Work Text:
Time waits for no one. Unfortunately, creativity is even more impatient.
Maybe it’s just that you’ve been ready to go for longer, but every minute that Rafayel takes to get ready seems like an eternity. Is it on him for working on his latest painting up until the very last possible second when he had ages to finish it, or is it on you for knowing he’d do this and still getting yourself ready on time? He talks up a pretty big game about how you can’t rush perfection in art and appearances but, well, you’re not aiming for perfection here. You’re aiming for presentability. And even in his worst moments, he can pull off being somewhat presentable.
Honestly, you should be aiming for perfection now. You should be way more nervous than you are. Sure, you’ve attended plenty of events with him, but those were all exhibitions, shows, concerts, interviews. Places where he or his family were the stars, and you were tagging along in that nebulous half-bodyguard, half-girlfriend role. This is different. This time, he’s the one being introduced.
Not that you’ve never had to do it before. Most of the time he doesn’t even need an introduction; such is the life of a world-renowned painter, after all. But there’s a difference between introducing him as Rafayel, the painter who you’re contractually obligated to keep safe, and Rafayel, the guy you’ve been seeing for a while, or even Rafayel, your boyfriend. Just like there’s a difference between introducing him to Tara and Simone, who caught him idling outside headquarters on more than one occasion and were dying to know about the guy whose car you keep getting into after work, and bringing him along as a plus-one to your friend’s wedding.
You don’t bring just anyone to a wedding.
“Rafayel?” Seriously, how long does it take to put on a suit and tie and some cologne? You sigh, checking the time on your phone, and head up to his room, knocking smartly on the door before you let yourself in. Even if he were in some state of undress or worse, a tizzy, it’s nothing you haven’t seen before. “You almost ready? We’re gonna be late, and traffic’s already supposed to be a nightmare.”
There he stands, fully dressed—navy blue to complement you—and facing the full-length mirror across the room. He’s turning this way and that, all the weight on his good leg, and you’d think he was fully confident about his appearance if not for the faintest tremble in his hands. He doesn’t even notice you until you come into frame in the reflection, and when you sidle up and squeeze his shoulder he almost flinches. But for what? It’s just you. It’s just a date. It’s not like you’ve never been on a date together.
He tries to play it off with a warm, charming smile; it’s actually almost convincing. “Thought humans believed it was bad luck to see each other before the wedding.”
“That’s for the bride and groom, silly.” Easily, your arm wraps around his waist, and you find yourself comfortably leaning into him “We’re not the ones getting married today.”
In the mirror, Rafayel’s smile falters. He pretends it didn’t happen. You don’t know if you should, too.
“I was right,” he says, his gaze drifting over your dress—powder blue, tea length, sweetheart neckline. “It does look good on you.”
“You think everything looks good on me,” you tease, giving him a gentle shove. “You act like I was handcrafted by the gods or something.”
“And what if you were? You’d just discredit their hard work like that? They put in a lot of time making you, y’know. A lot of love, too.”
“Oh, so that’s what you are, huh? An emissary of the gods, transmitting all their love to me.”
This time, he settles into something more genuine. “I don’t need gods to love you.”
“We’re gonna be late,” you tell him again, fighting off the sudden pleasant turn of your stomach. “Are you ready? You look ready.”
“Almost,” he says. There’s the twitch in his hand, back with a vengeance. “Almost ready.”
All right. Now you’ll bite. “You’re nervous…?” Slowly, your touch trails up his arm and rests on his shoulder again. “About what? Meeting my friends? They already know about you. They’ll like you, honest.” You scoff, more to yourself than at him. “Honestly, they’ve been waiting for ages for me to date. They kept complaining that I was too picky.” If anyone were to ask you, you’d just say you were being discerning. “So if I’m seeing someone, they’ll know it’s a good person.”
“Not that,” he says. And then, after a pause. “Well. Maybe a little.”
“Then what?”
Rafayel takes his time with his breath. Holds it awhile before he lets it go. “I don’t really go to weddings,” he finally confesses. “Just Aunt Talia’s. And Thomas’s. I don’t think I’ve been to one since.” Gingerly, he slides your hand off of his shoulder, but keeps it secure in his. “I don’t know. They’re just not for me, I guess.”
Now that he’s said something, now that he’s holding onto you, the tremble under his skin is much more obvious. Even, especially, when you squeeze his hand and slide your fingers between his. “I wish you’d told me before,” you murmur. “I would’ve considered your feelings. I wouldn’t have even asked you to come with me if I knew—”
“I’ve never been to a wedding with someone else.” He squeezes your hand back. “Maybe it’ll be different this time. Besides, if you’re there, of course I’ll go.”
