Chapter 21
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Forever begins now.
Morana
This room is way too big. Way too new. Way too…far away from everyone I know who lives here.
Right now, Maelin and Zakery are all cuddled up together. Lukas and Clara, too. Yet I lie here, alone, in solidarity with Viktor and Kaleb—assuming Viktor hasn’t gone to Crisis’s house. He sometimes heads out there and sleeps in her “fish room” because that’s “normal,” I guess.
I’ve given up on trying to figure out what is or isn’t normal to these people.
I roll over, facing the wall toward Kyran’s bedroom, just two doors up.
I guess I’m also lying here in solidarity with him.
My eye twitches.
Imagine springing a marriage on a girl, dragging her home with you, and then leaving her all alone and cold in an unfamiliar bedroom the size of her entire previous house. Imagine having that audacity.
Nose scrunched, I forget about trying to be better or more agreeable or less annoying, mean, and difficult. I throw my blankets off, march the mile to my bedroom door, trek up the hall, and invade my husband’s room.
Halting a foot inside his bedroom, I freeze as the black streak of his cat darts off to hide.
Crushing my dumpling bear in his arms, Kyran—beautifully tragic—lies in bed, fairy lights agleam around him. His face rocks toward me, and his ice-blue eyes blink. With ethereal elegance, he unwinds a single arm and drapes it beyond the gauze of his glowing sheer canopy. Palm open, he beckons.
Helpless, I close his door behind me as softly as I can and go to him.
It’s like entering a fantasy world when he welcomes me in to him, fingertips featherlight against my cheek as he sits himself up and makes room for me in his lap. Voice low, he murmurs, “Trouble sleeping?”
I force my attention off his lips, to his eyes. “We’re…husband and wife. We shouldn’t have to sleep alone anymore.”
He smiles for me, and I get stuck with my attention fixed on his mouth again. He says, “I like that plan. It’s not scary here now, but I feel your absence so acutely, it’s still impossible to sleep without you.”
I shiver. “Are we…really going to do this?”
“If you want to. If you’re ready.”
I do want to. I don’t know what ready looks or feels like. I’m still so scared. I have never wanted to love someone like this before. No one else has ever mattered this much.
Gripping his shoulders, I take a deep breath and hold his gaze. “Our marriage was stupid.”
“Hey.”
“It was. It was so bland. Generic. A real courthouse wedding. Practically screamed we’re doing this for tax purposes.”
“We eloped, secretly, in the heat of the moment. It was, incredibly, romantic.”
“No, it wasn’t.”
He rolls his eyes off me. “Okay, fine. It wasn’t. It was functional. It was serious. It was making a point.”
“The point being?”
“I love you to the brink of insanity, and whatever you think about yourself that’s less than palatable, I can and will top it.
Have you even realized how little crap you’ve given me over marrying you?
You throw more fuss at me for dirty laundry or getting my sandwich crumbs on the floor when I eat by the fridge.
Now I’ve given you the best reason to be livid, and you hardly seem bothered.
Shocked, sure, but bothered? Not really.
Want to demystify that for me, dearest?”
Warmth skates up my back. “You were trying to bother me by marrying me?”
“I was trying to show you I don’t have a limit to what I will do for you and that I am more than willing to impose upon you in outrageous ways that can’t begin to touch whatever it is about you that you think pushes people away. I thought you’d go off, but I wasn’t doing it to set you off.”
“I still can’t believe it happened. I still feel like I need to wait for the certificate and then go check the state records myself.
I know you’ve mentioned marrying me plenty, but I don’t think I ever believed that you would.
Then, you just did it. Without question.
Without hesitation. You sprung it on me as though it wasn’t some big choice, as though you didn’t need to think or consider or weigh whether or not you wanted me.
You were sure. And I…” I sniffle. “I don’t know.
I can’t wrap my head around the idea that someone is sure about wanting me. ”
Kyran scrubs his thumb beneath my eye, catching a teardrop. Then he moves to capture the moisture on his tongue. “There’s very little else I’m half this sure about, Morana.”
“You made an excellent point,” I whisper, find a shaking breath. “It was a very loud point. So loud, actually, it’s still ringing in my head.”
He hums, and I shiver, because his mouth has found a place at my throat, kissing sweetly, toying, teasing. His hands grip my thighs, tight enough to relay desperation as he grounds and paces himself—restraining.
“I’d like to give you better vows,” I say.
He pauses, drawing back to look me in the eye.
I know I look pitiful. I’m shaking with how badly I want more of what he was just doing.
My eyes are glassy with tears and every inch of my flesh is on fire.
He takes in the sight, swipes his thumbs against my legs, and becomes mildly predatory. “You would, mistress?”
Shy, I nod.
He unlatches one hand, skims his touch up my body, and cuts his thumb across my jaw. “Go on.”
Heart thundering in my head, I whisper, “Kyran Bachelor, I promise to communicate openly with you and never let you question what happened between us. I promise to honor and protect. I swear the rest of myself, everything I have to give, everything that hasn’t already been taken, to you.
I want to be a good wife. I want to be kind to you when it matters.
I want you to know that you’re important to me.
I want to be your safe place. I want…to be your forever. ”
He catches several more tears on his knuckle, smiling as he runs his finger along my cheekbone.
Deep with conviction, he murmurs, “Morana Bachelor, I promise to never leave you wondering where you stand in my heart. I promise to treasure you in every way I can. I will put you first. I will love you wholly. I will become your safe place, because I am your forever—just as you are mine.” His fingers find mine and stretch them until our pads and palms meet.
