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I didn’t care how much Vard tried to force me to believe the worst of Darius. Because I’d seen the worst of him, the best of him and everything in between and he was my perfect match in every way. So they couldn’t twist my mind or heart against him anymore and I was done with the lies, done with pretending I was weaker than I was.
“If you kiss me now, I don’t think I’m ever going to be able to let you go again. So if this isn’t it for you, if you can’t handle my stubborn, selfish ass then please just walk away. Because I can’t have you for this moment if I don’t have you for every moment after it-”
“I’m yours, Roxy,” he growled against my lips. “For every single second I have in this world, I’m all yours. And after that I’ll still be yours, wherever I end up after I’m gone, I’ll belong right here with you.”
And just in case it wasn’t clear, baby, I’m not going to be anyone’s but yours. So maybe you and me should get hitched and I can show you what a real wedding night looks like?”
“You snuggle with Darcy and Darius all the time. But where’s my snuggles, Lance? Where’s. My. Snuggles?”
I know I’ve hurt you, but I did it because I love you in a way that’s bigger than every galaxy in this universe. I was miserable before you showed up in my life, and now you’ve awoken a man in me who I actually fucking like, and I don’t wanna lose him almost as much as I don’t wanna lose you. So yeah, I’m going to put myself between you and death at every chance I get, and maybe that scares you, but it doesn’t scare me, Blue. It gives me a purpose I’ve never had before, and I never want to let go of it.”
“I was yours the first time you called me Blue.”
“I don’t think we were ever really apart, Lance,” I whispered and I turned my head to look at him, finding some hesitation in his eyes. But he blinked, banishing it, his gaze shining with happiness instead as he leaned forward to steal a kiss that laid a permanent claim on me. One that swore we’d never be parted again, that we’d fight for each other with the power of the moon on the tide, and no matter where each of us went in this world, the other would always follow.
“If I never saw you again I think I’d just cut my heart clean from my chest rather than live on in that agony,” he breathed and I frowned at him as I felt the intensity of those words.
“I can be owned and shackled and made into a slave for you, beautiful. But I’m not the kind who does as he’s told. I’m the kind who seeks out the secret desires in your eyes and feeds them to you piece by piece. I’m your most corrupt wants brought to life and it’s my fucking calling to sate you, Blue.”
“You are meant for the sunlight, Lance Orion. So you’ll stand with me
And you, Roxanya Vega, are more important to me than all the gold and jewels in the entire world combined. I’d go without them for the rest of my days if it meant I got to steal a moment in your arms with you looking at me the way you are right now. There is nothing I wouldn’t do to keep you safe and to make sure you stay mine. I want to possess you with all the greed and wrath of the monster in me and I want to own you with the desire of a thousand Dragons guarding a priceless treasure, but more than all of that, I just want to love you like this.
She’s the only girl who ever looked at me and saw the man worth loving within my skin. She didn’t see my position or my power or my wealth. She saw me and she made me become a better man for her. She’s every fantasy I’ve ever had and every dream I ever dared give thought to, but she’s even better than that because she’s real. I can’t give her up. I might as well drive a blade through my heart right now if I have to.”
“I still don’t deserve you,” he said. “But I love you with all my wretched heart has to offer and I’m going to keep proving that to you with every moment gifted to me on this earth until my dying breath. So no, Roxy, I don’t want to sleep. Because I refuse to waste a single second that I’ve been gifted with you. I want to claim each and every one and work to make them good enough for you.”
Darius Acrux had taken full ownership of my heart. And I was claiming his right back in return.
“No. Not like you. It was you. Even before I ever laid eyes on you, it was you, Roxy. Only ever you.”
The way we came together might not have been a pretty little fairy tale filled with sonnets and roses, but it was raw, brutal, real. Ours. And I’d felt every damn moment of it along the way.
I’m the guy who makes you come so hard you can hardly breathe, let alone see straight. I’m the one who makes your heart race every damn time you look at me because you know I’ll never stop hungering for you the way I do, and I’ll never get enough of you or be able to love you with any more passion than I possess right now.
“Because I’m not going to let them take you from me, Blue, even if they come down from the heavens themselves to try and rip you from my arms. I am not named after the hunter constellation for no reason. I will make the stars my prey if they set you in their sights, and so help me, I will carve every one of them out of their seats in the sky and watch them fall.”
“I call that worshipping my goddess. I call it making love to the most beautiful woman in all of Solaria, I call it penance for all the bad things I’ve done to you and the least I can offer in retribution for the harm I caused you. But most of all, I call it loving you with the intensity of the sun and the devotion of the moon because you are my end, baby. The only dream I never dared to have for myself. Yet here you are, within reach at all times. And you’d better believe I can’t resist you now that I have you. I plan on marking every inch of your flesh so thoroughly with the memory of my
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“I just don’t want to have any regrets,” he murmured, drinking me in. “I need you to know how much I love you. I need you to understand that the only place I would ever want to be is right here with you, no matter what happens. And if I do die in this war, taking on my father, then I need you to understand how much I loved you-”
“Yeah well, death can’t have you because I already staked my claim.”
I just know what I want and it’s you. In any way I can have you and every way you’ll offer. So if I can get you to be my bride then I’ll fucking take it. If you never want to get married, then I’ll take that too. If you didn’t want me this close and all I was left with was the option to watch you and hunger for you from afar the way I had to when we were Star Crossed, then I’d take that as well. It’s you, Roxy. Only you. So here I am and I’m yours. The rest of it is up to you.”