You can’t help but smile—at the words, or his sincerity, or both—and on a whim, you fish your phone out of your purse, sliding over to the camera app and holding it up to your reflections. “Then we ought to make this a momentous occasion, yeah? Make it the best wedding you’ve ever been to?”
In one smooth gesture, Rafayel rests his arms around your waist, his cheek atop your head. Photogenic as ever. The smile on his face tells you it’s already the best one, and you haven’t even gotten to the venue yet. You’ll know it for sure later, when you’re uploading it to social media with whatever creative hashtag the bride and groom have come up with. But having the sense now, when he tips your chin up for a kiss just moments before the second shutter goes off, is just as good.
———
Traffic isn’t as horrendous as you thought it might be, but you still cut it pretty close. At least it gives you the time to catch him up on the happy couple while you cradle the wedding gifts in your lap. How you’ve known the bride since your school days, how close you were back then even though she dated often and you rarely if at all, how you played wingman in college to get her together with the groom even though it meant more nights alone. At least she was happy, right? Doesn’t it show? Isn’t this just your hard work paying off?
Rafayel offers up one bittersweet smile, somewhere between flicking on the turn signal and glancing in the rearview mirror. “Always the bridesmaid, never the bride, huh,” he says.
“More like, always the friend, never the lover,” you say. Slowly, you offer him your hand over the center console. “Well. Till now.”
That cuts the bitter right out out him.
You pull in just in time and speedwalk to your seats the same way you spent the drive over—hand-in-hand, sharing reassurances—and on the bright side, getting in just before the ceremony starts means you’re close to the back. No one knows you were almost late, and no one knows you’re there, and no one can bombard you with questions about the person sitting next to you, leaning over to whisper questions in your ear. As far as you’re concerned, it’s a quadruple win. Quintuple, even, when he slings his arm along the back of the bench, an unspoken invitation to come closer.
“How is it?” you whisper, shifting just enough that your thigh touches his. Out of the corner of your eye, a couple of old friends notice you, point you out to each other. If you shrivel up for being perceived, you at least hope it isn’t obvious. Perhaps you’ll catch up with them later, much later, if they even remember you at all.
With a sigh, Rafayel cranes his neck and gives the venue a once-over. The ceilings are high, and the acoustics are decent, carrying the clutter of the guests’ voices decently enough, and the stained glass in the windows are just stunning enough without being blinding when they catch the sunlight and cast it on the floor. Whoever decided on the place clearly knew what they were doing. “So far, so good,” he says. “Better than being in a stuffy gallery right now, that’s for sure.”
“Because you don’t have to talk to anybody yet, huh.”
He grins, tapping your nose affectionately. “You get me.”
You haven’t quite decided yet, if you owe him after all this is over, or if you’re finally getting repaid for all the bodyguard events you’ve had to attend. Perhaps as far as Rafayel is concerned, this is just one more uncomfortable event he’s got to get over with. Or perhaps he’s treating it the same way you sometimes treat his interviews or his exhibitions, where the fact that he gets to be with you at all is payment enough.
“You’ll tell me?” you ask, just before the murmurs fade. “If you need to get away for a while?”
His eyes widen, briefly—did he never expect anyone to think of that? to think of him?—and then warm with a smile. “Yeah,” he says. “I’ll tell you.”
“Good,” you whisper, and you let his hand find yours, out of sight, as the music starts up.
You should be paying attention to the ceremony. Should be in awe at every part of the procession right down to the bridal veil, or swoon silently at the officiant’s monologue, even though to him it’s little more than reading scripts and going through motions. You should be reminiscing about old times, wondering when the girl who used to tell you to live a little in between study tips became a woman. The sheer atmosphere of it all should have you melting, mulling, wondering if it will ever be your turn up there, if it will be anything like this. And you are doing those things, at least a little. It’s just that every so often, you find yourself glancing to the side. Watching for the changes in Rafayel’s expression, subtle though they may be. Feeling for the jitters in his fingers, the clammy sensation of his palm. Worrying if it’s too much for him, if he’s bearing a little too much for your sake.
If he notices the way you keep stealing glances at him, if he feels any kind of overwhelm, he doesn’t show it. He faces forward, legs crossed, arms folded. His expression is neutral, if a little pensive—the kind of look he gets when he’s trying to commit something to memory, digging around for the inspiration he’ll take home with him later. The kind that makes you wonder why the whole room doesn’t have their eyes on him, why no one else thinks the artist is art in his own right. Perhaps they will, at the reception. Perhaps they will, when they see the light in his face when you call him your boyfriend.
