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“Gabriel,” he said, a small smile lighting his face. “My name is Gabriel.” Like the angel? No wonder I’d thought he didn’t belong here.
For the bare glimmer of a moment, it made me feel as if he saw more in me than just the piece of ass all the other men who came to this club viewed me as.
“I was thinking you didn’t belong here.” And I’d been right. He paused, his expression enigmatic as his eyes moved over my face. “Huh. Funny,” he finally murmured. “I was thinking the very same thing about you.”
Something about her…called to me. Something that had nothing at all to do with her skimpy outfit or overt sexuality. Something that had nothing to do with the reason I was there in the first place.
You can find hope in the strangest of places, in the darkest of corners. Clutch it close, my darling. It’s yours and no one else’s. Lemon Fair, the Queen of Meringue
God, she was beautiful. Too beautiful for this room. Too beautiful for this place.
surprised me to notice at all. Somewhere along the line, men’s bodies had all started looking the same to me. Fat, skinny, well built…what did it matter? They all used them the same way: to inflict pain on others, and to take pleasure for themselves.
He brought his hand up and presented a small bouquet of white flowers, holding them out to me. “I brought these for you.”
Maybe he was the safest man on the planet.
“I don’t want anyone else except you. You are the right girl. Please.”
Sometimes we wore such hurtful, limiting labels in this life, whether they’d been assigned by others or by ourselves. I’d felt damaged and ruined once, but I didn’t anymore. I was still a work in progress, but I wasn’t a victim. I was a survivor.
When you can’t figure out what to do, Racer, you go with your gut. You might not be right every time, but you’ll never regret following your own heart, especially one as pure as yours.
“I’m not giving up on you. I’m coming back.”
“It’s not the things you do with love and good intentions that you end up regretting. It’s the things you don’t do that you have to live with.
“I made my pick. You.”
Shh, darling. I know it hurts, but your body knows how to heal. And so does your heart. Lemon Fair, the Queen of Meringue
Do what you can with what you have, even if it’s not very much at all. Racer, the Knight of Sparrows
“You have hands for creating beauty,” I murmured. The words had fallen from my lips before I’d considered them. And yet, I realized how true they were. Gabriel’s gaze rose to mine, those warm hazel eyes soft and full of some type of knowing. “I don’t create beauty, Eloise, I just reveal what’s already there.”
Hold on, hold on. The sun shines for you, too. Shadow, the Baron of Wishbone
She looked like a broken goddess, and if I knew how to paint, I’d want to paint her, to capture all her shadows and light.
“I hope…that if we see each other naked again, it won’t be a job, or an accident. It will be because we both want it, and because it means something.”
Don’t stop yourself from dreaming. Dreams are what keep our hearts alive. Lemon Fair, the Queen of Meringue
“Oh no, Ellie. The way he looks at you is many things, but friendly is not one of them. He has feelings for you. And if that man has feelings for you, you must be someone very special.”
The mind is such a fascinating thing—and there are always so many variables. I could discuss psychology all day long.”
Our hands linked together in a way that made me feel we’d been created together, that every part of his body might contain a place just for me, a place I’d fit like no other. As if we’d been sculpted with the other in mind.
“You women cooked. We men will clean.”
Told them you only throw a punch for two reasons: if someone hits you first, or to protect the honor of a woman.”
don’t mind chasing you, Ellie. Just let me catch you once in a while.”
Because Ellie’s mine. Not to possess. But to love.
My love for Ellie felt like a breath of life inside of me.
You were given this pain because you’re strong enough to endure it. Shadow, the Baron of Wishbone
Gabriel. Just like the angel. My angel. I want him to be my angel. I
He wanted to give me the peace of this moment, the…poetry of this place, the romance, the scents and the sounds and the serene beauty all around us. He wanted to give me love. And, God, I wanted to take it, I was just so scared to reach out and grab it. Still so fearful it would be taken away. And if it was, I would never be able to go on. I would never recover.
I wondered how trees knew to let go of the things they no longer needed, and I wondered if I could do that, as well.
“I win every time I’m bold in how I love. I want to say I win a hundred times a day, a thousand, by loving the sunrise, and the wind, and the way raindrops sound on my window.” He paused, his thumb moving lightly over my cheekbone, caressing my face like I was precious. “And you, most of all, you. I want to look at you and say, one evil man did not stop me from presenting my heart to the girl who claimed it. You get my heart, Eloise. You. And, God, I hope you want it. But if you don’t, I still won’t regret giving it to you. Even then, I won’t regret loving you because it means I win.”
He had come to me as a man who panicked every time someone got close to him, and now he was touching me with such certainty, such strength and conviction. God, I was proud of him, but more so, I was deeply honored that he’d chosen me, deeply grateful that he’d learned the worst of who I was and loved me anyway. I was breathless with the sheer wonder of it.
When he finally broke away, gasping softly, it took me a minute to realize where I was, that’s how lost in him I’d been.
And our first kiss. The most beautiful kiss I’d ever experienced.
We all have a superpower. What’s yours? Gambit, the Duke of Thieves
“What else?” Her voice sounded wistful. “She loved to read. She always had a paperback in her purse. Sometimes I’d look around at games when the other team was up, and she’d have her nose in a book.” I smiled at the memory, at the knowledge I’d gotten my love of books from her.
There isn’t anything I’d give to her that I wouldn’t give to you.”
Beautiful things happen when you least expect them. Lemon Fair, the Queen of Meringue
Gabriel rinsed the razor and turned the leg he’d shaved from side to side, assessing his work the way he did when he sculpted.
“You’re a work of art.”
But then realization dawned: this was what it should feel like to be a woman. I’d never had any idea at all. We touched and kissed with loving hands and open hearts, and I’d been right to think I’d never experienced anything like this before. It was tender and generous, and it was everything. Everything I’d never known.
And that’s what I felt: beautiful, adored, loved.
His breath against my neck was a calming wind, his smile the sunshine, his touch was a thousand rainbows dancing on my skin, and I loved him so much I thought my heart would burst.
I will be a blanket of love warming you. Lady Eloise of the Daffodil Fields
And I finally knew what it was like to love a woman: body, heart, and soul.
We’re a team. If you hurt, I hurt. Racer, the Knight of Sparrows
