I didn’t trust anyone else to drive. My hands melded to the wheel and my eyes peeled on the horizon, I waited for the break between sand and sky that meant water was near.
The ocean. The castle. Leon.
My fear that I wouldn’t get to Leon in time was off the charts as I jammed my foot on the gas and shifted through gears. I didn’t give a shit if I pulverized them to dust. Everyone else wisely remained quiet except Cannon, who was trying to get in contact with someone at the fortress to no avail. No one answered his repeated messages on the D-P. Not Leon. Not Raine.
That kind of silence added oil to the fire racing through my veins.
“Try again,” I punched out between my teeth.
“There’s no ping back.”
I snarled at Cannon, “Keep. Fucking. Trying.”
Driving gave me purpose. If I’d been in the passenger seat—Cannon’s seat—I’d have destroyed the goddamn D-P. I might’ve torn up the entire motherfucking vehicle.
I didn’t keep tabs on the Cruiser that was supposed to tail us, which held Linc, Liz, and Nathaniel. If they were behind us, good. If not? I didn’t care.
Leon, Leon, Leon. I almost puked again but managed to swallow the bitter bile before it hit the back of my throat. It felt like hours when finally the castle reared up—the mirage before us.
“LEON!” I thundered the second I jumped from the Cruiser. I didn’t stop yelling his name the entire time I sped across the causeway that never seemed to end.
Bursting through the door, I took bearing of the empty rooms with the fastest visual ever. I bolted up the stairs. Boots pounded behind me. At the top of the castle, I turned the doorknob. It was locked.
“GODDAMN YOU!” I pounded on it once, twice. Then I simply kicked the hundreds-years-old thing in.
I barged into the room on legs that all but fell out from under me when I saw Leon.
“NO!”
The chair I’d sat in the other night was knocked on its side on the floor. A rope looped over the open beams knotted around Leon’s neck. His face was hidden behind the tumbling locks of hair, hands wide open, head hanging limply.
I moved in a flash. “Not you. Not now. Not ever. Not like this.” I grappled with his legs and swung them over my shoulder to take the weight off his neck. “Get the rope. CUT THE FUCKING ROPE NOW!”
Cannon was there. His KA-BAR sliced the thick twine like it was melted butter. Leon’s body slumped into my arms.
I laid him out on the floor, inspecting him with my eyes and my hands while I throttled back the roar rumbling through my body.
His eyelids were closed. His features were relaxed as if in repose. His arms and legs were limber.
I reared back and smacked his face with enough force to wake the dead.
He didn’t so much as twitch.
My palm burned.
“Oh God. OhGodOhGodOh…”
The others rushed forward, boot-shod feet standing all around us. Too close. Too much. Too many.
I jerked up. “Get the fuck back! Don’t touch him. Nobody touch him. I got this. I got him.” Boots shuffled back. Bending over Leon’s still form, I pulled him into my lap. “I’ve got you. I’ve got you, I’ve got you.” Blabbering, sobbing, reeling from dread.
I felt for the pulse in his neck, willing it to send up a strong throb beneath the pad of my thumb.
Nothing.
I bent for his mouth and his chest immediately. Hands pumping up and down, breaths filling his lungs at intervals. I gave him my breath as I’d lay down my life for him, but not yet, not now. I wasn’t ready for him to be gone. I’d never be ready.
My arms creaked two minutes later. My heart cracked open. Instead of puffing breath between Leon’s lips, I kissed him. I kissed him and cried over him. I kept a hand on his neck and one on his chest and I willed him to live. I filled him with the all the love I’d never shown him. I clung to him like a wave breaking over a rock.
“Darke?” Liz’s voice sounded clotted, thick.
I shook my head and started another round of compressions.
“Darke.” That was Linc.
I ignored him, too.
Cannon started in. “Maybe it’s time to—”
Leon gasped. He inhaled and cried out. His eyelids shot open and he stared at me.
“Keep those eyes open, baby. That’s right. Do what you’re doing. There you go. Perfect, just perfect.” I gently coached him through his first seconds back in the land of the living with tears coursing down my face.
I choked. “He’s okay. He’s okay. He’s alive!”
His breath warmed the hollow of my neck when I drew him to me. I watched Liz fall into Linc and Cannon accept the ready-and-waiting embrace from Nathaniel.
“You’re alive. You’re okay.” I cradled Leon in my arms and kissed all over his face. “I’ll make sure you’re okay.”
