28. Photograph
Chapter twenty-eight
Photograph
Eoghan
T wo days passed in quiet bliss. We spent it drinking wine from the cellar, and making do with the cold cuts in the fridge, and a loaf of bread Dairo had the housekeepers deliver. My dear cousin, and his attention to detail.
With a second of guilt, I realized that the food here had been left by Malinda Brock, the housekeeper’s daughter. The woman who was far too infatuated with me for comfort.
I dismissed those thoughts because they didn’t belong in my honeymoon. Not when I was looking at my wife, sitting at the window, her feet up on the edge of the chair, and a book on her thighs.
She was wearing my silk shirt from the wedding. The shirt was unbuttoned, leaving a beautiful trail of her brown skin down to her navel.
“It’s creepy that you keep drawing me,” she said with a grin, her eyes never lifting from the book, as she twirled her finger around a long curl.
“I’d photograph you like this, if I could,” I admitted, hearing the scratch of my pencil on the paper. I didn’t look at what I was drawing. I knew what it would look like when I looked down. I knew my hands, and their work. Instead, my eyes stuck to the curve of her cheek, and the sweet arch of her eyelashes. “But I’d never allow a photo of you out in the world. This is a vision made for me, and me alone.”
“Get a polaroid?” she said, with a little smirk.
I lifted a brow. “And what if some maid or servant cleaning the house found them? I’d have to gouge their eyes out and beat them into a coma so that the image of your beauty didn’t even live in their mind.”
“Possessive,” she said, her voice a gentle, sensual moan.
“This vision of you only exists for me.” I ruminated on the possibility of something being made only for me, and only existing in my brain. It would certainly be more intimate that way. That when I died, so would the memory of my Muse.
Still, I knew I wanted pictures of her on my phone, on my wall, on a frame by my bedside.
“I’ll need pictures of you,” I said, “but not so… intimate. I think pictures of your glorious face will be enough.”
“So take one,” she said.
“I will.” It was a sudden statement as I fished into the nightstand to get my phone. “Grab your little flower crown.”
I should have had a photographer at our wedding. I should have had a thousand pictures of her in that damn dress, walking down the aisle, even if it was in an empty church.
Maybe I could recreate it in a painting.
I had never put much stock in photographs because there was so much that they missed. They might be able to get clinical accuracy, but only a painting could capture the spirit and aura of a person. Like the portrait I was making now of a bride basking in the love of her groom.
Her dark eyes finally looked at me.
“Don’t move!” I commanded, and she looked back down at her book with a smirk. “I’m almost done with this one.”
I glanced at the paper and saw that the bright colors of the window, and her in shadow, was almost complete. More than a perfect facsimile of the image in front of me was the feeling this image evoked. She had an ethereal glow, and whether that was a figment of my imagination or if it was real, it didn’t matter.
The feeling evoked by the sight of her was as important as the literal image that could be snapped by the imperfection of a camera.
I ran my finger over the charcoal, spreading it across the paper to make the correct spread of shadow beneath my wife’s breast. What would I name this portrait? I wasn’t sure. I leaned back in satisfaction, gazing at the image I had created and the woman who inspired it.
“Through the eyes of Kira’s husband,” I said out loud, as I wrote it down in the corner of the paper, giving the creation a name.
She looked at me, her head tilted, her face almost grave.
“You take that seriously, don’t you?” Her voice was filled with wonder. “Being a husband.”
I folded the cover of the sketchbook, to close it on my lap.
“There is no calling or vow I have taken more seriously than the one I have made to you.”
“But you don’t even know me.” She shook her head. “You jumped in so fast. Why?”
I shrugged. “I have a lifetime to get to know you.”
She laughed, but it sounded sad. It broke my heart.
“Are you having second thoughts, love?” I slid the sketch pad off my lap and walked to her. I put my hands on her bare knees, spreading them so I could take my rightful place between her thighs; a place I was growing very, very comfortable. “Do you regret what we’ve done?”