For all his solemnity, he’s hardly fooling you. There’s a growing tension in his limbs, a squareness in his jaw. To his credit, he’s trying to cover it up with pursed lips, a softened gaze, but his composure slips—just a little—when the officiant turns the ceremony to the bride and groom for their vows.
You don’t have to be Rafayel to know he’s holding his breath as the bride unfolds a piece of paper. You can see it in the tightness in his chest, the flare of his nostrils, the rapid-fire blinking, one-two-three. You can’t tell if he’s trying to center himself, or if he’s trying to get out of his head, out of his body. The only thing you can do is take his hand in both of yours, cradle it as gently as the bride handles the microphone. Face forward, just like him, as you spell out a silent profession—I LOVE YOU—against his palm with the tip of your finger. No one can see you back here, after all.
And Rafayel remembers to breathe. Sits up straight. Returns the gesture, your hand in his, the way the groom takes the microphone, and traces out his reply with the cadence of the tides, the ebb and flow of the words coming from the front of the room: I LOVE YOU MORE.
You have always, happily, lost that competition.
You don’t remember much else. Not the exchange of the rings, not the words of the officiant or the bride and groom’s repetition. All you remember is the groom bending forward and lifting the veil for the first kiss, and that’s only because while everyone else claps, Rafayel squeezes your hand and doesn’t let go.
———
“What was Auntie Talia’s wedding like?” you ask on the drive over to the reception.
There’s not much else you can ask; Rafayel’s already reassured you, at least three different times, that he doesn’t need to go home yet. Even if the tension in his jaw doesn’t totally convince you.
He goes stiff, waiting for the traffic light to change, then wills himself to relax in the driver’s seat. “I don’t really remember,” he says plainly. “Just that she was happy to get married. It was years ago, before you and I met.”
You sigh, somewhere on the dreamy side, your eyes falling shut. “She must have been a gorgeous bride.” You can already imagine it: dark curls framing the sharp angles of her face, the pearlescent white of her wedding dress, the bright smile that must have reached all the way up to her eyes when she promised to share her life with someone. “Was she?”
“She looked happy,” Rafayel says, drumming an idle rhythm against the steering wheel. “I guess that would make anyone look pretty.”
“I… guess…” It feels like conversation is starting to go in the opposite direction, so instead of pushing the issue, you settle back and fiddle with the radio. Anything to fill the suffocating quiet.
At the next stop light, Rafayel rests his head on the steering wheel and says, “She asked me if I would ever think about getting married.”
Your stomach turns. Are those butterflies? Or wasps? “When? Recently?”
“At her wedding. You know how aunties get sometimes.” He breathes so deeply that you can see it in the stuttered rise and fall of his shoulders. “They see the people around you settling down, or they settle down themselves, and then all the questions and comments start coming out. ‘When are you going to get a girlfriend?’ ‘When are you thinking about getting married?’ ‘Don’t you want a family of your own?’ ‘You’re not getting any younger, you know.’”
The light changes, and you have to pat his back to get him to hit the gas before the cards behind him start honking. Perhaps it’s better not to tell him that you can’t quite relate.
“It sounds frustrating,” you tell him honestly. “Maybe she’s just looking out for your well-being and your happiness, but who’s to say that getting married would make you happy, you know? Maybe… Maybe the thing that ends up fulfilling you is just your art, and you’d be happy with that. It’s up to you, isn’t it?”
The more you speak, the harder it is to get the words out. Is that really what you want for him? Is that really what you want for yourself?
Rafayel doesn’t say anything. He just keeps driving, lips in a firm line, knuckles almost white.
“Are…” Your teeth sink into your lip. “Are you… upset?”
“Nah.” He shakes his head, tossing a glance your way. “I just don’t wanna talk about it anymore. That okay?”
“Yeah.” When did your voice get so small? And why? “Yeah, that’s okay.”
You spend the rest of the drive in relative silence; his hands are so firm on the steering wheel that you don’t know if you should reach for one of them when he stops at an intersection, and his eyes are so focused on the road that a part of you is scared you might distract him if you say something. So you resort to looking out the window, legs crossed lazily at the ankles, because you might as well dispel the tension with a little bit of scenery. Might as well distract yourself from the fact that this is the most distant Rafayel has even been with you.
Do all boyfriends do this? Go quiet, get touchy, about marriage? Isn’t there one, at least one, who looks forward to it? Yearns for it? Would do anything to have it? Not that it’s been top of mind for you, but it’s not like you’ve never entertained the thought either. It’s not like you’ve never woken up next to him, or cooked dinner with him, and thought you wouldn’t mind more months, years, a lifetime, hell, an eternity of it. It’s not like you don’t see him in suits sometimes and wonder if that’s how he’ll look waiting at the end of the aisle. It’s not like you’ve seen him down on one knee, paintbrush in hand, and entertained the thought of it being a ring instead. It’s just never come up.
