18. Welcome Me Home
Chapter eighteen
Welcome Me Home
Eoghan
I didn’t care that I had slipped. The charade was over.
I grabbed her face and planted my lips on hers, sucking her air, invading her mouth with my tongue. She struck me on the chest, her fists thumping against my ribs as she tried to push me away. But I didn’t relent. She was mine. She had admitted it.
She and I were one.
I stole the kiss. Just as I had in the museum the first time I had taken her out. Just as I had every time since, when I pulled her to me, vowing to never let go until she was my wife.
It wasn’t really stealing, because it was already mine. She had never been with another man.
I had resigned to forgive her if she had. I had tortured myself with the idea of it, and come to the conclusion that if she was with me, and all of that could be kept in the past during our dark days, then I could forgive her. I could forgive her if she could accept me.
But she hadn’t. She’d been as lonely as me.
Her resolve melted. Her tongue joined mine. The sweet sound of her wanton moan made my cock bounce against my zipper and I pushed my body into hers. As her mind denied what it knew - that I was hers, and she was mine - she resisted. I grabbed her wrist and pulled her to me until I slammed her against the wall, hitching her leg around my waist.
I was ravenous. I was hungry.
I needed her.
Damn my plans. Damn my intentions. I was only human. Mortals can’t resist the call of the goddesses that walk among us.
She tried to pull away but I held her to me, willing her to know who I was. Willing for her to feel me. To see me. To recognize me.
Her lips were tender, moist and salted from her tears. She sniffed, then her lips parted just a stitch. Just enough for my tongue to make its way through and feel the smoothness of her tongue. Past the barrier of her teeth, I could take her breath and swallow her mournful sighs. Her hands crawled up around my neck, and I held her close, ready to take her…
No. I wasn’t taking her. I was re-claiming what was already mine.
I broke our kiss. But I didn’t remove the arms around her waist. I was never going to let her go.
“You’re extraordinary, Kira.” I buried my face in her throat, taking the skin in my teeth, biting down until she moaned. “My sweet Muse.”
Her eyes were dazed, her brows pointing upward in the middle like she was trying to understand something.
“Your voice…” she whispered, trying to make sense of the thoughts in her head. “Your accent changed.”
She tried to push me away again, but I tightened my hold. Her eyes went wide with recognition as the pieces were slow to snap into place.
“No…” she whispered in disbelief, shaking her head. “How?”
“Aye, lass,” I whispered, leaning my face towards hers until our foreheads touched. “You forget I’ve lived here most of my life.” To make my point, I changed my drawl to the one I had used for Aaron. “I can talk however I need to.”
She blinked in disbelief, her eyes searching my face.
“It can’t be.” She squinted, the shock of me still short circuiting her brain. I didn’t blame her. It was shocking, after all. “You don’t… look anything like…”
“It can be.”
The tears came back again in earnest. I knew that they would as her reality was crashing down. But it would be okay. I would make it okay. I would hold her together, just as I had promised I would.
I let her go, and she slid down the wall, until her knees were at her chest, her eyes never shifting from mine.
I went into her nearby bathroom - a room smaller than her closet in our home - flicked on the overhead light, and stared at my face in the mirror.
I looked at my blade in my palm, which she had kept, and ran it under hot water. I fisted a handful of soap, and soaked it through my hair, watching my reflection as the brown dye washed away, down my throat, turning burgundy against my skin like blood. I peeled off the fucking plastic nose that had changed the most prominent feature of my bone structure, and tossed the damn thing on the ground.
“This shouldn't shock you, sweet Muse,” I called to her, watching as she tightened her arms around her legs. “You’ve changed your hair too.”
I grabbed more soap, and slathered it on my trimmed beard.
“Still don’t believe me, sweet Muse?” I didn’t know what to expect from her.
She was frozen, her mouth open, her eyes wide, as she kept her eyes on me. I liked it. I liked her gaze. I always had. I’d adored it, in fact.
I took my iron blade and placed it on my skin, and quietly removed the damn beard that had been so effective in hiding me from my Muse.
I fucking hated the thing.
I don’t know how many minutes had passed, but it was too many. With the collar of my shirt soaked in the dye, my face tender from the rapid, careless shave, I finally turned back to my wife. My lovely, lovely, bride.
Warm blood trickled down my cheek from a careless slice, but I didn’t care to patch it. She should see me for what I was. The same blood-soaked man she had willingly taken in matrimony. A man who would bleed a man dry to keep her safe.
Still, she was pale with shock and disbelief.
“It’s me, Mrs. Kira Green,” I whispered.
I wanted her to see me. To know me. To recognize who I was, and who we were.
She loved me. She had said so.
The closest man she’d come to kissing was just an approximation of the same person she was fated to.
I looked at her slender frame, her purple, straightened hair, and I longed to have her be what she was again. The full woman, dressed in the sheath dresses that highlighted her curves, and showed her power.
The same power that she had used to lead millionaires and billionaires by the nose through Gallery Four.
She was a woman of power. A queen. A goddess.
She did not belong under the boot of hapless women who accused her of being a nanny, when she was the woman who could hold the world in the palm of her hand.
“I’m your husband,” I said, stepping to her. “Now the masks are off, sweet Muse. It’s time for us to be what we truly are.”
I grabbed her beneath the arms and pulled her to her feet.
“You are my wife, you do not fall for anyone,” I whispered. “You stand on your own two feet, and command the fucking room, just as you had the first day I laid eyes on you.”
