But it was only Satrine he paid any real attention.
As their family faded away, she finally came to him.
“Hey,” she whispered.
Loren gazed down at her and said nothing.
“We need to wind this around our arms and get this show on the road,” she prompted when he didn’t speak or move.
“This is lovely,” he whispered.
Her expression grew soft, but her eyes, as they had been from the moment she entered the atrium, shined bright with the depth of her love for him.
A bright so bright, it drove deep into his soul.
He allowed that to settle before he lifted a hand, pulled that remarkable hat off her head, and sent it flying.
She cried out in surprise.
“But it has to go,” he finished.
She stared up at him for but a brief moment.
And then his soul exploded with radiance as his bride filled the vestibule with laughter.
* * * *
He had his hands full of her ass and his gaze full of her beauty, bouncing as it was on his cock.
He lifted up to sitting, and then he had her arms around his shoulders and her lips on his.
“Baby,” she breathed.
He pulled her off his shaft.
“Loren!” she snapped.
“Knees,” he ordered. “Offer yourself to me.”
They were in the shadows, but he didn’t miss her eyes catch fire.
Then, facing the head of the bed that sat along a bank of arched windows that had a view to the now-stormy sea, she positioned her exquisiteness before him, offering her ass and her cunt.
Loren took it, his fingers curling into that glorious flesh, his cock pounding into her sleek wet.
He raised a hand to his mouth, sucked in his thumb, then returned it to her ass, slipping his thumb into her hole.
She reared back into his cock, emitting a soft whimper of pleasure, as he knew she would.
She loved him inside her, any way she could take him.
“Fuck me, sweeting,” he growled.
She did, he watched, stroking her hole, and when he knew from the clutching of her pussy that she was close, he pulled out.
“Honey,” she begged.
He turned her to her back, covered her, and entered her again.
He laced their fingers on one hand, wound his others in her riot of curls, and she circled him with her legs.
The look on her face, the feel of her sheath, the sounds she was making, the intermingled smell of their bodies, he was going to lose control.
And he always wanted her to climax first, of course, but tonight, he wanted them to climax together.
He shifted a hand between their bodies, moving it down to her clit.
He touched her.
She whispered, “Husband,” as she climaxed under him, around him, for him.
And at that word, Loren lost it, and he went with her.
The room exploded in light as the dragons outside their windows blazed fire through the air above the Riven.
And the stone of their room turned incandescent all around them with the flash.
But it was only her for him, and him for her in their wedding bed as Satrine accepted his seed, and he accepted her love, and in her ear, he whispered, “Wife.”
* * * *
Buttersnatch
Hawkvale
Newton
Oxblood Region
Some weeks later…
They’d cornered him.
He squatted like a rat and stared into the fog, breathing heavily.
It didn’t take long before they formed through the dark and mist, still mounted on their powerful steeds.
Six of them.
Six tall, handsome commanding men, staring down their noble noses at him cowered in an alley.
They were led by the king.
Buttersnatch stared in shock up at the mighty Noctorno, knowing it was his end and feeling a strange sense of pride he would meet it at the edge of a royal blade.
“Fancy serving your king?” his monarch asked.
Buttersnatch blinked into the fog.
Another, stranger sense of pride stole through him, and he was surprised at how strong it was.
This meant he straightened from his squat.
Only to bend forward and bow.
Epilogue
Let’s See about You
Loren
They rode up to the back of the house.
It did not bode well to see his wife standing in the open doorway, Carling lurking at her shoulder, her arms crossed on her chest, her lovely face set to, as they put it in her world, really seriously pissed off.
He grinned.
She caught it and looked even angrier.
“Carling! Break out the whisky,” Marlow ordered.
“Do that first, milord, or call a physician?” Carling asked in return.
“Physician,” Middy scoffed through a broken lip.
“We had a deal, you and me,” Satrine called to her husband.
They reined in, and his four brothers were much swifter in dismounting than he.
Corliss’s stable boy rushed forward to grab the reins.
Loren took his time sauntering to his wife, who barely moved as his friends slid by her into the house, Croft being the last and sending him a “best of luck” expression.
Carling followed them.
Loren stopped in front of her.
“I’m not sure what you find amusing!” They heard Mary say loudly and imperiously from inside. “My niece was in a state. There’s nothing amusing about a lady in a state. No, you there, also grab a bottle of brandy. We’re out in the parlor, and I’m parched.”