Roxy took a Lapis Lazuli crystal from her pocket, turning my hand over and painting the constellation of my star sign on it before painting her own hand with hers. She arched a brow at me as she took my hand again, the demand clear that she wanted me to make a star promise with her.
I looked at this woman, this princess, this ultimate fantasy of mine and she stared me down as she waited me out, knowing that when it came down to it, I could never deny her anything she desired of me. So if she wanted me to swear I’d pluck my fucking soul from the grip of the heavens after I died and return it to her keeping where it belonged then I’d swear it. No matter if I was just one man going up against all the stars in the heavens for her, because there was no fight I wouldn’t face in her name. No matter how impossibly the odds were stacked.
“I won’t allow this fate to pass,” I said.
“Neither will I,” she replied darkly and I gasped, trying to snatch my hand from hers but the magic clapped between us before I could pull away and she was left standing over me, smiling triumphantly and waiting for me to lose my shit over what she’d just done.
“Did you seriously just curse us both?” I demanded as I snatched my hand away from hers and she tossed the crystal aside.
“No,” she replied. “I intend to keep that vow.”
“And what if you can’t? I can hardly release you from it beyond the grave.”
“You won’t need to if you stick to your word.”
“What you’re talking about is impossible,” I insisted.
“We were impossible once, Darius Acrux. So don’t try to put limitations on what we can or can’t do.”
My throat bobbed as I looked at her, wanting to break that vow out of fear, but wanting to uphold it even more out of love. Because of course I didn’t want to die. I didn’t want to lose her. I wanted to agree to every want she had of me and promise her the entire world at her side.
“I love you, Roxanya Vega,” I said, my voice raw with the truth of that. “No matter what happens with this fate, the war, my father, the throne, all of it pales beside my love for you. And I know I’m not good enough for you but that just makes it all the easier for me to worship you the way you deserve because I won’t ever stop trying to live up to being the man you deserve to have. Not until my dying breath and beyond that too if it’s what you want.”
“You’re what I want,” she replied firmly.
Her palm moved to my chest and she pushed me back so that I shifted to sit against the headboard, my gaze latched to hers as she slowly stripped out of the clothes she was wearing, dropping them to puddle at her feet and stepping free of them in her matching black bra and panties.
My gaze roamed over her deep bronze skin, taking in the swell of her tits and the rise and fall of her heavy breaths before dropping to the hourglass curve of her toned waist and round ass, descending to that tattoo which bound her to me and made my fucking heart sing every single time I laid my eyes on it.
She was right. The stars couldn’t have this. They couldn’t take us away. It was too powerful, too beautiful, too fucking right. And I wouldn’t let them have it because it was mine. She was my most prized treasure and I would hoard her away from the sight of the stars themselves if that was what it took to keep her.
Roxy moved onto the bed, climbing into my lap and dropping her forehead to rest against mine as she closed her eyes and breathed me in just like I was inhaling her. She was intoxicating, this creature of mine, soul destroying, heart breaking, endlessly everything.
I ran my hands up her spine beneath her wings until I found the place where they joined with her shoulder blades and I started to run my fingers back and forth along that ridge of skin and feathers.
“Mine,” I murmured, repeating what I’d said to this girl more times than I could count now, but it had never felt so brutally honest.
“Even beyond the Veil,” she breathed and I nodded, turning my face and kissing her neck beneath her ear, making her shiver for me as I continued to massage that sensitive spot where her wings emerged from her back.
Roxy shifted her hips over mine and I groaned as she rode over the solid ridge of my dick within my pants, a breath drawn in between those most kissable of lips as she felt how much I wanted her in every atom of my body.
I moved my mouth to the corner of her jaw, kissing her again and she rocked her hips once more, this slow, sensual movement which made a growl build in the back of my throat as coins cascaded from the bed beneath us.