Chapter Ten
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Archie
I have never wanted cake less in my life.
I have never wanted Sarelia more.
In all the hours upon hours I’ve spent consumed with shameful thoughts of her—imaginings of her hair against my skin or her soft blush beneath my lips—I never came close to guessing the magnitude of want she would inspire once she was actually within my reach.
Countless evenings I’ve fallen asleep riddled with guilt and lust in frightening measures, wishing her near as my skin burned with the need to touch her.
And yet, I had no clue at all what having her would be like.
But now she’s here, and mine, and my fantasies are transformed into scintillating actions I can take as far as Sarelia allows me. And Sarelia—sweet, beautiful, delectable Sarelia—allows me to take them quite a way before she stops me, my generous wife.
I pant against her collarbone, my fingers flexing beneath her shirt against the skin of her freckled stomach. Skin that she’s letting me touch, letting me kiss, letting me explore.
“Sarelia, my princess,” I gasp.
Her hands run through my messy hair, her own breathing ragged. “Archie,” she replies.
I hiss, then nip the dip between her collarbones in displeasure. “No, what you called me earlier,” I order.
Her fingers twist, catching my hair in a rough, painful grip.
I remove my hands from her shirt, lest I trip straight over her boundaries and into bliss.
“Archie,” she repeats, then follows it with a soft, enticing, “my knight.”
If I weren’t already on my knees, I would be.
“You were born to torture,” I praise. “Say it again.”
She sighs, pulling my face up so that she can peer at me with half-lidded hazel eyes while she undoes me completely.
“My knight, who saves me from a loneliness I did not know I felt.” She smiles, a shy thing that endears me all the more following the hours of not shy she’s been blessing me with.
Then, she speaks again, slow and halting and brave, saying things that slay me just as much as they embarrass her.
“You have always saved me from my loneliness, Archie, but now… I know we barely know each other, even as we know so much, but you’re so…
you, you know? Intelligent, kind, generous, thoughtful, unhinged.
No matter where this goes or what happens, I’m grateful for right now.
That you would even think of me in any capacity, let alone the capacity you claim to is…
I can’t fathom it. I can’t fathom that I’m here, or that you’re here, or that we’ve been…
” she trails off, face flaming crimson. “Well, any of it. I can’t fathom any of it, but I’m grateful, and I’m joyous.
If this is a dream, I hope that I do not wake up anytime soon. ”
My goodness, I love her.
“You say such pretty vows,” I mutter. “Would that they were burned into my skin, heated memories over what your hands have left. I could be covered in layers of your touch, your words, your beauty. I could be beautiful with you, I think, covered like that.”
She blushes, and I kiss it, because I am allowed. Because it is mine.
Because she is mine.
“I’m not sure how much more of this I can take,” she whispers, tilting her head back as I coast my lips across her jaw and down. “I know we’re married, but…”
I leave a mark on the delicate skin of her throat before exercising the scraps of willpower I have left to pull myself away from her.
As I sink into the bedding beside her in the bedroom in my house that I’ve designated as hers, I take in a ragged breath.
“We do only what you wish,” I remind her.
“Only what you ask for. Only what you allow me to enjoy.” I roll my head, catching her eyes before I continue.
“And you must know, what you don’t let me have?
It’s just as enjoyable for me. The waiting.
The anticipation. The agony of my thoughts beating against my self-control.
” I grin—a feral, vicious thing. “I love it all, Sarelia. The giving and the withholding. I revel in what you allow me and what you do not. Never feel like you cannot tell me to stop, because the nos will always be as enticing as the yeses.”
Her chest rises and falls in time with my heart. Too fast, and yet not fast enough to catch up with the wild torrent of desire sparking across my flesh.
“How are you so perfect?” she asks, staring up at the pretty pink canopy covering the pretty pink bed we lie in. “How do you keep getting better?”
“How are you so perfect?” I counter, letting my eyes traverse the star-speckled skin of her cheek. “How do you keep getting better?”
She has no answer, and neither do I. Some things just are what they are.
Silence falls between us until our hearts and lungs fall back under our control and the static on my skin has shifted to an undercurrent instead of a pulsing electric zing.
The gauzy pink fabric above us sways in the breeze coming through the open window, and I wonder what Sarelia thinks of it.
Does she like this room that I’ve spent years of my life working to hone for the day that I would finally bring her to be with me? Is it pink enough? Is it too pink?
My eyes flash across the extent of pink-ness I’ve gifted her as I pull up in my mind the bedroom that she lived in at her parents’ house.
Comparing the two, her room here blows her room there out of the water.
In pinks, yes, but also in comfort, in space, and in thought.
Sarelia’s room at home is a mishmash of life-less, cheap furniture, nostalgic memorabilia from her life as she’s grown, CinnaRoll47426 merchandise from every line I’ve ever put out, and do-it-yourself fan art she’s created in her free time.
In her old life, she was stuffed into a room that could barely fit her desk, her bed, and her dresser. She’d piled things ceiling high on whatever surfaces she could make use of. Her walls were a testament to her dedication to showcase everything she found important.
When designing her room here, I kept these things in mind.
First and foremost, I wanted her to have space. Which is why I moved into what was once a guest room in favor of giving her the primary bedroom. A princess should not live in a tin can.
