Chapter Thirty-Two
“Come here,” Ronan says. He’s standing by the hearth, the firelight catching on the trim of his doublet and the golden flecks in his eyes.
I had already been halfway into the bedroom, but I do as he says.
“I want to see you first.” He frees the veil from my hair, taking care not to tug on the dark strands where it tangled. Then he releases the pins that hold my braids, unraveling them with his fingers.
He sucks in a breath as my hair falls around my face, releasing the lilac scent of my soap with it. “Your hair,” he says, brushing a strand off my forehead. “This curl right here.” He twines it in his fingers. “It does something to me.”
“What does it do?” I ask, combing it forward to cover my breasts. I’m still in my dress, but with his height, he has a good view of my cleavage.
He smiles, adjusting his pants. “Oh, I think you know perfectly well.”
I reach up to brush my hand through his hair, and his face turns to meet my palm with a sigh at my touch. “I have to admit I like your hair too. Although I almost prefer it messy.”
“Sacrilege,” he says. “This hair is my entire personality. You may be my wife, but I won’t be insulted.”
“You only said that so you’d have an excuse to call me your wife.” I only say this for the exact same reason, thrilling at the word.
“Am I so transparent?”
“Like a pane of glass.”
“Alright then. What am I thinking right now?”
He’s touching me, so I can feel the desires of his body. “You want to rip this dress off of me, but you’re trying very hard to be patient, like you said. So you’ll settle for untying these laces.”
“That’s what I’m feeling but not what I’m thinking.”
I pout, and he brushes my lower lip with his fingertips. “See how infuriating it can be not knowing?”
“What are you thinking then?”
“I’m thinking there is nothing more beautiful in this world than you.
” He reaches behind me, pulling me to him so he can untie my laces with me pressed to his chest. “I’m thinking how unbelievably lucky I am to be standing here.
Holding you. Loving you.” He pulls the fabric apart and loosens it, lowering it to release my breasts.
“I’m thinking of how badly I need you and praying you never get tired of me because I’m going to go on needing you until I draw my last breath. ”
“Ronan,” I sigh as he runs his fingers over my skin.
True to his word, he touches every inch of me as he removes my dress, his fingers gliding across my shoulders, my back, my hips.
I step out of it as he kneels to the floor, removing the boots from my feet one at a time while I use his shoulder for balance.
He runs his hands down my legs: the outside first and then the inside as he stands back up.
I gasp when he reaches the place between my thighs, but he doesn’t touch any of the intimate parts of me.
I reach for his doublet, and he pulls it over his head, baring his broad chest. I mimic his movements, tracing lines on the skin of his collarbones, his shoulders, his back, his scar, and the incredible lines of his stomach.
“Do you remember the day you saw me training with Adria back at the palace?” I ask as I trace the outlines of his abs.
His cock twitches in his pants when I reach the trail of dark hair leading down to his waistband.
“You were wearing that ridiculous shirt, and it was driving me insane. Or at least I thought it was until you took it off.” He hisses as I press a kiss to each of his muscles.
I look up at him from his stomach, and his eyes are completely glazed over with lust. “That’s when I knew what insanity was. ”
“Ridiculous?” he stammers out, his hand twining in my hair, gripping my head.
“It was absurd. Silly little strings that did nothing.”
He smirks. “I wore it on purpose. I wanted you to look.”
“Even then?”
“I’d come this close to taking you against the wall in an alley as Soren, and then I’d seen you naked in the baths. So yes, Sylvie. Even then. I was already going out of my mind wanting you.”
“And now?” I ask, dipping my finger beneath his waistband.
“Now I’m going to have to stop you because I’m not nearly finished with you yet.” He grabs my hands by the wrists and pins them behind me. My mouth falls open in surprise, and he kisses it.
I moan against him as he kisses me, first with incredible passion and then slowing, softening. Becoming maddeningly gentle. He releases his firm grip on my wrists. “Behave,” he whispers in a way that makes me want to do anything but. “Turn around.”
