“Bors…” I twisted in his embrace but he only squeezed harder, his forearms pressing under my ribs, the air driven from my lungs.
“I can imagine what you are thinking, my angel. You’re young, sent from heaven and I’ve visited hell more times than I care to count. But you will be my everything, I’ll be the man I always wanted to be…for you.”
I pressed my lips to the inside of his huge, scarred biceps. I wanted so very desperately to say yes, right then and there. I wanted nothing more than to be his and his alone. I envisioned a life for us together in such vivid detail that I almost felt it had happened already. Like it was always meant to be.
Then my eyes fell on the windowsill, even in the darkness the world beyond was ominous. While we lay, all knitted up together in the simple glow of our lusty, breathless new love, the real world loomed, with all its difficulties, conflicts, and complications.
With my whole heart I wanted a fresh start with him, somewhere—anywhere. I was his. I knew that. I’d been his since the moment our eyes met, and he was mine. But that didn’t change reality. If there was one thing that I had learned from my family, it was that what I wanted made no difference.
“I want nothing more,” I said, my voice so low I wasn’t sure if I was answering him, or talking to myself. “None of those things matters to me. I’d marry you in sackcloth and live in Angelica’s pigsty if it meant we were together. But life hasn’t taught me to expect happiness, or that just because I want something it can be so. You don’t know my father. He might not be liked by the washerwomen in town, but he has friends. No priest will marry us without his blessing, and he will never give us his blessing. He has some power I’ve never understood, yet it is there nonetheless.”
He loosened his grip and leaned forward, and his stubble scraped against my cheek. “I hear you making excuses, I hear you saying you do not think it is possible, but what you are not saying is no.” There was a smile in his voice.
I didn’t know what to say. How could I disappoint him by insisting? Yet how could I let him have hope for something that would never be? “I would, but…”
“Then I can sleep contented,” he said, holding me like I was his most cherished possession, and I felt his breathing deepen and slow as he drifted off to sleep. “You could not say no, so it is a yes.”
Sara
Sleep was an elusive companion that night. In between the snatches of rest, he took me again, and again. Filling me with his sticky release until it slicked my thighs and we drenched the bedding and I couldn’t fathom life without these feelings.
Without him.
I lay awake in his arms after he’s soothed and took care of my sore womanhood with a warm cloth he retrieved from the kitchen. Still, the precious ache between my legs kept me awake, watching the patch of moonlight creep over the bed until dawn found us locked together. The thought of marrying him weighed on me, knowing he wanted it, knowing I wanted it, but knowing above all it was an impossible dream.
As soon as I felt him stir in the morning light, I whispered his name.
“Shit, for a second, I feared it was all just a dream. Thank God for you,” he said sleepily, leaning over to kiss me. Then he frowned when he saw my face. “What’s on your mind, my precious girl?”
“What you asked,” I replied, searching his face for any hint that he’d withdraw the offer and finding none. “I’ve thought about nothing else. But my father will never give me to you. He will never consent. You know how things work here. The priest will insist on speaking to him, and after that he will refuse to perform the ceremony. Perhaps we should just be content to be together. Ours could be a common law marriage, until my father passes away and there is nobody left to stand against us.”
“No.” He shook his head on a grimace. “No one will keep me from marrying you. I’ve killed many before for matters far less important to me. What I would do for you…fuck, Sara, the things I would do for you would make my years of warring look like a candlelit dinner under the weeping Oaks. You will be mine, or blood will run in the streets. Our children will bear my name, I promise you that.”
The mention of children made my heart tumble inside my chest. Children. Our children.
“He is my father, Bors. No matter how much I wish that he weren’t. I want to be yours, but it will never be with his blessing.”