Chapter Thirteen
▲
Archie
I slide my hand around Sarelia’s neck when she leans toward me, careful not to crush any fragile systems as her weight pushes my fingers deeper into her skin.
“I’m okay,” she says, as if that is more of an answer now than when she said it the first time.
“I don’t care that you’re okay,” I reply. “I care that you weren’t.”
Her mouth dips as she works to hold in a smile.
“The only one allowed to cause you distress is me,” I rumble. “And only when you ask for it.”
“I’m not feeling any distress now.”
My hand twitches. “Sarelia, please.”
Her eyes blink open to peer into mine, seemingly gauging how serious I’m being.
The answer is very.
Her shoulders slump, and she pulls back from my touch. “I was just on the phone with my parents.”
Ah. Some of the tenseness in my shoulders loosens.
I suppose I will not tear the perpetrators of my wife’s sadness limb from limb then.
A pity.
“What led to the crying?” I ask, swiping a fingertip over the puffy red skin surrounding her eyes.
She winces. “Remember how you said they love me, but they’re fixers?”
I frown. “Yes.”
She waves a hand out in a well there you go sort of gesture.
My frown deepens. “Do you remember how I also said you’ll no longer have to take on dealing with the fixers in your life on your own?” I ask. “How I said I will be here for you, spreading the burden of their emotional weight across both of our shoulders?”
Her cheek concaves as she bites it. “Yes?”
I stare at her, counting the speckles on her cheeks as I wait for her to elaborate.
She stares back, not elaborating.
Hm.
“We’ll add it to the meeting agenda,” I decide, having counted each of the stars on her skin three times over with still no reply. There are exactly sixteen-and-a-half.
She nods, then flutters her eyelashes at me, the picture of perfectly innocent princess behavior.
I kiss the tip of her nose and grab her hand, leading her to a room that I hold all of my meetings in on the first floor.
Previously, the room held nary but a sad little table and a couple of chairs beneath a singular dangling lightbulb. Previously, I delighted in that aesthetic greatly, and all the more at the strength with which Stryker loathed it.
“I’m not being interrogated,” he’d grumble. “And I don’t appreciate you trying to make me feel like I am.”
My lip twitches at the memory, but softens as I hold the door open to my new-and-improved meeting room for my bride. My heart stutter-steps as she steps inside, jaw dropping at what I’ve spent the morning setting up.
“It’s a library!” she exclaims, eyes alight. “With fairy lights!”
“And all your books,” I show her. “Plus a few others I had lying around.” Or every single book I could find in the house because I didn’t have time to drive to the city to fill up the shelves.
As it is, there are only shelves at all because I had some in storage meant for Heidi’s Christmas gift last year—before Basil went and built her an addition to their home full of custom hand-made built-in-bookshelves, the gift-stealing louse.
I’d had to pivot, getting her a giant blow-up yeti for her yard instead, but I couldn’t quite part with the sturdy, mahogany slabs I bought.
I found myself grateful for my hoarding today as I hauled them from the shed to hang in the meeting room and further grateful when they covered the entire wall as if they were always meant to be there.
After they were hung, I began my search for books, finding Sarelia’s, of course, and Camilla Evergreen’s lexicon as well.
I gathered work-related tomes, too—CubeCraft and torture both—then, getting a wee bit desperate to fill space, I grabbed my collection of cookbooks.
“Collection” being a generous term, as I own exactly two.
After spacing out the hundred or so books on the wall-to-wall shelves, I went on another hunt, this time for knickknacks and shelf filler. This hunt was much more fruitful. If there’s one thing I own, it’s an excess of tchotchkes.
Small plants scatter the space, sharing real estate with figurines, gaming awards, framed photos, fancy rocks, candlesticks, LEGO creations, mini hardware buckets, and more. A mish-mash of items, all with a story to tell about my life, proudly sitting for Sarelia’s perusal.
“Did you make this?” she asks, peering at one of the miniature room dioramas nestled between a copy of Camilla Evergreen’s That Time I Played the Mafia Boss and a wooden chicken figurine I whittled in the style of a Stardew Valley chicken statue.
“The mini rooms are kits I bought online,” I answer. “You get everything in little wooden sheets that you punch out and turn into tiny furniture and decorations.”
“So cool,” she breathes. “They must have taken you hours.”
They did. Hours as well as skin. Cutting the little art prints for the room’s walls is not as simple as one might assume. More than one of the prints boasts the added artistic touch of my blood.
“They took a little while, yes. I did them as I reviewed footage of you writing. It was as if we were working together.” I sigh, wistful for times past. “I thought of them as dates.”
Her skin pinkens as her bottom lip disappears between her teeth.
I stand stock-still as my body demands I take that lip from her teeth and put it between mine. Agony slithers over my flesh. Want encapsulates my brain.
My nostrils flare as I put my hands behind my back, threading them tightly together while I reach for the depths of my willpower. I may have no treats without payment, and my payment is self-control in the face of extreme desire.
It burns as much as it delights.
“I’ve set up tea for us,” I say, not wholly surprised at the gritty quality of my voice.
Sarelia, however, flits wide, startled eyes toward me. Her pupils dilate as she takes me in, and her breaths shallow.
My eyelids lower.
“Tea,” I repeat firmly, bowing as I sweep an arm out toward the small round coffee table sitting before a green sofa, both relocated from what used to be a well-furnished guest room.
Sarelia, cheeks burning, moves to the sofa and sits primly on the edge of it, setting her papers on the cushion next to her. I sit across from her in a round chair meant for melting into, a state I rebel against, for if I melt, it will be only with my princess pressed against me.
In front of us lays as intricate of a tea as I could manage in the time left after transforming the room into a cozy set up we could properly enjoy.
