Tempting Fate by Kerrigan Byrne (best free ereader .TXT) 📕

They’d once called him their master.

Clayton Honeycutt and Richard Smythe. Both of them skilled killers. Both of them Fauves before the organization had fallen apart upon his and Raphael’s “death.”

They hadn’t recognized him… until it had been too late.

Christ, what did this mean? Had all of this been about him the entire time?

Was Felicity in danger, not because of her inheritance, but because of his attachment to her?

Had someone followed him as he watched over her? And if so, why decide to strike now when he’d been “dead” for a year?

Gabriel stayed in London to make certain the last of the Fauves had been dismantled. To look for Marco. And to keep her safe.

Had Marco, the wily Spaniard, somehow figured out his identity?

Did her current nightmare exist only because of him?

Had he stolen whatever peace of mind she had left only for a kiss?

That kiss.

What a revelation. He’d known kissing was something people did every day without thought. That lovers and spouses and sweethearts indulged in the seemingly innocuous practice on a whim.

He’d always wanted, wondered, wished…

But he’d never imagined the potent enormity of the deed. That by capturing his mouth, a woman could possess his entire body. That the intimacy of shared breath and rapturous tastes might liquify his muscle to molten iron and turn his blood into honey.

Blood.

He looked from the sink in front of him as streaks of red crawled toward the drain, to his face in the mirror above it.

His face. He still didn’t recognize it. A man stared back at him, almost entirely whole and yet not any part of him as it should be.

His nose might have been aquiline if not for the ragged bone beneath. Eyes that didn’t quite match in size were shadowed by an eyebrow split by a scar.

The corner of his upper lip stitched together and healed into a slight divot, giving him an eternal appearance of cruel disdain.

It was easier, somehow, when he had looked like a fiend. When his features terrified others as effortlessly as his reputation.

When she’d fainted at the sight of him.

Easier, because he’d woken every day a monster, and surprised no one by doing monstrous things.

It seemed more honest. Man was often the worst kind of beast, and the most dangerous ones, he reckoned, were those who hid behind angelic features.

Gabriel wet the edge of another cloth and wiped at the grooves branching from his eyes, the crease of his nose and the brackets of his mouth. He dabbed at the cut below his hairline, barely worth the trouble.

The bleeding had stopped and revealed it was hardly more than a few layers of skin that’d decided to gush like a highland waterfall in spring.

Most of the blood he’d just rinsed from his hands hadn’t been his own.

And she’d witnessed the slaughter.

Poor Felicity had barely been able to look at him after, had retched up a few organs in response.

He closed his eyes for a long breath as a tide of regret swamped him.

Berating himself, Gabriel wrenched open his vest and released the top buttons of his shirt, pulling it aside to assess the damage done by Honeycutt’s knife.

Perhaps it was better this way, he conceded as he folded a towel and affixed it to his torso wound, applying firm pressure. Better she knew what he was capable of before anything else happened. Before he had the disastrous idea to hope for more than a kiss. To allow his thoughts and his hands to wander her body. To seek other experiences he’d thus been denied.

He’d never meant for that kiss to happen. But the moonlight and her scent, the feel of her in his arms as she led him in a graceful rhythm. Their bodies in some perfect, graceful sync. The glimmer of feminine appreciation in her eyes.

Her lips had sought him. She’d pressed that ghost of a caress against his mouth, and every tenuous chord he’d lashed to the final vestiges of his decency unraveled.

He’d remember the taste of her as long as he lived.

A knock on the door brought him from the mirror. The iodine, needle and thread he’d requested from the maids must have arrived.

Replacing a few buttons back over his chest, he pressed his forearm to his side to secure the makeshift bandage in place before opening the door.

Her nipples were hard.

It shouldn’t have been the first thing he noticed. Not when Felicity stood there in thin layers of high-necked cream satin and lace. She held the stitching implements he’d called for in one hand and a mystery tin in the other.

Thank God she couldn’t seem to bring herself to look at him, because it took a shameful moment to drag his own eyes away from the pebbled points peeking through her gown and wrapper.

Damn summer nightclothes for being so thin.

Damn his body for becoming hard as a diamond at the sight.

“What is it?” The question emerged harsher than he’d intended.

Though the scent of floral soap told him she’d washed, her hair remained dry, released from the braids of her coif and brushed into a glossy cloud of rioting fluff that fell in unruly waves past her shoulder blades.

“I was told you requested stitching, and wanted to… to check for myself that your head wound is not too serious,” she told the doorframe.

Touched by her concern, he reached for her medical offerings. “It’s nothing. It’s not even bleeding anymore.”

At that, she flicked a glance up at him from beneath her lashes before lifting her chin to properly look at him.

“Oh good.” Her shoulders peeled down from her ears. “No need for these then.” She brushed past him into the washroom, and discarded the needle and thread to the countertop. “I brought you a salve of honey, oregano, and goldenseal to protect it against infection.”

When he reached for the tin, she pulled it from his grasp. “Please, let me.”

“That’s not necessary.”

“It’s the least I can do since you were wounded in the line