My own wild mustang.
I am the mare he seeks to find.
My own wild lion.
I am the lioness he instinctually protects.
As Fausti men were known to do, however, he was right on the line. Not too much. Not too little. He knew exactly what he was doing, except…when he was this way with me, I could feel the wildness stirring him. Stirring him to take me, as I was submitting to him.
His eyes broke from mine and he glanced at the shower handle. With a trembling hand, I reached over and turned it on. The first spray was freezing, and he shielded my body from it as it turned warm. He closed his eyes to it, his arms coming around me like bars, his palms against the tile.
I began to undress him. He said nothing, but it was as if I was stroking his cock. His breaths were sliding out, and I could feel the coolness of them as they washed across my face. He trembled, his muscles taut against his skin.
“Turn around, my husband,” I said in Italian.
I knew he had been hurt. I demanded to see what had happened to him in my honor. In Italy, I was sure this honor would have been greater, to battle a foe who should have been more honorable, who understood the Fausti ways, two knights dueling with swords, their steeds whinnying and stomping, but Italy or Wyoming, he had shed blood for me. I would honor him. Honor him with my kisses, my warmth, my healing—whatever came together and was greater than the sum of love between us.
I stared into his eyes—his eyes were penetrating. As penetrating as his cock. I could feel his warmth inside of me, inside of my system, flowing through it, as if his blood was my blood.
I shook my head.
He is inside of me.
His heart.
His ways.
Him.
Perhaps I was always a romantic person. I love the idea of jewelry being given as a claim. I love the lyrics of an amazing country song because of the way the singer pined for a lost love or made a vow to keep the love they had. All of this was fodder for the fire of my husband’s blood. I might have been romantic, but not to this degree. He took me back to ancient times.
Times when a knight would climb a woman’s trellis only to get a glimpse of her before he charged into danger to fight for her honor. He would wear a token of her love on his person for the entire world to see. He would write her love letters. Sing her. He would bring the woman out in her, and she would bring the man out in him.
It was not him or her, it wasthem—us.
He might look like the stronger sex (and in physical battle, he was), but deeper than skin, she held half of the power. Perhaps in her knight’s eyes, even more.
She could heal him when no other soul on this earth could.
“Turn around,” I ordered in Italian, in a voice much stronger than my hands belied. Blood still swirled around the drain. The scent of it, wet pennies, almost, overpowered the scent of eucalyptus from the plants I’d set around to give the bathroom a more pleasant smell.
He stared at me for a moment before he pushed against the wall and began to turn around. As he moved, it turned the entirewater on the floor red, and the smell, almost made me cover my nose.
Then his back came into view, and I had to force myself to stay on my feet. My hands touched the cool tile before they barely hovered over his back.
“Mariano,” I barely got out.
“A mark,” he rasped out in Italian. “For you. It is yours to keep. To heal.”
It was clear to see a strip of leather had done it—split his back open in a long gaping wound that would leave a scar. Some areas had clotted. Some were still dripping with his blood.
My blood.
The blood of the man I could not live without.
My hands tightened into fists, and I felt strangled.
“Who did this?” My voice was breathless, but only because my emotional stableness was being rocked to its core. I wanted to cry at the same time I wanted to use the same weapon to destroy the hand that had done this.
