Chapter 24
?
Us.
Maelin
Twirling my parasol, I take in the grounds of the Bachelor manor this lovely Sunday afternoon. Late last night, after Morana and I had put up our groceries, Zakery texted me, asking if I’d be interested in a date today.
I didn’t expect him to pick me up and drive us right on back to his home, but…
I cannot say I’m complaining.
He has hung curtains around the quaint white gazebo I can usually see from one of his bedroom windows, and the shades flutter in a mild breeze as we approach. Sweeping one wide, he smiles, letting me tuck into the dim glow and find a picnic area spread across the wood flooring, blankets and pillows heaped around large wicker baskets.
My sketchbook. My pencils.
Some pens, and I suppose a sketchbook of his.
Awe sets in as I close my parasol and push my sunglasses up on my head.
“It was a nice day,” he says, joining me. “I hope it’s not too bright.”
“It’s—” I clear my throat. “—perfect.”
His icy gray eyes warm as he helps me to a place amid the pillows then begins unpacking the picnic baskets. Sandwiches, salads, chips, juice, pastries, cookies. The spread is monumentally extravagant.
“May I?” he asks, pulling out two champagne flutes and a bottle of Welch’s Sparkling Sangria.
I nod, trying to calm the beat of my heart as he pours me my glass.
This is so romantic.
We’re going to eat and draw together? In a secluded, sun-shielded gazebo surrounded by flowers?
And he’s not even making it work by having his digital art at hand? Just…sketchpads? For fun?
So…
This is love.
This is what love looks like.
Feelings can take a long walk off a short pier. If it came down to this or the person who made me responsible for his feelings, I’d choose this. Every time.
“Are you all right?” Zakery asks after I’ve been sat here, gaping, for the past three minutes.
I jolt to awareness, nearly spilling my drink.
Zakery braces my hand, soothing, “Easy. What’s wrong?”
My head shakes. “Nothing. It’s just… all of this. I’m so happy.”
He cups my cheek and swipes away a tear. “This was hardly any trouble. I bought a bunch of pre-made picnic things yesterday and asked my brothers to help with the curtains and pillows. It took maybe ten minutes to set up and thirty to shop for.”
“You went shopping yesterday?”
“At SunMart.” His smile tilts toward mischief. “Saw you there.”
My heart thumps. Please, please, please tell me he didn’t overhear anything. “O-oh?”
“You seemed very attached to a box of cereal. I bought a couple. In case you want it for breakfast any of the days you stay over here.”
My damp lashes flutter as I try to understand what he’s saying. He…first of all…was at the store, shopping, so he could set this up. Then, when he saw something I seemed to like there, he bought some for me? So I could have it whenever I’m here?
That’s…so sweet. It’s so sweet that it makes me cry harder.
His smile fades. “I’m sorry. Was that overstepping? Should I have said ‘hi’? I didn’t want to intrude on your time with your sister. I recognize that I’ve been hogging you these past few weeks, so I didn’t want her to think I was trying to steal you in the few moments she gets.”
I sniffle, wiping my cheeks as I lower my flute glass against my lap. “No, you didn’t do anything wrong. I’m just touched. This is probably hormones. Sorry.”
“Nasty things, hormones.” Instead of undermining my emotions, he scoots himself next to me, wraps me in his arms, and kisses the top of my head. “Take your time. I’m right here if you need anything.”
Sagging against his chest, I soak in the stability of his presence, whisper, “Is there anything I can do for you? You’ve been so kind and generous. It feels like I’ve just been existing.”
“Well,” he murmurs, “there is one thing I’d like to do, but we can broach that subject after we eat.” With that he fills his flute glass and raises it. “A toast?”
I lift my own glass, fighting to quell my sniffles.
“To the start,” he says, “of us.”
Us.
I love that.
So I touch my glass to his, and drink.
?
Bare, tattooed arms flexing, Zakery paints penstrokes across my skin, hypnotized and careful. Every so often, he whispers a curse and drops his lips to my flesh. I do my best not to shudder while he etches me in ink.
It started with my hand—a butterfly, branches, a skin canvas for the sketches I showed him of our Creator’s Ball attire details. From there, he moved to my shoulder, stretching dragon wings and claws around my bicep. Now, after dragging a finger across my collarbone, meeting my eyes, and saying please , he is dotting the thousand stars of a galaxy on my chest in the space between where my dress starts and my throat ends.
Kissing my jaw, he murmurs, “You’re doing so well. Being so still for me.”
My breath shivers.
