you are the only creature worth looking at. Yours is the only body I want to discover. The only touch I’ve ever truly desired.”

  His nostrils flared.

  His jaw flexed and shifted beneath her hands, and his entire enormous frame shook as he stared over her shoulder at the door to Cresthaven.

  “I’m not like them,” he spoke in a tight whisper, barely audible over the rain. “I’m not like the men in your books.”

  “You are better,” she insisted, caressing at his scars with the tender pad of her thumb. “You are real.”

  Finally becoming a casualty to the cold, she shifted on her bare feet, the numbness giving way to pain as a violent shiver overtook her.

  He blinked down at her feet, then with several dark and foul curses, he swept her into his arms and carried her inside. He didn’t stop until he’d climbed all three flights of stairs and shouldered into her bedroom.

  Appointed in white and gold, the only other color in the room was that of the massive blue Persian rug in front of the fireplace. Gabriel took her there in three long strides, and she slid down his body as he set her on her feet before the roaring fire.

  It was like standing on a bed of pins and needles at first, and she gritted her teeth against chattering as he disappeared into the adjoining washroom.

  Working quickly, Felicity dashed the down coverlet from her bed and settled it before the fire. Then she shrugged out of his coat, peeled away her sopping wrapper and grappled with the buttons of her nightshift, struggling to tug it over her head in time to discard it before he returned.

  Naked, she turned and bent to stretch them on the warm stones of the hearth.

  Mrs. Pickering wouldn’t likely get to the wash soon, what with her maids gone, and she shouldn’t want them to go sour in the laundry basket.

  “Jesus fucking Christ.”

  The blasphemy was spoken like a prayer, and Felicity straightened and turned to find Gabriel in her doorframe, his eyes peeled wide in abject disbelief and two clean bath towels pooled at his feet where he’d dropped them.

  Still shivering, she stood as close as she dared to the fire, her hands tucked under her chin and one knee bent in modesty she was trying not to feel whilst attempting a seduction.

  “How thoughtful of you,” she prompted, offering him a shy smile.

  “Wha’? Oh.” He opened his hands as if surprised not to find the towels gripped there, and didn’t peel his gaze from her as he bent his knees and groped at the floor for the discarded offerings. Approaching her like he would a dangerous animal, he offered her one from as far a distance as his arm span would allow.

  When she took it, he retreated back to the door. “You don’t know what you’re doing,” he warned, valiantly trying, and failing, to avert his eyes.

  “You’re right,” she admitted as she took the towel and ran it down her shoulders and arms, her breasts, her belly, her thighs.

  His gaze followed her motions, his tongue moistening his lips as he drank in the sight of her with an odd expression of disbelief. Like a man who’d been walking for days in the desert and didn’t believe the oasis in front of him to be anything other than a mirage.

  Unused to such a vulnerable silence, Felicity cleared a gather of nerves from her throat. “You see, I haven’t the first idea what I’m doing, but… I was hoping, if you were to see me like this, you’d forget all the reasons you shouldn’t make love to me.”

  He blinked. Twice.

  A muscle in his hand twitched. As did one in his neck.

  Then he was simultaneously advancing upon her and rending both his shirt and vest down the front.

  Buttons made little plinking noises as they scattered across the floor in chaotic directions. He peeled the sleeves from his shoulders and abandoned the wet shirt to the carpet.

  Before she could take in a proper look at him, he’d engulfed her in his arms and claimed her mouth with a kiss more primal and potent than any described in the written word thus far.

  He besieged her with his lust, thrusting his tongue past the barrier of her lips with a wet, demanding glide. Caressing and tasting, he explored the recesses of her mouth in deep, drugging strokes.

  The top layer of his skin was still damp and chilled, but the inferno beneath threatened to immolate her in the conflagration of his unsatisfied lust.

  She would be a willing sacrifice to such a blaze.

  “I want to look at you.” He broke the kiss to make the husky confession. “You’re so fucking beautiful. Every inch of you. But I can’t seem to let you go.”

  Placing her hands on his chest, she peeled away from his flesh with reluctance mirroring his own. “I want to look at you, too,” she replied from behind lowered lashes. “Perhaps while you discard your trousers and boots, we can become familiar with the sight of each other. And then… we can familiarize ourselves in other ways.”

  He shook his head, and it took a moment for Felicity to realize it wasn’t in rejection of her suggestion, but in incredulity. “A man’s body is nothing but a utility, whereas you…” He seemed to lose his ability to speak.

  “I want to see,” she gently insisted, stepping out of the circle of his arms.

  His gaze devoured her as his hands fell to his waistband. Felicity found it rather lovely that he didn’t simply stare at her breasts and the thatch of gold between her thighs. Other parts of her seemed to snag his notice. The curve of her shoulder, the dip of her waist, her feet, and her hips.

  That wasn’t to say his eyes didn’t darken with dangerous storms when they devoured the most private parts of her.

  Finished with his buttons, he bent to remove his boots, and Felicity, in kind, hungrily viewed the bunches and planes of his shoulders, the chords of his neck, the ropes and knots of his insanely muscled arms.

  Pushing his trousers and underthings down in one motion, he stepped out of them and straightened, standing before her with nothing but the firelight flickering off his magnificence.

  All moisture deserted her mouth as his sex, already heavy and large, thickened right before her eyes, swelling against veins and smooth skin.

  Swallowing profusely, she did her best to tamp down on a surge of concern. She could think of n
o place in her body where that could possibly fit.

  He’d been wrong about men, though.

  At least about himself.

  Never in her life had she looked upon something and been so thoroughly affected. Not the art at the Louvre, or the plethora of other monuments made by man or nature.

  Gabriel Sauvageau was certainly built with the perfection and precision of the most ingenious of machinery. He rippled with strength, and radiated masculinity.

  Every single part of him was so large. So undoubtedly male. His thighs, thick with the divots and swells of detailed muscle. His torso, ribbed and grooved with sinew and strength.

  But what truly transfixed her was the art he’d carved into his own skin, often covering scars beneath.

  The wary suspicion haunting his eyes moved her as she floated toward him, her hands reaching out to splay across the veritable mounds of his chest. She loved the dichotomy of crisp yet silken hair beneath her smooth palms.

  Not a word was spoken as she smoothed her hands up over the mountains of his shoulders and down the slopes of his arms. He stood passively— if not patiently— allowing her to inspect a tattoo she liked, or trail her finger along a scar.

  She’d ask about them someday. Each one. When they’d become more comfortable like this. When the uncertainty had given over to trust.

  It was cruel to other men, she decided, that one such as he should exist. He was Achilles in a field of Greeks. Some of them heroes, some of them even demigods, perhaps.

  And not one with the slightest hope of comparing to him.

  “You can touch me, too, if you like,” she offered with a bashful flutter of her lashes.

  His hands curled to fists at his sides. “Not yet,” he said through clenched teeth. “I’m not… in control.”

  She made a sympathetic sound, wondering if arousal was different for men and women. Because, for the first time in her entire life, she felt nothing less than powerful. It was a strong word, but she hadn’t another one in her repertoire.

  Fear didn’t belong in this place, because he’d chased it away. Of course, she fought a bit of self-conscious uncertainty and her innate shyness and modesty.

  But no courage was necessary, because she was truly unafraid. In control. She held this beast of a man beneath a spell, and before the night was through, they’d belong to each other.