Page 60 of Iron Cross

No. I wasn’t taking her. I was re-claiming what was already mine.

I broke our kiss. But I didn’t remove the arms around her waist. I was never going to let her go.

“You’re extraordinary, Kira.” I buried my face in her throat, taking the skin in my teeth, biting down until she moaned. “My sweet Muse.”

Her eyes were dazed, her brows pointing upward in the middle like she was trying to understand something.

“Your voice…” she whispered, trying to make sense of the thoughts in her head. “Your accent changed.”

She tried to push me away again, but I tightened my hold. Her eyes went wide with recognition as the pieces were slow to snap into place.

“No…” she whispered in disbelief, shaking her head. “How?”

“Aye, lass,” I whispered, leaning my face towards hers until our foreheads touched. “You forget I’ve lived here most of my life.” To make my point, I changed my drawl to the one I had used for Aaron. “I can talk however I need to.”

She blinked in disbelief, her eyes searching my face.

“It can’t be.” She squinted, the shock of me still short circuiting her brain. I didn’t blame her. It was shocking, after all. “You don’t… look anything like…”

“Itcanbe.”

The tears came back again in earnest. I knew that they would as her reality was crashing down. But it would be okay. I would make it okay. I would hold her together, just as I had promised I would.

I let her go, and she slid down the wall, until her knees were at her chest, her eyes never shifting from mine.

I went into her nearby bathroom - a room smaller than her closet in our home - flicked on the overhead light, and stared at my face in the mirror.

I looked at my blade in my palm, which she had kept, and ran it under hot water. I fisted a handful of soap, and soaked it through my hair, watching my reflection as the brown dye washed away, down my throat, turning burgundy against my skin like blood. I peeled off the fucking plastic nose that had changed the most prominent feature of my bone structure, and tossed the damn thing on the ground.

“This shouldn't shock you, sweet Muse,” I called to her, watching as she tightened her arms around her legs. “You’ve changed your hair too.”

I grabbed more soap, and slathered it on my trimmed beard.

“Still don’t believe me, sweet Muse?” I didn’t know what to expect from her.

She was frozen, her mouth open, her eyes wide, as she kept her eyes on me. I liked it. I liked her gaze. I always had. I’d adored it, in fact.

I took my iron blade and placed it on my skin, and quietly removed the damn beard that had been so effective in hiding me from my Muse.

I fucking hated the thing.

I don’t know how many minutes had passed, but it was too many. With the collar of my shirt soaked in the dye, my face tender from the rapid, careless shave, I finally turned back to my wife. My lovely, lovely, bride.

Warm blood trickled down my cheek from a careless slice, but I didn’t care to patch it. She should see me for what I was. The same blood-soaked man she had willingly taken in matrimony. A man who would bleed a man dry to keep her safe.

Still, she was pale with shock and disbelief.

“It’s me, Mrs. Kira Green,” I whispered.

I wanted her to see me. To know me. To recognize who I was, and who we were.

She loved me. She had said so.

The closest man she’d come to kissing was just an approximation of the same person she was fated to.

I looked at her slender frame, her purple, straightened hair, and I longed to have her be what she was again. The full woman, dressed in the sheath dresses that highlighted her curves, and showed her power.

The same power that she had used to lead millionaires and billionaires by the nose through Gallery Four.

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