He runs his nose down my throat, kisses the marks, adds to them, curses. “Oh to be the ink poisoning your bloodstream. One day, if you’re willing, I’d like to be a permanent fixture in your skin. Just something small. Something to say you’re mine. I’ll keep the rest of you as a canvas I can reuse again and again. I would make a habit of coloring you in, watching you tremble for me as you fight to be oh so still.” His eyes hit mine, and I can’t stop the responding quake.
Smiling, he pulls his pen away, sets it down, and follows the swirl of the galaxy he’s made with a fingertip. “Beautiful.”
Swallowing hard, I say, “Is this really all you wanted to request from me?”
He pushes my hair away from my face and follows the curve of my cheek back down my neck until his touch gets lost in the galaxy again. “Yes.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m pacing myself. If I send you home dripping in ink like me, your sister might worry.” He plays with my fingers, kisses the flowering branches he drew on the back of my hand. “You’re worried you aren’t doing enough when you just exist near me, princess, but I’m hooked on it. Keep existing. Just like this. It’s—” He swears. “—cocaine.”
My face heats as I ease myself upright.
He grins, clicks his pen open, and takes my face in his hand before drawing a heart on my cheek. His kiss seers moments before I look at him. As our eyes lock, his smile tames, and his gaze lowers to rest on my lips.
Many silent moments pass before I ask, “What are you thinking?”
His thumb runs over my mouth. “Is desire a feeling worthy of subjugation? Am I experiencing it right now? Would it horrify you to know all the things I have thought as I’ve touched you for the past hour? Have I been thinking any of it of my own volition, or simply because these matters seem correct between lovers? All my life, throughout my childhood, my head has been filled to bursting with concepts of beauty. My worth has been measured by my skill. When I look at you, I see art . I must guide myself past that if I’m to entertain ideas of things that lovers do, and—still—I hardly understand.” Closing his eyes, he shakes his head. “Sorry. My mind is spinning. Ultimately, I am trying to decide whether I’d like to kiss you, if I merely suspect that I should , or if you’d appreciate the action regardless of what prompts it… Kissing you goodnight felt forced, and limited. I did it because it seemed correct. I’ve seen goodnight kisses before, scattered in media. I didn’t want to disappoint you if you were expecting it, and I counted precisely to three like you asked. It was for you, apart from myself.” He sweeps his fingers into his hair. “When you visit me in my dreams, there are no rules, no limits. I act without thought. But you’re not a person there, like you are here. Those actions stem from subconscious places that I don’t have access to when I’m fully awake. I…want you. I do. But I don’t know how to want you correctly. Does that…” His fragile gaze lifts, pleading. “…make sense?”
Reaching for his hand, I plant his palm at my waist, then I slip my touch up his bare arm, to his shoulder. He stiffens when I kiss a flower bud darkening his flesh. “If I stop you, stop.” I kiss his neck, feel his breath hold as his grip solidifies, pressing into me. “If you want to, stop me.” I graze his lips, pull back, meet his eyes. “That’s how you do this correctly. The rest can be just like your dreams.”
He releases his hair. “Is that…all there is to it?”
“As far as I understand.” My face warms. “At base level, clothes stay on until we’re married.”
He casts a glance at the jacket he neglected when he first began drawing on me.
I smile. “That doesn’t count.”
Nodding, he swallows, so I kiss his Adam’s apple.
He utters a curse.
“Stop?” I ask.
“No,” he croaks. “No, no. Please. Please continue.”
Gently, I suck. Kiss. Nip.
He drags my body to him, planting me on his lap, gripping my thighs around his waist as my skirt plumes. “How…do you stop after…after you start?”
I glance down.
If he were Harry, saying that kind of thing with accusation and dark promise, I’d be scared right about now.
But he isn’t, so instead I kiss his mouth, tug on his bottom lip, and test his responding motion as I swallow another curse.
“How, Maelin?” he whispers, hoarse. “Please. I don’t trust myself.”
“You’re beautiful, Zakery.” I rest my forehead against his. Frame his cheeks in my hands. “I trust you.”
“You’ve misplaced your trust before. I don’t want to hurt you if you misplace it again.”
My chest clenches, and he’s not wrong. He isn’t. But if I get past the pain, there’s something so safe in his awareness. It’s this intentional denial while every cell in him craves the closeness I’m offering that makes me trust him. He would rather ache and be careful than risk hurting me.
He responds in full lengths of poetry when I ask for his thoughts.
He…shows me love—whether he knows what he’s feeling or not.