I pressed our bodies together, pinning her against the wall. I reached between us and fumbled for my zipper.
I unleashed my cock, raised up her skirt, pulled her underwear to the side, and let myself into that molten heat.
Her mouth opened in a silent scream, her eyes shut, head tilted back, exposing that beautiful, tanned throat. I nipped at the skin, until I found the sweet spot on her clavicle and sucked her tender flesh between my teeth, with every intention of leaving my mark.
Her legs began to shake as I pistoned my hips, stretching her tight walls. The walls of a home that had been mine all along.
“Eoghan?” Her voice rose in despair. “No… no. No!”
She screamed her orgasm into the air before she clamped a hand over her mouth. She shook her head as her entire body quaked in ecstatic relief.
“Welcome me home, Kira,” I whispered into her throat. “Welcome your husband to where he belongs.”
She didn’t need to say it. I felt it with the slow rotation of her hips as she greedily fucked herself on my aching cock. Her body gave me an honest response, while her mind rebelled. Her mind was a traitor, but her soul told the truth. Her body, her soul, her heart knew that we were joined as one. We belonged together.
She tried to pull away, and I held her close. She thrashed in my arms, trying to twist from my grip, throwing her weight around to break my hold. But I wouldn’t let her go. I would never let her go.
“Eoghan, please, stop!” Her fingers clutched the collar of my shirt, pulling me closer to her. In a way, that was her own loud declaration of love. She crippled her own escape because she loved me. “Eoghan, please don’t do this.”
Don’t do what? I wasn’t sure. I stroked her hair, holding her close, enjoying the feel of her heat against me. Her skin. Her scent. Her hair. Our bodies together as man and wife.
I hated that her hair wasn’t the midnight black it had been, like the ocean waves in the darkness. The purple was a fucking abomination. But as I ran my fingers through her strands, I felt the sweetness of the curls were still there, beneath the over-combed straightness.
“It’s time for us to go home now, sweet Muse.” I kissed the shell of her ear. It tore my heart to do what I needed to do.
I needed her back in all her regal glory.
She trembled in my arms. I knew it wasn’t from fear. I know my wife as well as I know the taste of cool water, or the scent of clean air.
She trembled in my arms from the electricity that was always in the air between us. My wife. My Muse. My Kira.
“What’s your name?” I whispered into the shell of her ear. “I need to hear you say it.”
“Anna,” she whimpered.
Stubborn as always. A trait I loved, but loathed at this moment.
“Don’t lie to me!” I said against her skin, “I will take it as a fucking insult.”
I brought my face up to gently bump her nose with mine.
“What’s your name?”
Her face was filled with anguish, and those lovely eyes looked up at me. “Anna Jones.”
Anger surged through me, only soothed by the primal comfort of her sweet heat strangling my cock as I kept a slow and loving rhythm. But it only did so much to assuage the anger that bubbled up inside me.
I wanted to strike the wall beside her, to feel my fist shoot with pain. But I stopped myself. That was how I had fucked it all up between us. How I had sent her into a spiral of fear. How I had set us down this path.
I wouldn’t make the same mistake again.
“Lies!” I whispered. “You wound me, wife. ”
I pulled her thighs around my waist and she twisted her ankles behind me, her arms holding on to my shoulders. There was no resistance here. She wanted this. I knew it.
I jutted my hips into her, letting her feel the breadth of my arousal.
“Please Eoghan, let me go.” She shook her head, and that filthy, purple hair danced against her cheeks. “I’m begging you, let me go.”
“You’re begging for the wrong thing, love.” I hitched her thigh over my hip, feeling her skirt rise. There was so little between us. Just one little bit of fabric, easily breakable. “I can feel your need.”
She blinked back her tears as she moaned, my cock throbbing against her sweet, sweet core.
She was fighting me. Fighting us. But she wouldn’t win.
Even now, she clung on to me, her legs holding on as her hands begged for me to let her fall.
I pulled away from the wall, and just so that she knew what she wanted, I let her go, taking my hands off of her. But she clung on to me.
I let a satisfied moan escape my lips as her arms and legs tightened around me, her rhythm continuing.
“I’m not holding you, sweetheart,” I groaned as her cunt strangled my cock. “You’re doing this for us.”
We were married. We were joined. Whatever powers still existed in the world had bound us together, and there was no escaping fate.
“You feel it, don’t you?” I whispered against her cheek. “That this is home? That this is heaven?”
She didn’t respond as another tear stained her cheek, the black marks of her makeup leaving the evidence of its wake.
“I know what you need, Kira,” I said against her skin, my tongue darting out to taste her. To get more of her in my senses. “You need to come home. You need to let me protect you.”
“Please.” She shook her head, but I knew it was the very last throes of her resistance before she’d give in to me. We had danced this tango a million times before, and would a million times after. “Please…”
Her voice trailed away, as I slowly, painfully slowly, thrust my hips to create the friction we were desperate to have.
“You and I are one,” I told her, kissing her pretty throat, biting on the delicate skin. “You and I are joined, and no one can pry us apart. Not even you.”
She shuddered as her climax took over her body, and the beautiful, sensual feel of her coming apart pulled me over the edge with her, as I filled her with three years of longing. As I filled her, my mind filled with the thoughts of another child. Another little one, but this next child would be created in her image, more than mine.
Another, and another. I’d never let her slip my grasp this time.