Page 116 of Seduced

A delicious shiver travelled down her spine, and Poppy looked down, hiding her face from him. A long, white finger tipped up her chin.

“Look at me, please,” Alexei said in a hoarse whisper. She didn’t. His voice dropped to a tender whisper. “Why on earth would you think that, my dear?”

“Because I was weak!” Poppy burst out with sudden vehemence. “I am! Even though I fought that bloody murderer tooth and nail. ‘Twas probably the reason why the damned cat found the time to hide there in the hole with me.”

“I appreciate your language,” Alexei smirked.

“I do too,” she replied.

“I know you fought him.”

“Good.” Her previous vehemence seemed to have evaporated, taking her shame with it. Good riddance. “Because I did. You taught me well. Even though he ended up killing me.”

“Almost,” Alexei said, gulping air. “Almost.”

“It didn’t feel like almost,” Poppy said frankly, and his cheeks turned chalky white.Right. I should probably stop talking about nearly being killed as soon as possible.“Now what?”

“Will you marry me and stay here?” The question was uttered at once, without hesitation, as if the thought was prominent in his mind at all times. Poppy cursed herself for allowing the conversation to veer to dangerous waters.

Alexei looked as if he were braced for pain.

Dammit.

“Do you still mean that?” she asked carefully.

“Do you even have to ask,” Alexei scoffed. It was not a question.

“I can’t…I can’t bring myself to say that I want to get married,” she said and he inhaled sharply as if he had received a blow to the stomach. “But I do want to stay with you. I would be your mistress, if you prefer. I just want to be near you; it hurts being apart, worse than it hurt being in that coffin.”

“Please don’t ever refer to that,” he said quickly, “for I shall surely die if I think of you in there for one more second.”

“I thought ofyou,” she replies. “It comforted me.”

His arms came about her gently, but the movement had the restrained violence of a desperate man.

“What if I was there to comfort you in person always,” he said, “heart, body and soul, until the end of time?”

I would actually love that, she thought.It would be heaven.

“It scares me…marriage.”

“Marriage is nothing else but a way to become each other’s family,” he said. “I want to be your family, Wyatt. I want to be your everything, but let’s start with being your family, shall we? I don’t want to scare you.”

“You already are my everything, Alexei.”

His eyes shone with tears.

“Look,” he said and his voice was scratchy. “I never had a family, not a real one, and you…I wish to God you didn’t have a family, if I’m being honest. Will you take me as your family?”

“It doesn’t sound so bad, if you put it like that.”

He breathed out, shuddering, and then leaned weakly back as if a great burden had been lifted from his chest. Poppy’s heart fluttered, fit to burst out of her chest. And yet they just sat there quietly, as if nothing monumental had happened.

Was this what marriage to him would be like? Quiet? Happy?

Easy?

Nothing had been bloody easy for her, ever.

---