“Is this real?”
“Happy wedding night, Mrs. Kirovsky. Welcome home.”
Her breath catches and I grin like the monster I am. I scoop her into my arms before she can argue and slide out of the SUV and up the stone steps. Balancing her in one arm, I reach out and pull the front doors open.
Lucetta pulled favors the last few days to have everything restored in secret. It’s a ridiculous, obsessive project of mine, but it’s been worth every damn penny.
The scent of old books, candle wax, and ancient secrets hits us the second we cross the threshold. The air practically hums with history and something else. Something that welcomes us into this space.
Cressida shivers in my hold, but she’s beaming. It’s a smile that says she’s about to fall in love with this place like she fell in love with me—violently and without looking back.
I set her in the grand foyer, the chandelier overhead swaying slightly even though there’s no draft.
She spins in a slow circle taking in everything with wonder. “This is insane.” She finds the library easily. The flames in the fireplace are already eating their way through the evening, casting a steady glow across the room. Shelves stretch toward the ceiling, packed and worn, like they’ve been collecting storiesfor decades. Most of them came with the property, others I’ve had flown in from around the world for my wife. The leather chairs look lived-in, shaped by people who came here to think too hard or say too little.
“It smells like history,” she murmurs, running her hand along a worn spine.
“That’s because it is. But it’s someone else’s. It’s our turn to create ours in this space.”
She prowls the rooms, finding delight in everything she finds. Her fingers press to a lamp in the living room and it’s bathed in gentle light. Then she moves to the big, bay window that will watch storms unroll across the city and an alcove that looks like it remembers old lovers.
Cressida chooses the house in the same way she chose me—with a tilt of her head that says she knows what she wants and won’t hesitate in taking it.
“You knew I’d love it,” she says without turning.
“Of course. And the ghosts that live with us, what will you do with those, my wife?”
“They’ll mind their manners.”
She laughs, and I can feel it in my chest. Her happiness, her awe, the way this night has changed everything.
I cross the room and lift her face between my hands. “I’m good at making cages. I build them for men who forget how to behave. This isn’t one of them.”
“I know,” she answers, leaning into me.
My lips find hers, kissing her like a vow, like a promise inked in blood and bone. It’s hungry and it’s gentle. Cressida tugs me deeper into the house, past the towering staircases and candlelit halls, to a bedroom so grand and dark, it might have belonged to a queen.
She grips my jaw, her smile sharp and private.
“Wife,” I say, the word a prayer and blasphemy both.
“Husband,” she whispers.
Clothes fall like petals around us.
There’s no choir, no jury, no law that matters right now but ours. The world collapses down to a palm’s width and a heartbeat that answers mine because it wants to. Every inch of her is mine and I worship like a sinner at the altar.
We sink into silk sheets and whispered confessions. The bond flares hotly between us, and for a moment, it’s not just a marriage, a bond. It’s eternity pressing its lips to our skin.
Afterwards, we stay curled in each other’s arms and just . . . exist, breathing the same air, letting the bond hum between us.
Cressida eventually kisses my chest and resting her chin on my chest so that she can look up at me. “Do you ever regret this?”
My brows draw together, my hand drifting up and down her bare back. “This?”
“Me. The bond. The war that’s coming with Giselda. The fact that I never shut the hell up and that my wedding dress was fit more for a funeral than a wedding.”
I shift her onto her back so I can lay my palm over her chest, right where that tether hums in both of us.
