Chapter 26 #3
Cautiously elated, I remember I’ve been prepared for this for over a month. I reach into the bedstand drawer beside me and pull out a pregnancy test. “Only one way to find out.”
Her eyes jump between mine. “How would you feel if I was?”
Jubilant. Ecstatic. Over the moon.
I thumb her lips. “Try me.”
I walk with her into the bathroom, where she pees on the stick and sets it by the sink.
I wrap my arms around her from behind, feathering her bare shoulder with my lips.
“When you were missing, I felt as if I was running into an ever-diminishing tunnel, losing more oxygen and light with each step.” I drop kisses up the long muscle of her shoulder and neck, inhaling her deep heather scent.
“Only once we found you could I see and breathe again.” Our gazes tangle in the mirror.
“If we were the only two souls on this planet, I’d rejoice to have you as my companion, my lover, and my life.
In you I have all I could ever need. And in you I see the reflection of my better self.
” Turning her head toward me, I lay a soft kiss on her lips.
“You’re the flame that lights and warms my entire world. ”
“Leith,” she breathes into my lips, her tone fervent.
“Through everything I prayed we’d emerge on the other side and I’d have the chance to tell you how I feel.
In the darkness of that house, looking out toward the sea, I thought of Scheherazade, how in the end the king pardoned her and fell in love with her. ”
I smile, teasing the tip of her tongue with mine.
“And so I have, wee wife. More deeply each day, like a growing tidal wave, and never more forcefully than now.” Crushing her lips with mine, I lash her mouth with my tongue and reclaim every particle of her as my own.
I turn her to face me, cupping her nape and deepening our kiss.
She tastes of the promise of home, of something that belongs to me, of life that will never be extinguished.
When our lips disjoin, a tear rolls down her cheek. “I loved you as early as that day you nearly killed me in the pool. Only I never dared to hope you could feel the same.”
I thumb her tear away and drop it on my tongue. “I loved you long before I met Ron Pirie, Grizel’s assailant, and realized you’d made an honest mistake when you misidentified Aaron. The two of them could be brothers.” I kiss her forehead. “I’m sorry I ever doubted you.”
“I’m not. Because if you hadn’t, I wouldn’t be here now.” She laces her hands behind my neck. “I’m nervous to look at the test.”
“Then let’s leave it for later. I have more pressing matters to see to.”
Her brows soar. “More pressing than finding out if you’re a father?”
I hitch her thighs around my hips and turn us toward the bedroom. “I need to make love to my wife. That’ll always take priority.”
* * *
Iona
He carries me to the bed and lays me down, then reaches for one of his ties and blindfolds me. I hear a drawer open, and moments later, he fastens a leather band around my throat. It’s not too tight to be uncomfortable, but it’s snug, letting me know the collar’s meaning.
I’m his.
My chest swells with pride, and my pulse quickens.
He pulls his T-shirt over my head so I’m naked, uses it to tie my wrists together, and levers my arms above my head. I hear the swish of him removing his own tee and boxer briefs, and he parts my thighs, burying his head between them.
With flattened tongue he leisurely licks from my cleft to my clit. I moan as his tongue sharpens to a point and bats my sensitive bundle of nerves. As he drills it into me, I nearly lift off the bed, the sensation is so painfully pleasurable.
“Oh, God, Leith.”
“This is my pussy, understand?”
“Aye!”
He drags his tongue back and forth along my inner walls, making my eyes roll back in my head. “You belong to me, Iona. You always have and always will.”
“Aye, sir,” I acquiesce.
Pressing his thumb into my nub, he grinds his tongue up and down over my divide. Then he delves it back in again, touching a spot that has me whimpering and quivering.
I’m about to give in to an onrush of pleasure, when he lifts his thumb and tongue and blows cool air over my cunt. I groan, lolling my head back and feeling like my phantom orgasm is floating just above me.
“That was to remind you who gives you pleasure.” He straightens my legs and pulls them up so my ankles are at his shoulders. In one thrust he plunges his cock deep into me. “This is to remind you who owns you, body, mind, and soul.”
As if I could forget. Leith has owned me since the day I came here to ask him for that favor. He would’ve found a way to claim me even if I hadn’t sought him out. There’s something deeply comforting in that fact, like this collar I now wear.
He pulls out and thrusts straight through me again, hitting a place so deep I cry out. It’s beyond any power to express, this feeling of being roughly possessed with each stroke, of being manhandled for our mutual pleasure.
As if reading my mind, he growls, “You were made for this, Iona. Made for me.” His hips hit my pussy with savage purpose, building me up toward a dizzying pitch. With each punch of his pelvis he seems to be trying to drive deeper still.
He retreats partway. “Come for me, Scheherazade.” With one last pulverizing thrust he shatters me in pieces, stripping me of all consciousness other than pleasure.
On a scream I ride my road of bliss, feeling him swell and still inside me. As he pulsates, I squeeze him, struck by the miracle of our joining. I don’t need to see to know his magnificent abs flex and glisten with sweat. I don’t need to move to feel closer to him now than ever before.
Leith is mine, as surely as this collar has a lock on it. A lock signifying his love for me and mine for him.
1?sick, nauseated