Darius and I were meant to be meeting the others in Darcy’s room to discuss what to do about striking back at Lionel, but then Darius had slapped my ass and told me he couldn’t wait to own it later and I’d seen that domineering Alpha glint in his eye, so I’d been forced to remind him who was in charge in this relationship. And that was me.
“Sometimes I wish the Savage King had never died,” he murmured, almost to himself as he kept me close. “I think about how different everything would have been if he’d managed to stop my father before this all happened. How much longer I would have had with you…”
I sighed, shifting my fingers up to his jaw and tilting his chin so that he looked at me.
“We have all the time we want now,” I said. “The past is done. We can’t change it, so why think about it?”
His brow pinched and he slid his hands up my spine until he was caressing my shoulder blades where my wings lay dormant beneath my skin, making me arch my back and moan softly in pleasure.
“Roxy, on Christmas Day, when I thought-”
A banging sounded at the door and I turned my head to look towards it as Max called out to us.
“I’m taking this break in the rampant lust to mean you’ve stopped fucking and are just doing the cuddling shit – so stop making us all wait for you and get your asses in here so we can figure out how to do this.”
I breathed a laugh, unable to even feel bad about making them wait as the man in my arms tightened his grip on me and I looked back to him. We’d had to wait a long damn time for this taste of happiness so I was going to savour it as often as I could.
“Give us ten minutes,” I called.
“No,” Max snapped. “Darius will be good to go again in five. Then it’ll be a whole other round of us watching the damn walls rattle while Gerry tells us tales about the gardeners who have watered her fucking lawn, and I swear to the moon I will go on a killing spree if she brings up a single fucker other than me.”
“It’s super weird that you know how long it will take me to get hard again, asshole,” Darius called back, a laugh colouring his voice.
“It’s super awkward for me to be feeling so much lust all of the time too, but you two literally never stop, so here we are.”
I laughed as Max’s footsteps moved away from the door and Darius cocked his head at me.
“He’s wrong anyway,” he said, shifting his hips beneath me so that I was left with no illusions as to how hard he already was, and I bit my lip at the temptation in his dark eyes.
“You were saying something about Christmas,” I said, trying to keep my damn head because we really were running late at this point.
“Forget it,” he said, shaking his head slightly. “It was only about how fucking amazing you looked when I saw you waiting for me at the end of that aisle. I know it wasn’t ever meant to be our wedding day, but I’ve spent years knowing I was going to be married off to that hag Mildred and I can’t tell you how many times I fantasised about it being a girl like you.”
“Like me?” I teased but he didn’t smile back at my playful tone, only pushed up until his lips were brushing mine and my breath was catching in my throat.
“No. Not like you. It was you. Even before I ever laid eyes on you, it was you, Roxy. Only ever you.”
He kissed me and I fell for him. Not in the way I already had, but in this utterly captivating, moment of clarity kind of way which let me know right down to the roots of my soul that it was always going to be him for me too. This was it now. Me and him, bound together in a way that we didn’t need the stars to grant us, because it was ours and we’d chosen it, fought for it and won it with blood, pain and heartache and no mate bond gifted to us by the heavens could ever compare to that. I didn’t want silver rings in my eyes. I only wanted this man before me and the knowledge that we were the ones who had fought to claim one another without needing any help or guidance from any celestial beings. Because it was ours. And no one could claim it but us.
I pulled back reluctantly, tasting him on my lips and letting our magic coil together in a mixture of fire and air that dried us out and left my hair looking a lot less recently fucked.
Darius pushed to his feet, lifting me as easily as if I weighed nothing and striding across the room as I wrapped my arms around his neck and let my gaze run over the strong features of his face, the dark stubble lining his jaw, the frown which never seemed to entirely abandon him.
He placed me down beside the wardrobe that Caleb had built for us and pulled on a white t-shirt and some black sweatpants, then took some clothes out for me. I smirked at him as he dropped to one knee and dragged a pair of black panties up my thighs, dressing me with a dangerous look in his eyes that promised he’d be the one undressing me again soon enough.