Page 30 of Always Alchemy

It’s the reason we’re here, and it’s the reason so many of our loved ones have flown down to the South of France. Later, when I look both Max and Darcy in the eye and recite my vows to them, is the moment when all that I am, my heart’s every desire and my life’s very purpose, will be illuminated for everyone to see and hear.

Yesterday was bittersweet, if I’m honest. The awe I felt at standing opposite Max as the notary at theHôtel de Villein Antibes pronounced us legally married was tempered a little by the fact that Darcy couldn’t be a part of that ceremony with us.

I mean, she wasphysicallya part of it. I didn’t let go of her hand the whole time I stood there, not even when Max kissed me at the end. And we intentionally kept the ceremony as perfunctory, as bureaucratic as possible. It was a case of shoring up our rights, cementing our legal status, and protecting our future selves as fully as possible in the eyes of the British legal system.

We only had two witnesses present—Gen and Anton. Slightly ironic, since Gen had to stand there and watch her sister be excluded from the legal proceedings, a fact for which no amount of circular discussions over the past four months, since our engagement, could really compensate.

Today will be different.

Today, we’ll partake in a ceremony we’ve designed specifically to ensure an equal part for all three of us.

It will be joyous and love-filled.

It will be light-hearted and grave all at once.

It will beus.

As I fumble with my white tie, I glance at my brand-new husband in the mirror. For all the shit I’ve just spouted about today being the main event, I’ve been remarkablyguilty of whispering that word to myself over and over for the past twenty-four hours.

Max is myhusband.

I am Max’shusband.

And I’m not the only guilty party.

‘How does it feel to take your husband’s cock?’ he crooned in my ear last night as he pinned me facedown on our huge bed and fucked me senseless, Darcy smiling in post-orgasmic bliss right beside us.

I doubt I lasted point-five of a second before coming all over the sheets at those words.

When you’ve had the upbringing I’ve had, and you’ve spent your life believing that the things you want are wrong and sinful and dirty andabnormal, having the most beautiful man in the world whisperthatin your ear as he fucks your arse feels like nirvana.

Max’s eyes meet mine. His white tie is, of course, immaculate. So is his hair. He looks patrician and debonair and so handsome he steals the breath from my lungs. So perfect, he makes me want to sink to my knees and pay homage to him with this mouth he adores so much.

The look he gives me tells me there is not the slightest divergence between our thoughts right now.

‘Want me to have a go?’ he offers.

I drop my hands from the ends of my tie in defeat. I’m usually pretty good at this stuff—the benefits of an elite all-male education—but I can’t pull it together enough to get this tie to line up just the way I want it.

‘Please. I want it to be perfect.’

‘I know you do, love.’ He steps towards me and cups my jaw in his hands, tilting my face up to his. ‘But it doesn’t need to be, you know? No one will be looking at your tie, I promise. Becauseyouare perfect, andyouare radiant.’ Hekisses me lightly on the lips, and his words and his mouth and his eyes have my entire body turning to jelly. ‘Remember that.’

‘I love you so much,’ I say, my voice shuddery. Since giving myself over to Max and Darcy completely, it’s as if my body has become nothing but a vessel from which to pour a relentless stream of molten love for these two people.

I can’t stop telling them how I feel.

I can’t stop showing them how I feel.

‘And I love my husband,’ he says, getting to work on my bowtie without dropping my gaze.

TheHword sends a full-body shiver through me.

Will it ever stop feeling like a miracle?

I doubt it.

Eventually, his eyes drop to the job at hand, and I have the extraordinary pleasure of feasting on him at close range. His skin is an even, golden brown from a summer spent sailing and fucking and sunbathing as much as the three of us could manage despite the demands of Wolff, Cerulean and Darcy’s dance studio. The ends of his eyelashes are sun-bleached, and those lips, pressed together in concentration, have me aching. I want so badly to run my tongue along their seam and coax them open.

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