CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
The unfortunate part of Tarquin’s role at the palace was that he needed to leave frequently, and for the most part she couldn’t come along. It was never longer than two or three days, but she spent the entire time missing him. So when he whispered to her one evening that he needed to leave the next day, and would she please come with him, she grinned and hugged him so tightly that there was no way he’d have been able to go without her.
“Why are we here?” she asked, the next morning, after he was finally awake. She didn’t mind so much, though, not when his arms were tight around her.
“I want to get married,” he said.
She shot him an incredulous look. Surely she’d misheard him. “What?”
He smiled and lifted her hand to his mouth. “I want to marry you. I want you to be my wife.”
“That’s ridiculous,” she said.
“I thought you might say that,” he murmured, his lips trailing from the back of her hand to the inside of her wrist, “but I have good reasons.”
“What are your good reasons?” she asked, savoring the little thrill that traveled from her wrist straight to her core. “I don’t know how I feel about that.”
“It’s your choice, sweetheart, of course it is,” he began, “but hear me out first.”
She shut her eyes as he kissed up her forearm to the inside of her elbow, then ran his tongue along the crease. She nodded.
“Helias has a mate,” he said, “and Caelian. I know that others have found theirs as well.”
She watched him through the slits of her eyes, wondering what he was getting at. She didn’t need to be reminded that she wasn’t his mate.
“I never,” he said, punctuating the word with a kiss on her shoulder, “never want you to feel less than because we’re not.”
“But… aren’t we, kind of? No magical bond or whatever shit?”
He chuckled darkly against her neck. “See?” he said. “This is why I need you to be my wife. I don’t want you questioning what’s between us.”
She didn’t respond, just sighed as his lips moved down, pressing kisses from her throat to her collarbones.
“I love you,” he said as his lips just brushed against the top of her abdomen. “I love you. I love you. I love you.”
“I’m still not your mate,” she said.
“You’ll never be my mate, but… Aurelia will never be my wife. I’ll always love her,” he said, and rubbed his cheek against her belly. “I’ll always love you, too.”
She watched him as he said it. His face was sincere and lovely and sad, just like everything that had ever happened between them. She didn’t like the sadness, but it was there, it would always be there. Now there was a sweet contentedness, also, which lessened the bitterness considerably. He loved her, and deep down she knew that she’d loved him for almost as long as she’d known him. She’d been so afraid, but she didn’t have to be anymore. She wanted to make him happy, would fight to make him happy, and as she pondered the almost year that they’d spent together, she was struck by the thought of how much she would enjoy him being her husband.
“Okay,” she said. When he looked up from where he’d been kissing across to her hipbone, a hopeful smile on his face, she clarified. “We should get married.”
He grinned, and then he was on top of her, pressing sweet kisses all over her face. She giggled— she giggled— and wrapped her arms around him, savoring his reassuring weight on top of her.
“Really?” he asked. “You’re sure?”
She nodded vigorously, then held his face between her hands and kissed his mouth. He responded immediately, and the sweetness of before was gone— there was only heat there, only a fierce need for him to be joined with her in as many ways as possible. Her tongue darted out, swept across the seam of his lips, and then their tongues tangled together and she couldn’t help but sigh as they did.
He pulled away from her, breathless, and with an impish look that was becoming more familiar he returned to where he’d been a moment ago, kissing along her hips. It was clear where he was going, where she needed him to be, and when she moaned helplessly she felt a dark chuckle pressed against her lower abdomen. He pressed kisses straight down, straight to her core. Her breath hitched as he kissed her right on her clit, softly and tight lipped, almost chaste. She made a frantic, needy noise, and jerked her pelvis once, and then his hands moved to grip her hips, and his tongue came out to sweep through her folds.
She threaded her hands through his hair and made a halfhearted attempt to not press his face further into her. He devoured her; his tongue swirling and tasting and curling, his lips pressing and sucking. Before long she was writing under him, and calling out for him, and when he slipped his fingers inside her and began to move them she clenched around them and shuddered while his mouth was still on her.
