He entered the room, his mind and body weary. He shut the door and turned, wishing talk between him and his wife could wait. He felt a tight squeeze to his heart, seeing her sound asleep in the chair, her head nearly resting on her shoulder.
He went to her. It appeared her body insisted she needed rest over food, though he could argue with that, but he wouldn’t since his body warned him of the same. He yanked his plaid off and tossed it on the chair, then eased his wife up off the chair and into his arms. Her head fell to rest on his chest.
“Saber,” she whispered, her lips brushing against his chest as she snuggled closer to him.
“Aye, wife, tis me,” he said, trying to ignore his loins that tightened far too strongly.
He blew out several candles as he walked to the bed, leaving only the light from the hearth. He placed her in the center of the bed, the robe slipping partially off her, and climbed in beside her pulling the warm blankets up over them. He gently turned her just enough on her side, the robe slipping further off her, leaving her nearly naked just the way he liked her in bed, to plant his large body against her small one and wrapped himself around her until he almost consumed her. He was relieved when she did what she always did—snuggle against him as if she couldn’t get close enough.
Content for the first time in weeks, he closed his eyes and as he drifted off all he could think was that he was finally home and home was Elysia, and he would die before he’d let the curse touch her.
Chapter 15
Warm. So nice and warm. The thought lingered in her foggy mind as sleep left her and she stretched against the warmth.
Her eyes suddenly popped open and she sprang up in bed to stare at her husband and quickly pulled her hand off his chest, a habit of hers to plant it there, to launch herself up in bed. The loss of warmth shivered her senseless and she realized she was naked and one look at her husband’s green eyes firing with passion conveyed his thoughts. She turned away to pull the blanket up and spotted the sizeable rise in the blanket below his waist.
He desired her as he had most mornings and her body felt the same, a pang of passion hitting her unexpectedly. She turned to face him and though her body ached for him as well as her heart, she couldn’t help but ask, “How do I trust you when you have lied to me?”
Odran’s thought was to snatch her in his arms and show her how much he loved her and how there was no difference between him and Saber. But he wisely realized that was not what she needed from him, and what troubled him the most was that he didn’t know how to give her what she needed from him.
He pushed himself to sit up in bed and his hand caught on the robe that had fallen off her completely in the middle of the night. He handed it to her more for his sanity than her discomfort.
“I wish I knew what to tell you, but there is no easy answer. When you asked me to marry you, you caught me unaware and my immediate response, that I bit back with my tongue, was to say yes. Yes, I will marry you right now, this very moment. I knew I loved you shortly after we met. It was why I foolishly kept returning to your cottage when I knew better. But no matter how much I loved you, I didn’t want to condemn you to a life with a cursed man. You, however, changed all that when you chose me as your husband.”
It did her heart good to hear that he had rejected her to protect her and that he loved her from almost the first moment they met. But how she had changed everything by choosing him as a husband confused her and it showed in her scrunched brow.
“Your sister Bliss made it clear that you and Annis be allowed to choose the men you wish to wed.”
It dawned on Elysia then. “By choosing you of my free will, I opened the door for me to wed you whether you were one of the cursed lords or not.”
Odran nodded. “And I cannot begin to tell you how it delighted Chieftain Emory. He didn’t waste a moment in seeing it done and there was nothing I could do to stop it. The truth is, I didn’t want to stop it. I wanted you as my wife. I couldn’t stand the thought of you being with another man. I felt I’d claimed you as mine the moment I took hold of you and planted you to sit on my leg in your cottage.”