Minutes later, I lifted him from the floor and made him comfortable on the bed. I turned to the others.
My voice dropped low. “I’ll take care of Leon. You find Raine. I think I need to have words, or maybe a reckoning, with our shaman.”
With one last relieved look at Leon, everyone filed from the room.
After propping Leon on the pillows, I retrieved some water. I made him drink from the cup I held to his lips, and then I wiped his lips with soft touches of my fingers.
Ligature marks that had been red from the rough rope were shading into deep purple bruises circling the column of his neck. The more the marks surfaced on his skin, the more my fear, and ultimately my anger at his rash actions, consumed me until I slammed the water down.
“How could you do this? What the fuck were you thinking?” He blanched, but that didn’t stop me. Maybe I was supposed to treat him with kid gloves, but I couldn’t. “You promised you’d wait.”
“I’m a hustler; you know dat,” Leon whispered back in a voice raw from the rope’s wounds. “It’s easy enough to lie.”
I had to distance myself before I did something rash. I leaped off the bed, pacing back and forth. “That’s it? That’s all you’ve got?”
The door swung open, Liz behind it. “Maybe you two shouldn’t be alone right now.”
Her concern had the effect of cold water splashed on my face and I sat down. I tried to breathe evenly like a normal human being, not a wild savage animal. “It’s okay. I’m good. We’re fine.”
I sounded so, so solid with my two-word answers.
Liz glanced at Leon, who gave her a small nod, letting her know it was okay to leave.
The pain, the fear, the all-encompassing panic rushed over me. I moaned. “How could you do this? Why, Leon? Why?” I looked up to see his eyes filled, and he kneeled before me. “Why do you want to leave me so much?”
His remorse was like a blanket smothering him. “Because I don’ wanna leave you at all.” He bowed his head until his cheek lay on my thigh.
I reached under his arms, lifting him to my lap. There I rocked him. “Why?” I asked against the soft hair beneath my lips.
His face hidden in the lee of my neck, he said, “I had to know if it worked. Possédé—dat’s what Maman always said I was.”
“What?”
“Possessed by the devil, always gone my own way quick as I could.”
Arms gliding around my neck, he slid his cheek against mine where his soft whiskers rubbed my rough stubble. “I injected myself as soon as you left.”
I’d felt it in my bones while we drove away from the castle. I opened my mouth to rip into him again, but before I could speak, he pulled back.
“I got in touch with Hatch. He put me on the line with Doc at Chitamauga. I wasn’t bein’ completely stupid, Darke.”
Hatch. Another name to add to my shit list. My hand moved to Leon’s neck and stayed on the heated, bruised flesh.
“Doc talked me through it. And there’s somethin’ you don’t know.”
“What?”
“Hatch gave me a module for my D-P before we left. It sends a blood sample to the Doc so he can test it immediately.”
Slipping off my lap to sit beside me, Leon wrapped his arms around me. Instead of relaxing into his hold, I remained upright as if I had a stick jammed up my ass.
He huffed, a long gust that sent his hair off his brow. “So I did it. Sent the results to Doc. He tested my blood. Still positive for the Plague.”
A shiver raced over his body. His emotions that had run bright since he’d come around dimmed like candle flames dying out.
I leaned back and pulled him with me. I couldn’t believe I’d found him dead such a short time ago. Now he was here and living, alive and breathing.
Tracing the lean lines of his back, kissing him until his trembling stopped, I warmed him, soothed him, held him. “We’ll have other chances. There will be another antidote, one that works.”
Tension loosened from his limbs all at once.
“What was the deal with the broadcast?”
“I din’t wanna die without making a difference. I din’t wanna die without sayin’ good-bye to you.”
My heart slammed up into my throat. “You do not say good-bye to me, ever.” I drew his head back to lance him with my stare. “How did you manage to set it all up?”
“Hatch connected me just like Nate did when Liz’s stuff went live from Beta.”
Hatch again. Double Hatch Death. I might even use my hatchet on the man when we got back to the commune. Call it poetic justice.
I paused before asking the hardest question. “Why not wait for me?”
Leon stepped onto the floor and moved away.
I shot up. “What?”
“I din’t think you’d care.”
“That right there better be one of your perfect fucking lies.” Another current of rage blasted through me.
He backpedaled. “I…I can never be sure with you.”
My voice quiet, I asked, “Is that so?”
He swallowed and nodded.
