“So, will you become my wife or what?”
“Yes… fuck, you crazy bastard, yes. I will be your wife.”
He tries to open the box, but I don’t give him the time. I don’t even realize I’m crying until I’ve launched myself at him, pinning him to the couch with the force of my excitement. The ring box vanishes, I hear it skitter across the wood floor, and he’s laughing, actually, openly laughing as he catches me, arms around my waist, holding me like I could fly away if he didn’t.
“Easy, baby girl, I need to be alive to fuck you into the next century.”
I kiss him like a mad woman until he pulls me back and looks into my eyes. The candles paint halos behind each of his ears. I keep touching his chest just to be certain he’s real, and not some fever-dream summoned by all the nights I wished for something to save me.
“You mean it?” he says, and there’s a crack to his voice I’ve never heard before.
I nod, nose running, mascara definitely streaking, and the sight must amuse him because he bites my cheek. “I’m going to marry you so hard you won’t remember what it was like before you belonged to me.”
“I already belong to you, idiot.” I wipe my nose on his shirt and he grins, all teeth. I kiss him, open-mouthed and shaking, tasting the new truth on our lips.
He pulls me into his lap, and if there’s anything left to say, it dies in translation.
We stay like that until he retrieves the box and opens it, revealing a giant sapphire. He slides it on my finger while I admire it before scooping me up and carrying me to bed. We spend the next hour just soaking it all in before slowly falling asleep in each others arms.
It happens in the blue hour before dawn, when the world is all gradient and hush. I’m drifting between sleep and the memory of sleep, folded into the softness of his chest, when I feel his breath at my ear.
He doesn’t wake me up with words. He does it by brushing his thumb along my jaw, and then tracing the vein down my throat like he’s searching for a pulse.
He sits up, muscles flexing under my cheek as I roll off his chest. Looking down at me, he smiles, and it transforms his face from a hardened man into a boy with no cares in the world. “I’d do anything for you,” he declares.
I believe him.
He reaches for me, not with the urgency of need, but the slowness of someone savoring the only good thing they’ve ever tasted.
His hand drifts from my shoulder, down my spine, thumb dragging over every vertebra like he’s counting them. He stops at the base, palm spreading over the curve of my ass, then back up to the hollow between my shoulder blades.
He pulls me up and over his legs, facing him. We fit, somehow. We always have. He kisses me like he’s never kissed me before.
Our legs tangle, my thigh sliding between his, the hair rough against my skin. I hook my ankle around his calf, pinning him to me. He laughs as his tongue teases the seam of my lips, waits for permission, then dips inside.
He breaks away, nips at my jaw, then buries his face in my neck. I feel the scrape of his teeth, the heat of his mouth, but he doesn’tbite down. He just breathes, slow and even, inhaling the scent of my skin.
His hands are everywhere, greedy for everything I’ll give him. He maps my ribs with the tips of his fingers, traces the arch of my waist, the swell of my hips. When he finally cups my breast, he does it with reverence, thumb stroking the nipple until it pebbles under his touch. I shiver.
He slides down, mouth latching to my breast, tongue flicking over the peak. He sucks, gentle at first, then harder, until I arch up into him, needing more. He lets go with a wet pop, then moves to the other, giving it equal attention.
When he’s satisfied, he looks at me, lips shiny with spit.
“You’re perfect,” he says.
I snort. “You’re blind.”
He shakes his head. “No one’s ever looked better to me.”
He kisses his way down my stomach, slow and deliberate, nuzzling the line of my hip bone.
He doesn’t ask permission to keep going. He just parts my legs, kisses the inside of my thigh, then the other. He breathes hot air over my pussy, not touching, just waiting, until I squirm.
“Impatient,” he says, and his voice is a smile.
“Please,” I whisper, and hate that I sound so fucking desperate.
But he likes it. He grins, then flattens his tongue and licks a long, slow stripe up my center. I moan, the sound low and broken.
