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June shushed her, but there was a smile in the sound. “We don’t want to spoil the surprise.”
Jessie heard metal clanging. What were they up to?
Edel continued. “It just does no’ look sturdy.”
“I assure you, Your Majesty,” a stranger’s voice replied, “We’ve tested it extensively. It may look crude, but it’s actually an ingeniously simple device.”
Again, June admonished, “Would you all stop talking. She’s going to figure it out.”
“Should I be scared?” Jessie asked.
Strong arms came around her from behind. “You, scared? That would be novel.”
She breathed in Orik’s addictive scent and relaxed against him. “Wheneveryou’replotting something, I should be terrified. Are you building me a gilded cage this time?”
His deep resonating chuckle vibrated through her back. “Quite the opposite. I’m setting you free.”
A ball of nausea kerplunked in her stomach. “Huh?”
“Well, sort of.” He came around to her front and when he spoke again, his voice rumbledupat her. “You can take off the blindfold now.”
She reached up to yank it off. Her lungs momentarily lost the capacity to draw in breath. Orik had dropped to one knee and was holding up a ring with an azure stone that glistened like a blue flame in the sun.
June and Edel stood together on the sidelines, practically vibrating with excitement. Behind them, Tristan put his hands on June’s shoulders, looking more stoic than the others, yet pleased nonetheless. And beyond them was a sight Jessie had never imagined seeing again for the remainder of her days.
She glanced down at Orik, blinking back tears, and said in a shaky voice, “You got me a hang glider?”
June scraped both hands down her face in frustration. “Focus.”
Orik’s lips quirked. “We had our engineers fabricate it from June’s description. It was all June’s idea…as was this ring. She said this is a custom on your planet, where the man grovels on his knees while presenting his beloved with a pretty rock to coerce her into mating.”
June pinched the bridge of her nose. “That is not how I described it, by the way.”
Jessie laughed and wiped her teary eyes, struggling to hold back an emotional blubber-slash-scream of delight.
Orik remained kneeling before her and glanced at the ring. “I figured such a tiny thing would no’ be enough to entice you, so I waited for the completion of your new glider.”
Appalled at the idea of having to wait even another second, she snatched the ring and shoved it on her finger before throwing her arms around his thick, Goliath neck. “It’s enough! You could have given me a dull pebble from your shoe and it would have been enough!”
Returning her embrace, he stood, lifting her off the ground as though she was light as a feather and then claimed her lips in a searing kiss that transferred all his relief and happiness straight to her soul. She held him so tight, it was a wonder he could breathe, let alone concentrate on scrambling her brain with his kiss. When he pulled back, he rubbed the tip of his nose against hers. Tears breached the line of her eyelid and she smiled so wide, she was sure her lips could never frown again.
“I guess that’s a yes,” Tristan remarked.
“I’d say so,” Edel agreed with a smile in her tone.
June merely squealed and clapped her hands together.
When Orik finally let her slide down his body, she still couldn’t stop smiling, even as her cheeks began to hurt…and she couldn’t keep her greedy gaze from darting to her new toy.
Orik gave her an indulgent smile mixed with amusement. “You can fly it now, if you wish.”
“Really?”
He nodded. “We can go together.”
Nearly bursting with exuberance, she raised on her tiptoes to plant another kiss on his lips. A growl rumbled in his chest, and his eyes flashed that gorgeous green that her body instinctively responded to, looking as though he was ready to send everyone away and lock her in their bedroom for the unforeseeable future. Honestly, the notion was equally as tempting as joining him for a flight over the kingdom with her very own wings.
She became transfixed by those wicked lips of his, tilted in a sexy half-grin, and the scale began to tip in a single-minded direction.
