Chapter Forty-Six
I STOOD ON A PODIUM.
The fantasy slowly came alive around me, revealing a totally different world.
We were no longer on earth—this wasn’t just a different time period or place. This hallucination wasn’t based on our planet. The light was brighter here, as if we were closer to the sun. There was no wind or elements, and the cotton wisps of clouds danced within the ballroom’s ceiling as if we were so sky-high that it’d formed its own weather patterns.
A castle.
A castle in the clouds.
A castle in the mind of my husband.
I blinked as I started to make sense of the huge room. Five-story high columns held painted cupid panels and arched windows from floor to ceiling. No drapes and no mullions, leaving the glass a perfect portal to the staggeringly stunning vista beyond. Spires of a white-washed citadel beckoned beyond, perfect crystal skies framed the cloud fortress, and the sun was too big to distinguish—it was just there. Golden and glowing, bathing all of us in beauty.
I was right.
We weren’t on earth anymore. We were in Olympia or some other home of the gods or perhaps…in a dream.
Sully’s dream.
The moment I thought about him, he appeared.
Inserted into the fantasy with a snap and solidness, he was a man dressed entirely in rags. He spread his dirty hands as he caught my gaze. His palms calloused and trousers torn at the calf. His muslin shirt held patches and frayed edges, and one sleeve had been ripped at the elbow. His bare feet no longer held sand from Goddess Isles but filth from trudging through mud and mistakes.
“Hello,” he breathed, unable to take his eyes off me, drinking in my gowned body.
I looked at where he stared, and my heart hurt at the difference in us. Where he was penniless and dressed in poverty, I sparkled with every diamond in creation.
My arms were inlaid with precious stones, my wrists twinkled with gems. The sheerness of the fabric covering me was weighted with opals of every facet. Panels of silver velvet cascaded in a train, embroidered with sapphire thread and decorated with another million opals.
Beneath my dress, I wore no shoes, but my feet had been painted with henna scrollwork, my toes complete with lotus flowers and my ankles hidden in rosebud vines.
My hair was loose and longer than usual, grazing almost to my thighs, and I felt a magic tingling in my fingers. The electricity I’d suffered from the very first moment I’d touched Sully now hummed powerfully in my blood.
I closed my eyes and focused on the sensation, following the crackle through my veins, around my heart, and along every inch of skin.
Just like this wasn’t earth anymore, I wasn’t human.
Looking at Sully, I whispered, “What is this place? What am I?”
He licked his lips, still unable to look away from my body. “This is my dream. When I first met you.”
“You saw me this clearly?”
“I saw your silver stare and empathic heart. I saw you on an unreachable pedestal, and knew you held magic that could kill me with just a touch. I went to you. I bowed at your feet, and instead of commanding me to leave, you welcomed me. You cared for me even when I didn’t deserve it.” He shrugged in his rags. “The rest—the clouds, the castle, the opals—it’s an embellishment to show you just how in awe I was of you, to hint just how much I needed you, even then.”
“And the magic in my veins now?” I held up my hand, gasping as micro shards of light appeared in my palm.
“That isn’t fake.” His voice lowered until it slipped beneath my gown and made love to me with seducing syllables. “That is just a manifested reality. When you touch me, I feel it. When you kiss me, it electrifies my very soul. You aren’t just a woman to me. You never have been and never will be. You are a witch in every way that matters.”
I tried to quell the rapidly growing lust for him. To not grow wet for his misplaced worship of me but instead focus on how handsome he was, even dressed in yesterday’s heartache. “Sully, I need you.” I held out my hand, beckoning him to my podium.
He took a step, shivering as he once again drank me in. “You take my fucking breath away.”
I shivered, my nipples pebbling behind opals and my insides melting with need. “Then let me kiss you, and I’ll give it back.”
He smiled, rakishly and shyly. A combination that set fire to my desire.
“Do you want me, goddess?”
“I’m not a goddess, Sullivan Sinclair; I am your wife.”
“Wife.” His dirty feet brought him closer, each step revealing just how high my plinth was, just how above himself he’d put me. “My forever after wife.”
“You saw me as untouchable.”