Page 163 of Fated

Amy is at the bookshop with Sean. Maranda came too. She wanted an international adventure. Later today they’ll all come to the chateau and have dinner with me and Mila.

Aaron slowly takes the watch. He turns it in the light and the gold glints in the sun shining through the window.

“You dreamed me first.” He sets the watch on the nightstand. “But Fi, I’ve been dreaming of you for the past two years.”

I smile at him. “Even though you didn’t know what I looked like?”

“I knew your heart.”

“Did you always recognize me when I was there? When I wasn’t me?”

He reaches out, stroking his hand over my cheek, down my jaw, to the edge of my mouth. “You were always you. Looking back, I knew each time I was with you. How could I not? And today, when you walked into the room and I saw you—soft hazel eyes, fiery auburn hair, intelligent and generous, your kind smile, the warmth of your touch—you were my Fi.”

“It’s not hard for you to believe?” I ask, thinking he didn’t have a childhood like mine, where I was prepared to accept there are more things unexplained in the universe than explained, and to accept the things we don’t understand.

“I believe in love,” he says. “I think just about anything is possible with love.”

“You love me?”

He smiles, leans forward, and pushes me back to the bed. I fall beneath him and he straddles his hips over mine. “I love you,” he says. “Fiona Abry. Fi.”

Instead of saying yes, I whisper, “I love you.”

Then we’re lips and mouths and hands. I pull off my dress, the satin scraping over my skin. Aaron slides my bra free, catches my nipples in his mouth, and presses a kiss to each freckle, each fairy kiss. He slides his hands over my skin, caressing the curve of my hips, stroking the softness of my abdomen. His jeans whisper over my skin, abrading me like the sand of the beach. He rocks against me. His mouth is hot, his movement a gentle wave.

I reach for his jeans, tugging them free. I pull off his shirt. Then I run my hands over the smooth muscle of his abdomen and the dark ink of his tattoos. I roll my hands over his shoulders and arch up to him.

I tug his boxers down and he springs free. He closes his eyes and draws in a shaky breath as I move against him.

I reach around him, holding him over me. He’s as hot as the sun, as welcome as the warmth of the sea sliding over me.

He takes his mouth to mine, kissing me with all his love. “I love you.”

I reach up and pull him closer. Taste the sweetness of his mouth, the promise of a life well-lived and well-loved, a future of dreams.

I wrap myself around him, and then he pauses, keeping himself still at the heat of me.

“Fi?” he asks—a question, a proposal.

I smile up at him. “Yes,” I say, and then he kisses me and slowly, gently, plunges into me.

My breath catches as I stretch around him, taking him in. His heart pounds against my chest as he stills over me. I clutch his back, the heat of him searing me.

He looks down at me, a fierce, wild-love expression on his face—the same one he wore when he promised to love me, to wait for me, to find me. I drag in a breath, overwhelmed by the feel of him.

“Please,” I say, tilting my hips, “love me.”

And then he does. He loves me with the same passion I dreamed of. He loves me unreservedly and wholeheartedly. He doesn’t hold any of himself back. So when I cry out and my heart shatters and then mends, all in the same moment, I know?—

He gives a ragged cry, whispers my name, kisses me.

I know?—

This love. It’s a forever kind of love.

Aaron pulls me onto him. His sweat and heat slick over me. His heart beats wildly as he rubs his hand over the curve of my back.

“I’m going to spend my life with you,” he says, his voice a low rumble. “I thought I’d let you know.”

---