Maybe it never will come up.
“Do you ever think about it?” He’s pulling into the parking lot now, killing the engine and your pessimism all at once.
You sit up, at attention. “Huh?”
“Your wedding. Getting married. Do you think about it.”
“I thought you didn’t want to talk about this.”
“I’m just asking. Yes or no.”
You’re so taken aback by the question that your mouth quivers, struggling to put the words together. You barely get a couple out—“I—I mean, um”—before his face falls and the light leaves his eyes.
“Oh,” he says, tucking the keys away. “Right. Okay.”
“Wait—”
He’s already out of the car, and you practically have to run—in heels, mind you—just to catch his wrist and stop him. He tenses at your touch, something you hoped to heaven he’d never do, but least he pauses. Gives you a chance. Lets you take his hand.
“You…” You swallow down the dryness in your throat. “You just took me by surprise. You didn’t let me answer.”
Rafayel doesn’t speak. You hope it means he’s waiting.
“I… do.” Your heart hitches, saying those words out loud. Maybe it won’t be the last time you ever say them. “I do think about it, sometimes. It’s just… not the kind of thing you bring up willy-nilly, or too early on, you know?” Will you ever know what the right timing is? Does such a thing even exist? “I just… Look. I don’t want you to be any more uncomfortable than you probably already are, so maybe this isn’t the place and time to talk about this. But there will be one. I promise.” Slowly, your fingers find their home between his. God, you wish he’d turn around. “Just like… Just like I promise that I do think about it. I do. Honest.”
“Getting married?” he says, so softly that not even the lines of the parking lot can hear. “Or marrying me?”
Your face grows warm. Your stomach turns again. Butterflies this time. “Both.”
This time when he turns to you, he’s the one to look taken aback. His eyes flash, maybe shocked, maybe hopeful, all the light returned to them, and his voice drops to a whisper you remember from an Ebb Day long since past. “You promise?”
You give him a faint smile. The same one from that day. “I promise. I can’t conjure up one of those little fish the way you can, and I can’t guarantee the ocean will like… bless it, or anything. But I can do it the human way. Y’know… cross my heart and hope to die, stick a needle in my eye?”
Rafayel’s shoulders shake with a far-off laugh. “That sounds painful.”
“Guess it’s proof I’m telling the truth, right?” You step in front of him before he can move again, and you meet his gaze. Make sure he knows you mean it. If you had the time, you’d get lost in all that pink and purple. You suppose you’ll have to save it for later. “I’m sorry for scaring you. And for making a hard day even harder. Can I make it up to you later?”
He studies your face for a moment, and then his own breaks out into the warm smile you know so well, were waiting on edge for. “Silly,” he says, gently flicking your forehead before linking your pinky with his. He does it your way this time, feeble though it may be. “Don’t you know by now?”
Your brow furrows, a feeble attempt at numbing the sudden pain. “Know what?”
He takes your face in his hands, callused and capable, when he tells you this. “You make my days easier.”
———
That’s the nice thing about a hiccup: once you nip it in the bud, it’s gone for the foreseeable future. Not for good. Just for now.
You have to be honest; it almost seems like Rafayel has more fun at the reception than you do. Maybe that’s because to you it feels like an awkward college reunion, where you exchange pleasantries with handfuls of old classmates and feign interest in where they are in life. Maybe it’s because it’s an opportunity for him to see you having to be the social one for once, and he can take a backseat and keep conversation to a minimum. The perks of being a plus-one, you suppose.
Or maybe it’s just because of how often he gets to watch you gesture toward him, your arm in his, and say, “Oh, this is my boyfriend, Rafayel.” Because of course it’s next to impossible for him to let you stray too far for too long. Sure, he makes an attempt at modesty whenever you introduce him, especially when you congratulate the bride and present the couple with your wedding gifts. But the light in his face and the swell of pride in his chest isn’t lost on you. Neither is the dopey smile that hurts your cheeks every time you say it. Or the one that lingers when he fields a couple of questions about your relationship in your stead.
Or the one that nearly splits your face in two every time someone tells him he should consider himself lucky that you decided to date him, because you don’t date just anyone. Every time he pulls you a little closer by the waist and says, “I do.”