In two steps I was right in front of him, grasping his face in my hands. “I love you! I love you, you shortsighted son of a bitch. Jesus Christ, I didn’t want to, but…” Dragging him into my arms, I lowered my voice to whisper against his ear. “I think I fell in love with you that first night, angel.”
His fingers reached for my shoulders and dug in. His tense body clung to mine. He said nothing. I don’t think he even breathed.
I drew back and cocked my head. “I say I love you and you’ve got nothing?”
Leon chewed his bottom lip to hide the sweet smile forming. He shook his head a little and sighed. His nose nuzzled my throat and a long breath moaned out of him. “Say it again.”
“Don’t I deserve something in return?”
He pushed up to pop a kiss on my lips, beaming with self-satisfied delight that settled my heart solidly in my chest for the first time in months.
I didn’t let him duck his head, instead going for his lips with my own for a deeper, longer, lustier taste. I kissed his cheeks and temples, his quivering eyelids when the dark fans of his lashes swept low.
I murmured against his brow, “I love you so much, Leon Cheramie.”
He gave a rumble before launching himself into my arms. His legs wound around my waist, and his searing kiss nearly knocked me off my feet. I groaned when he pulled back, trying to recapture his suckling mouth.
He nibbled my bottom lip. He slid his tongue along my jaw with a hum. Leon lapped my parted mouth and retreated when I gasped.
“Je t’aime, Darke.”
I cranked my arms around him and let out a resounding whoop! If Liz busted in now, I was going to bust a cap in her ass. Joy spread through me like warm sun rays after a long, dreary winter. I sealed our love on Leon’s lips with a kiss that seared my soul.
Spinning toward the bed, I eased him down and crawled on top. His mouth was plumped up, glistening. Irises coin-sized and dilated. Body waiting, ready, especially when he stretched and rolled his hips, drawing attention to the hard ridge in his pants.
I wanted to get him naked, consummate this moment. I wanted to take him and stamp my essence within his body and all the hell over him until he knew without a doubt no one would ever reach as far inside him as I did.
First I needed to make sure he saw sense because—fuck—he’d very nearly succeeded in killing himself in the name of the Revolution. For a second time. Tumbling aside with a groan, I willed my erection to stand down.
Leon propped onto an elbow beside me. He idly played his palm beneath my shirt, tugging his hand over muscles, tickling my nipples. “What?”
I clamped down on his wrist to stop his toying motions. “You know what.”
He shook his head.
I leaned over and stretched his arms out. “Yes. I need to make sure you’re okay in your head, not just your heart.”
He tried to snatch free. Good thing I was stronger, bigger, and had been through a few more battles than him. He was going nowhere.
“Whatever.”
I ignored his response. “I’m not saying I have the first clue about what you’re going through, but I am saying I will be here every step of the way.” I captured Leon’s tears when they fell, then his lips when he sighed. “I want to be with you. I’m choosing you. I need you to choose life.”
“I choose you, too.”
I relented with a kiss, retreated with a question. “And life?”
The battle within him was not black-and-white. It came across in bright bursts of feeling where hope warred with fate, a destiny he’d already accepted.
I cupped his face. “I’m going to be completely selfish here, baby. I love you. And my heart is tethered to yours now.” I figured out right away I wasn’t above using his emotions for me, or guilt about our circumstances, to make him stay put, in this life, on this earth. “I already decided that if you die, I die, because I am not doing this again. I’ve never loved anyone as much as I love you. I never will.”
Gone was my guilt over Tam and Wilde. They would be happy for me. I knew that. As long as the little prick with my heart in his hands stopped trying to put an end to his life.
Leon’s head knocked up. “That ain’t fair.”
I didn’t care one damn bit. “Guess you better decide to live, then.”
His nod was slow. “D’ac.”
His pronouncement was so quiet, but my God, it was a victory. One that meant everything to me.
“You do not do anything like that again, angel.” I shook him. Then, afraid of hurting him, I gentled. “Don’t, please.”
“And if it’s just another week?”
I forced a hard swallow before I could answer. “It won’t be. It’ll be forever for you and me.”
Leon broke from my hold. He rolled me onto my back and straddled me, suddenly flirty and sexy. “Lâche pas la patate—we’ll hang in there. You’re a romantic fool, Darke.”
“For you. Only for you.”