That command I follow.
“I love how strong you are,” he says, moving my hair out of the way to trace the softer lines of my own muscles.
We’ve trained together a lot in our time here, and though my body is never going to look as strong as I’d like, at least I do feel strong.
“I love the way you feel against me when I come up behind you.” He pulls me back to him, and I feel him hard against my backside.
I press against him and moan. He kisses my neck and my shoulder and then steps away from me to rub my back.
“That feels so good,” I say as he massages me, kneading the tension from my muscles. He works his way down my spine, and then just as I think he’s going to touch my ass, he skips it and works on my legs. “Hey!”
“All in good time, my love.” He massages my legs and then turns me around to do the front. He looks up at me through his lashes, enjoying my pleasure immensely. It feels so good to have him touching me like this. Not sexual, but incredibly intimate.
As he works his way up my legs, he presses soft kisses to my skin. I jerk against him involuntarily as he moves closer and closer to my sensitive area, my hands reaching into his hair to pull him there. “So impatient.” He stands upright and kisses my lips with that same maddening softness.
I’m dying to overpower him, to force my tongue into his mouth and to tear off his pants and take him inside of me, and I know he can feel it.
“You can take me how you want to when I’m done,” he purrs into my ear. Then he kisses my earlobe, running a trail down my neck with his tongue, his other hand caressing a mirrored path down my skin with a barely there touch that has me writhing against him.
He breezes past my breasts, licking and grazing the soft flesh of my stomach, stopping just short of my freshly shaved lower skin.
He moans, letting his other hand run down my back until it finally meets my ass.
Then he lowers his mouth to my inner thigh, kissing right up to the seam where my leg meets my body.
“Ronan,” I beg. “Please.”
He kisses his way back up to my breasts, his fingers and tongue circling the soft flesh, spiraling toward my nipples.
“Oh, Ronan. That feels amazing. Thank the gods you love my breasts.”
“Mm,” he moans as his fingertip and tongue lightly brush my nipples.
I cry out.
“They’re perfect.” He licks and touches them in torturously light circles, kissing and pinching them so softly I can barely feel it.
And fuck, if it doesn’t drive me wild. I’m soaking wet, and he’s only just gotten started. “I think—I think the left one is a little bigger.”
“Oh, no,” he says mockingly, looking up at me. “Why did you tell me? I guess I’ll have to stop being completely obsessed with them.”
“Obsessed?” I say, gasping as he finally sucks my nipple into his mouth.
“Yes, Sylvie. I’m obsessed. They’re incredible, but that’s not why I’m obsessed with them. Not the only reason, at least.” He takes the other nipple into his mouth and sucks it, and it sends a wave of desperate need between my legs. “I’m obsessed because of how you feel when I touch them.”
My back arches as he goes back and forth between them, sucking and licking my nipples, lavishing them with attention. I could let him do this for hours.
“But if I’m being completely honest, the thing I’m most obsessed with is what lies between them.” He stops and presses his cheek to my chest. His voice goes quiet. “You’re so beautiful, Sylvie. Not just your body. You. Your heart.”
I lift his chin so he’s looking me in the eye. “You are my heart, Ronan. My heart. My husband. My home.”
“Oh, Sylvie,” he says, and then he lifts me up and carries me to bed.
“You’re the love of my life.” He dips his fingers between my legs, opening my lips and gliding them over the wetness he finds there.
He groans as he grazes my clit, his touch featherlight.
“There’s nothing in this world I want more than to make you happy. ”
He kisses me as I writhe against him, begging for more pressure. But then something changes. I didn’t think it was possible with such a light touch, but the tension is building in my body. “Oh,” I moan. “How is that…how are you doing that?”
“Just listening to your body,” he says, kissing my neck. “Giving it what it needs instead of what it wants.”
