His mouth twitches.
"You're not cool."
"Shut up. I'm very cool." I wipe my eyes. "You gave me clean blood and a place to belong and the first person in my life who didn't need me to be strong all the time." My voice cracks. "I'm keeping you."
The crescent marks flare between us. Both of them. The garden brightens by a degree, crimson bleeding through our clothes for one long pulse.
Marcellus speaks the final words.
Maximus kisses me. His hands frame my face. His mouth is cool and sure and the bond opens between us and everything he's feeling pours through.
Someone is clapping. Julian. Of course it's Julian.
Mira is crying. She's smiling and crying. Seraphina has her arm around her daughter's shoulders.
Simone is standing at the edge of the garden with her palms pressed over her mouth and tears streaming down her face.
Lanthar watches from the tree line.
His hand isat the small of my back as we walk the corridor. My heels echo on the stone. His footsteps are silent. The compound is behind us. The candles. The faces. All of it still warm in my chest.
He opens the door. I step through. He follows and the lock clicks behind him.
He doesn't rush. His hands find my face first. Both palms against my jaw. He looks at me in the low light, and whatever he sees makes his breath change.
"My wife," he says. Testing the word. His thumb traces my cheekbone.
"That's going to take some getting used to."
"I've had centuries to practice patience." His mouth finds mine. Slow. His lips part mine and his tongue traces the edge of my lower lip and the kiss deepens by degrees, unhurried, thorough. The coolness of him against my warmth sends a shiver down my spine that settles low in my stomach.
He pulls back. Turns me around. His fingers find the hooks at the back of the dress. He undoes them one at a time. His knuckles trace each vertebra as the fabric loosens, cool against the warmth of my skin, and each hook that releases lets the air reach another inch of me. When the last one opens his mouth follows. A kiss pressed to the nape of my neck. My skin prickles where his lips land. Then lower. Between my shoulder blades. Each one deliberate. Each one placed. Each one leaving a cool print that my body heats after he moves on.
The dress slides off my shoulders and pools at my feet. He turns me back to face him.
His eyes move down my body. He takes his time. Memorizing.
He drops to his knees.
The same knees that hit the grass when he proposed. On the floor of our quarters, his hands settle on my hips, and he presses his mouth just below my navel. Holds it there.
My hand goes to his hair.
He stays there. Cool against my skin. His thumbs tracing easy circles on my hips.
"I can feel it," I say. "Through the bond. What you're feeling right now."
He doesn't lift his head. His lips move once against my skin. Something closer to a promise than a kiss.
Then his fingers slide down. He hooks them into my underwear and draws it down my legs. I step out. He traces back up. Calves. Behind my knees. The inside of my thighs. Along the crease where my thigh meets my hip, and my breath catches.
He looks up at me from his knees. His eyes are dark and his jaw is set.
He stands. Guides me back toward the bed. I sit on the edge. He drops to his knees between my thighs and lowers his mouth.
The first stroke of his tongue is slow. Full. He drags it through me in one long pass, bottom to top, and the sensation pulls a sound from my chest before my hands grip the edge of the mattress. He does it again. Unhurried. His tongue flat and wide, pressing against me in a long drag, and the heat blooms outward from where his mouth is, spreading through my thighs, my stomach, the base of my spine.
He settles in. He seals over me and works me with his tongue in deliberate circles. No urgency. He knows what makes my hips lift, what makes my breath hitch, what makes the sound come out of me that I can't control. Every pass tightens something inside me. A coil winding at my center, each circle of his tonguepulling it tighter. He finds each one and stays with it until I'm shaking.