A three-tiered serving stand occupies most of the table and holds a variety of finger sandwiches, scones, and sweets.
Beside the stand, an antique teapot rests on an ornate gold-dusted tray with teacups, a sugar bowl, and a milk jar.
I pick up the teapot as I nod toward two porcelain dessert plates. “Choose your snacks, love,” I order softly, upturning a floral teacup on its saucer and pouring a measure of cinnamon black tea into it. A sugar crystal chunk and a small bit of milk follow the tea.
“What would you like?” Sarelia asks, hovering a pair of tongs over a cucumber sandwich while giving me a sidelong glance.
I smile. “Guess.”
She hesitates, then puts the sandwich on my plate. A scone with lemon curd lands beside it, then a piece of sponge cake. She passes it all to me slowly—shyly.
“Lovely,” I praise. “Exactly what I would have chosen for myself.”
Her eyes brighten.
I set her tea in front of her, then make my own—two sugars, a splash of milk.
“Let’s see,” I murmur, spreading lemon curd on my scone. “On our agenda, we have our goals for this marriage and working through the damage your parents inflicted this afternoon over the still-festering lashes they gave you only a couple of days ago. Is there anything else you wish to add?”
She takes a sip of steaming tea, then clears her throat. “Under that second point, we will need to discuss my parents’ desire to meet you.”
I sip at my own tea, careful not to let the emotions rioting in my gut touch my face.
Her parents love her. They want the best for her.
They hurt her in their love for her, but they have good intentions, and good intentions matter a great deal.
They are people, after all, flaws and shortcomings included.
And parents are especially full of flaws and shortcomings, despite what our younger selves may believe, which means they are especially deserving of understanding and grace when their intentions are only good.
More important than their good intentions, though, is the fact that Sarelia loves them. A great deal, even.
Which means I will cling tightly to my patience in my dealings with them so that I do not further strain my wife’s emotions where it concerns her relationship with her parents. I will cling, and I will make it clear that she is deserving of love in the way that is receivable to her.
I will also work to learn the lesson that I am trying to teach her—that just because a person shows love in a way that you cannot understand, that does not make their love any less.
And learning how to accept that love is the first step to being able to communicate to them how best to love you.
We must first believe that they are loving us as much as we would like them to so that when we ask them to love us how we would like them to, it doesn’t feel like they’re cheaply following our instructions to placate us.
Anyone can follow clearly laid steps to show us that they love us, but if we do not already believe in that love, our silly little brains will say, Yes, but if they had to be told, do they really love us?
Brains are such fickle things.
“We can add a parental visit to point two,” I decide, setting my tea down in favor of my scone. “We’ll do our goals first, then? You are ready to present yours?”
She freezes, and the rosy hue of her skin pales to nearly ghost-white.
I just barely keep my face blank.
“Um,” she hedges.
I put my chin in my hand and stare, eyes wide, waiting for her answer.
“Ummm.” Her voice quivers, and a bead of sweat forms on her temple as she glances at the papers beside her before nudging them ever-so-slightly behind her.
My lip twitches.
So. Cute.
My head tilts. “Yes?”
“Would… you like to go first?” she asks, nearly whimpering in her stress.
I wait one, two, three counts before dropping my hand and shrugging. “If you wish, my princess.”
Her entire body relaxes, and I laugh.
She blinks, lashes fluttering before the lightbulb above her head burns bright. “You were teasing me!” she accuses, sputtering a laugh.
“Who? Me?” My hand hits my chest, and I gasp.
Her giggles fill the air, half amusement and half relief. “You’re a menace,” she compliments.
I grin. “Would you like to take notes?”
Her lips tip down. “I didn’t bring my notepad.”
I stand, dip my hand into one of the baskets taking up space on the bookshelves, and withdraw a pad of paper and two pens—black and blue.
She perks up. “For a man who doesn’t do lists, you sure are prepared.”
“I am married to a woman who loves them,” I reply, offering her my treasures.
“She must think you a very good husband.”
My hand covers her wrist before she can pull it away, and I lay a kiss on her pulse. “She’s had but a taste of the joys I wish to bring to her,” I murmur against her skin.
Her heartbeat quickens under my lips.
“You mean to make me perish,” she whispers, slipping her hand from my grasp.
“I mean to make you weep,” I reply, surveying her response.
When her breathing only shallows, I continue.
“I mean to make you squirm, and want, and beg. I mean to make you ask for what you want and then I mean to make you take it. I mean to make you love me with every fiber of your being, with every cell that you have in you, and then I mean to make that love so consuming that you can think of nothing without it leading back to me. I mean to have you obsessed, my love—my princess—and I mean to have you beside me, gleefully taking part in the things I do that some might call wicked, but we know are for the good. I mean to live life with you in every way that I can, and to have you fulfilled in every way that you can be.” I glance at the notepad in her lap, untouched.
“Those are my goals, love, if you’d like to write them down. ”
Her chest heaves with her next breath. “I think I’ll remember them.”
I keep my eyes on hers for as long as she can bear before I nod, sit back, and sip my tea. “Very good,” I murmur. “That’ll be your turn, then.”
Her teacup clatters against its saucer as she lifts it for a drink. Once she’s delayed her turn sufficiently, she returns the cup to the table. Grabbing the papers she’s hidden behind her, she shifts, straightening her back.
Her blush blooms brighter as she glances at whatever enticing things she’s written down, and she shuffles until her top page is now at the back.
My eyebrows rise.
“My goals are,” she recites, “mutual care and respect, consideration for one another, supporting each other, clear communication…” She goes on, naming several more core foundation pieces for a healthy relationship, then ends her list with, “and a pet.”
I take a bite of my cucumber sandwich while I consider her desires—the ones she’s said and the ones she can’t bring herself to admit.