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

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