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“Hmm?” I tease, knowing full well my husband is losing his patience with me.
A soft smile brushes the corners of my lips. “Just a few more strokes,” I soothe my beast from over the top of my easel. “Hold still or it won’t come out right. We’ve gone over this. I need you to stop moving.”
“Don’t keep me waiting too long. You know how I get,” he growls in a low pitch that is made of raw primal cravings.
There is a promise buried in those words and between me and my paintbrush, that is what I’m counting on. And God. That voice. It’s spellbinding. The first time I heard it, I feared how my body reacted to the beast it belonged to. Now I crave to hear the deep rumble of his voice every day of my life.
And I almost lost that chance. I set my palette down and wipe smudges of paint off my fingers. A year ago I had Valerian’s blood on my hands instead of the alizarin red I used for the draped velvety blanket covering the lower half of Valerian. Or, barely covering, I should say. The longer I take to get the colors and shadowing just right, the lower the deep crimson slips down a perfect chiseled set of abs.
“Wife, I’m getting hungry.”
I hold my hand up and let the fading sunlight play over the emerald-cut diamond wedding ring on my finger. “Husband,” I whisper in a husky voice. The feeling of freshness that word brings to my thoughts glides across my mind. I know what it means. I’ve said it a million times. But this time…this time it holds a world of meaning. “Just another couple of minutes and then I’ll be done.”
I peek around the edge of my painting for a glimpse of the man I married. I turn back to my easel and pass the edges of my brush over the illustrated shadows that caress his body in the most intimate way. I can’t keep the smile off my face as my pulse skips. He’s that fucking beautiful. And all mine.
I thought I lost him this time last year. If I had, I would have followed him into an early grave. It’s hard to think love intertwined our souls so profoundly and so utterly irreversible, but we are proof it can happen. Love is stronger than any other human emotion and it has the power to heal all wounds and form new connections if you only step out of the way long enough.
I’m glad we did. I never saw him as the enemy. My father did. He never accepted that I fell for the man who took me away from him. My father is somewhere in South America running from the man who assumed Darrion’s throne. He knew better than to steal and yet he couldn’t stop himself. The last I heard from my father, he wished Valerian a slow death someday and me a daughter who would break my heart as I broke his.
Those words hurt. When Valerian read the note left for me at the gate back home, he thought I should have walked away from him in order to save my relationship with my father. He actually thought I would once I discovered the darkness of his actions.
Truth be told, his fear was valid. If we lived normal lives in the sunshine and full daylight, I would have never understood his actions were to protect me and other innocent lives. But we live in a gray criminal world where black and white rules do not exist.
I hear the heavy pad of bare feet just as his scent reaches me. In a word it’s mind-numbing. Subtle, masculine, smokey. It is as intoxicating as the heat coming off his body as he moves up behind me and drops warm kisses over the soft slope of my right shoulder.
They are possessive, yet gentle. But it’s the burn of his teeth sinking into my tender flesh and the hot pass of his tongue over the tortured area that have me gasping into the quiet room.
“You’re supposed to be on the settee like a good painter’s subject.” His low, warm laugh rumbles through his chest and feeds into me.
I tilt my head to offer more of me to his greedy mouth.
“It’s lonely over there and I don't enjoy being away from you for too long.”
Seeking fingers come around my waist to find the hard tips of my nipples already beading under the feel of his rough fingers on my smooth skin. He squeezes until flesh turns pink and my nipples swell to the point of pain. A cry breaks from my lips and my back bows, forcing my breasts deeper into his demanding hands.
He pins me to his chest and works the hard tip of my breast between his thumb and forefinger.
“Valerian,” I warn, but we both know the only heat in my tone is for what he is doing to my body. My lips tilt up and I turn in his arms. We’ve spent the last twelve months in London while I finish my last semester of art classes. That ended over four months ago. All the time since then and now has been one beautiful honeymoon.
I press my flat palms against the hard plains of his abdomen and brace myself for what comes next. His fiery eyes find mine once again and the large space around us grows heated, smaller.
He dips and scoops a hand under my ass, dropping the blanket.
Between us, I feel the hard press of his erection growing against the slickness of my entrance. Exposed to all the naughty delights he wants to treat me to, I wrap my arms around his neck and let my husband carry me to the bed. The beautiful penthouse we purchased as our “home abroad” is lavish in every sense of the word, but all I pay attention to is the love in my man’s eyes.
“I’m glad you convinced me to work naked.”
“Me too.”
Valerian tosses me in the middle of the bed just beyond the settee. I gasp and giggle a little until my beast brings his weight over the top of me.
“Spread wide for your daddy, little rose.”
His expression is arrogant, his touch possessive.
“Are you going to give me what I want?”
The crystal blue of his eyes drinks in every inch of my body.