He returned his lips to her mouth, and she could feel his hard length pressed against her. It would be so easy to shift slightly, to jerk upward, and have him inside of her, where she needed him. He seemed to have other ideas, though, thrusting tentatively against her, rubbing through her folds and against her clit, while his tongue swept through her mouth and his arms held her to him.
She begged for him, the friction delicious but torturous, and he responded by nipping lightly at her neck and thrusting harder against her. He still wasn’t in her, still wasn’t where she needed him, but when his fingers came and caressed her nipple and he sucked at the skin on her neck, she found herself again calling for him, again shuddering and clenching— this time around nothing.
Not nothing, though, because just as she went over the edge he adjusted his angle and pushed into her. She was so full— every delicious spot inside of her was caressed as he moved in her. She wondered how she could have forgotten so quickly what this was like. It was nothing short of perfect. The fullness inside of her, the weight of him on her, the heat from his skin and the heat from his breath— perfect.
She kissed his temple, then his cheek, and then the stubble that had grown along his jaw. She kissed everywhere she could reach, frantic to remind him of her love, of her devotion, and when she couldn’t reach anywhere else she held his head and cradled it against her chest. He moved inside of her slowly, reverently, almost lovingly, but when the tempo increased and his gaze was burning into her, she pressed her fingertips into his hard shoulders and pressed her feet against the back of his powerful thighs and clung to him.
He fucked her hard, like he’d needed this as much as she had. Each time he filled her, she reveled in it, and when he pulled out, she felt a vague sense of loss— every single time. As he moved faster and faster the feelings overlapped more and more, until she found herself in a strange kind of limbo where she was as satisfied and as wanting as she’d ever been.
It didn’t last long, because she was surprised by her orgasm— she’d been so focused on the now unfamiliar sensations that she hadn’t realized how close she was, and she was over the edge with no warning. She felt as if she were coming unraveled, as if she were falling with no end in sight, but he was there to catch her, to put her back together. He fucked her hard through it, and her clenching around his cock was it for him. He shuddered his release inside of her, and as he did he breathed her name.
She held him on top of her for a long time afterward, not letting him move or do anything other than lay his dear head against her chest. She stroked his hair away from his face, she ran her fingers softly over the stubble on his jaw, she fingered the lines along his ears and nose and mouth. When her heart had slowed again, and when she found her eyes getting heavy, she shifted slightly, and he rolled off of her.
She missed him right away, but he pulled her against him, so that her cheek was pressed to his chest and his arms were around her.
“I love you,” she whispered, so quietly she wasn’t sure if he heard it in the dark room, but then his lips pressed against her temple.
“Fuck, I love you,” he said, squeezing her almost painfully against him. She wasn’t going to protest his grip.
They were silent for a few minutes, savoring each other. “Why are we here?” she asked quietly, for the second time. He hadn’t exactly answered her the first time.
“Well,” he said, after a minute, “there’s this little church right here in town…”
“You mean right now?” she asked, lifting her head to look at him. “You want to get married right now?”
He shrugged. “We have a few days here. Why not before we leave?”
“I… don’t know,” she admitted. “Maggie and Caelian planned their wedding for months.”
“Do you want a wedding like theirs?” he asked.
“Please no,” she breathed, so quickly that he laughed.
“We don’t have to right now, sweetheart, let’s do it when you want to. But I’ve chosen strategically, and if you do want to, we’re not far from your family.”
She chewed her lip as she thought. “I want to. Anytime,” she said. “Now is fine. I would marry you anytime. But… would I be a terrible daughter if I didn’t want them there?”
He shook his head and kissed her softly. “You’ll never be a terrible anything.”
“Just us, then?” she asked, looking up at him hopefully.
“Just us,” he confirmed. “Just like it should be.”