Our story wasn’t pretty, and it certainly wasn’t easy. There was struggle and divide, arguments and pain. But it was ours, down to every gritty detail, and I found I wouldn’t have exchanged it for that pretty, simple life I’d just seen. I was possessive of my Blue, and maybe it was selfish of me to think that way after all she had been through, but there wasn’t a single thing I’d have changed about her, and to become who she was today, she’d had to be broken, put under pressure so she could emerge like coal into a diamond.
I’m not losing a single second more with you, Roxanya. You just earned yourself a Dragon sized stalker and I won’t be going anywhere until death rips me from your arms. Even then I’ll try to stay, I’ll be the air on your cheeks and the light on your skin, never leaving you no matter where you go.”
“Baby, if you want pancakes then I’ll happily buy you a whole damn pancake house. I’m spending the day in the company of that smile on your face and the night bathing in the sound of your screams. Your every desire is my command and I’m making sure they’re all fulfilled today.”
“Because nothing in this world means more to me than you do, Gerry. And there are no differences we can’t overcome to be together.”
Because no one will take you from me, and no one will love you as fiercely as I love you. Where you go, I will follow. There is no force powerful enough in this life or the next to tear you away from me. So don’t you dare question my love for you.”
“I’m so terrified of what this will mean for you, Blue, but I’m so much more terrified of hurting you. So if you want this, then it’s yours. Besides, now the decision is made, I get to do what I’ve wanted to do since I first laid eyes on you.”
“Will you kiss me and be mine in every way imaginable? Will you accept a grumpy asshole of a Vampire as your one true mate?”
“I’ll love you ‘til the world is dust,” Orion breathed and those words sent a delicious tremor down to the centre of my being. “I’ll love you even beyond then,” I answered and our lips collided as we accepted this bond and a ripple of power blazed through my body as the stars threaded our souls together.
“When I’m done with you, Blue, you’ll never get the feel of me off of your skin.”
If I could claim vengeance for the suffering he’s forced upon you and everyone else. If I could turn the wrath he’s always offered me back on him and end him and his power for good, then I would like to think I might have done enough to make up for everything else.”
“Killing him isn’t what makes you worthy of me,” I said, my thumb tracing over his cheekbone as I drank him in. “This love between us is what proves that. You’ve given me something I never dared hope for and I know you’re still not perfect, but I don’t want perfect. I want your flaws, your temper, your power, and your passion. I want you, Darius Acrux. Not a white knight who slayed a Dragon for me.”
“No time with you would ever have been enough, Roxy. You have to know that. A year, a lifetime, a fucking eternity would never be enough. But I couldn’t let you die. I had to make the choice. I had to-”
The only man I would ever love. The only one I ever wanted. The one I fucking needed with every fibre of my soul.
“No. I don’t want the stars to choose you for me, Darius. I chose you for myself and that’s exactly how I like it. Fate doesn’t get a say in it. You’re my mate because I picked you, not them. You’re my match because you proved that you were the only one for me, not destiny. Our love burns hot with unmatchable passion and eternal devotion as endless as the entire universe because we fucking fought for it in a way no other Fae have ever done before and none ever will. You’re not some gift from the stars to me, Darius. You’re the spoils of a war no one else ever could have won but us. So I’ll
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I looked at this woman, this princess, this ultimate fantasy of mine and she stared me down as she waited me out, knowing that when it came down to it, I could never deny her anything she desired of me. So if she wanted me to swear I’d pluck my fucking soul from the grip of the heavens after I died and return it to her keeping where it belonged then I’d swear it. No matter if I was just one man going up against all the stars in the heavens for her, because there was no fight I wouldn’t face in her name. No matter how impossibly the odds were stacked.
“We were impossible once, Darius Acrux. So don’t try to put limitations on what we can or can’t do.”
“I love you, Roxanya Vega,” I said, my voice raw with the truth of that. “No matter what happens with this fate, the war, my father, the throne, all of it pales beside my love for you. And I know I’m not good enough for you but that just makes it all the easier for me to worship you the way you deserve because I won’t ever stop trying to live up to being the man you deserve to have. Not until my dying breath and beyond that too if it’s what you want.”
She was right. The stars couldn’t have this. They couldn’t take us away. It was too powerful, too beautiful, too fucking right. And I wouldn’t let them have it because it was mine. She was my most prized treasure and I would hoard her away from the sight of the stars themselves if that was what it took to keep her.
I’d fight to stay and I’d refuse to leave even when the heavens came to drag me from this unworthy body, even if it cost me my place in the afterlife. Because an eternity with the stars meant nothing to me in comparison to a life in her arms.
“There is only you, Roxy,” I said, finding her evergreen eyes and holding them. “The stars can have it all, everything else of me but you.”
I let myself sink into the sensation of being held tight within her arms and knowing it was the only place in this life or the next where I would ever want to reside.
I had never deserved her. But she’d been mine all the same. If only for the briefest span of time. So no matter how foul my luck had always been, I knew I had been blessed in that one, most vital way. I had tasted the heat of her kiss and drowned in the weight of her love, been consumed by it and owned by it and made whole by it too.
And that was the way I wanted to leave this life, because when it came down to it, I knew that she was it for me. The only thing I’d ever truly needed and for the briefest span of time she had belonged to me. And that was enough. There is only her.