Love is a word he has defined and chosen to act in accordance with.
To Harry, it was a word. To Zakery, it is an action.
“Should we wait?” he asks, agonizing. “Until nothing is too far?”
“Would you like to?” I ask.
His eyes shatter when they meet mine. “No. Adamantly no. But. I am not thinking clearly. You smell…so good, princess. So good. And you’re so…” He struggles for air. “Soft. I want you. It’s becoming violent. I’m afraid to lose the feeling. I’m afraid I won’t experience this again.”
“You will. Don’t worry about that.”
“But…I run things dry. Shows, movies, stories. All the things I have ever thought I’ve loved I have rewatched or reread until there’s nothing left in them for me. Just a faint sensation of longing, nostalgia, anxiety .”
“I’m not going to be the same any time you rewatch me, Zakery. You can’t even rewind me once, because I’ll never play like a rerun.” I kiss the divot below his lip. “Breathe.”
His lungs fill, pressing against my chest. Air fizzles out of him. “That…was not entirely helpful.”
I giggle.
He laughs, running his hands up my sides, glancing at the galaxy on my clavicle. “I…I want you.”
“I want you, too.”
His hesitant smile makes me wish I knew how to paint.
Carefully, he combs his fingers into my hair, grips, and bares my throat to him. My body melts against his kisses until heat suffuses my every inch. “Do you believe in soulmates, Maelin?” he asks, nipping my jaw.
“Maybe. I don’t know. Some people you just mesh with, and it’s immediate. Some people your heart just seems to…know.”
“I haven’t been able to get you out of my head for a single moment since we met.” His mouth closes over mine, tasting, teasing, learning. He breaks the connection before I’m ready. “I cannot promise feelings. You know that. I’ve told you. But we are compatible in our beliefs and aspirations. I possess a strong sense of duty and justice.” He dips me back, plants me in a mound of pillows. “I’m a good listener. I know how to act around the people I care for, to show them I care, to show them I love them, whether I feel it or just know .”
“What are you saying?” I ask, breathless.
“I love you, Maelin. I know I do. People piss me off so easily so often. It’s rare I find one I can tolerate. But I’ve not had to tolerate you. The hours we’ve spent together every day over these past weeks would wear me thin even if I were spending that much time with any of my brothers. But with you? I haven’t tolerated a moment. You make me laugh. You surprise me. You are quiet when I need you to be, and you fill the silence when I need to hear anything but my own thoughts. I don’t know how you do it. I just know I have been hanging on your every word since the first one you spoke to me. You are so… so beautiful. You have claimed my soul.” He traces the line of my cheek bone under my eye, up, and around my ear. “If, after the Creator’s Ball when you see your ex again, you decide you sincerely don’t mind my company… If you can tell in your heart that you care for me not just because I offer above the bare minimum you have known…please.” His forehead rests against mine. “Marry me. That very same day. Outside. Here. In the middle of the night. With the moon reflecting on your skin. Beneath the glitter of the stars. You wrote down that you didn’t care for a wedding…so… please . We don’t need one. Just say you’ll be mine.”
Marry him…in…two weeks?
I swallow the buzz clouding my brain and strive for logic and ration. Marry him. Marry this man I’ve known for a matter of weeks after I’ll have only known him for a little over a month?
Without a wedding.
Without pretense, or forethought, or planning beyond I do ?
“My parents,” I say. “You need to meet them before we get married. And I want them and my sister to be at our vows, wherever we take them. It all depends on if they approve.”
“I will beg on my knees for you if that is what it takes.”
That is highly unlikely to be necessary, but I do greatly appreciate the sentiment.
“Is this a tentative yes ?” he asks.
I wet my lips, and I want it to be. I really, really want it to be. I want to trust everything he’s shown me, everything he’s said, everything he’s done. I want to know that all the beautiful parts of him that leave me feeling secure aren’t just his efforts to woo me. I want to know that this, simply, is him .
I don’t want my desperation to make me stupid again.
I have wanted to get married and be loved ever since I was a little girl. I have always wanted to have someone to call my person . I just never thought the one I assumed would take that role would betray me. I never knew how blind a person could be in an effort to obtain their dreams.
So, I say, “We’ll see what my parents think of you, okay?”
He stiffens, but nods, and repeats, “I will beg. Whatever it takes. Because I have decided to love you. And I do not make such decisions lightly.”
Somehow, having someone decide to love me means so much more than when it just happens . “Zakery,” I whisper.
“Yes, princess?” he implores.
“If my parents approve, I, too, will decide to love you.”