He even makes it through the speeches without a hitch—one of those blessed “no talking” times—and when the music rises and the floor opens up, he even has the audacity to ask you for a dance or two. Bows and holds out his hand and everything, like it’s a regency ball instead of a wedding reception. The music is too bouncy for a regency ball, too many kick drums and electric guitars instead of violins, but he keeps time and leads all the same. He grins when he catches you mouthing the lyrics, and his voice cracks with a laugh when he twirls you once, twice. Like you’re in your bedroom, or out on the grass, instead of some fancy dance hall. You haven’t seen him this carefree since that one afternoon you got rained out and spent hours splashing through fresh puddles. What a relief, to see him let go a little more, so far away from the work. So far away from everything that brought him down just hours ago.
It’s the first event you’ve been to, you realize, where Rafayel doesn’t try to run away.
When the music finally slows to something more heartfelt, he doesn’t ask if he can have another dance. He takes it without question. His hands find their home at the small of your back, and yours loop around his neck, and you’re doing more swaying than actual dancing, but it doesn’t need to be dancing. You have all the comfort and safety you need, resting your head on his chest, pressing your ear to his heart, reveling silently in how it speeds up as he pulls you in.
Somewhere in the middle of it all, you catch the bride watching you. She’s leaning toward the groom, listening for something he’s whispering in her ear, but the moment you meet her eyes she smiles. Maybe she’s missing the feeling of falling in love. Maybe she’s falling in love with you falling in love. Whatever it may be, she can’t take her eyes off of you, and just before Rafayel turns you she winks. Permission, perhaps, or a blessing, or the same thing all the other guests must be thinking. The same thing you’re thinking as your hand finds his.
Finally.
When the party dies down for the night, you’re surprised by how many people bid the two of you goodbye, offering to catch up over coffee or drinks sometime. Whether it’s because of your role as a Hunter or an insatiable intrigue about Rafayel and your relationship with him, it’s hard to tell. Just like it’s hard to tell whether catching up is something to look forward to or something to dread.
Not that you need to worry about that now. All you have to think about looking forward to is getting back to the studio.
Rafayel makes it a point to keep one hand on the steering wheel and the other in yours for the entire ride home. As though you’re even going anywhere. He keeps the radio on low, but he’s humming that song from the reception, the one he twirled you to. It doesn’t take long for you to plug the auxiliary cord into your phone and play it for him, and while you’re waiting at a red light you hook your little finger around his. A silent agreement. This is your song now.
When you make it back to the studio you have half a mind to stumble into bed as you are, but Rafayel makes as much of a fuss of undressing as he does dressing up. It’s an intimate act, undoing yourselves together with the lights down low: you wipe off your makeup at his vanity, he finally frees himself from that damned necktie; you take down your hair and shake out the tension in your temples, he tucks away his suit jacket and those black shoes that pinch in just the wrong way. (It’s all about how you lace them, you told him once, but he hasn’t bothered to take you up on it.)
“Hey,” he says, his hand still on the armoire door. “You really want to marry me someday?”
Butterflies. All of them. Under your skin and filling your ribcage. “I mean, we kind of already bicker like a married couple, don’t we?”
“That’s not what I mean.”
You know what he means.
You wish the words didn’t come out so hollow, because you mean them more than anything. “Well… yeah. Someday.” Your chest tightens. “But you don’t seem to like talking about… weddings, and marriage, and things like that. Then again, you seemed so upset when I didn’t answer right away earlier.” You manage a half-hearted shrug, more at your reflection than at him. “So I don’t know which it is.”
He sighs, leaning back against the armoire. “I didn’t use to like it. It wasn’t something I wanted to think about. Just something… personal, I guess.”
“Then… did something happen? To change your mind?”
His gaze settles on you, as soft as it is alluring. You can get lost in the colors now. “Yeah,” he says. “You did.”
Almost instantly, your heart leaps up into your throat, pounds heavy between your ears. “You think about marrying me?”
There’s that tremble in his hands again, but he clenches them into fists, just long enough to will it away. Like it's not allowed to control him anymore. “Yeah. I do.”
You turn in your seat. “You want to?”
“Well… yeah. Someday.” He echoes your words, perhaps to tease you, but he’s laced them with something. A bittersweet touch of more than anything. “You could be, I don’t know. My mermaid bride, or something.”
The corner of his mouth twitches, like he’s been sitting on that one for a while, and hell, why not humor him? Hasn’t he shown you enough of himself today? Hasn’t he indulged you, done you the most solid of favors? And why is he standing all the way over there, anyway? Why isn’t his hand in yours anymore?
Over the back of your chair, you beckon him closer with a loving look. “C’mere, then,” you tell him. “Come kiss your bride.”
Rafayel smiles at you like it’s the easiest thing you’ve asked him to do all day. Like he’s been waiting forever to hear that.
