After we said our spur-of-the-moment vows to each other, Christian picked me up and carried me inside to the bedroom. I should’ve been freezing, but I was warmed from the inside out in anticipation of what would come next. We once again undressed each other, slower this time. When he laid me back on the bed and straddled me he mistook my shivering for something left over from the freezing cold we'd endured on the deck.

“I’ll always keep you warm, Mimi,” he whispered in my ear before showering my face with kisses. He stopped to look down at me and asked, “When I went down on you...when you came on my face...” His eyes were searching and I knew what he wanted to know.

“No, it wasn’t my first orgasm,” I offered. I thought I saw a flash of disappointment mingled with anger, “But,” I quickly interjected. “It was the first time I came like that."

I didn't want to go into an explanation of how I'd let Lucas down there only once and it ended up being more awkward than passionate.

I sucked in a breath and looked over his shoulder, avoiding his eyes. “And you might as well know that I don’t have a whole lot of experience reciprocating.” I was afraid to look back and see frustration at my lack of experience, but he looked relieved. “I can’t stand the thought of another man touching you, or vice versa,” he admitted. “But I’m also glad you’ll have some firsts with me. And they’ll be the lasts too, because you belong to me, Mimi. No other man will ever touch you.”

I didn’t challenge his comment about belonging to him because I was too impatient for what was happening between us to continue talking. I wrapped my arms around his neck and pulled his mouth hungrily to mine. He eventually made his way to my throat and I missed our broken kiss but couldn’t stifle a groan when he made his way even further down my body, this time giving the attention to my breasts that I’d craved earlier. And I thought Lucas's sloppy attempts at teasing my nipples felt good? In retrospect it was like comparing Cogsworth to the Beast, I mused. My Beast.

He used his tongue to slowly make his way down my stomach and once again focused on the place that provoked so much pleasure less than an hour earlier. I screamed his name this time and was still trying to catch my breath when he made his way back up to face me. I opened my eyes and smiled, reaching for his hardness but he shooed my hand away. I guess I looked surprised because he explained, “Like I told you before, I don’t want to wait any longer to be inside of you, Mimi.”

I smiled and spread my legs wider, finally wrapping them around his waist. I felt his body meeting mine, and braced myself for what I knew would be a mixture of pleasure and pain, but he suddenly stopped.

Before I could ask why, he said, “Tell me.”

I blinked, confused. “Tell you what?”

“Tell me what I told you before we said our vows.” His eyes were serious, almost hard, and I knew what he wanted to hear—what he needed to hear—and I said it without hesitation or reservation because I meant it.

“I love you too, Christian.”

He entered me slowly, not taking his eyes from mine so he could evaluate my reaction. He stopped when I gave a slight wince, but I breathlessly told him, “It’s okay. Keep going.”

So he did and our bodies met in unison, eventually finding a pace that left us both breathless and sated.

We spent the rest of the night talking, and exploring, familiarizing ourselves even more with each other. Making up for years that had been lost. We made love twice and he refused me a third time, insisting that he didn’t want to make me sore. But that doesn’t mean we didn’t find pleasure in other ways.

“Don’t look so disappointed, Mimi. I’ll be making love to you for the rest of our lives,” he assured me.

He fell asleep in the same position that he held me our first night together. With my back against his chest and his arms wrapped around me from behind. I could feel his breath on my neck as sleep evaded me. I remembered our last-minute made-up vows on the snowy deck and I smiled when I thought about the ones we’d made so long ago on a playground that had been dedicated to the sister he’d never met, and I’d never known about.

Apparently, being with him was unlocking memories that I’d deliberately chosen to forget. But they were slowly making their way to the surface. In this particular recollection, I’d been the one to recite my vows first after Christian handed me a clump of flowers. At least I think they were flowers.

I’d looked at Christian and batted my eyes before saying, "I will always wear my ring and be your bestest friend ever. And I will be your wife and live with you when we get older, and we get jobs, and you make us a house." I paused to consider my next words. My mother had been very pregnant at the time with Jason, so I knew having babies was a part of marriage. "And if we go to the doctor and he puts a baby in my belly, I will be the mommy, and you will be the daddy when the baby comes out."

I smiled big at him and waited expectantly for his response.

He took a deep breath and said, "I will always win more rings for you. I will win ten hundred rings with different colored diamonds, and you can have one for every day. I will be your husband, and I will make you a house, and I will eat soup every day if that's all you can cook. And if the doctor doesn't put a baby in your belly, then I will put one there. I don't know how, but that's how I think babies get in the mommies’ stomachs. The daddies put them there. That's what Slade told me, but he didn't know how either." He paused before shyly adding, "And you’ll belong to me, and I will love you forever, just like my daddy tells my mommy.”

“Why aren’t you asleep?” he whispered in my ear, startling me out of my memories, part of which caused an ache to surface.

“How did you know I wasn’t asleep?”

“Because you sleep like the dead, and I’m a light sleeper. You’ve been fidgeting and it woke me up.”

“I was thinking about what you said earlier, about me belonging to you,” I told him.

“What about it?” he asked.

“A person can’t belong to someone, Christian,” I quietly replied. “That’s claiming ownership and you can’t own someone.”

“Yes, you can, Mimi. You’ve owned me all these years.” He kissed the back of my head.

“How have I owned you all these years?” I whispered.

“By holding me hostage,” he answered.

“I think you need to reverse your thinking on that comment.” I couldn’t keep the attitude out of my voice. “I’m not the one who slapped handcuffs on you.”

“Yes, you did,” he countered.

I quickly shifted around to face him and like that first night, the moonlight helped me find his eyes. When I did, they weren’t challenging me. They were filled with longing and what I thought was vulnerability. Vulnerability from Christian Bear? Surely not. I must’ve been misreading him.

“What makes you think I held you hostage?”

“Because that night you drove out of my life with your mother and James, you took my heart with you.”