Page 47 of Once Charmed, Twice Cursed
He lifts his chin, baring his throat. “Squeeze.”
Surprise flickers, but the roar building inside me drowns it out. I slide my fingers around his neck and do as he asks.
His eyes roll up in his head. He pulls me harder against him, and suddenly I’m cresting the pinnacle, needy noisesflying from my throat as my eyes slam closed and my body detonates inward.
Sensation pours through me in glittering waterfalls. They swell and ebb and swell again.
I fly apart into beautiful pieces. And Weston is clearly doing the same, because he’s all hoarse cries and straining muscle as he wraps his arms around my waist and hangs on. His hips flex up off the chair as he surges against me, finding his release.
When the tidal crash of pleasure finally relaxes its grip, I go limp. My hands fall from his throat. I catch my breath in silence, my fingers trailing downward to frame his triquetra.
His Mark regards me like a triple eye. Squinting. Suspicious.
I stare at where my bare wrists hover an inch from his skin. An inch. Just one. That’s all it would take. It would besoeasy.
But I cast the thought aside and force my eyes upward.
Weston’s head lolls back against the cushion. He looks...dazed. Drunk. “That was...”
I brace for something I don’t want to hear.Good enough, maybe.Or,nice, but not completely satisfying.
“...the best thing that’s ever happened to me,” he finishes. “That was the highest point of my entire life.”
I blink. “Really? Even though it’s not as much as you’ve done with?—”
“Birdie.” He lifts his head, shaking some of the haze from his eyes. “They were nothing. Just stand-ins for you. And poor ones, at that.”
Something tender awakens at the base of my throat—some fragile, featherless emotion I want so fiercely to protect.
“And I always had to rush through,” he adds. “I’ve never just...enjoyed it.”
I hold his eyes. He holds mine.
“Thank you,” he murmurs.
And there they are again, those two words, in all their simplistic glory.
“Thankyou,” I say, after a beat. “That was the highest point of my life, too.”
A ghost of a smile touches his mouth before he suppresses it. I almost get lost in the way he’s looking at me, because I want to exist here forever, in this tenuous peace we’ve forged with our bodies. I want this moment to stretch and stretch and never end.
Eventually, though, it does. It has to. I climb off him, acutely aware that my nightgown is sticky and even wetter than before. He sprawls bonelessly in the chair, his release glistening on his skin, and I squash the desire to kneel before him. I want to drag my tongue across the ridges of his abdomen, find out what he tastes like.
I hate that I never will. That I promised I wouldn’t.
Butthat, what we just did... I’d do that a thousand times over again, if he’d let me.
“It could be like this every night, you know,” I say softly. “You and me. Together but apart. We could make it work. And you’d never have to rush, with me. You wouldn’t have to worry.”
He blinks once, long and—I dare to think—considering. It’s clear that what we just shared has torn away some of his shields, because there’s no guardedness in his voice when he says, “I love you. So much that I don’t know what to do with myself sometimes. And… Fortuna, I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’d love nothing more than to marry you and have you swan around this cabin wearing a soaked nightgown all the time.”
I hold my breath, sensing there’s more. “But?”
He grinds his molars together. “But…But…even if you agreed to do it my way, even if you promised to keep your Mark forever, Brendan would never allow it. I knew that when I proposed. I’ve always known. As long as you have your triquetra, you’re destined for someone richer and more influential than I’ll ever be.”
The air cools, even though the flames haven’t lessened. “So that’s...what? That’s it? That’s okay with you?”
“No,” he says, with a trace of his usual fire. “Of course not. I hate it. But that doesn’t mean I can change the rules.”