He crosses the bedroom in a few uncertain strides, studies you like this is the first time he’s ever gotten to look at you. He laughs, mostly to himself, as he lifts half-shaky hands, flipping back an imaginary veil. As he presses them to your cheeks, freezing cold from the makeup wipes. As he draws you in and kisses you like he finally has permission to.
(He’s always had permission to.)
The touch of his lips to yours is tender, sweet, eternal and ephemeral all at once. Over way too fast. You barely get the word out—“Again”—before he leans in once more, anchoring himself on the armrest, pressing you all too gently into the seat, his tongue pleading with your lips for permission. His gaze sweeps over your face, the curves and angles that fill out the dress he picked, and he gathers you up with hardly any effort.
“Come to bed,” he whispers. As though you had any choice in the matter with his arms wrapped around you like this, walking you there himself.
You smile down at him, catching the pink and purple in the moonlight that bleeds through the ceiling. “Okay,” you whisper back.
There are probably a lot of people—most of them, even—who have lost the art of deriving pleasure from kissing alone, but Rafayel has never been one of them. He seems to rediscover it every time your lips touch his. He sets you on the bed and he crawls between your legs, sure, but all he allows himself for a long while is his mouth against yours, his hands closing feebly around your wrists. The most he dares to do is draw his kisses down the line of your jaw and bury them in the warmth of your neck, the hollow of your throat.
“Rafayel,” you sigh, and he only hums his acknowledgment, giving your hands a squeeze. His teeth graze your neck, and you squirm, lightning chasing up your spine, and out spills the only Lemurian you ever learned. The only phrase he ever taught you. “You’re mine.”
Almost instantly, he groans, teeth sinking deep into your neck, and when he lifts his head there’s shock etched into his face, the mark on his chest burning bright red through his dress shirt. He’s trying to catch his breath, failing, all his weight in his hands as he presses you into the bed.
“Sorry,” you whisper, still wincing from the sting. “Should I not have—”
He doesn’t let you finish the question, doesn’t even let you think you shouldn’t have. His mouth finds yours again, instantly, a moan bubbling behind his teeth, and when you roll him onto his back he barely puts up a fight. He only looks up at you in awe, pupils blown wide, hands roaming every part of your body they can reach. He’s sporting that handcrafted-by-the-gods look again, probably cursing out the dress in his head, hating it for all it covers up. Aching to see how you look underneath it.
“What I just said…” Cautiously, your fingers find the buttons of his shirt, undoing them one by one. Oh, his stomach tenses so delightfully when your palms skim up his body, and a beautiful blush is dusting his nose, his cheeks, all the way to the tips of his ears. “What does it mean? You said the closest translation is ‘You’re mine,’ but… is there more to it than that?”
Rafayel swallows hard, Adam’s apple dipping low in his throat, and he draws you down to him with a finger curled into the necklace you had yet to remove. “Yeah,” he says, little more than a breath that mingles with your own. “A lot more.” His touch drops down to your thighs, trailing up, up under the hem of your dress, just over your underwear, all the way up to the waistline. All that damned fabric getting in the way. “It means all kinds of things.”
Your breath hitches. “What kinds of things?”
He smiles against your lips. You feel it more than you see it. “Belonging,” he murmurs, as he frees his hands from the dress, as his fingers drag up the length of your back. “You’re telling me I belong with you, not to you. That everything I feel is everything you feel.” He fumbles for the zipper at the nape of your neck. “That I was made for you, and only you.” He unzips the back of your dress so smoothly, breathes in time with you when the night air touches your skin. “My body was made for your body,” as he pulls down your dress and unclasps your bra. “My mind was made for your mind,” as he pulls you flush against him and presses his forehead to yours. “My soul was made for your soul,” as he meets your eyes, the windows to them, dark with need but flashing with meaning. Softly, his tongue darts out against your lips, and he catches one of them between his teeth. Connection instead of ownership. He can’t bear it if all of him isn’t touching all of you.
“All of my lifetimes are for all of your lifetimes,” he whispers. “So if that’s what you mean to say, then say it again.”
He looks so vulnerable by all these soft lights. The dimmers, the stars, the moon. They’re commanding him to give himself to you, tempting you to do the same. Guiding your hand under his chin. Keeping both of you from looking away.
There are the words again. Rolling off your tongue. “You’re mine.”
Rafayel draws in a sharp breath, says something you don’t quite understand, and flips you onto your back. He wastes no time in shucking off his shirt and flinging it into some unknown corner, and as he peels off the rest of the dress his mouth seeks out every inch of skin it can find. Every scar from fighting, every stretch mark from growing. And those same words keep spilling from his mouth, over and over. In the palm of your hand, up the length of your arm, along your collarbone and down to your chest.
