Page 120 of Bedeviled

“I love how young and carefree you make me feel when I have mostly known the weight of the world,” he says. “Maybe at first I loved you because I thought you were Roxilana, but as I have come to know you as Selene, I have come to love you for who you are. Unserious, except when you’re very, very scary—or horny.”

I scoff and give him a playful push on the shoulder, and I’m rewarded with a wicked grin.

Memnon’s smile softens and he continues. “I like your wit. Your humor. I like how even when your memory was impacted by your magic, you didn’t let it stop you from doing the things you loved. I love it that you talk to Nero like he’s a person. Gods, I could go on.”

I swallow as I gaze at him, my heart in my throat.

“The thing is, I am enamored with every little thing about you, Selene, and I will be for the rest of our lives.”

I stroke his face. “Of the two of us, you have always been the poet,” I whisper. “But I’m also sure that all the words in the world would not do you justice, my scary, wonderful soul mate.”

The fatigue from the evening is setting in; I can feel it pulling me deeper into sleep. I force it back, just so I can say what I want to say. “You are everything I never knew to dream for, and it’s my great honor to be your soul mate.”

I see his throat work.

“And, just so you know, I love you for who you are. Not just Memnon the Indomitable, King of the Sarmatians, but Memnon who likes to cook for the sheer whimsy of it, and who grows wildflowers just so he can place them in my hair. Memnon who loves horses like they’re family and who has developed what might be an unhealthy interest in cars.”

Memnon’s eyes glitter as he takes in my words and my expression.

“I enjoy your humor and your bossiness and your fierce, fierce loyalty. I love how your terrifying mind strategizes and what an absolute nightmare you are to our enemies. But most of all, I love this secret, vulnerable side of yourself that you only share with me. I love all of you and I always will.”

The sorcerer pulls me in then, like he can’t seem to help himself. He kisses me with urgency, as though he needs to press into me exactly what my words mean to him.

I do, he says down our bond.

I smile against him, then nip his lower lip.

Even after the kiss ends, the two of us stay tangled like that. And eventually, that’s how I fall asleep, clutched in the powerful embrace of my soul mate’s arms.

CHAPTER 26

Morning light is lazily streaming into the bedroom when I feel Memnon’s large, corded body wrapped around mine. His breath is even.

I glance down at where his arm is slung over my body, locking us together in the embrace.

Marring his skin are cuts from battles that happened over a thousand years before the printing press was invented. I trace them now, along with the tattoos that decorate his arm, remembering our final conversation from last night. Some intense, unnamable emotion wells up in me as the sunlight highlights the dips and rises of his muscled form. A thin wisp of my magic coils around his upper arm as if it, too, needs to claim a piece of him.

Memnon’s hand flexes at my back, drawing me in closer, and his lips press to my shoulder. He’s still under the hazy weight of sleep, and I allow myself to drink in this moment. Despite the gruesome scar on his face, in sleep he looks young and unburdened. My heart speeds as I take him in, wanting this perfect moment where it’s just me and him to last forever.

Either the sun or my own restlessness must rouse him because he drags me deeper into his embrace, brushing a kiss along my hairline, then the shell of my ear. He runs his lips down the side of my face, then my throat, only stopping at that sensitive crook where my neck meets my shoulder.

I stretch like a cat beneath his lips, and I feel him smile against me.

“Good morning, est amage,” he breathes, his voice still thick with sleep.

My heart pounds as I arch against him. This runaway happiness that seems to well up from within me; I’m terrified of it. I’m also utterly addicted to it.

Worst of all, I might do anything to feel more of it.

Memnon moves his mouth against my ear. “My queen, it is the honor of my life that you feel for me what I have ceaselessly felt for you.”

He pulls away enough to meet my eyes, and I feel more laid bare under his gaze than when I am well and truly naked.

My gaze drops to his lips. “Kiss me,” I command with all the imperiousness of the queen I once was.

I see the rakish edge of his smile before Memnon’s mouth descends on mine.

Kissing the sorcerer ends up leading to other things being kissed by the sorcerer, which then leads to getting the sense railed out of me.