“Gods, Ronan.” It’s deliberate and languorous, the climb. He rubs gentle circles around my clit, occasionally dipping his fingers inside me with agonizing slowness, responding to feelings I can’t articulate. “Let me touch you.”
He complies, slipping from his pants and freeing his cock as he lies beside me. I moan as I see it, red and so erect it looks like it must hurt. I skim my fingertips over the slit, rubbing a drop of his excitement around with the same excruciatingly delicate touch he’s using so expertly on me.
He groans and bucks against my hand and then reaches back between my legs.
“So impatient,” I say, and he laughs into my shoulder.
I rub the head of his cock softly as he sighs against me, his fingers glancing over my clit. Then I trace a vein down his shaft from the head before running my hands over his balls. He gasps as I stroke them, and the sound makes the building heat between my legs surge.
“That’s so good, Sylvie. That feels so fucking good.”
He rewards me by filling me with his fingers, and I tighten around him. “I’m close, Ronan.”
“Good.” He sucks one of my nipples into his mouth, and I arch beneath him. “You’re so good at coming for me.”
I moan at his words. His touch remains as light as ever, but my body doesn’t mind.
If anything, it seems to be even better in some ways, the denial.
The anticipation of a stronger touch. He pulls his fingers out of me and rubs my clit again, his mouth moving from breast to breast, soft licks punctuated by harder sucks.
My legs tighten beneath me, my back rising off the bed and into Ronan’s hand. My hand tightens on Ronan’s cock, tugging his foreskin up and then pulling it back down, my movements becoming erratic as my body comes closer to its climax.
“Oh, gods,” he grunts. “Fuck, that’s so good.”
He presses his forehead to my shoulder, his hair grazing my chest. His hips buck into my hand as mine buck into his.
Then suddenly, it’s on me. My body clenches and releases, exploding in a dazzling wave of pleasure that travels up my spine into the back of my head, the heat and tension pulsing through me with my release.
I cry out his name, and he takes my mouth and climbs on top of me, inching into me as I convulse, using the waves of my climax to pull him in deeper and deeper until he’s all the way inside by the time my movement slows.
“Gods, it feels so good inside of you.” He pulls out slowly and reenters even slower, his body trembling from the effort not to pound into me all at once. “I don’t know how long I can last like this.”
“Take your time,” I say, rubbing my hands lightly over his back. “I want you to come for me like I just did.”
He moans softly into my neck. “I don’t care if I come at all. I’m going to make love to you now. All I want is to be as deep in you as I can be. To stay there as long as I can.”
He’s true to his word. He thrusts in and out of me slowly, kissing me softly the entire time.
It’s so wonderfully intimate, the two of us unhurriedly moving together, taking our time.
He leans back and looks into my eyes, brushing my freckles and murmuring about how much he loves me, and then he kisses me again, and I feel it so deeply in my heart that it brings tears to my eyes.
I’ve never felt love like this. I’ve never felt so certain something was right, so safe in someone’s arms. I’ve never felt so needed and cared for, never felt so much wonder and desire and comfort in someone’s embrace.
Our bodies respond to each other like they were made for each other. Like the gods themselves sculpted them to fit together, like the earth taught us her song, ancient and timeless, and we sing it together in perfect harmony.
It feels at once eternal and momentary, the connection between our bodies lasting only minutes but the tie between our souls stretching into eternity, the golden thread of fate that connects us contracting and going taut as we near our release.
Our feelings no longer feel separate as the tension builds between us.
We move as one; we feel as one. His pleasure and my pleasure.
The heat in my body echoing the heat in his.
My legs tighten around him as his arms tighten around me; he pushes into me as I pull him in, our rhythm increasing until finally we reach our climax together, his body spilling into mine, my body taking his offering, his sacrifice at my altar.
He stays in me after, going soft inside of me, stroking me and kissing me and telling me how happy he is that I’m his wife, how he’ll never let me go, and I do the same.
But both of us are wrong.