Chapter 21 Aurelie #2
And I remember the way I smiled, because I hadn’t dethroned him.
I’d stepped onto the throne beside him. Reminded the world that behind every great man was a woman who didn’t follow—she reigned.
She ruled. She destroyed softly and rebuilt from the ashes.
She took his crown in one hand and his cock in the other and asked him to kneel, not because he had to, but because he wanted to.
Because he already had.
I remember tilting my wrist toward him, just slightly, flashing the fresh ink that still burned across the top of my skin, mirroring one that he got.
Something only we knew. Something quiet and eternally promising.
His eyes dragged to mine like gravity, his chest rising deep and slow, like he could feel me without needing to touch.
I pictured him falling apart. His mouth on my wrist, my thighs around his neck. My moans in his mouth, my blood on his tongue.
And God, I loved him like this. Feral but restrained. Mine but desperate. Caged by the same hunger he’d once used to undo me.
This was the vow. The real one.
Not the ceremony. Not the rings. Not the papers with dried ink.
This—a different kind of ink.
The silence.
The claiming of it all.
The first thing I registered was pain, but not the emotional kind for once. And certainly not the my-car-is-designed-to-kill-me kind of pain.
It was hot, sharp, localized. Somewhere low. Somewhere that felt important.
I groaned before I opened my eyes. “Cal…” It was all I could manage.
A grunt from behind me, followed by a deep, hungover sigh. “Why do I feel like I got hit by a tractor?”
I cracked one eye open, instantly regretted it, and dropped my head back against the pillow.
Sunlight bled through the sheer curtains, blinding and rude. The sound of waves felt way too loud for being so far away. And every single inch of my skin was either too hot or too sore.
“I’m sticky,” I croaked.
“I think I’m dead,” Callum muttered. “My soul left my body sometime after the sixth glass of wine and my second orgasm. You married a ghost.”
I giggled, and immediately winced. “Fuck. Ow. Ow.”
“What now?”
“I… don’t know.” I tried to sit up before immediately giving up when pain flared from my hips. My thighs were sore. My brain lagged half a second behind everything else.
“Mon Dieu,” I muttered, blindly reaching under the covers. The panic hit slowly—then all at once. My dress was gone. So were my panties. I was very naked, very tender, and there was definitely something tight and plasticky stuck to my skin.
My fingers brushed something that should not be sore unless—oh no.
“Cal?” My voice went high-pitched. “Cal, I think we got tattoos.”
“What?” He was still facedown, a pillow over his head. “What’re ye talkin’ ‘bout?” he slurred.
I’d never heard him sound more Scottish in my entire life. And if I wasn’t so goddamn hungover and about fifty percent certain I blacked out last night, I would’ve come on the spot.
“I’m talking about the fact that I feel like someone branded me with a hot needle and I think it’s because one of us thought it’d be cute to get permanent body art after a wedding and ten drinks.”
That got him up.
Well, sort of.
He flopped onto his back with a groan, then lifted the sheets to peek under. One hand slid over my waist, gently rolling me despite my dramatic protesting whine.
“Aye, Jesus Christ,” he muttered, awe creeping into his voice. “As if you could get any hotter, m’love.”
“What?”
“Baby,” he said, voice still half-asleep. “Look.”
I did—and then I screamed.
Just above the curve of my left hipbone, beneath a strip of some plastic adhesive, there it was in black script. Definitely real.
’til death
“Oh my God.” I scrambled to check the other side where a twin throb echoed.
yes, sir
Elegant and neat. It was so familiar, so—
“Oh. My. Fucking. God.” I gasped in horror. “That’s my handwriting.”
Cal blinked at me, then burst out laughing.
“WE GOT SLUT TATTOOS,” I shrieked.
He laughed harder. “You got slutty wedding vows on your hips.”
“You watched me get slutty wedding vows on my hips!”
“I encouraged it!” he wheezed. “I think I cheered! It matches your slutty little tramp stamp.”
I buried my face in a pillow. “I need a priest. I need an annulment. I need to black out again.”
“No you don’t.” He flopped toward me and kissed my shoulder, still grinning like an idiot. “You need electrolytes. And for me to read your hip tattoos again with my tongue.”
I whined. “Don’t make me horny when I might throw up.”
“You were horny last night while throwing up.”
I hurled my pillow across the room. “Tell me I didn’t projectile sob-vomit on our wedding night.”
Cal just laughed harder, clutching his stomach.
“Baby,” he choked out, “everyone threw up. Kimi puked in a planter. Lucy almost fell into the bush she vomited into. Marco offered the tattoo artist a blowjob. Ivy cried about Marco’s mum not liking her. You’re not even in the top five most embarrassing.”
