Chapter 20
CHAPTER TWENTY
GRAHAM
We tumbled through the door of our room at the castle, Agnes laughing against my mouth, her fingers tangled in my hair. I kicked the door shut behind us and pressed her against it, kissing her like I’d been starving for her, which I had been.
Almost drowning in a loch put things into perspective.
I supposed it made you realize what mattered.
And Agnes Wright was the only thing that mattered.
“I can’t believe you proposed in front of everyone,” she gasped between kisses.
“I can’t believe you said yes.”
“Of course I said yes, you bloody eejit. I’ve been in love with you more than half my life.”
“Still.” I pulled back to look at her, this woman who had dragged me from the grip of an ancient curse with nothing but her bare hands and her stubborn refusal to let go. “I should have done it properly. You know, candles. Flowers. A ring.”
“I don’t need candles or flowers.” Agnes’s eyes crinkled at the corners as she smiled up at me.
“Och, you most certainly do. You’ll be getting a ring, my bonnie fiancée. And a fancier proposal when I’ve got my head about me again. But for now … you’re all mine.” I sunk into the kiss, never wanting it to end.
Agnes laughed, the sound bright and warm in the dim room. “It’s really fine, Graham. This was perfect. Frankly, why wouldn’t everyone be there for it? They’ve been in our business for ages now.”
“Maybe I’ll have Kaia forge a ring for you.
She can imbue it with protective magick or whatever it is she does.
” I pulled Agnes forward into the room, not wanting to stop touching her.
I wanted this lightness to always stay in her eyes, and not that deep line in her brow that came when she was worrying.
“Graham, seriously, I don’t need—”
“I’m serious.” I cupped her face in my hands, my thumbs tracing the line of her cheekbones. “I’m going to give you everything, Agnes. A proper ring. A proper wedding. A proper life. As soon as we break this curse and murder the giant water serpent—”
“We’re not murdering the Beithir.” Agnes rolled her eyes.
“Maybe you’re not,” I muttered.
“Graham! You can’t go near the loch. You’ve promised me.” Agnes moaned as my lips found the sensitive spot just behind her ear. I scraped my teeth over her soft skin.
“I’m not sure you get a say in this anymore. You’ve spent a decade pushing me away when we could’ve been having so much more fun together.”
“I was trying to save your life, you ungrateful eejit.”
“My life wasn’t worth saving without you in it.”
My words hung in the air between us. Agnes’s smile faltered and her hands came up to grip my wrists.
“Don’t say that.”
“You want the truth? Here it is.” I leaned my forehead against hers.
“Every day I spent without you was a day I was just going through the motions. Running the pub, laughing with the lads, pretending everything was fine. But it wasn’t.
Because you wouldn’t let me in. Because you kept holding me at arm’s length, and I didn’t know why, and I thought…
” My voice cracked. “I thought it was me. That I wasn’t smart enough or good enough for you. ”
“Graham—”
“And now I know it wasn’t me at all. It was an ancient curse and a family secret and you trying to protect me from something you thought you couldn’t fight.” I kissed her, soft and slow. “But you did fight it. Today. You fought the whole bloody loch for me.”
“I don’t even know how I did though, Graham.” Agnes shivered underneath my hands.
“But you still did it.” I paused and properly looked at her. “You almost died today, too, Agnes. You went into that water without hesitation. Without thinking about what might happen to you.”
“I was thinking about you.”
“Exactly. And I love you for it. But I also need you to know that I can’t lose you either. See the thing is, I really need you to come out the other side of all this. Alive. With me.”
“Och, duh. That’s the plan,” Agnes said, sighing as I nudged her toward the bed.
“And you do so love a plan. Tell me how you see it, darling.”
She rose on her toes and kissed me. “We’re going to break this curse, and we’re going to get married, and we’re going to have a life. A long, boring, completely ordinary life.”
“Ordinary?” At that, I laughed, shaking my head.
“Okay, maybe not ordinary. We live in a village with a ghost coo and book wyrms and gnomes. But as close to ordinary as we can manage.”
I laughed despite myself. “I love you.”
“I love you too.” She kissed me again, slower this time, deeper. “Now take me to bed before I lose my nerve.”
“Lose your nerve?”
“I’m trying to seduce my fiancé, and you keep making me have emotional conversations instead.”
“Apologies. How inconsiderate of me.” I scooped her up, and she yelped, her arms wrapping around my neck. “Better?”
“Much better.”
I carried her to the bed, a massive four-poster thing, which looked like it had been in the castle since the Middle Ages, and laid her down on the covers with a gentleness that was almost reverent.
