He smiled. “I love you. I think I have from the time you sat across from me at the White Flame. You were so earnest and so damn beautiful, with your wild hair and dark blue eyes.”
“You love me.” It was a statement, but a shaky breath followed.
“I do.” He petted her hair, enjoying the feel of her soft, out-of-control curls. “And I’m done blaming you for the dreamglide. Because you broke the law, I can stand here now and be with you. I wouldn’t have otherwise. I would never have asked you out and I would have ensured that I kept my distance.
“Leaving you last week, however, became a death I knew I’d have to endure over and over for the rest of my life. I thought I was prepared to return to my solitary existence, until you showed up wearing a purple fringe and black leather. You took my soul by storm.” He slid his hand beneath her chin and kissed her. “I love you, Juliet, with all my heart.”
~ ~ ~
Juliet stared into Brann’s beautiful, green eyes. Even the line between
his brows had eased. The fae part of her kept absorbing the phenomenal change in Brann. This was not the man who’d left her after they’d made love earlier in the cottage living room. He was no longer conflicted. In fact, what she felt most was that the man in front of her was exactly like the man she’d made love to in the dreamglide.
They were one-in-the same now.
And she was free to love him as much as she wanted.
She smiled. She caressed his face and kissed him in return. Her heart felt swollen with an abundance of affection. “I love you, too. So much.” Tears brimmed in her eyes. “You mean everything to me. And like you, I’d never expected to have love in my life again. I didn’t think it was possible here in Five Bridges.
“When you responded to me the way you did the very first time I took you into my dreamglide, I was hooked. You were the man for me, even though I lived in denial all that time.”
He searched her eyes. “So, we’ll be together, you and me?”
“From this night forward.”
An odd light entered his eye. “Will you marry me, Juliet, despite the fact that I’m a stubborn vampire?”
“Oh, yes.” The kiss that followed led Brann to pick her up and take her upstairs. He spent the next several hours, well past dawn, making love to her, speaking his love in his wonderful, deep voice, and promising to make every night special for her.
Several times, she enjoyed him in a combination of dreamglide and real-time that had her crying out over and over again with pleasure.
She didn’t know when they’d be able to return to her canal home. Maybe never. They were marked now, on the various cartels’ radar. But she knew how methodical Brannick could be and how his rescue tunnel system had operated for years with no one the wiser.
He held her in his arms and talked about the future, about each of the cartels and the various men and a few women who aided the drug organizations. She knew they would have to be extremely careful and in many ways disappear from the world in order to forge a resistance operation that could eventually overthrow the ruling evil of their world.
But time was the one thing each of them had in their long-lived alter world. What had been stripped from her when she’d unknowingly taken the fae alter serum, hidden inside a dark flame potion, had been given back in just how long their lives could be.
She fell asleep cradled in his arms, held secure in her dreams. More than once she felt him pull her close, awakening her enough to savor the warmth of his embrace. Her heart swelled each time, at the comfort of his touch, his presence in her bed, and the way he professed his love against her ear, whispering to her in his half-sleep.
There was work to be done in Five Bridges, of renewing a land lost to its darkest elements. But now Brann was with her and what had seemed so impossible, became filled with light, hope and the promise of a future full of love.