I couldn’t bear it if she was. It would break me to know that she might regret this, especially when I had yet to tell her the worst of it; the worst of what would come when she bound herself to me.
She shook her head, bringing her finger to her lips, her palm beneath her chin. “I should.”
When she crossed her arms beneath her breasts, she created a barrier between us. A barrier that I would not allow to stand. A barrier I would plough through, even if I had to lick her sweet clit for hours until she spread herself wide, ready to receive me as she had this morning.
“We know nothing about each other.” Was she about to cry? I couldn’t tell. But it stabbed at my gut. I wouldn’t allow that. She was allowed to shed tears of ecstasy, and that was it. There would be no sorrow for her. I couldn’t allow that. I’d open my veins and bleed before I let her feel a drop of sadness.
“You know art,” I said, cupping her cheek. “You have a fierce mind and a beautiful body. I am enthralled with your face and I worship every inch of you.”
She rolled her eyes. “There are thousands, if not millions, of beautiful women in the world. Many of them are prettier than me…”
“Lies.”
“... they just didn’t push you away like I did. But now that I’ve accepted you…” There was that blasphemous tear. I could see it collecting on her lower lashes, threatening to overflow and mar her gorgeous cheek. “Will you get bored of me?”
The tear crawled over her long lashes and started to fall. I caught it with my lips, kissing the space millimeters below her eye. The salty taste made my tongue feel bitter and wrong.
“Never,” I whispered against her cheekbone. “I would deny God before I deny my wife.”
She laughed, her crossed arms loosening in the space between us, thawing the barrier she created.
“You’re a terrible Catholic.”
“That’s true,” I said, kissing her cheek.
I pulled back, my eyes trailing down her face, to the sweet pulse at her throat. Then down the valley between her breasts, bordered by the white silk shirt that hid the beautiful mounds of her breasts, but couldn’t hide the delicious, hardened nipples that poked out, tempting my mouth.
But I looked down further, down the ridges of her curved belly, to her navel.
Then down further, to her mound, and the wetness beneath.
“I can smell your arousal,” I growled, the heady, musky scent of her filling my senses, making me drunk with it.
“It’s not my fault,” she gasped. “Not when you look at me like that…”
“Hmm.” I reached down, pushing her thighs apart so that I could lewdly gaze at her folds. “I have so much to tell you,” I confessed, staring down between her thighs. I bit my lower lip, fantasizing about placing myself there again. “But I don’t have the heart to burden you right now. Not when we are here, apart from the world.”
“In our little magical cottage?” she teased.
“Mm-hmm,” I said with a nod. “On our honeymoon.”
I placed my palm against her belly. Could I give her a child? Could that happen? Would that bind her to me so she couldn’t leave? Would it tie her to me, so that when I laid myself bare for her, she wouldn’t run for the hills? When I finally showed her every scarred inch of me.
I looked up at her face, her eyes darkened with lust, and I knew I would burn the world if it meant I got to keep her by my side.
In my miserable existence, no one had ever made me feel alive the way she did. No one invaded my soul and filled my senses the way she did.
“I made you bleed,” she said, running her fingers over my shoulder, to where four angry red lines of broken skin stared at her. “I’m sorry.”
If only she knew. If only she understood that I wanted to bleed for her. I wanted to take her up in front of everyone and cut my hand to make an oath to be hers in blood. And even if she chose not to take it with me, I would take it for her, freely, without reserve. But that would make a reasonable woman run for the hills. And Kira was nothing if not a reasonable woman.
“Mark me,” I said, leaning down to kiss her belly, where I hoped a baby grew already. “Dig your nails into my skin and mark my flesh the way you’ve marked my soul.”
She groaned, her thighs tightening around my hips.
“You say such ridiculous things.”
I leaned down and took a deep inhale of her musky scent, as she grew wet at nothing but the power of my words. My vows made her want me, which just meant that I would recite them like a priest at the pulpit.