“What—oh, please—” You shift underneath him, mewling softly; he’s taking his sweet time with your breasts, burying his face between them, worshiping them, tongue flicking them to a dizzying stiffness. “What are you saying?”
His eyes are hazy with devotion, flickering with the blazing light of the bond mark, when he looks up at you. His shoulders heave, and every time you moan he soothes your skin with another kiss. To your stomach. Your hip. Your thigh. Lower, and lower, until his breath fans out over your core.
“‘My bride.’” He sighs the words as he pulls your underwear down your legs. “‘Mine, all mine.’”
You don’t get the chance to ask him to teach you how to say it before he dives in like a man starved. Like someone unafraid of drowning. He can never not taste you. He takes his time with this, too, drinks you in, digs his nails into your skin, groans and yanks you closer when his name is little more than a wisp of syllables on your lips. He only resurfaces long enough to plead with you, his cheek resting on your thigh, his lips and fingers shimmering with the taste of you. Intoxicated.
“Let me,” he breathes, eyes glazed over. “Let me have you.”
Slowly, your fingers wind into his hair, tugging up, up until your eyes meet. “Me first,” you tell him. “Let me feel you first.”
He nods, desperately, like you could have asked him to kill for you and he would have done it without a second thought, and he crawls back up to meet your mouth. Lets you know exactly what it means to give himself to you, to want you just as much in return. His breath catches as you reach for his belt, and you don’t even bother doing more than unbuckling it. There’s just something so gratifying about how he shivers and moans when you slide your hand into his pants.
“This is mine too,” you whisper against his lips. “Right?”
“Yes.” His hand makes a fist in the covers, knuckles as white as they were on the steering wheel. “All yours.”
It’s the last coherent thing he says before your hand closes around his cock, and you treat him with all the patience and devotion he gave you. He looks so lovely beside you, eyes fluttering, hips rocking up into your touch out of his control. So otherworldly, when he reaches for your face and pulls you closer for a kiss, and another, and another, when he hums in satisfaction as you stroke the length of him. So raw, when you rub your thumb over the head and he seizes up and whimpers, electrified.
“Please.” He practically pants the word against your skin, nails sinking into your hip, his breath warm against your ear. He has no more time for teasing, for beating around the bush. “Wanna be inside you,” he says. “Wanna make you mine.”
The smile that inches across your face is nothing short of adoring, even though the heat of his words lick up your spine. “I am,” you tell him, your palm sliding along his chest, up his throat, settling on his cheek. “I am yours.”
No sooner does the sentence leave your lips than he’s on top of you again, pushing his pants the rest of the way off, wedging a pillow under the small of your back as he wrenches your legs open. For a long while, all he does is stare, his grip on your calves half-bruising, and from this angle the needy pulse of his cock isn’t exactly invisible to you. He admires your body in the moonlight like any sculpture or painting that catches his eye, lets his hands roam over every part of you because his touch is too careful to damage the art. He revels in the goosebumps that the graze of his nails leaves in their wake; he delights in how you shiver and fidget when the cool night air drifts over the wet heat between your legs. And you don’t know how to say it in Lemurian so you manage in the languages you know: the desperate buck of your hips, just sliding against the shaft of him, when you tell him your body is his body; the longing look you fix him with when you tell him your mind is his mind; the wanting, needing reach for his hand, his touch, when you tell him your soul is his soul.
You don’t know how many lifetimes you’ve lived, but when Rafayel slides inside you so perfectly, you know they have all belonged to him.
He nearly doubles over once he bottoms out, his pelvis flush against yours, the most heavenly choked noise erupting from his lips. He’s clutching the sheets, trembling from head to toe like it’s his first time. And something about it does feel like the first time. Something about this has changed you, fundamentally, irreversibly. He nearly collapses on the way to kissing you, burning, the taste of you still on his tongue, and when he pauses to look at you there’s an inextinguishable flame in his eyes.
“Mine,” he rasps. Oh, God, he’s been waiting for this. “All mine.”
You try to give him the same delicate touch, pray you don’t damage him either, as you draw him against you, your hands in his hair, your mouth at his ear. “Yours,” you whisper back with a roll of the hips, encouraging him to move. “All yours.”
Rafayel hardly pulls away from you at first, insists on clinging to you, like he might lose you if all of him isn’t touching all of you. He all but anchors himself to you, ever one to savor the moment, but all it takes is one request—”Look at me”—before his eyes are on yours and his weight is on his hands and he’s thrusting so deeply that neither of you can keep focused or quiet. You can’t bring yourself to be embarrassed at how wet you sound, how easily he moves inside you, because how could you ever be embarrassed to love Rafayel? How could you ever be embarrassed to want him? You’d tell the world if you could. You will, one day.
