Epilogue
The Morning After
Sunlight poured across the bed in honeyed stripes, warming the tangled, unhurried hush of the chamber.
Leticia stirred against her husband’s bare chest, solid, warm, familiar in ways that still made her heart skip with disbelief.
Gabriel murmured something low and sleepy, tightening his arms around her like he meant to keep her cuddled against his body forever.
“I was trying not to wake you,” she whispered against his collarbone.
“You failed,” he rumbled, his voice deep with sleep and satisfaction. “And now that you have, I cannot be held responsible for what happens next.”
She laughed, breathless and unashamed, and pressed her lips to the pulse beating just under his jaw. It leapt for her as if his heartbeat were the answer to her kiss.
“I am your wife,” she reminded him softly.
His hand curved over the slope of her hip, possessive and reverent all at once. “Best sentence in the English language.”
The star-ruby caught the morning light on her finger, warm against her skin beside her wedding ring. She turned her wrist slightly, tracing the edge of the stone with her fingertip. “I still cannot believe this is real.”
Gabriel tipped her chin so she had no choice but to meet his steady gaze. “Believe in this. I will love as long as I draw breath… and beyond it, if I am permitted.”
Tears slipped unbidden down her cheeks, and he brushed them away with his thumb, kissing the tracks where they had fallen.
“And,” he added with that wicked flicker she now recognized as her undoing, “I intend to begin showing you exactly how devoted I am the moment you finish breakfast.”
“Breakfast?” she repeated, amused.
A knock sounded at the door.
Kenworth’s voice floated through, dry as ever. “Begging your pardon, my lady, but victory eggs and ham have arrived on the tray. Shall I leave them at the door…or dare I risk entering?”
Leticia collapsed into Gabriel’s shoulder with a muffled laugh. “Victory eggs?”
Gabriel shrugged. “We won. Kenworth is sentimental when he thinks no one is looking.”
“Leave the tray,” Gabriel said, without looking away from her. “And go.”
“As you wish.” One could almost hear Kenworth smirking behind the panel.
When his footsteps faded, Gabriel gathered her beneath the sheets once more, his lips finding hers slowly, as though time itself had finally yielded to them.
But Leticia slipped away just enough to reach for the little page she had tucked on the bedside table, folded and worn already, though she had not yet dared to open it before. The letter Gabriel had pressed into her hand with the ring.
“You thought I would forget,” she teased, holding it aloft.
His arm fell across his eyes with a groan. “I hoped I could distract you.”
She smiled and smoothed the paper open. “You underestimate me.” Her voice softened as she read.
I have written you truths in shadows, in fear, in longing. But tonight, I write to you in joy.
You have been my secret and my solace. Now I would have you be my future.
I am, without condition or restraint, yours. Entirely.
Her eyes lifted from the page, shining. “Without condition or restraint,” she whispered. “Yours entirely.”
Gabriel caught her around the waist and rolled her against him, laughter low and unguarded. “I wrote that under duress.”
“Duress?” she echoed, wicked smile curving. “You’ll have to show me what kind.”
His answer was another kiss, deep enough to make the letter slip from her fingers and flutter onto the rings on the side table.
Perhaps they did.
For the first time in a brutal season, danger lay behind them, love beside them, and a lifetime of bright mornings ahead.
They began it, as all good adventures ought, with a kiss…and a promise that neither intended ever to break.
The End