Page 83 of Iron Blade

“There is no calling or vow I have taken more seriously than the one I have made to you.”

“But you don’t even know me.” She shook her head. “You jumped in so fast. Why?”

I shrugged. “I have a lifetime to get to know you.”

She laughed, but it sounded sad. It broke my heart.

“Are you having second thoughts, love?” I slid the sketch pad off my lap and walked to her. I put my hands on her bare knees, spreading them so I could take my rightful place between her thighs; a place I was growing very, very comfortable. “Do you regret what we’ve done?”

I couldn’t bear it if she was. It would break me to know that she might regret this, especially when I had yet to tell her the worst of it; the worst of what would come when she bound herself to me.

She shook her head, bringing her finger to her lips, her palm beneath her chin. “I should.”

When she crossed her arms beneath her breasts, she created a barrier between us. A barrier that I would not allow to stand. A barrier I would plough through, even if I had to lick her sweet clit for hours until she spread herself wide, ready to receive me as she had this morning.

“We know nothing about each other.” Was she about to cry? I couldn’t tell. But it stabbed at my gut. I wouldn’t allow that. She was allowed to shed tears of ecstasy, and that was it. There would be no sorrow for her. I couldn’t allow that. I’d open my veins and bleed before I let her feel a drop of sadness.

“You know art,” I said, cupping her cheek. “You have a fierce mind and a beautiful body. I am enthralled with your face and I worship every inch of you.”

She rolled her eyes. “There are thousands, if not millions, of beautiful women in the world. Many of them are prettier than me…”

“Lies.”

“... they just didn’t push you away like I did. But now that I’ve accepted you…” There was that blasphemous tear. I could see it collecting on her lower lashes, threatening to overflow and mar her gorgeous cheek. “Will you get bored of me?”

The tear crawled over her long lashes and started to fall. I caught it with my lips, kissing the space millimeters below her eye. The salty taste made my tongue feel bitter and wrong.

“Never,” I whispered against her cheekbone. “I would deny God before I deny my wife.”

She laughed, her crossed arms loosening in the space between us, thawing the barrier she created.

“You’re a terrible Catholic.”

“That’s true,” I said, kissing her cheek.

I pulled back, my eyes trailing down her face, to the sweet pulse at her throat. Then down the valley between her breasts, bordered by the white silk shirt that hid the beautiful mounds of her breasts, but couldn’t hide the delicious, hardened nipples that poked out, tempting my mouth.

But I looked down further, down the ridges of her curved belly, to her navel.

Then down further, to her mound, and the wetness beneath.

“I can smell your arousal,” I growled, the heady, musky scent of her filling my senses, making me drunk with it.

“It’s not my fault,” she gasped. “Not when you look at me like that…”

“Hmm.” I reached down, pushing her thighs apart so that I could lewdly gaze at her folds. “I have so much to tell you,” I confessed, staring down between her thighs. I bit my lower lip, fantasizing about placing myself there again. “But I don’t have the heart to burden you right now. Not when we are here, apart from the world.”

“In our little magical cottage?” she teased.

“Mm-hmm,” I said with a nod. “On our honeymoon.”

I placed my palm against her belly. Could I give her a child? Could that happen? Would that bind her to me so she couldn’t leave? Would it tie her to me, so that when I laid myself bare for her, she wouldn’t run for the hills? When I finally showed her every scarred inch of me.

I looked up at her face, her eyes darkened with lust, and I knew I would burn the world if it meant I got to keep her by my side.

In my miserable existence, no one had ever made me feel alive the way she did. No one invaded my soul and filled my senses the way she did.

“I made you bleed,” she said, running her fingers over my shoulder, to where four angry red lines of broken skin stared at her. “I’m sorry.”

---