I hear the rustle of bodies. The scrape is chairs being shoved back. Footsteps echo before the boom of does shutting. Then silence.
He pulls me into his lap. Folds me close against his chest with his fingers moving through my tangled hair.
“Okay?” he asks into the top of my head.
I nod, sniffing. “I didn’t want to go.” My arms tighten around him. “I didn’t care what those assholes said, I didn’t want to leave you.”
“I know, my love.” His fingers cup the back of my head. “It was a risk I wasn’t willing to gamble your life on. So, we had to have a few years apart. It wouldn’t have been forever.”
I tip my face back. “But so many years.”
He strokes the tears from my cheeks. “You’re here now.”
I know he’s right.
I get that it was only a little while and we’re together now, but...
“It wasn’t fair,” I blurt. “Malakar is right. Why do the fairies get to keep their humans? They set deliberate traps and none of their humans want to be there. I wanted to be here. I wanted to stay with you.” I rub the back of a trembling hand across be cheek. “You’re my husband and they took you away from me.”
He cups my chin and tilts my face up. “There are rules.”
“Fuck the rules! They took you from me.”
“Rina—”
“No!”
I’m openly sobbing. The pain of losing him, of standing before the pocket with him a few feet away, waiting for me to pass through finds me all over again. The same raw agony thatate through me when I returned to the human world without him finds me all over again. It digs its claws into my heart, ripping it from my chest as it had all those years ago when I begged him not to send me back. The years of being unable to grieve even as I did without knowing why.
“I want to see them.” I glower into his eyes. “I want to meet the pieces of shit who make these stupid rules while they themselves are responsible for half the shit that happened. I want to look into their stupid faces before I take a bat—”
He kisses me.
I’m still so furious I keep snarling my threats while he moves his mouth over mine. I’m seething even when he puts me on the table and throws up my skirt. It’s only with the first thrust of his hips and his cock filling my used and tender opening that I forget my words.
“Quiet, wife,” he breathes into my ear, hips bucking. “The time we spent apart is over. You’re home, back where you belong and nothing will take you from me again. Shh,” he whispers when I choke on his name. “Mine.”
I let it go.
For now.
I hold onto the man who makes my heart full. I kiss him with every drop of my love for him. I sink my fingers into his hair and hold him even as we both shudder.
“No knot?” I tease.
He smirks against my mouth. “The Umbral Court is waiting outside the door.”
It takes my brain a second to remember what that is. I never met the group of Chthonian rulers, but I do know they hold important meetings to discuss ruler things with each other.
I wince. “I interrupted your meeting. I’m sorry.”
He kisses me hard and pulls me down his still stiff cock until I hit the bulge.
“You are my wife. Nothing comes before you.”
I stroke his cheek and search the dark pools peering back at me. “Why does it feel like this is a dream and I’ll wake up and you’ll be gone again?”
“Not going anywhere,” he promises.