* * *
After Leon fell asleep, I disentangled from his arms. I stepped into the hall, shut the door, and collapsed to the floor. I needed a minute to regroup, sit down, and possibly pass out without him waking up to witness my total mental breakdown.
The stark terror of seeing him suspended from the ceiling with a rope around his neck crushed me. Leon hanging. Long bare feet swinging. Hair falling to cover his face. I’d now witnessed the deaths of three lovers.
I groaned, hugging my arms tighter around my body. Pain made me immobile as I saw the scene over and over again. It was a good thing I’d puked everything up earlier, because I broke out in a cold, nauseating sweat.
I rubbed my face and rose to my feet. I did my rounds of the castle, making sure everything was locked down, before I finally headed back to the bedroom.
Inside, Leon hogged the bed from one side to the other. I smiled, shucked my clothes, and slipped in next to him. He shuffled in his sleep as I filled all the empty spaces around him, as he did me.
* * *
It was still dark when I woke, and Leon wasn’t next to me. I kicked off the bedding, intent on tracking him down, when I heard the shower running.
I used the basin to clean up the dust and dirt and tears from yesterday. It was barely dawn. Leon appeared from the bathroom just as I’d finished washing my face. He smelled of soap and the heat of silky skin.
As I patted myself dry with a towel, I glanced over at him. He didn’t have a stitch of clothing on. His cock was hard, and a jewel of precome welled from the slit. I watched as that clear drop formed a perfect diamond before slithering down his shaft in a meandering path.
My jaw went tight. I licked my lips. I struggled to breathe when he ambled around the room, displaying every sexy part of his taut, toned body.
“Jesus Christ, Leon. Don’t you think you should get some more sleep?”
“Sleep is for the—” Stopping abruptly, he shook his head. He bent over the foot of the bed, angled from his hips, pushing up his ass.
Looking at me, he ran both hands up the backs of his thighs to his buttocks. When he spread those firm cheeks to reveal the smooth crack between, I gasped.
“I don’ wanna sleep. I wanna feel alive with you. I want you inside of me.”
Cherry-red and slick, his tiny hole winked at me from between the swells of his ass. I dropped my hands from where they clenched under my pits only to clamp them on my thighs. He dipped a finger inside himself with a soft, wet squelch.
My cock lurched forward, dragging me behind it.
“Holy hell.” I stared at his backside as he speared an extra finger inside.
Moaning and fucking up and down on two fingers, Leon threw his head back.
“You prepared for me?” I gripped the sides of his cheeks, mesmerized by the slick visual and slurping sounds.
“Din’t wanna wait.” With a dip of his knees, he sent a third finger home. The back of his hand brushed my cock, which had clear ideas of doing all that filthy-hot work for him.
My palms on his inner thighs spread his legs wider. He withdrew his fingers to brace both hands on the bed in front of him. I roughly fondled his hanging balls, then inspected his sleek open asshole. I teased the broad black-purple cap of my cock against his pucker, clasping that pert ass wide.
Leon’s whole body shook from shoulders to toes. He turned his head, trying to gauge my intent. While he watched, I greased my palm with spit. I curled my fist around my meaty erection and made it glisten. Backing away enough to fit my entire cock against the deep, hot valley of his ass, I decided to go for a little ride since he was being so acquiescent.
I grabbed his hair in one hand, wrenching him up, his hip with the other, and pulled him to me. The first long slide made me shift closer and rumble deep within my chest. The second made Leon wiggle his ass around me. The third caused a globule of ejaculate to stretch from the tip of my cock down his cleft.
I stilled. My dick thudded against him, the black rod wedged between his paler cheeks.
“Mon Dieu.”
Reaching around, I gripped his cock and squeezed. The head was engorged above my fist, filled with blood and need. I bit his shoulder and licked it before jerking his shaft in quick tight strokes that strangled his voice and made him rise to his tiptoes. Then I released him and stepped away.
“Get back here.” Groaning with frustration, he fell forward to his hands on the bed.
“I’m not fucking you raw. Lube and a condom.” Sweat beaded along my torso and dripped down my stomach.
Leon scrambled to find it, but I stopped him. “Oh, no. You wait right here. Stay just like that.” I swooped down for one long lick of his trench, stopping to twirl my tongue at his furled opening.
My cock covered and coated in lubricant, I returned to my man. His back arched for me. His ass lifted. The vision of his ruby entrance when I slid my thick shaft toward it made me swell even more.
