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

her perfect features from view, and he wanted more than anything to see her response.

God, he hadn’t even asked her what she wanted. He’d just claimed her like some bloody barbarian marauder claimed his spoils of war.

But she had to know she was so much more than that.

Sharing a bed was a great deal different than sharing a life, and the mention of it that morning had been hanging like the sword of Damocles over his head all day.

Because he’d wanted it so much, and knew she’d made other decisions already.

They’d never spoken of what a future between them might look like… but he’d been in love with her since the first night she’d reluctantly assisted Honoria Goode with the clandestine mission that’d brought them into each other’s lives.

Raphael had also been struck by Mercy at the beginning, but Gabriel…

He’d been devastated by Felicity.

She’d been his in his heart, his imagination, his every decision since that day.

He knew it was pathetic, and he didn’t give a dusty fuck.

He lived and died by her word.

Raphael stepped forward, his eyes both cautious and contrite. “Gabriel… you cannot just announce that—”

“Let him speak.” Felicity shouldered through Titus and Morley, attracting all attention in the room.

A spark ignited in his chest. One he’d thought had been extinguished forever.

Hope.

In that moment, everyone else in the room disappeared.

“Felicity. Even though I lied to you about my name, I was honest when I said I’d only known violence. I’d thought people were only capable of malice and greed, cruelty and guile.”

Lifting a hand, he caressed her cheek with the backs of his scarred knuckles. “But your goodness— your light— it beckons me. It humbles me. It makes me want to twist myself into you. To tear the parts of myself away that offend you and see them crushed beneath the heel of your boot so that I might weave something better into my tattered soul.”

Her mouth dropped open, but he forged ahead, needing to spill his entire heart before she either accepted or condemned him.

“I’m in love with you,” he blurted. “I wish I could undo all the evil that I’ve done for your sake. I have been a liar and a thief. I am a bastard in every sense of the word. But my feelings for you are the truest thing in me. They are… the sweetest, most tender kind of violence because they have broken me down and shattered everything I thought was the truth.

“I know I said that you were mine but… I don’t want to possess you.” He held up his hand. “No, that’s not true. I can’t help but ache to make you mine. Because you are mine. Even if you decide that this isn’t to be. My heart. My body. My protection. My life. It’s yours. I am yours. Even if you gave your future to another. You are still mine, because you are a part of me. The only part of me I can stand.”

When he looked up, she was not the only Goode sister with tears streaming down her cheeks.

She covered his hand with hers, turning her cheek into his palm and pressing a gentle kiss to the pads beneath his fingers. “Gabriel. Your past doesn’t matter to me. I don’t care what man you were. Only the one you are now. The one you will choose to be.”

He stepped closer, his eagerness too apparent. “I could be good, if you taught me how.”

“She’s the only Goode sister who actually deserves the designation,” one of the men said in a caustic tone.

Prudence slapped her husband’s arm and a chuckle washed the room of some of its gravitas.

Gabriel gathered her hands in his own, and did something he’d never done for man nor God in his entire life.

He knelt. “Marry me? I have no title to offer you—”

“But he’s as rich as Midas,” Raphael interjected helpfully.

Gabriel shot his brother a withering look. “If you do not mind that I cannot make you a lady, that we will belong in very few ballrooms, I’ll do my best to give you a good life. I’ll treat you like a queen. I’ll worship you like a goddess. Even though I am broken, I—”

Felicity astonished him by sinking down with him. “You are not broken… you are beautiful,” she insisted. “You have become everything to me in such a short time, my entire world seems filled with you.” Her lashes swept down as he held his breath, waiting for the answer she seemed ready to give.

“I… only feel safe when I’m with you. But I don’t need you to worship me, Gabriel, I don’t want to fall off this pedestal I’m on. Because, I’m the broken one. And I have no real reason to be. My fretting will drive you mad, if my snoring doesn’t first. I have those fits— those spasms of helpless terror that make no sense and reduce me to nothing without warning. My greatest enemy is often my own mind, the one thing you can’t protect me from.”

“But I can,” he interjected. “I will. I will hold you when you’re terrified. I’ll remind you that you’re safe. I’ll help you battle your nightmares, and I’ll dig in the garden next to you until they abate. I’ll face the world when you cannot. Because, Felicity, the only thing I fear is living a life without you in it.”

He couldn’t say if he bent to her or she surged up to him, but their lips met in an ecstatic clash, their arms encircled each other with the exuberance of two people finding treasure they’d never even dreamed to possess.

When Gabriel had decided that his heart couldn’t expand beyond his encompassing love for the woman in his arms.

He opened his eyes and looked across the room and realized immediately how mistaken he was.

Because he’d have to make room for the entire Goode family.

His family.

Epilogue

Felicity woke Christmas morning vibrating with the anticipation of a child. Cosseted in her sleeping