Page 100 of Iron Crown

She was prodding me, like a fucking sheepdog, leading the cow where it needed to go with barks and nips. She was corralling me to her, and I just couldn’t stay strong anymore.

Not when she had gone this far.Christ, she knew me well.

“If that is what you want to say,” she said, the heat of her gaze never straying from my flushing cheek. “Thensayit.”

She knew I could not. She knew that Iwouldnot. Such a lie was against everything I believed. It was too enormous to even consider.

She came to her tiptoes, ghosting her lips against my cheek.

“Don’t lie to me,” she said, sweetly. “I would take it as an insult.”

My knees almost buckled beneath me.

She knew me so well. Maybe even better than Dairo or Shiny… maybe better than I even knew myself. She knew the monsterbeneath. She had seen me break, and she was still here. Still, offering me the broken flesh of her hand in a vow.

“I wish I were a stronger man,” I whispered, my voice heavy with everything I would not say to her. Every secret I kept in my blackened soul. “I wish I weren’t such a selfish man, and could let you go. Let you and Cillian go!”

I took the blade from her other hand, and took her mouth in a deep, demanding kiss. I plunged my tongue into her mouth right at the moment that my own blade sliced my palm. I didn’t even look to see that I cut it correctly. I knew that I had.

I had to tear my lips from hers before the blood on her hand, and mine, stopped flowing. I clasped our palms together, and to my sheer delight, she clasped on just as hard as I did, her fingers digging into my skin. I wrapped our hands in the silk tie she’d taken from my neck, and I whispered the words, “You are blood of my blood, bone of my bone. From now, until the end of my days and beyond the afterlife, I will never have another but you, beloved Muse. Sweet Kira.”

I kissed her again, my free hand grabbing her by the throat, my palm pressing to the beautiful pulse there. I kissed her hard, pouring my soul into her mouth. When she moaned, I pushed us apart, just a centimeter to look into her lustful eyes.

“I love you,” she gasped out before she kissed me again, and I took it. I latched on to her with the desperation of a drowning man, and she was my only source of breath.

“I love you,” I said against her mouth, not willing to break every bit of contact we had. I pulled her to me, our boundhands between us, pressing into my stomach as our free hands wrapped around each other.

Her kiss, her embrace, her hand in mine was everything I needed to go on living.

She was gravity itself, keeping my feet on the ground, preventing me from losing my mind.

Standing in her presence, in the warmth of her affection, and her declaration of devoted love, I was whole again. I was grounded. I was at peace.

I don’t know how long we were like that. It passed in the blink of an eye.

Only Shiny’s impatient coughing, which kept getting louder and louder, told me that we had been at this long enough to try her patience.

I pulled away, unable to keep my smile from my lips. I slowly, tenderly, unwrapped my tie from our fasted hands and reluctantly separated us, at least bodily. I folded the tie and placed it in my trouser pocket. I took out a clean, white handkerchief from the inside of my blazer and placed it in her palm, putting pressure on her wound.

“We have to go,” Shiny complained.

“Aye, we’re going,” I grumbled, agitated thatthiswas how we chose to cement our marriage.

Though, as always, I couldn’t blame her. She saw a chance and took it, and if I had left without her today, it would have been thefirst real step in pushing her from my side, and denying her as my wife.

That nonsense is over now.

“Let’s go,” I said gently to Kira, taking her good hand in mine and leading her to the car.

O’Malley went to open the door to the back seat, but I waved him off. He went to the driver’s seat and got in, as I opened the door for Kira, and she stepped inside.

No weapons. No armor.

Ajax Leblanc had been watching the space, and our men had scanned the area. They were in place, watching everything to make sure that the Italians did not try anything funny. I doubted they would, since we had slaughtered so many, but, in the infamous words of Cosima Durante,vendetta is an Italian word.

I didn’t know what vengeance they might try to enact.

“Jericho’s men are watching Giovanna Durante,” Kira said quietly. “If anything happens to us, they’ll have a red dot on her forehead. They won’t shoot her, but the threat should be more than enough. We can warn Cosima before the meeting, to make sure she doesn’t try anything.”

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