There was no more teasing, just a slow pop through his ring and a long howl as I slowly seated myself completely inside him. I withdrew immediately and lunged back in.
“Yeah. Just like dat, cher.”
My breath coming in rasps, I fucked him right down onto the bed. I shifted him forward, keeping him attached to my needy cock, and crawled up after him. My arm around his throat—protecting it—his hand grasping my flank, I dug my toes in and rocked in and out. His round buttocks lifted up and sank down with each thrust and retreat. Muscles bunching and bulging, bodies banging together, we drove across the mattress and almost fell to the floor.
With a grunt, I slowed my pace. The underbelly of my cock caused a pause and the most heated friction every time I sucked out of him. It made Leon yelp in a throaty voice before I plunged deep again.
I stopped. Kissing across his shoulders, licking the nape of his neck, I said, “I’m not going to fuck you from behind, baby.” I dismounted, moving back.
Disappointment cracked his voice. “You’re not?”
Flipping him over, I settled above so his cock was a hot spike between our stomachs. He lifted his legs to my hips, bracketing me with his body. We touched in all places, in all ways.
My lips against his, I whispered hoarsely, “I want to make love to you, just like this.”
I entered him with a groan. The slick slide inside was perfection—hot, tight nirvana. We held our lips open and close, our mouths sometimes missing the mark and landing on chins or cheeks or sensitive earlobes.
Leon voiced the sexiest little moans amid a litany of nonstop mumbles: ooh yeah, ahhh, please, please, oh fuck, more…
“I like being inside you.” I lifted up to push deeper.
“I know.” His grin ended in a groan when I pumped long and slow.
I leaned down to kiss his chest, above his heart. “I like being inside you…here.”
His sooty eyelashes fluttered down. His lips parted for my kiss. His arms tightened around my neck, bringing me toward him.
I rolled into his body with lingering thrusts, awed by his beauty, his strength. Sinking inside with such care and love, I felt our communion light up inside my body. I swiveled my hips to grind my stone-hard balls against his upturned ass, breaching him deeper than before.
His breath hitched. His eyes flared wide. “Oh! I’m gonna come!”
A sudden flash of sizzling heat squeezed my cock. Unexpected. Too much for me to withstand as Leon’s back arched, driving me deeper. It was impossible to stop the fast snap of my hips and the all-encompassing desire to fill him with my come. It lashed out of me for so long and in such magnitude, I hollered in my release and left fingerprint trails on his skin.
But I wasn’t sated. Not by a long shot.
Leon whistled through his teeth when I grasped both ankles, drawing his legs wide. “Darke?”
“Now I’m gonna fuck you.” Mark you, own you, make you mine.
I managed wet kisses on his lips between our full-bodied writhing.
I volleyed into him, my blunt-headed length a torpedo engulfed by his grasping hole. It was easier to pound into him, his narrow chute used to me, nice and wet and sloppy. Lush sounds comingled with his uncontainable moans. And I was overtaken by my driving need to inhabit his body any way I could, to take away the fear and pain and fury and replace it with love and peace and forever.
Pulling out my thick cock, I pushed it against Leon’s. He was just as hard as me. Wet with come and lube, I smoothed my hand up and down both shafts. His stomach clenched. His body strained upward. When his throat arched, I cupped the back of his neck and sent my lips sliding all over the purple-colored flesh he’d hurt.
“You want to give this up?” I lunged back inside of him.
Leon shook his head.
I hauled him on top of my thighs. I fucked into him again. “Remember this feeling. Me inside you. You inside my soul.” I lifted his hand to the hard-beating pump of my heart.
He nodded frantically, his fingers digging into my flesh.
“Because I love you. I love you so goddamn much.” Unbidden, tears rose in my eyes. I captured his lips, his gasp, his vow of requited love.
I withdrew completely from his ripe round cheeks and slid back inside. Once, twice…I bent over his body after watching my dark, glistening cock dive deep and retreat into the hot pink hold of his ass.
Leon looped his legs around my waist as I lowered us both down.
“Good. So good, baby.” Then I wrapped my arms around him. I brushed my lips over his and cried out. My seed sped into him as his spread between our bellies.
Minutes later, I loosened my arms to slide off of him. I flopped to my back.
The sole of Leon’s foot rubbed my calf. He squeezed and massaged the muscles of my pecs down to my abs. When I lifted sleepy eyes, he was squinting at me.
“What?”
“It’s so different with you.”
