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“I love you,” Calista whispered, there against his mouth. And the words made his heart thud. “I tried so hard not to love you. I told myself I couldn’t love anyone. But in the end, I thought of you and I emptied out my father’s safe, and I ran straight here.”
“Calista,” he said, like her name was a song. He rested his forehead against hers. “Tomorrow you will be my queen. But I believe I have loved you from the first moment I saw you, standing out on the balcony with your eyes on the sea. I loved you then. And if you will let me, I will dedicate my life to loving you forever.”
“I don’t know if I believe in forever,” she replied, tears pouring down her face. “But if you do, then I’ll try. I’ll dedicate my life to trying, and giving you every reason in the world to trust me. I promise.”
“And I promise you, I will give you the same.” His lips crooked into a smile. “And you know I am excellent at keeping promises.”
“Just as you know I’m terrific at keeping my focus,” she replied, the sparkle he loved so much returning to her gaze.
It felt like another song.
And then his mouth was on hers, she was wrapped around him, and he bore her down to the floor before the fire.
He kissed her and he kissed her, over and over, hardly able to believe that this was real.
“Orion...” she whispered.
He took his time, peeling her out of the sharp, sleek clothes that made her look so dangerous. Then he feasted upon her.
He took her breasts in his hands, tasting one hard nipple, then the other. She moaned, arching against him, and he wanted too much. He wanted everything.
Orion shrugged out of his own clothes, sighing with a kind of relief when her hands found the hard ridges of his abdomen, then moved lower to worship the hardest part of him.
Her eyes were wide with a kind of mute pleading as she shifted, moving lower so she could take him in her mouth.
A sweet promise. A wicked temptation.
A kind of vow, he thought, as she licked her way along the length of him as if tasting his heat was a sacred act all its own.
And when he could take no more, he pulled her up and astride him, settling her so he could feel the molten heat of her all over him, where her mouth had just been.
“You are mine,” he told her, like a vow. “Always.”
“Forever,” she agreed, and then she impaled herself upon him.
And they both groaned with the pleasure of it. The slick, hot glory that was only theirs.
She moved her hips, an endless seduction. And together, they made vows to each other that would last a lifetime. With their bodies and their words. With the deep thrust and breathless retreat.
With the spiraling heights he took her to, his hands gripping her hips as he took control, lifting and lowering her. He watched her shake apart, flying over that cliff into a thousand bright pieces. He kept going, flipping her over and driving himself in deeper.
His first. His last. His only.
He waited until the fire in her burned anew, and only when she cried out his name again did he let himself go, following her over the edge of the world.
Later tonight they would burn to ash the bitter legacy her father had collected. They would render him even more toothless and dismissible than he already was this night.
Here before the fire, they were new.
Come the dawn, it would be Christmas Eve. He would make her his queen.
And he was His Majesty Orion Augustus Pax, King of Idylla, so he did exactly that—and then he set about loving her for the rest of his life, because she deserved no less.
And because she loved him right back.
Hard and true, fierce and faithful, until they were both so happy it was hard to remember that they had ever been anything else.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
