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“Yes?I don’t recall you ever saying such a thing. All I remember is trying to get some sleep that night at the Martinezes’ estate when you threw yourself on top of me. I haven’t been able to escape your annoying ass since.”
I swatted at his arm, although the restoration of his playfulness made my heart dance.
“I knew I wasn’t just saying yes to being with another man,” I said, the words sounding awkward and thick in my throat. “But to being with you. And Ren, do you think I expected you to begentle and sweet?”
I looked him in the eye, needing him to see the truth there.
“Do you think Iwantyou to be?”
Drawing in a prolonged breath, Ren straightened up so he could face me properly. “I could deal with what I was and what I liked in bed before you,” he said falteringly after a long moment.
“Am I so terrible at it?” I asked, offering an expression of mock affront.
“Fuck no. You’re amazing, Mathias. I just...how can I love someone and also want to hurt them?” Brown eyes bore into mine, wide and pleading for answers. “I’m so fucked up.”
He ran a hand down his face and then rolled his eyes at me. “Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Give me that smug grin that says I’m missing something obvious.”
“Well,” I said. “You are.”
Ren threw himself backwards down onto the furs, his arms falling limply at his side.
“Do you really believe I would let you do all those things to me, if I didn’t want you to?” I asked, my lips twitching in amusement at how unnecessarily dramatic he insisted on being even in the middle of an existential crisis. “If you’re fucked up for liking it, then I am too, and I’m more than happy to walk that road at your side.”
I shifted so I was crouched over him, looking down at where he was cradled amongst the pile of furs, looking small and lost. “But I don’t think we are. Pain makes me feel alive. All my life, it’s just been about surviving. Getting through, existing rather than living. But the pain…you make mefeel it, Ren.”
“That’s certainly my intention,” he said dryly.
Then he yelped as I smacked him lightly in the stomach for his interruption. “Maybe we don’t talk about a scene before we start, but I don’t want that. I enjoy the surprise of trying to guess where your mind is going and not once ever getting it right.” I gave him a feigned glare that was steeped in fondness. “Fucking sadist.”
I received a low chuckle in response.
“I trust you,” I continued. “Not to not go too far – neither of us know all of my limits, and I like learning new things about each other – but I trust you to stop when you realise you have. I can stand on the edge of the cliff and jump with you, and know that you’ll be there for me no matter how turbulent the fall.”
He hummed. “Always.”
“I don’t want to lose that,” I said. “That fear, that newness, that exhilaration. And I don’t see how something that makes life brighter can be a bad thing. Maybe some people won’t ever understand it. But you do, and now I do, and isn’t that enough? Aren’tweenough?”
The prince rose up onto his elbows and stole a kiss, long and soft and yet with enough of his usual brusque forcefulness to assure me I’d gotten through to him.
“We’re enough,” he said firmly, and I saw the conviction welling in his eyes, that same faith I’d relied on so many times to see us through. Me and him, against the continent. Against the whole world, if it dared to get between us.
“Hurt me, fuck me, tease me…and don’t ever stop,” I begged, murmuring the words against his lips. Laughing, Ren pulled me down into his arms, not with the intention of leading to anything more but just so we could hold onto each other. Hold, and never,everlet go.
“I’ll do all of those things tomorrow, and more,” promised Ren, his voice soft. “But tonight,mi corazón,can we stay just like this? Please?”
I snuggled in against him. “That sounds absolutely perfect.”
“You’re absolutely perfect,” he said.
*
Chapter Twenty
We stayed another day in the lodge, making up bullshit justifications to each other about the weather not being right and needing to scavenge more food and fresh clothes from the cupboards, but really it was just so we didn’t have to leave. So we could spend hours nestled together on the furs in front of the fire, feasting on vegetables that were probably on the wrong side of aged, and sharing stories. Sitting on the porch wrapped in a blanket and watching the clouds lumbering across the sky above.