“I literally cried and came and vomited in the same three-hour window—”
“I vowed through sickness and in health, baby. Projectile sob-vomit and all.”
“Oh my God, we’re disgusting.”
“I’m in love,” he said proudly. “With the hottest little masochist.”
I wheezed. “Okay, stop.”
But I couldn’t stop smiling. Couldn’t stop laughing. Couldn’t stop feeling him next to me—warm and shirtless and smug and mine.
Then he froze.
“What?” I asked, glancing up at him.
His eyes widened, mouth parted as he stared at his left wrist.
“Cal. What.”
He slowly turned it toward me. Across the top of his wrist, right above where a watch would rest, were three words in a black typewriter font:
in this life
My breath caught. A memory flickered in my brain. Me leaning over him, showing him my right hand.
No fucking way.
I turned my own wrist over.
& the next
It was real. It was on both of us.
My eyes burned, but not from the hangover. This man would bleed for me and brand himself and vow to find me in every lifetime and never let go.
“Callum…” I whispered.
He just shook his head like he couldn’t believe it either.
“I almost wrote down that exact thing in my vows,” he admitted hoarsely.
I didn’t speak. I just threw myself into his arms and held him, ink and all.
His body was hot and solid beneath me, every muscle relaxed now in that delicious quiet.
His hand drifted slowly up and down my spine, no destination, just comfort.
My fingers found his hair and tugged gently.
He hummed against my neck, his breath warm and uneven, like he was still catching up to the moment.
“I think I blacked out during the ceremony,” I murmured.
“You were beautiful,” he said. “You looked like lavender honey and heartbreak. I was a goner.”
A smile tugged at my mouth. My legs tangled with his under the covers. I let his hand wander a little lower. My head spun in a soft way, heavy and warm, and somewhere between his thumb brushing beneath my breast and the ache in my hips pulsing again—
I gasped again.
“There was a butterfly. Three butterflies—I remember—on a sketch? Or a napkin? Something—”
“Oh God.” He paused, blanching. “Did we?”
“Je ne sais pas!” I crawled halfway over him and yanked back the sheet. “You had a sketch in your wallet, I think? I remember seeing it… on the counter? At the parlor?”
“Fuck.” He reached blindly for his pants at the foot of the bed, his movements jerky and disoriented. “Check my arm. My thigh—no, wait. Shit. Where the fuck is it?”
I stilled when my arm started to burn. I bolted to my feet, regretting it instantly, then hobbled toward the mirror like Bambi on ice.
I turned my arm. Sure enough, there were three butterflies—two black, one red. Small and delicate and burned into the inside of my left bicep, right by my heart when my arm was at my side.
Cal appeared behind me. Our eyes met in the mirror. He pressed his lips together, like he wasn’t sure if he was allowed to speak. Then his gaze landed on the ink. His throat worked once, then again.
“One for every loss,” I said softly. “The red one is ours. And maybe a symbol of what we’ll find again.”
He reached for my arm, held it gingerly, then kissed the edge of the plastic like it could bring back what we’d lost.
“I remember now,” he told me quietly. “You showed me the sketch and said you wanted to carry them with you. And I said…”
“You said I’d never have to carry them alone anymore,” I whispered.
Callum nodded. Then slowly turned, lifting his left arm just slightly. One single black butterfly etched over his ribs.
We didn’t speak for a long time.
We just… drifted. Closer. Then closer still, until we collapsed back onto the bed together.
I turned and tucked myself into his side, head on his chest, leg flung across his hips as the early morning sunlight snuck through the linen curtains and wrapped us in silence.
The air was warm, sea-salted, still heavy with wine and sweat and something reverent. Something permanent.
We were still sweaty from the night before. Still inked. Still in love.
And still, apparently, not done.
Because when I finally pushed up on one elbow to look at him again—smiling, sleepy, wrecked and married—I noticed something.
Something inked just beneath the faded edge of an old scar on his hip, along the top of his right thigh, high enough that you’d have to be on your knees to see it properly.
I stilled, my heart hammering. “Ummm…”
He blinked at me, flushed and smiling. “Hmm?”
“What the fuck is that?”
“Oh,” he said, voice suddenly quiet. “Yeah.” He paused and bit his bottom lip. “I don’t know. Why don’t you get on your knees and find out?”
My jaw dropped. “You did not—”
He smirked. “Pretty sure I did.”
“You absolute menace,” I breathed, already crawling down the sheets, hands skimming his stomach, dragging my fingertips lower until I was level with it.
I already knew the words. Already loved the ones that were there before.
elle saura
She’ll know.