I’m panting, turned on.
“You want it, don’t you?” he asks, reading my mind.
I nod.
“Good girl. I’m going to fuck your face and I’m going to come down your throat and you’re going to take me like a good girl, and when you swallow every drop, I’m going to make you come so hard you’re not going to know up from down. Understand?”
I moan, wanting it. Wanting him. I reach for him again.
“Now open wide.”
I do and he does exactly what he said. He fucks my face brutally, my throat raw as he slams into me again and again and again, giving me moments to gasp in air before he’s inside me again, cock swelling impossibly and when he comes, when I feel him throbbing, all I can do is watch his face, his beautiful face as he empties inside me, down my throat, his taste salty and sweet and I do as he said. I try to. Swallowing every drop. Not wasting any of it. Because this is him. The essence of him. And I want a piece of him inside me always.
When it’s over and he draws out, he crouches before me, thumb on the corner of my lip to wipe up come. He presses that thumb into my mouth, and I suck it dry and then he kisses me. He kisses me hard, his tongue in my mouth as he swallows his own come, tasting himself, his eyes open, still dark, so dark I imagine this is how the Mediterranean looks at midnight. He lifts me back onto thedesk, both of us still panting. I open my legs wide, and he does as he promised. He makes me come so hard, I don’t know what’s up or down and I can’t remember where I am or what I’m doing here until finally, what seems like an eternity later, we’re sitting on the floor on a rug in front of the fire, Cassian’s back against the couch, me on his lap wrapped in his arms, the fire crackling. The fire he made that I didn’t even see him light.
When I look up at him, he’s watching me.
“That wasn’t much of a deterrent for snooping, was it?” he asks.
I shake my head, exhausted. “The opposite, maybe.”
He smiles. “My violent, wild Allegra. Maybe it’s time.” He dangles the pouch in front of me.
“My mother’s ring,” I say remembering.
He shakes his head. “No, it’s not that. It’s something else.” He opens it, drops what’s inside into his palm and holds his hand before me. He opens it and I look down and inside his hand I see two rings. Two simple platinum bands. One thin and small, the other thicker and wider.
Confused, I look up at him.
“The night you were kidnapped, I had picked these up.”
“I don’t understand,” I say, sitting up straighter, glancing at the rings before turning my face back up to his.
“I was going to marry you, Allegra. Not quite for the right reasons, although they were there. I just didn’t know them yet. Now, I know. I love you. I want to marry you for no other reason than that. Will you do that? When this is over, when I’ve killed that bastard, I’m going to ask you to marry me, and I want you to promise that you will say yes.”
I turn my gaze to the rings, then back up at him. I reach up to touch his face. “I love you, Cassian. I love you morethan anything in this world. And I say yes now because that bastard doesn’t matter. You matter. We matter. I don’t give a fuck about anything else. It’s just you and me. You and me forever.”
He takes the smaller of the two rings and slides it onto my ring finger. I make myself look. I don’t let myself turn away and neither does he.
“You are my wife, Allegra. In my heart and in my mind, you are my wife.”
I take the larger one and slide it onto his. “And you are my husband, Cassian. In my heart and in my mind.” I reach up to kiss him, pulling him down to me. “Make love to me please. Make slow love to me.”
19
CASSIAN
Imake slow love to her in front of that fire. I take my time and weave my fingers with hers so I can see our rings, our promise, and make slow, slow love to her.
Afterwards, I set another log on the fire. Sitting on the couch, we watch that log crackle, the flames catching, rising high. Our bodies intertwined, we stay like that for what I wish could be forever. Just Allegra and me in this room, no outside world, no monsters to battle. Just us. Together. Like this. Forever.
Forever.
She turns her soft eyes to mine. They’re liquid gold when she’s sated, burning amber fire when she’s my violent little Allegra. She brushes my hair back from my face.
“You look like her.”
I raise my eyebrows.