She looked up at me, her curls spread across the pillows, her eyes dark with want, and I had to take a moment just to drink in the gorgeous sight of her.
My fiancée.
The word still didn’t feel real. After years of wanting and waiting and wondering if I’d ever get to call her mine, she’d said yes.
In front of everyone, while we were both still damp from the loch and shaking from adrenaline.
But she couldn’t take it back now. Everyone had heard her agree to be my wife.
“You’re staring,” Agnes said, her cheeks flushing in the most adorable way possible.
“How could I not?” I picked up her hand and kissed her ring finger. “You’re the bonniest lass in all of Scotland.”
“You don’t need to…”
“I can do what I want with my fiancée. And right now, it’s appreciating her beauty.”
“Well, appreciate faster.” Agnes tugged at my arms, trying to pull me closer.
“No.” I climbed onto the bed, settling over her, and kissed her forehead. “I don’t think so, love. I do believe I’m going to take my time.”
“Graham—”
I kissed her eyelids. Her nose. The curve of her cheek. “I almost died today.”
“I’m aware.”
“Which means I’ve got a new perspective on things.” I kissed the corner of her mouth. “A new appreciation for life. For time. For not rushing through the moments that matter.”
“And this would be one of those moments?”
“Every moment with you matters.” I finally kissed her lips, soft and slow. “But this one especially.”
She melted into the kiss, her hands sliding up my arms to my shoulders. I wanted to kiss away the understandable tension in her body, the fear she was trying to hide, and the worry she couldn’t seem to shake. I wanted to take that worry away if I could, even if for just a little while.
“Let me take care of you,” I murmured against her mouth. “Just for tonight. Let me be the one who takes care of you.”
I pressed my lips to the hollow of her throat. “You deserve to be taken care of. You deserve to be worshipped. And I’m going to spend the rest of my life doing exactly that, starting right now.”
Her breath caught as I pulled up the borrowed jumper she wore. Slowly, I pressed kisses to each new inch of skin I revealed. Her body trembled beneath my lips, and I was drunk on her response to me.
“Graham,” she breathed.
“I’ve got you.” I pulled the jumper over her shoulders and sat back to look at her. “God, Agnes. Do you have any idea how beautiful you are?”
“You’re biased.”
“Damn right I am. Doesn’t make it less true.”
I traced my fingers down her collarbone, across the swell of her breasts, watching goosebumps rise in my wake. She arched into my touch, a soft sound escaping her lips.
“More,” she whispered.
“Patience.”
“Hang patience.”
“Let’s consider it payback for making me wait all these years. So now we’re going to take our time and enjoy this.” I unclasped her bra and let it fall away, then bent to press my mouth to the curve of her breast. “Every. Single. Moment.”
She gasped as my lips found her nipple, her fingers digging into my shoulders. I took my time there, learning what made her moan, what made her arch, what made her say my name in that breathless way that went straight to my cock.
“You’re wearing too many clothes,” she managed.
“Mm. That does seem unfair.”
“So do something about it.”
I sat back and pulled my shirt over my head, watching her eyes track down my body with gratifying hunger. Then her gaze caught on something and her expression shifted.
“Graham. Your chest.”
I looked down. There were bruises there—already deep purple and blue—spreading across my ribs where Faelan’s healing magick had done its work.
I’d felt them aching, but I hadn’t looked.
I guess I hadn’t wanted to see the evidence of how close I’d come.
I don’t want to consider how close I came to being taken from this earth.
From Agnes. And I certainly hadn’t spent time reflecting on the moment I “came to” and felt Agnes pulling me out of the water and Ramsay carrying me away from it.
“It’s nothing,” I said. I’m alive. I’m with you.
“It’s not nothing. The curse did that.” But I’m here and you said yes to be my wife.
“Faelan healed the worst of it.”
“That is the worst of it?” Agnes sat up, her fingers hovering over the bruises without quite touching. “Graham...”
“I’m fine.” I caught her hand and pressed a kiss to her palm. “I’m here. I’m with you. That’s all that matters.”
“I almost lost you.”
“But you didn’t.” I guided her hand to my chest, pressing it flat over my heart. “Feel that? Still beating. Because of you.”
Her eyes were bright with tears again. “I can’t—if something happened to you—”
“Nothing’s going to happen to me. Not now that I know you’ll fight a whole loch to keep me.
” I kissed her tears away. “We’re going to break this curse, Agnes.
And then we’re getting married. And then we’re going to have a spectacularly boring life where the most dangerous thing that happens is me burning dinner or coming home too late from a busy night at the pub. ”