After space, I prioritized her physical comfort, then the comfort of her soul.
Her bed is the largest, prettiest, softest, comfortablest princess bed money could buy.
Made of cherry wood and fairytale dreams, its four wooden posts go nearly to the ceiling, with bars across to hold her canopy.
Her dresser, likewise, stands tall, with long legs lifting it from the ground so that she does not have to strain when she bends to open the drawers.
The wood of both pieces of furniture boast carvings done by my own hands, curated with Sarelia in mind.
Her desk showcases my carvings as well, tucked neatly below the window which looks over the backyard, the better for her to view me as she works should I wander out.
Her chair, sadly, contains no carvings, but it does not contain less thought.
I spared no expense, updating the top-of-the-line ergonomic desk chair every time a new best chair was released in the years before she arrived.
The chair is, of course, pink.
And the walls? Pink.
The carved cherry wood? Stained pink.
The soft-as-a-cloud bedding? Pink.
Pink, pink, pink, just like her room at home, but more and better and not at all something she would dislike, so why am I entertaining such thoughts?
Because the distress is almost as delicious as her blush, and the anxiety might just be as sweet as her lips.
“What do we do now?” she whispers, and my eyes break from the carvings of amphibians and flowers on her bedpost to land on her instead. Her gaze collides with mine, then skitters away. “Now that we’re married?”
More of what we’ve been doing, I would hope, but I know that’s not what she means.
“Now we get to know each other,” I answer.
“Proximity means that we will find the parts of one another that we haven’t been able to see.
We can learn so much more now—appreciate so much more.
So we observe, then instead of speculating alone on the others’ thoughts and motivations, we can talk about them.
” Communication is the key to any healthy relationship, after all. And the unhealthy ones, too, thank all.
“We get to know each other,” she echoes, wonder coating her gentle whisper.
“And make goals,” I add. “Couples are always making goals. We’ll do that.”
A cute little line appears between her brows. “What sort of goals?”
Hm. “Well, I know my personal goals for this relationship. Perhaps you can think of some on your own as well, then we can have a family meeting to discuss and plan.”
Her lashes graze her cheeks one, two, three times. “You’re giving me homework.”
I smile, sliding a hand across the bed to tangle my pinkie finger with hers. “You love homework.”
Her skin warms, and I know I’m right. “Which brings us to an opportunity to enact the first part of our plan! I know that you love homework because I’ve seen your eyes light up at an assignment or a deadline, but I don’t know why you love these things.
” I roll to my side and prop myself up on my elbow, careful not to disengage our pinkies as I lean into her, a moth drawn to a blushing flame.
She shrugs, peeking at me out of the corner of her eye as she replies, open, honest, and immediate, “I like having a finishable task with a clear end date. Something I can check off of a list, or something I can split into smaller parts so I can check them off of a list. I like the small hits of dopamine it gives me, and I like the sense of accomplishment I feel when I look at something and know that I’ve done it.
I’ve finished the Thing, and now I can move on to other Things to get more feel-good chemicals. ”
Huh. Fascinating. And highly unrelatable. “I don’t think I’ve ever checked a single thing off of a list in my life.”
She snorts, then giggles. “I always imagined you would be the type to make a list and immediately lose it.”
“You’re so generous to think I would be put together enough to make a list in the first place.”
Her eyebrows rise, and her head turns fully toward me so that our noses are but inches apart. “No lists?” she asks. “Not even a planner?”
I shake my head, then boop our noses together. “No list. No planner. I keep track of what needs done in my head.”
Hazel eyes widen. “In your head?”
I nod. “A lot of my work really shouldn’t be written down, and the stuff that could be…
well, it’s so much more fun to take the risk of forgetting, don’t you think?
There’s nothing like the rush of an approaching deadline that you only just remembered, when it’s nearly too late to hit it.
Or when it is too late to hit it, and you have to piece together a viable solution with no time, no forethought, and no guarantee it will work.
” My heart lurches just thinking about it.
Sarelia blinks. “This explains a lot, actually.”
I’m positive that it does.
“This has been good, yes? Our first step in getting to know each other, accomplished. You may now check it off a list.”
Her eyes shine and—slowly, tentatively—she leans in until our lips brush.
My hands fist as I fight for the control to stay still until she moves away. I bask in the temptation to take, take, take, and revel in the awful that is not.
“Thank you,” she says. “For being so perfect. For rescuing me from my loneliness. For being a knight when I so dearly needed one.”
I tsk and pretend to be a person who has willpower and knows how to use it. “You thank me for such basic things.”
“The basic ones are usually the ones taken for granted,” she retorts. “And I don’t want to take a second of being with you for granted. I want to recognize the gift you give to me in every moment we have together.”
As an expert on torture, I believe I have been outgunned.
“No more talking,” I decide, letting go of my loosely-held control. I roll over my bride. “Kissing only.”
Her giggle is honey on my tongue as her words replay in my head, twisting my organs until they’re nothing but goo in my stomach.
Recognition. Appreciation. Care.
From Sarelia, my princess.
How am I ever going to bear the exquisite unsettle such things evoke?
Perhaps with kisses, one could suggest.
An excellent suggestion, I think.
And then I spend a nice, long time testing it out.