“Rin,” I growl. “You’re so fucking perfect.”
She just gasps, fingers flying, breasts swaying heavily. “Fuck me, Apollo. Let me feel you. Fuck me hard. Come inside me, Apollo.” She curls forward as her first orgasm detonates inside her. “Oh my fucking god,Apollo, Apollo, my love, my god, Apollo…”
I can’t help myself. My climax rips through me, tearing me apart like a nuclear bomb. I lose all control, hugging her thigh as I give myself utterly to our united climax.
I pour myself into her, slamming deep, my thighs slapping against her ass loudly, and she cries out, whimpering, wailing, her orgasm stretching, repeating, multiplying.
“I love you,” I gasp, “I love you, I love you, I fucking love you, Rin, god—I fucking love you…”
She unhooks her thighs from my shoulders and pulls me down to her, latching her heels around my back and her arms around my neck, her lips on my ear, her sex fluttering slowly against me, soaking every last moment of hardness out of me as our climaxes subside.
“My Apollo, my love.” She bites my earlobe. “I love you so fucking much I can’t even stand it.”
We shift, then, and she cradles my head against her chest, my good arm trapped between us, silence wrapping around us.
We are blessed, then, with a long drowsing time to revel in the afterglow. Her heart beats against my ear, her breasts the softest, warmest pillows. Her arms cradle me. This…this is what the old therapist was talking about. This, with Rin—it’s healing me. Patching the cracks in my shattered soul with pure gold, turning my brokenness into art.
We don’t sleep—we don’t dare both sleep at the same time. We just…lie together in happy silence.
She wiggles, at some point. “I need to clean up.”
I roll off of her. “Let me.”
I get a damp, warm washcloth and clean her, thoroughly and gently. When I get back into bed, it’s my turn to hold her.
“Thank you for giving me space to…to not be okay, I guess,” she says.
“Of course.”
“So, Yelena.” She twists to look up at me. “She didn’t want to let go of you, there at the end.”
“We…bonded, I suppose. She’s a smart, tough, sweet little thing.” I hold the silence for a moment. “It really made me think.”
She stills. “About what?”
I look down at her. “Us.” I hold her hand, touch her ring finger. “The future—ourfuture.”
She swallows hard. “Apollo, I just… you’ve told me you love me. And I want you to know that that’s enough. Just like knowing you love me without the words would have been enough.”
“I know that’s the truth, Rin,” I say. “But I also know there’s more you aren’t saying.”
A shrug. “Hearing you tell me you love me…it feels like…like a completion.” Her eyes water. “It means so…so much. Iknowyou love me. But hearing it?”
“You should have heard it far sooner,” I say.
She shakes her head. “When you were ready. Igetyou, Apollo. I understand, and it’s okay.”
I touch her ring finger again, rubbing it gently. “I haven’t really had much of a chance to process things until now,” I say. “And now that I have the chance, I’m realizing a few things.”
She watches me rub her ring finger. “Like what, Apollo?”
“Like, I’ve been the most foolish kind of coward, to hold back with you.” I touch her lips to forestall her protest. “I have been. With reason, perhaps, but a fool and a coward nonetheless. You deserve…everything. And I want to give you everything. You’re the daughter of a billionaire, and I’m not far behind him in terms of wealth. So when I say give you everything, I don’t mean material things. There’s nothing you could want that you can’t provide for yourself.” I kiss her finger where a ring would go. “This may be untraditional and…not the way you may have pictured this moment happening. It just…feels right—”
She swallows hard, her eyes tearing up, but bright. “Ask me, Apollo.”
“Be my wife, Corinna. Marry me, please? I don’t have a ring to put on your finger, but…when this is over, I’ll put the biggest, brightest diamond money can buy on your finger. Just…please, marry me.”
She cries quietly, happily. “Yes, Apollo. Yes. A thousand times yes. I’d marry you right now, if I could.” A sob, and she lifts up, crawls higher on my body to kiss me. “I don’t need the biggest diamond, either. That means nothing to me. Any old ring will do, as long as I get to be your wife.”
