21. A Hunt and a Challenge #4
“I love how you sing. The way you don’t force it to be pretty, or happy, the way there's beauty and there's triumph when it’s sad. Sometimes there’s this anger in it that makes me feel like I’m not alone, like even if you were angry with me, I could take it, if I just got to still hear you sing.
” He breathed deep, and lifted his eyes to mine.
“I want to make you happy. I want…to hear you humming around the house, like you do sometimes. I want to listen to you talk and laugh and bicker. I want to be the one you laugh and bicker with. I said before that I didn’t have anything to offer you, but that isn’t true.
I have myself. I have a lifetime of doing right by you, of mending what we’ve broken and loving you as I can.
And that’s what I swore, outside this kael. I swore I’d be yours, Nora.”
“I’m afraid,” I squeaked. I was crying. “I don’t want to hurt your life. I don’t…I don’t fit here.”
“I only sometimes fit,” he said, “but there are people who want us.”
“They want you.”
“I’m not dominating their affections so much as you believe, Nora. If it came to a row, I think you’d find a lot of them very much on your side.”
I shook my head. “Your friends are kind. Grezha has been kind. But…” My breath trembled. “What if there’s never a place for me here?”
He looked at me, and those twin forges he had for eyes held none of the sarcasm of moons past. “You’re my wife,” he said, and brought both my hands to his mouth, to kiss. “There is room for both of us,” he said, “or there is room for neither of us.”
I gasped.
Maybe this was a terrible idea. I think I said something along those lines.
“This is a terrible idea.” I was hiccuping in sobs, and he was smiling.
“We don’t know what’s going to happen,” I said.
But I knew. I knew that I wanted it to be with him.
And when he said, “There is no turn of fate that could make me regret loving you,” I knew I’d given myself wholly back to him.
I leaned towards him and let my lips meet his.
The kiss was sweet with the salt of my tears, with his hands tightening on mine. And the brush of his mouth didn't rush. Whatever this was, we weren't going to skip it. However my heart raced, he was taking this time.
I opened my eyes. “I don’t want to go to Merreborough,” I got out. “I don’t want…a life where you don’t fit. I just…” I pulled in shuddering breaths.
“No one is asking you to leave.” He kissed me. “No one will ask you to go.” And I stopped thinking and surrendered to his arms.
We drank each other in. Time felt false, unreal. His touch, on the back of my neck, on my waist, his fingers in my hair— had he untied my braid?— I was melting into him, and then I wasn’t, I was grabbing onto him, pulling at his shoulders, dragging him to me.
He pulled back, his pupils so wide there was only a thin ring of gold. “We’re wearing too much clothing for this.”
Right.
I stood.
Right.
I got the ties undone, and his hands were helping me pull it off, the dress and then the shift. He craned his neck back. His hands brushed my waist, and my breath caught. “God, you’re beautiful,” he murmured, and there was a knot in my throat.
I squared my shoulders. “You need to stop staring.”
His eyebrows rose, that wolfish grin unmoving. “Why? We’re married.”
I crossed my arms. “Then give me something to stare at.”
He laughed, full-throated, and pulled free the ties to his trousers, let them drop.
“Better?” He still grinned.
I nodded. “Fair.”
“Fair?”
“It’s fair because now we’re both nak—"
He pulled me onto the bed, onto his lap. And then I found it very hard to breathe.
“You were saying?” he said.
I got my voice back. I was not going to be silent this time. “Close…close your eyes.”
“Why?”
“To make it fair.” My heart raced. “You got to see me first.”
He closed them. “I feel like removing myself from the action is going to do the opposite of making this equal.”
When had I fallen in love with the shape of his nose, the angle of his jaw, that mouth? When had the harshness and the intensity that came together in this man become the most beautiful thing I could look at, the kind of beauty that gave me courage?
I feathered my touch over his brow, the softness of his skin, the ridges of that scar and the sleekness of his eyebrow. His ear. His lip.
“You’re teasing me,” he rumbled.
“No. I’m enjoying you.”
“Are you? What are you going to enjoy next?”
I pressed a kiss to the corner of his mouth, his jaw. “I don’t know. I might stay here.” I traced my fingers over the marks across his chest, his arm. “You’re very fun to ki—" I squealed as he caged me in his arms to roll over on the bed.
He was over me, and I was staring up, gasping. His eyes roved over me, from my face, down, back. “I don’t know,” he said, “You seem to enjoy being enjoyed, too.”
Maybe I didn’t need this to be fair.
“May I?”
I nodded, but he waited till I found my voice and got out, “Yes. If…you want.”
“I do.” That grin split across his face. “I’ve wanted this for a very long time.”
I tried to focus, control my breath. “You met me three months ago.”
“You think I didn’t want you before we met?” And then I couldn’t argue with his nonsense, because his lips had met my skin.
He laughed quietly. “Are you always going to hide your face for this?”
I was fighting for words. “...I think it’s very reasonable to have only one of us looking at a time.”
“Do you want me to blindfold myself? Would that make this less awkward?”
“It’s not awkward, I’m just—" I cut off with a squeak as his touch trailed downwards.
“How are you this aggressive and this jumpy?”
“How are you this nice and this mean?”
“Mean? This is mean?” He lunged and was over my face again, all of him was over me, and suddenly I didn’t have much to say. “Tell me how to be nice.”
“I…”
“I what? No, speak up. I need to hear this.”
“I…” he waited, and I turned my head away, towards that brilliant torch. “I can’t think when I’m looking at you.”
“What? I’m too pretty?”
“Yes, yes, you asshole! You’re too pretty!”
His laugh rang against the walls, open, free. “I’m closing my eyes,” he said.
My heart was racing. “You said that before.”