“Let’s head back inside,” I murmured, pulling back just enough to look up at him and running my fingers over the rough stubble that coated his jaw. “The others have been freaking out over you and I can find some proper clothes and-”
“Gabriel will tell them I’m here,” he said dismissively. “And I like what you’re wearing just fine.”
I breathed a laugh as I ran my hands up the front of his shirt and my fingers tangled in the dark material. I was wearing some shitty old man clothes, had wet hair and a bare face and was most definitely looking my worst, yet I got the impression he actually meant that.
But as he gazed at me intently, a lump rose in my throat and I tightened my hold on his shirt, remembering why he was wearing it.
“You and Mildred,” I murmured, the thought of the two of them together after their wedding burning a line of bile down the back of my throat. “Did you…” I trailed off, unable to ask the question and knowing it was unfair of me to feel so cut up over the idea of him consummating their union. But fuck, I’d been a ball of anxiety ever since he’d left that chapel and I needed to know almost as badly as I didn’t want to find out. I understood the pressure he’d been under, I knew the position Lionel had forced him into so I would find a way to get over it if he had, but the thought of it just made me want to burn the entire world down and rip Mildred’s fucking face off.
“No,” Darius growled, disgust flickering over his features. “And I wouldn’t have even if Gabriel hadn’t saved my ass. I had a plan to use an illusion to make her think she’d been fucked and then I was gonna just…well I have no fucking idea really, but it doesn’t matter. I’m not married.”
“You’re not?” I frowned in confusion and he smirked at me as he shook his head slowly, reaching past me to shove the heavy beam locking the door behind me aside.
“No,” he confirmed. “Thanks to your brother. But maybe we can get into that later? The point is, I’m not married, you’re not bonded to my father, and we’re no longer Star Crossed.”
“Oh,” I said, mentally berating myself for not coming up with something better to say in response to that.
“Yeah,” he replied, pushing the door at my back open. “Oh. And just in case it wasn’t clear, baby, I’m not going to be anyone’s but yours. So maybe you and me should get hitched and I can show you what a real wedding night looks like?”
A crazed laugh slipped from me and I shook my head as I began to back up, hooking my fingers into his belt and tugging him into the barn after me.
“Can we just start out slow?” I asked, trying not to freak the fuck out at the idea of marrying him. “We can see if we can go a week without beating the crap out of each other and think about marriage in like twenty years or something?”
I expected him to laugh but his gaze darkened as he let me pull him inside the barn and for a moment, I could have sworn I saw pain registering on his features. But before I could focus on it, he pushed the door closed behind him and darkness fell around us as my Faelight was left outside.
“Whatever you want, Roxy,” he growled and I gasped as his hands wound around my waist.
My pulse raced at the idea of that, but before I could get too caught up in the fantasy of a future with him, his grip on my waist tightened and he walked me backwards, his mouth against mine and his kiss so brutal it almost hurt. But it was the best kind of pain I could imagine.
My back collided with something and before I knew what was happening, he’d lifted me up and was perching me on a wooden platform scattered with stalks of straw as the scent of it rose up all around us.
There was a hole in the side of the barn behind me and the moonlight poured in through it, gilding us in silver and highlighting the strong lines of his cheekbones and jaw. He was so freaking gorgeous that it made my breath catch, like some mythological demigod come to shatter hearts and steal virgins from their homes. But this deity wasn’t here to ruin me, he’d come to worship at my altar and the depth of the feelings in his dark eyes had my entire body trembling with a need I was certain could only ever be satisfied by him.
His fingers slid beneath the hem of my borrowed hoody and his skin burned hot against mine as he dragged it up and off of me, taking his damn time to reveal my body to him before tossing the black fabric aside.
A growl spilled from his lips as he found me bare beneath it, my nipples hard and chest heaving.
“You’re more than I deserve, Roxy, but I’m not selfless enough to give you up,” he said in a dark tone. “So I’m going to take my time with you tonight. I’m going to mark each and every inch of your flesh with my touch so that you can’t even wash the feeling of me from your body.”