“There is no future without you. You are my eternity. I feel it in every breath and every moment between. I love you. Can you feel how much I love you, Morana?”
“I…think I’m starting to.”
“Do you know that I’ll love you even more in the morning?
No matter what happens right now, I will keep loving you more, and more.
No matter what you do, or don’t do. No matter what you say, or don’t say.
I love you for everything you are and everything you aren’t and everything you will or won’t become. You…Morana…are precious to me.”
I settle my forehead against his and let the tension leave me. “I…would like to love you like that. Will you teach me how?”
His lips graze mine as his eyes close. “I will show you that you already do.” He kisses me, and electricity sparks in my soul. “Are you ready?”
“Y-yes.” A gasp fills my chest as his mouth settles against my collarbone.
“Do you trust me?” He nips.
Right here, right now, I am choosing to. “Yes.”
He dumps me back into the plush, and I stare up at him backdropped in the fairy lights. His fingers toy at my waistband. “You own me, mistress,” he says, lowering to kiss my stomach through the fabric of my black cami. “Act like it.”
Shuddering, I grip his hair, drag him up to my mouth, and bury myself in his smile. “Promise?” I ask, hoarse and breathless, once our lips are raw.
“Promise.”
And then he paints his promise into my flesh and bone, until very little of me remains, and I cannot peel apart the point where I end and he begins.
?
I wake first, bleary, sun-washed, warm. Kyran’s scent consumes me, and I lie in our bed, staring at his dark hair for the longest time. He continues sleeping, steady breaths drawn through him like an ebbing tide. Face buried against me, arms unrelenting even in slumber.
Last night was…
I have never come out of being touched in those kinds of ways feeling like more for it. They have never been an action that relays care or love. Last night was a new creature, something I’ve never experienced before, something he—apparently—had never tasted even in lackluster before.
I will never, in all my life, be able to forget the drunk way he looked down at me and said, Dearest? Remember when I told you that you were my first love? This is something I would only ever do with someone I love. Please have patience with me.
Hands shaking, he treasured me.
I was his first. He’ll be my last. We’ll be one another’s forever.
And nothing is going to get in the way of that.
Steadily, my husband wakes, body shifting around me as a low sound leaves him.
Unnatural bliss grips my heart. “Morning, e-boy.”
The smile that overwhelms him heals something inside. Reverent, he cups my cheek, settling on his arm to look at me. “Morning, mistress. Did you sleep well?”
I nod, because I think it would be impossible to sleep poorly after whatever insatiable whirlwind transpired last night.
I just about lost consciousness from the exertion, and Kyran—so sweetly—kept coaxing me into more, and more, until my memories abandoned anything that wasn’t him and his heat and this bone-deep feeling of being wanted. Beyond flesh. To my very soul.
Letting love pour off him in droves, he laughs and cuddles me. Delirious with joy, he sinks against my body, whispering, “My wife. All mine. Forever and ever.”
My nerves flutter, and I comb my fingers through his hair.
If he keeps loving me like he did last night, I don’t think I’ll get a spare moment to doubt that things between us will ever end. He redefined everything I know about intimacy. He showed me why it’s called making love.
My heart feels so full right now it could burst.
“You hungry?” he whispers into my shoulder.
Mm. Clara breakfast. “Yeah.”
“You want me to bring you some of whatever’s out there?” He kisses and draws away, reluctant with every centimeter he gains as we come apart.
I’m halfway to agreeing when I recall that I live here, and my family’s out there, and if I let Kyran serve me breakfast in bed, I’ll coax him back into it, and we won’t be leaving it for the entire day.
Which won’t get us much farther along on the plans for our trip to my parents’.
Which is becoming somewhat ever more dire.
Yeah, I really need to introduce them to my husband and apologize for being the worst daughter on the planet.
Sadly, I slip from the sheets and his warmth to begin searching for wherever my pajamas wound up so that I might make the trip to my room in decency and get ready for the day. “We should probably mix our wardrobes,” I offer, locating my camisole on the floor.
Turning when Kyran doesn’t respond, I locate starvation in his eyes as they run over my body. He licks his lips as his gaze consumes the way his fingerprints have spackled me.
“Kyran?”
He blinks, finds my eyes, reboots. “Clothing. Yes. I’ve already made room in our closet.”
Already, huh?
His gaze drifts back to taking me in as I get myself dressed. “I wasn’t too rough, was I?” he asks.
I glance at an indention of my teeth still on his arm and flush. “Nope.”
“I feel like my heart is going to explode. It won’t stop hammering.
I want nothing more than to stay here with you, catching brief moments of lucidity in between passion and passing out.
I want my days and nights to be nothing more than holding you and learning you and talking to you until my throat is raw.
I want to kiss every inch of your body and beg you to tell me everything that has ever happened to you in your entire life from the instant you gained consciousness.
” He grips his hand to his chest, noticeably blushing.
“I love you. I…is this what loving someone feels like? When every last wall disintegrates and there’s no more space left between? ”
A shiver rocks me, and I melt back down onto the bed, taking his face in my hands. “I…think it might be. I don’t know. I’ve never…liked someone this much before.”
Teardrops gather in his eyes, and one slips free. “I don’t know how I lived without this. I never want to take another breath without it.” He scoops me up in his arms, holding tight. “Thank you for choosing me.”
Emotion threatens to choke, but I manage to return his embrace and whisper, “Thank you for believing I could.”