“If I let you, can I kiss you?”
“Temple, truly, you are impossible.”
“I prefer to consider myself focused.”He waved a hand.“Yes, tell me, then.”
She stood, tugged the light, and slipped her glamour around her like a cloak.
Temple sat upright, frowning.
“I was practicing,” she said, “wearing a glamour like this in case I might need to.In case pretending to be someone other than myself is the only way you can have me as your wife.”
He stood and leaned against the bedpost, expression unreadable.“Are you scared of going out as yourself?”
“A little,” she admitted, but that is not why I would wear this face.“I do not want you to be scared.If pretending to be someone else will help you, I will do it.Otherwise, I will meet danger exactly how I am behind this glamour.Either way, I must leave this house.For you.And for myself.”
“You are willing to either put your life at risk or pretend to be someone else entirely.All for me?”
She nodded.“And for your family.They need what you are doing.I understand that, and though rejoining society scares me, your brother Ajax scares me more.”She grinned and she knew with this new glamour her grin was a little more charming than her real one.“I made the glamour attractive and striking, to better fit you.Do you like the red hair?”
Temple’s eyes caught fire, and his brow lowered like a sudden snowfall—heavy and deadly.“What do you mean to better fit me?”
She waved at him, all of him too masculine, too imposing, too beautiful, too perfect.“You are… you, and I am, well, not particularly noticeable.Everyone will wonder why you married me.And of course, you did not marry me because of my appearance, but?—”
He was right in front of her in a flash, his hand tangled in her hair, tilting her face up.“Put it back.”
“Put… it back?”
“Your hair.Your face.Put it all back the way it should be.The way I”—heat stained his cheeks and breath stuttered in his chest—“the way I love it.”
The way I love it.Not a declaration, but she’d never hoped to receive one of those.This was glorious.His words ran riot through her, drenching her through and through with a giddy happiness.Without thinking, she tugged at the light, gently pushed at the air to dissolve the glamour.
He released a sigh of relief, his embrace softening.He threw his shirt off and climbed into their bed.When she joined him, he dug his fingers into her hair, his lips a hazy smile.
“You’re tangling it, Temple.”
“I want to be tangled up in it.”
He dragged her down to the bed, kissing her forehead, her cheeks, the tip of her nose, her lips.His hand massaged her scalp, then forged a trail down her neck, her spine, cupping her arse to pull her up against his cock.Hard and ready.She was ready, too, and she dragged her wet flesh across his member until he moaned.Her limbs heavy with need, she straddled him, moving her mass of heavy hair all over one shoulder.
He wrapped it round his fist like a rope, and with the other hand kneaded her breast.
“Temple,” she moaned, feeling him pulling her everywhere.His hand on her hair, his tongue at her nipple, his cock rocking against her most sensitive, pulsing spaces.Something else pulling at her, too.Her finger burned—a gentle, warm sensation—where she wore his ring.His soul seemed to circle there, calling for her, claiming her, twisting itself up in her.And her soul answered the call, claimed and twisted, too.
Iron and air bound together.Metal and light reflecting something new.
She lifted, positioning him at her center, then took his full length with a delighted gasp as he thrust his hips upward.Using the rope of her hair, he tugged her down until her breasts pressed against his chest, and he kissed her hard, licked the inside of her mouth.Wet and hot.This man was hers.
She scored his hard chest with her nails, and his eyes bloomed fireworks, glowing with pleasure.His hips rolled against hers, teaching her a rhythm, and she followed where he led, a swimmer being carried out to sea by a vast and powerful wave.
When she broke, the sea became a sky and her body a falling star, exploding into light.She clutched his shoulders, could hear his heart beating in her ears, her name a prayer on his lips as he came too.
They folded into each other, a tangle of limbs and hair, the rock of his bicep under her palm, his lips scattering kisses across her hair.He rolled her over into the nest of the mattress and she wiggled into the heated space left by his big body.He returned to clean her and gather her up once more, and when she fell asleep, he was stroking her hair and murmuring so near her ear she could, somehow, hear the warmth of his breath as well as feel it.
“Do not change a damn thing, Diana.Not a perfect thing.It will break my heart if you do.”
Her heart surged as it slowed.Too big, much too big to be contained by the cage of her ribs.Her smile what she would wear to slip into sleep.
But her last thought brought shadows.This had started not with her and him and an irresistible bond.
But with a potion.
“You’ve got it wrong,” he whispered against the skin of her neck.“They won’t wonder why I’m with you.They’ll scratch their heads because they can’t figure out why a little queen like you chose a rough fellow like me.The beauty and the beast, they’ll say.The alchemist and his queen.”
“I thought I was a mouse.”Her words as quiet as one.
He hummed an objection against her pulse.“My little queen.”
She felt a queen.In his arms, she felt like she could conquer the world.They worked well together.When one needed, the other gave.True partners.They were about to confront forces that thought a woman like her should never exist.But with Temple by her side, surely they would be the victors.