“And you accept it,” I said, crawling up her body, and reaching down to unbutton my trousers and unleash my cock. “You accept my vow.” I placed my tip at her entrance. “You accept my oath.”
I grabbed her right hand again, and placed her palm against my lips before I bared my teeth and bit down. She winced at the pain, but never pulled away.
I would place my teeth marks on this sacred skin, until such a time that she would accept my mark on her.
“Why do you do that?” she asked through a pleasured groan as my cock slid further between her folds. “Why do you… bite my … hand…”
Her head fell back, her eyes rolling as she groaned with ecstasy.
“Do you know about handfasting?” I asked, feeling like I had to lay myself bare in front of her. Like I could cleave myself in two and expose the deepest parts of me.
“I… what? Like… oh!” She moaned as I swirled my hips, letting my cock push around her walls, carving itself within her passage.
“It’s an ancient thing, before there were priests. A man and woman cut their palms and joined hands.” She moaned as I pulled out, then thrust back inside. “They’d wrap a cloth around their union, making a marriage pledge.”
I had no idea if she could hear me, or if she was too far into her own pleasure to understand. I didn’t care.
I wanted to tell her this secret.
“I want to cut our hands and bear the mark of our oath to each other.” My forehead fell onto her chest, staring down between her swollen breasts, to the place where my cock thrust between us. “So scratch me, Kira,” I begged against her skin as sweat started to pool on her heated skin. “Dig your nails in. Take my knife and carve your name into my skin if you want. It is the least I would give to you.”
I hardened inside her, my balls tightening as I prepared to thrust deep inside her. She screamed in ecstasy, her legs tightening around my waist, drawing me into her, and I reached out to grab her hand, to place the skin of her palm between my teeth again.
Her other hand reached up, curling around my ribs, her nails clawing at my back. It was pure ecstasy when her nails dug in, cutting into my flesh as she tried to draw me into her.
I felt the euphoria of pain. I groaned with the sting that heightened the pleasure of her wet pussy as she pulsed and quivered around me.
“I’m coming!” she whined, as I felt the final, hard, uncontrollable thrusts as I shouted my orgasm against the tender flesh of her sweet palm.
I came, spilling myself inside her, and feeling the satisfaction as she arched with pleasure.
I would never tire of hearing those words - her declaration of pleasure. I would never tire of her saying my name, or calling me husband. There were no words more haunting or more sacred than her declaration of love.
“I would give my life for you,” I vowed, enjoying her warmth around my shaft. She was such a tight fit that I could even feel her quivering breaths against my sensitive tip. “I will give you everything.”
I slowly, painfully, pulled my softening cock from inside her, my head pulling out of her with a wet pop.
I looked down with rapt fascination as my white cum leaked from inside her. I took my two fingers, pulling the droplets back up, and placing them back where they belonged - deep inside her.
“Mm,” she groaned, as she bit her lower lip. The act made her kissable mouth look even more plump. “I’m so… tender.”
It wasn’t a complaint. In fact, she sounded quite satisfied.
But I knew not to push further. Not yet. Not until she knew me better, and not until I could train her body to my whims. I would have her moaning, wanting, and greedy for me, as I was for her. But all of that would take time. Time that I had, now that she was my wife. We would have a lifetime to become accustomed to each other.
But bliss was over, at least for now.
“We have to go to the main house,” I said without preamble, changing the topic from the ecstasy of our little world. “You’ll need to meet my father, and…”
I swallowed hard, unsure of what I wanted to tell her. She’d have to meet my father and be presented in front of our army? She’d need to learn about the Mob, the Mafia, and the Bratva? The underworld where I made my life? She’d need to understand the world she had entered, and promise never to leave.
Because she couldn’t leave, now that she was my wife.
Because I was a monster.
I had bound her to me, making her a target for our enemies. And even the sharks that circled around her were a ploy to keep her close. If there was danger all around, and I was her only safe harbor, then she’d have to cling on to me, like I was a raft and she was adrift at sea.