Epilogue
Luna, six months later
“ You have a shield around your heart and I’ve wanted to shatter it into pieces from the first night we met.” Voss links his hands together at the base of my back and pulls me in until our bodies are fully flush from breasts to knees. It’s my favorite place to be. His hard arousal presses into my midriff and is a sinful tease of what is coming. But his words are just as alluring.
“Mm,” I moan. “You know how I love a man with a smooth tongue.”
He places a kiss to the tip of my nose before moving to my neck. I cradle him close allowing myself to be in the moment and not worry all the time. There is no need to rush to one of my shitty jobs. There’s no need to panic-call the hospital over a due bill or worry about the ones on the way in the coming months. I push my fingers through his soft hair, our body heat twining together.
“Please go on, lover. What would you do after you break this shield you speak of? Would my heart be safe in your care? Or are you a roguish brute who wants to ravish me and then fade into the sunset?” I know what he is going to say, but there is a selfish part of me that needs to hear the words.
Voss’ warm laugh is low and rumbles over my senses. “No, my jungle flower. I’ll never grow tired of ravishing you. When all those jagged edges are broken and fallen away, I want to wrap my love around your heart and make you whole again. Protected. You’ll never be alone again for as long as I live.”
“We, brother. We want to make you whole again. And for as long as we live.”
Shayne leaves me in Voss’s arms as he comes to stand at my right. He silently lowers his lips to mine, never taking his eyes off me. Our breath mingles. His touch to my cheek is gentle and completely contrasts the ferocious hunger in his eyes.
To my left Jasper reaches over and stops the elevator mid-lift to the thirty-seventh floor of the Centennial.
I turn my eyes to him to find his usual scowl nowhere in sight. In its place is a look of love and awe. The night I stole their diamonds I set all of us on a new path. We spent that night in their apartment a few floors below The Gilded Key Society talking and making love until long after sunrise.
I told them everything about me and my sister and they told me everything my father said about us. I spent a lot of time thinking my father loved me and my sister, but wished he could have had sons. Apparently, I was wrong. He wanted his girls to be as far away from the life he led as possible.
He wanted to give us normal lives and worked endlessly to make that happen. Sadly, he didn’t have the chance before he was taken away from us all.
“Make no mistake, my little moon. You’ve given us something we didn’t know we were missing. You’ve entrusted us with your body. If you give us your heart, I will personally pick each jagged piece of that shield off the floor and one by one put it back together with so much love it will blend with your blood and with every beat of your heart you will feel the devotion and love I have for you.”
“That we have for you,” Shayne interjects.
“All of us want to be the ones to love you, protect you and cherish you.”
Shayne and Voss hold me in their arms and brush at the tears their words caused.
“Don’t cry, baby.” Voss kisses a falling teardrop away.
“They are only tears of happiness. I promise.”
They each pull rings out of their pockets.
“What’s this?” My heart beats erratically when Jasper is the first to take my left hand. He goes to one knee and the others follow.
“Are those the loose diamonds? I thought you sold them?”
“We had a better idea.”
That is Shayne. He holds his ring up and the others do the same. I mean it when I say these three share a brain link.
“Will you marry us? I can’t think of my life without you in it.”
“Nor can I,” Jasper husks with tears in his eyes. Forget my heart beating a hole through my chest. It seizes up from the palpable amount of emotions pouring out of him and his brothers.
Voss gently takes my hand from his brother and is the first to slip a gold ring onto my finger. His face shimmers behind the wall of tears in my eyes.
“Marry us, jungle flower.”
“Be our tigress until the day we die.”
“Our little moon.”
All three slide their rings onto my finger, taking my answer from the way I’m frantically nodding my head.
All three unite seamlessly together to form a gold band of three diamonds—one for each brother.
“Yes,” I finally manage in a quivering voice. I swallow and fight to put some power behind the word when I speak again. “Yes!” I say and this time I don’t fight the tears. I let them fall knowing every drop is made of the love I have for these men.
Jasper moves in and I'm in his arms being cradled to his chest. I lay my head down, pressing my ear over his heart. It beats steadily, feeding into my soul.
“I trust you and I love you. All of you,” I whisper between all of us. “I trust you with my heart, my soul and my life. Please treasure it as I treasure yours.” I look between the three of them, more tears in my eyes. I don’t understand how the Universe knew I needed these three men in my life, but here we are. The four of us are looking to make a life together traveling the world doing our thing. Yeah, you can’t change the stripes on these tigers. Their reputation has grown to the point we can go to any city from here to London and their special kind of skill set is sought after. As fences and ad key masters.
“Forever. Take that to heart.” Jasper’s warm lips on mine feel like he’s sealed our union with love that will last for exactly that—forever.
The brothers share me with each other, kissing, loving and whispering all the dirty things they are going to do to me tonight in celebration of our engagement.
As for me joining the Belladonnas? The option is still on the table, but not right now. Ivy promised to save me a spot for when I’m ready and to prove she’s on my side, she gave me the list for Harlon.
On the flip side, Jasper is working hard to convince me to work exclusively with them. He’s got a point. It’s easier to sell items than steal them. Besides, now they are going to be my husbands.
Voss and Shayne have proven working with them comes with a lot of benefits, too.
A foolproof health plan for one. They helped me with my sister’s treatments as they promised and she’s already showing significant improvement with the new drugs. The doctors are hopeful she’ll go into remission. Stage one breast cancer hit out of nowhere and nearly took us by surprise. Every single day I get to look into her eyes and be thankful she’s still here with us. She’s younger than me and neither of us thought we needed to worry about that kind of disease so early in our lives. It’s how our mom died, but she was already in her early fifties.
Stella nor I ever thought it could happen to either of us so soon in life.
Oh, boy did Stella and I learn a lot in a very short amount of time. Our mom never wanted to talk about it so Stella and I had to do a lot of learning together. With the hope the doctors have given, who knows. Maybe by this time next fall she could be the one falling in love and that would truly be the greatest gift of my life.
There’s another lesson I learned. Love is a gift not everyone finds. I’m going to cherish mine until the day my time is up.
The other benefits of working with the Ambrose brothers is having full access to them all hours of the day and for the last six months that has been morning, noon and night. I’m not even exaggerating. Jasper wants to put a baby in me and the other two have the same thoughts.
I’ve told them time and time again, I’m ready to be fat and eat ice cream all day. Just kidding on the ice cream bit, but I can’t wait to cradle our children in my arms and grow our family.
As for my men’s roles as key masters for the Society?
I’m biding my time. They’ve talked about making me one of them, but right now I want us to build trust. I meant what I said. I trust them with all of me, but we started out with me stealing from them. I need to make sure they know I am with them for who they are, not what they can do for me.
They say they already know that, but I need to make sure they know with their hearts, not just their minds.
The right time will come and when it does, I will step in beside them and help build empires. But first, I want to build ours and right now, we’re headed back to the Society. If we are lucky, we’ll get the same room again. I have new ideas and this time they will be the ones tied up.
T hank you for reading Gilded Touches!