“Do you still want to be with me?” Ethan had to ask. His voice was scared, but not broken.
I did what Delmare suggested, and followed my heart. “Yes. But I want it to work this time,” I started. “I can’t go through this again. It’d kill me.”
“Perhaps we can go back to what we were before,” he said.
That was the wrong answer. “I don’t think we can go back…” I said. “I think we have to start over.”
Ethan mused over that notion. When he was silent for too long, I spoke up. “I can’t shoulder our burdens alone anymore, Ethan,” I said tiredly. “I’ve carried us for too long. My life is difficult enough. I need to be with someone who makes our relationship easy. I can’t fight against my disease, fight against Droga and fight against you, too.”
“I’ll shoulder the battle for you,” he said. “I asked more from you than I ever should’ve.”
“I don’t know what I want from you. But I do know that I don’t want our past,” I continued. “Things need to change if I’m going to be with you.”
Ethan turned me around, then took my hands in his. “I want you to marry me,onawilke.I want to stay by your side and live the rest of my days with you as my wife.”
He sighed. “But what I want doesn’t matter if you’re not happy. Tell me what I can do to make that happen, and by the gods, I’ll do as you ask.”
Oh gods, here we go.I wasn’t sure how well this would go over. But if Ethan wanted me back, I had conditions— ones I wasn’t sure he’d like, but that he’d have to accept if we were to be together again.
“I need time, Ethan. I’m not ready to be your fiancé again, or a true mate,” I stated. “I just want us to be a regular boyfriend and girlfriend. There was too much pressure on our relationship to be everything. I don’t need that kind of stress. I just want to have fun.”
He frowned. “Like you had with Finlay.”
“He was different.” I moved closer. “I cared about Fin, but I never loved him like I love you. Yet at the same time, I didn’t feel all this…strainto get everything right all the time. I could mess up. I didn’t have to keep secrets, or pretend to be perfect for the press. To get Fin to love me, all I had to do was be myself.”
“That’s all I want for us.” Ethan squeezed my hands. “It was never my intention to make you feel like you had to be more than what you already were.”
“You’re a prince. That comes with a lot of baggage that I can’t carry anymore. I’ll handle dealing with your mom, and suck up being the headline in all the papers.” I took a breath. “But when we’re together, and it’s just you and me, I don’t want things to be complicated between us. My life is complicated enough. I’m the Worldweaver. I’m the only one who can save the fae. And I need you to help carry my burdens, not make them heavier. I know I said earlier that I’d help you with your issues. But it can’t be just one of us doing all the lifting. We have to work together.”
Ethan’s eyebrows knitted together. “I know I’ve asked a lot of you since we’ve met. Too much. I don’t want to do that again.”
“But will you? I can’t take being in a super serious relationship right now. I’m in college. I’m twenty years old. You want the wedding, and the happily-ever-after. I want that too, but not right now. What I want is a good time with the person I love.”
Ethan’s face was confused as all fuck. “It’s a foreign concept to me. Nothing in my life has ever been simple.”
“Why can’t it be simple with us?” I pressed. “We make things harder than we have to.”
Ethan nodded. “I understand I can be…theatricalwhen my emotions run away with me.”
“That’s an understatement,” I mumbled under my breath, but Ethan forged on.
“I must ask you this,” he began. “Before we traveled to Octavia Falls, you were undergoing the ceremony to break our bond. I could feel it on my end. You didn’t finish, but you still have a chance to. Is that something you’re considering?”
I grasped his arm. “If you took our bond away, I’d still love you. I don’t need the magic to know you’re brave, or kindhearted and giving. I don’t need a bond to realize that you have a good heart. Now that the demon’s gone and I know you’ve changed, you can be my safe haven again. I can fight everyone, fight all of Droga’s armies, but I need to know I have somewhere to go home and rest at the end of the day, an escape from the world. Ethan, I’m asking you to be my home.”
Ethan’s eyelids beaded with tears. He pulled me to his chest and held me so close, I could hear the beating of his heart.
“I will be your home,onawilke,” he promised. “And if it’s fun you want… I can happily oblige.”
Ethan kissed me. It was gentle and slow, not the powerful, wolfish claim that I’d remembered from him before. He was asking me if this was okay. After not kissing him for so long, the feel of his lips on mine made me come to life. I responded with urgency, leaning into the kiss and melding my mouth with his in delight.
He made a few noises of pleasure and boosted me onto his lap. I felt his length underneath me and pressed into it, enjoying the strong feeling of him against me as I moved over the top of it, back and forth. We kissed long and slow, the only sound being the water as it lapped against our heated skin.
I nearly cried for how badly I needed this kiss. Ethan brought everything rushing to the surface, and I had to fight against my mating instinct to declare myself as his right then, right now. Every inhale of his scent was overpowering, and I wanted him to claim me like an animal. Romance could wait. This was instinctual.
Ethan reached down and began fondling between my legs. I moaned and pressed my tongue into his mouth, requesting more. Ethan continued rubbing me, but his body was shaking with restraint, as if he’d held himself back from me for too long. It was torture for him to keep waiting for my touch.
I gave a pump to his dick. Ethan gasped against my mouth and kissed me harder. I jerked him, the water sloshing against my hand as I massaged his delicate head. I made my movements faster. Ethan’s head lolled back from mine, and his eyes fluttered in pleasure for a moment before the wolf overtook him.
