Page 43 of Crown of Thorns
“I don’t, hen,” he says. “I may have chosen youfrom a dossier of prospective brides, aye, but it was always only you. From the moment I laid eyes on your picture, I saw your dark hair and big brown eyes and I knew you’d be the one… the only one.”
“Rhys…”
“And then I flew to the states to see if the beauty in the photo matched the real thing and you literally fell into my arms,” he chuckles.
“Admit it, you set that up.”
“I did no’,” he says. “That was all you and your enchanting clumsiness.”
“That’s probably true,” I admit.
“No’ probably.” He laughs. “Sometimes I wonder how you learned to walk, because you bounce into walls and trip over your own feet.”
“Rude.”
“But then I remember that your nose is probably stuck in a book and you’re no’ watching where you’re bloody going,” he says. “But none of it matters. I felt you in my arms and took one look at your ripped jeans and university jumper, with all that hair piled up on top of your head and I knew that you’d be mine.”
“How did you know?” I ask, caught up in the fairy tale he’s weaving around us both.
“Because I knew I’d stop at nothing to make you mine.”
“Rhys—”
He stops me.
“I know you don’t like her,” he says,not bothering to say Meg’s name to my face. “But she is from a time before. I will no’ lie to you and tell you that there were no’ women. There were. I am older than you by quite a bit and I lived my life before I found you. You canno’ be mad about that.”
“Are you sure?” I ask brattily.
I hear the smile in his voice and feel his body relax knowing that the fight has gone out of me… for now. There’s still so much I have to come to terms with, but that’s not for today.
“Aye, hen, I’m sure,” he says. “But you have my word that you have nothing to worry about and you know it.”
“How so?”
“I can’t keep my bloody hands off you and you know it,” he says, and I warm to his compliments. “My cock is always hard when you’re near. It’s bloody inconvenient.”
I can’t help but laugh at that. “That sounds like a personal problem.”
“Aye,” he chuckles. “Now will you sit down to some breakfast?”
“Yes.”
“Good,” he says as he leads me back to the table. But instead of letting me sit in my own seat, he sits back down in the one he previously abandoned and pulls me into his lap.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“I rather like the idea of holding you close thismorning,” he says. “We are about to celebrate our future together and I’m feeling a bit romantic. Will you indulge me?”
“Yes,” I whisper as he brings the teacup in his hand up to my lips for me to sip from.
“Good.”
He squeezes my hip, runs his fingers through my hair or his palm down my back, between bites of eggs and toast or sips of tea. It’s intimate and just as he said, a bit romantic. I have trouble balancing this sweet version of him with the man who punished me so provocatively.
“What’s spinning through that brilliant mind now?” he asks with a small smile playing about his lips.
“I don’t understand you,” I admit.
