Page 64 of The Marriage Bargain
The tears dripped onto his skin. I flicked my hand up to catch them, but I wasn’t fast enough. He felt the moisture and immediately tensed, pushing himself up on his elbow, leaning over me.
“What is it, Delle?” Concern laced his voice. “Are you unhappy?”
“No, no, of course not,” I responded, also propping myself on my elbow. “It’s nothing, I promise.”
“Your tears are not nothing,” he responded. Gently, he caressed my chin, my cheek. “Tell me.”
“You’ll think I’m an idiot,” I half-laughed, exasperated with myself for ruining this beautiful moment.
“I would never think that.”
Reassured, I murmured, “I guess I’m just so happy that we made it. We’re together. We’re—we’re husband and wife, you know? In every way. I get to sleep with you for the rest of my life. I get to sleep with you! Look at you! I mean, how lucky can I get? We survived everything both of our worlds threw at us. We made it. We chose each other. We chose our life, and I guess I’m—I’m really happy about it. Maybe a little overwhelmed, but in a good way.”
I wasn’t sure how he’d react to that stumbling speech. Would he think it was silly? Stupid?
A slow, happy smile spread across his beautiful face, brightening golden eyes that gleamed even brighter in the bedroom’s gloom.
“Sweet Delle,” he murmured. “Strong as the Citadel. Wild as a snowstorm. Fierce as a winter wind. But with a heart as large as a galaxy. I love you and I will always love you. Whether here on Earth, or wherever time and the future take us. I will love you if all we ever have is a simple patch of land and a quiet existence here, or if time takes us spinning among the stars. You’ve given me something no one else ever could, and that is a home for my heart and my soul. For that, I will forever be thankful.”
He sealed the words with a long, slow kiss that was as sweet as his previous kisses had been fiery. And if that kiss led into another kiss and another and another, and if each one became deeper and hotter until we were sailing off again into skies of pleasure, that simply made it better. We’d survived everything two different worlds had thrown at us thus far, and I knew, with a solid certainty deep in my bones, that we would forge a new path together and make an unlikely marriage bargain between a human female and an alien Overlord the best thing that had ever happened to either of them.
The End