“I want to do this forever,” he manages to say, one hand on the headboard. His muscles tense, and he thrusts hard enough to push you up the bed, and a grin steals across his face like lightning when you cry out and clamp down around him. “Perfect, so perfect, made just for me.”
If he’s going to treat you like this, then you wish he’d do it forever, too. It feels like sacrilege to swear, so you reach for his free hand, and you tangle your fingers with his, and you press a kiss to the back of his hand, again and again and again, his name sprinkled in between. “I meant it,” you tell him. “What I said earlier. I think about it, I want it, I want you, I love you—” Another hard thrust, his hips slamming into you, and you whimper and squeeze his hand tight. “I love you, I love you, I love you—”
Rafayel’s response is little more than a loud groan, and above you he moves faster, harder, barely in control of himself. “I’ll come if you keep saying that,” he says, voice cracking as he squeezes your fingers to almost numbness. “Don’t want to, don’t wanna stop, wanna feel you.” His mouth is lazy against your neck, teeth sinking and tongue swirling without leaving a mark, but God, you want him to. “Wanna feel all of you.”
He manages to slow himself, pace himself, and every kiss and touch he leaves on your body is an unspoken vow. To protect you, cherish you, provide for you, hold you, love you. He scatters them along your neck, between your breasts, in the crease where your hips meet your thighs. He leaves them in your hands, holds them tight, brings one to his lips and seals his promises with a kiss to your ring finger, and as he presses your palm to his cheek the mark on his chest blazes bright, demands to be seen, invoked.
“Rafayel—” Your throat is dry from all your moaning, from trying to catch your breath, and your head is swimming with every drag of his cock inside you, and you wouldn’t mind if this lasted forever but you have forever to do this again and again. Weakly, you wrap your legs around him, and your fingers drift over the bond mark. The moment you touch it he chokes, bottoms out, grips your thigh for dear life, and the sheer sensation is enough to have you arching off the bed. “Rafayel, please—”
“Say it,” he whispers, pressing your palm to his chest. “Say it, I’ll do it, I swear.”
You grit your teeth, tears pricking at the corners of your eyes. Can’t you have more of him? Isn’t there more of him to take? How much more can he fill you up? “Come,” you gasp, tossing your head back. “Make me yours.”
Almost instantly, Rafayel’s whole body stutters, and he doubles over, burying his face in your neck, and this time when his teeth sink into your skin it stings deliciously. He muffles his moans with your body, and he opens you up to take him fully, and when he comes inside you it’s with a shudder and a warmth that has you digging your nails into his back. Marking him, too.
“You’re not mine yet,” he says, all ragged breath and desperation, still inside you as his hand dips between your legs. “Not yet.”
As soon as he touches you a sigh slips out—from you, or him, or both—and you can’t help rocking up against those soft, slow circles around your clit. Can’t help whining softly in his ear that he’s yours, he’s yours, he’s made his point, oh God, oh God, you’re so close, you’re his. Your fingers tangle in his hair and he hushes you with a kiss, and another, and another. And finally, finally that softness grows harder, and the slow becomes faster, and those words are dancing on his tongue again as your peak washes over you like the tides.
“‘My bride,’” he’s saying, over and over. “‘Mine, all mine.’”
He’s still holding onto you when you come down from the high, inching out of you little by little but hooking your knee over his hips as he collapses beside you. His lips find your neck, soothing all the marks he must have left behind, and as he shushes the little sounds that escape you he catches your hand, pressing his lips to your ring finger again. He tucks his head under your chin, his bones settling with yours as he wraps his arms around your body, as his ear finds your heart.
“Maybe going to weddings isn’t so bad,” he says. “Not if they always end like this.”
You have just enough energy left to laugh, to kiss the top of his head, to draw constellations out of the freckles on his back. “Will you teach me more Lemurian?”
He’s already starting to doze. “What for?”
You smile tiredly into his hair. “When we get married,” you tell him, holding him tight, “I want to say my vows in a way you understand.”
Rafayel lifts his head, just barely. Far, far more love in his eyes than fatigue. It almost borders on devotion. “‘When?’”
“Yeah. When.” This time, you’re the one to catch his hand, to kiss the ring finger. You bring it to your chest, cross your heart with it. You do it your way. “That’s not a problem, is it?”
He smiles, dopey, ever faithful. “That’s the opposite of a problem.”
The last thing Rafayel says before he falls asleep, his body your body, his soul your soul, is something in Lemurian. Ebbing and flowing like the waves. You don’t know what it is, exactly, but you pick up enough—You’re mine, mine, mine—to wonder if maybe he’s already got his own vows figured out.