“I love you,” he murmurs against my collarbone, lighting my skin on fire. “I love you so much it aches—burns. To have you here under my touch is the fulfilment of a thousand dreams. That you would let me place my hands—mylips—on you?Me?” He shudders. “You bless me beyond anything I deserve.”
“Say that again,” I plead.
“I love you.” He nips my collarbone. “I love you.” His tongue slides up my neck, ending in a kiss at my jaw. “I love you.” His lips brush mine, and I whimper. “I love you,” he whispers.
“Please don’t stop,” I beg, and so he doesn’t.
He tells me he loves me between every peck, every bite, every lick. When he can’t say it with his words, he says it with his actions, caressing and pushing and pulling until I’m liquid in his arms, sighing my own love back.
“You’re staying,” he mutters. “I love you so much, and you’re staying here with me forever, and we’ll have a marriage kitten and watch each other through the cameras and have little hazel-eyed babies that we can teach how to stalk as well.”
Dizzy, I agree. “I love you. I can’t believe this is real.”
“It’s real,” he confirms, dragging his hand to my neck. His thumb rests over my pulse, pushing ever-so-slightly.
I lean into it.
“Is making out with you the correct response to finding out you’re torturing a man downstairs?” I wonder aloud as his mouth replaces his thumb.
“Making out is the correct response to me believing I was going to lose you, and you proving to me that you really weremadefor me.”
I huff a laugh, unable to argue. Not that I would even want to.
Because, really, why would I want to argue with my husband when I could kiss him instead?
Chapter Sixteen
?
Archie
I’m not sure which is hotter, making out with Sarelia after our meeting or watching Ted squirm as she leans over him to peer at his bindings.
“What brand are these?” she asks, examining a buckle with nary a glance at the man beneath them. “Are they leather?”
“They are,” I answer, clasping my hands tightly behind my back. Snogging over Ted wouldnotbe romantic, regardless of how very much I want to kiss her. “I made them myself.”
“Wow,” she whispers, walking around the table to examine the acid collection set up at the end. “You’ve made hoppers!” she exclaims, clapping. “This is incredible!”
I bow, pleased. It is so rare that anyone properly appreciates my craftsmanship. Even Stryker and Basil shy away from looking too closely at my work station, and Millie and Heidi are strictly allowed over only when I do not have an ongoing project on the sterile side of my basement. That Sarelia would be the first to truly observe and admire my work shoots tingling currents of electricity through me, enticing me to reconsider my stance on snogging in the workplace.
“This would have made such good research material for one of my books,” Sarelia mutters, moving on from my table to poke around my tool chest. “I was so scared writing that dark romance series because every time I googled something I was just sure that the FBI was going to knock on the door with a warrant for my arrest. But look! You could’ve been my own walking search engine!”
“You did an excellent job without me,” I reply. “In fact, after reading that series, I went back through my footage of you from Stone to check you weren’t sneaking off to participate in your own corner of the darker parts of the world.”
She turns to me, a pair of blood-stained channel-lock pliers hanging in her grip—a siren if ever I’ve seen one. “You read my books?” she asks.
My brows furrow. “Of course. Didn’t you see them in our meeting room?”
Ted whimpers between us as she approaches, lifting the pliers as she shrugs. “I saw them, but I thought you just bought them to support me, not toreadthem.”
I tsk. “What a very silly thing to think. Why would I not want to delve into the worlds you create? When they tell me so very much about you?”
Her nose wrinkles. “My stories are not me.”
“No,” I agree. “But your trends are. Your penchant for the found family trope encouraged me to look deeper into the dynamics between you and your parents, while the way you write brothers made it clear that you adore yours. The things you enjoy and obsess over also make it onto the page—namely, me, but other things as well. I learned that your favorite type of games to play on your computer are search-and-find cat games and that you have a deep disdain for bran.” I smile gently at her, my wife. “Your stories are not you, but you place pieces of yourself within them whether you mean to or not.”
She blinks, resting the pliers against the edge of the table and ignoring Ted’s attempts to wiggle away from them. “Oh.”