“Why?” Lifting up to an elbow, I captured his hand against me. “Because I’m black?”
Leon sniggered. “No. Mmm.” He bit his bottom lip. “That just makes it hotter. No, ’cause I never…”
“You never had a lover?”
His face, already flushed from exertion, turned rosy-colored. “Nah. I just screwed a lot of people.”
“Why?” A tight fist of jealousy cramped my stomach.
“Too busy workin’. Then I felt dirty. You know me, the Company whore.” His head lolled toward me. “Had to make money. Had to survive. Wanted to make sure my maman was safe, ’cause if you think I’m trouble—merde—she’d shoot her mouth off at anyone, anywhere because she never believed the must-do rules. We could barely make the government rent on our poverty-row house with her work at the factory. ’Sides, I’m cute and I got a great ass, non?”
“Leon.” I groaned. I wasn’t sure I could handle this, but trust and love and complete honesty had to be on the table between us.
“Sold my soul to the devil. Pay was good. And since I was in demand, the Company left Maman alone.” His eyes drifted shut. “They made me go with men and women.”
“You don’t like women.” Renewed anger aimed at the CO ripped through me. He’d been through so much, a war of his own.
He smiled, only one side of his lips curving. “I like ’em well enough to be friends with ’em. Wasn’t too thrilled to fuck ’em. Not at first. But ya know what? It was easier with the women than the men. The executives wanted to own me, and I din’t want them…inside of me…in my body or my head like that. The women? They were nice, usually fed me afterward. I could get it up either way, but I had control when I fucked a lady. The men took all dat control away from me.”
“That’s not something to feel blessed about,” I said.
“Sometimes you gotta take what you get an’ make the best of it.”
“Not with me.”
“Not with you. Never like that.” Rolling onto his side, he ducked his head. “But I know what it’s like to have pussy, Darke.”
“If this is about Tam again, I will tell you every single day I don’t want a woman. I’m not looking for anyone else—male or female. What happened with them, my love for them had everything to do with circumstances. I loved them. I miss them.”
He shuffled away.
I scooted right behind him until my chest met his back and my arms rounded his body. My lips skittered across his cheek to the corner of his mouth. “What happened with you? It was unexpected. I tried to turn you away because I convinced myself I couldn’t have you, didn’t deserve you, didn’t want you.” I tipped his face so he couldn’t hide from me. “You know what? That was all bullshit. You alone made me whole. You, just you. You are the one I want.”
He dropped his head. “I still feel dirty.” His words were muffled by a pillow, but I heard them.
“You can be as dirty as you want with me. Trust me. I like it. You turn me on so fucking much it’s a wonder I didn’t bang your ass wide open the night of Nathaniel and Cannon’s handfasting. Christ, it damn near killed me to keep my hands off you these past months. My palm is thick with callouses from beating off to thoughts of you…”
“Really?” He breathed in wonder. He pushed onto his side, once more tangling long limbs with mine.
“You’ve got no idea what you do to me. And I love it.” I ran my fingertips along the hollow of Leon’s cheek. He glowed with my praise. “There’s not a single dirty speck on your spirit, angel.”
He hummed, lowering his face to my neck.
I drew my hand down his back to grasp his ass in a firm hold. There was one more thing we had to cover before heading off to la-la land. “You’re not to fuck anyone but me ever again.”
That might not have been the smartest move. Leon reeled up and snapped, “As long as we’re throwin’ out edicts, same goes for you.”
“Won’t be a problem.”
“For me, either.”
“Good.”
“Bien.” He resettled himself with me as the cushion for his body.
“And you let me take care of your every need from now on,” I tacked on just as Leon relaxed.
“And if I say I’m fully capable of takin’ care of myself?”
I snagged his chin and kissed his lips. “You’ll let me do it anyway because you love me and you’re a generous person.”
“Hmph.” In a shy whisper, he said, “I wanna take care of you, too.”
“Oh, you will.”
“D’ac.”
Duck meant okay. Good.
“Tell me you love me again,” I whispered against his ear, thrilling when little chills rose on his skin.
“Je t’aime. Je t’aime.” Each time he said the words that joined us together, he kissed me with soft pecks. “I love you, cher.”
With the covers drawn over us, I hugged him tightly.
“Am I allowed to sleep now, monsieur?” he asked with a large yawn and a twinkle in his eyes.
I suddenly felt bad about haranguing him. Not enough to stop from adding, “Only with me. Every night. In my arms.”