Chapter 20 #2
She laughed, and though it was a bit watery, it was still a laugh.
“There’s my lass.” I kissed her properly, tasting salt and want. “Now. Where were we?”
“You were taking your clothes off.”
“Och. Right.” I stood and finished undressing, watching her watch me. When I was bare, I reached for the zip of her trousers. “Your turn.”
I undressed Agnes, marveling at her beauty, still amazed that she was mine for all of time. We slowed, trading kisses and soft words and touches that made us both gasp. By the time we were skin to skin, I was aching with want, but I forced myself to go slow.
“I love you,” I said, settling over her, feeling her warmth against every inch of me. “I love you, Agnes Wright. Soon to be Agnes Kincaid, if you’ll have me.”
“I’ll have you.” She wrapped her legs around my waist, pulling me closer. “I’ll always have you.”
I sank into her slowly, watching her face, watching her eyes flutter closed and her lips part on a moan. She felt like coming home. Like everything I’d ever wanted and never thought I’d have.
“Okay?” I asked, holding myself still despite every instinct screaming at me to move.
“More than okay.” She opened her eyes, and they were dark with love. “Move, Graham. Please.”
I moved.
It was slow and deep and nothing like the frantic coupling of our first night together.
This was different. This was two people who had almost lost each other, finding their way back.
It was reassurance. I kissed her as I moved, swallowing her moans and giving her mine in return.
Her nails raked down my back and I shuddered, picking up the pace, need driving me.
She met me thrust for thrust, her body arching against mine, and I buried my face in her neck and breathed her in.
I slowed, savoring, because I wanted to live in this moment forever.
And for a while, we did. The rest of the world just ... fell away. There was no curse. No danger. There was only Agnes beneath me, around me, her breath mingling with mine in the dim golden light of the room.
Bracing myself on one forearm, I used my free hand to trace the curve of her waist, the dip of her hip, mapping the geography of her like I was committing her to memory—because I was.
Because today had taught me that nothing was guaranteed, and if I only got one lifetime with this woman, I would memorize every inch of her.
She shifted beneath me, tilting her hips, and the new angle drew a groan from somewhere so deep in my chest it barely sounded like me.
“Graham.” Agnes almost purred at my response and gave me a slow, knowing smile that was just wicked enough to have my brain short-circuiting.
This. This is what I almost didn't get to have. The fact we’d almost lost each other again made my heart twist.
She must have seen something shift in my expression because her hand came up to cradle my jaw, her thumb brushing across my lower lip, and she whispered, “Stay with me. Right here.” And I did.
I anchored myself to the feeling of her, the warmth of her skin against mine, the way her thighs tightened around me when I rolled my hips just so.
Dipping my head, I kissed the space between her breasts, right over her heart, scraping my teeth over her skin so as to mark her. Mine.
I rocked into her slowly, deliberately, drawing it out until she was trembling, until her fingers were clutching the sheets and then abandoning them in favor of digging into my back.
“You feel incredible,” I breathed against her skin, and she let out a laugh that dissolved into a moan when I punctuated the words with a deep, rolling thrust.
“You’re not—” She lost her train of thought entirely as I did it again, slower this time, watching her face, watching the way her eyes went hazy and her lips parted and her head tipped back against the pillow.
I could have watched her like that for hours.
I wanted to. I wanted to wring every last drop of pleasure from this night, to give her something so good that it burned away the fear, even if only for a few hours.
So I kept the pace achingly slow, building her up with a patience I didn’t know I had, whispering her name like a prayer against every bit of skin I could reach—her throat, her shoulder, the delicate shell of her ear.
“Graham,” Agnes gasped, arching against me. “Faster.”
Reaching up, she tugged my hair. I gasped at the spike of pain, but loved how much she wanted me. I laughed against her mouth, because bloody hell, how could I not?
Because even in all of this, our love had always come with a little pain, hadn’t it?
Tracing my lips along her collarbone, I tasted the salt of her skin, and she whimpered, her hips rolling against mine in a rhythm that was making it very difficult to maintain any semblance of control.
“Why are you so damn beautiful? It’s like you were drawn just for me,” I murmured against her throat, and her pulse jumped beneath my lips.
She pulled my face back up to hers and kissed me—slow and deep—and it seared through my soul.
Every point where her body touched mine was a live wire, and the way she whispered my name between kisses, like a promise, nearly undid me completely.
“I love you,” I said again, because I couldn’t say it enough. Because I’d almost never gotten to say it again. “I love you, I love you, I love you.”
“Graham—” Her voice was breaking, her body tensing. “I’m close—”
“I’ve got you. Let go, darling. I’ve got you.”
She came apart beneath me, crying out my name, and the feeling of her pulsing around me sent me over the edge right after.
We lay tangled together in the aftermath, breathing hard, neither of us willing to move.
“That was—”
“Yeah,” I answered.
“We should almost die more often if this is the result.”
“Absolutely not. I forbid it.”
She laughed, and the sound was the most beautiful thing I’d ever heard. I rolled to my side, pulling her with me, tucking her against my chest. She fit perfectly there. Like she’d been made for that exact spot.
“Tomorrow,” she said, “I have to figure out how to face the Beithir.”
“We have to figure out, Agnes. We. But, tonight, you’re mine.”
She was silent for a moment, her fingers tracing idle patterns on my chest.
“Thank you,” she said finally.
“For what?”
“For waiting. For being stubborn enough to stick around even when I made it seem like I didn’t want you.”
“Agnes.” I tilted her chin up so she was looking at me, even though from her comment, I knew she saw me. “There was never any question of giving up. There was never going to be anyone else. You were it for me from the moment we met.”
She tucked her head back under my chin, and her body relaxed against mine. Beyond our doors, the castle was quiet. Everyone had retreated to their own rooms, their own partners, and to their own private moments of connection in the midst of chaos.
Tomorrow, we’d face the curse again and everything might change.
But tonight, I had her in my arms. Safe. Mine.
And that was enough.
For now, that was everything.