Naughty Brits: An Anthology
Page 57
We’re sweating, indecent, and still so very exposed, but I never want to move. I just want to curl into his strong chest forever.
I feel his lips on my hair, and then his nose as he breathes me in.
“Charlotte,” he says miserably. “My sweet, brilliant Charlotte.”
“Church, I—”
“You don’t have to tell me,” he says, pressing his lips to my temple and then easing free of my body. “I know.”
I huff. “I don’t think you do.”
He doesn’t respond to me with anything other than a nod of resignation. He thinks I’m about to tell him to go to hell, and he would go there meekly if I did. Meekly.
My Church, meek and mortal, and all because he thinks he deserves the worst. I mean, he does, but it’s also not the point right now.
The point is that I don’t want to tell him to go to hell. I don’t want him to go away. I don’t want him going anywhere except everywhere I’m going.
He kneels to tug my dress down and help me step into my panties. “Will you listen to me?” I ask.
“Of course,” he says.
“I love you,” I say and then my breath gets all stuttery and short, because suddenly nothing feels as important as getting this right. “I love you and I don’t want you to stay away from me. I want you close. I want you next to me, inside me. I want to belong to you again.”
He’s looking up from where he kneels at my feet, and I see a thousand expressions passing over his face. Shock and then hope and then guarded concern. “We just fucked, Charlotte. I don’t think it’s the right time for you to make concessions—”
“They’re not concessions,” I say. I run a fingertip over the scar on his cheek and then trail my fingers down to his jaw so I can keep his face lifted to mine. “They’re what I want.”
“But I fucked up,” he says hoarsely. “You shouldn’t want them.”
“Maybe,” I say, using my other hand to brush the dark hair away from his forehead. “But I do. So.”
My words do nothing to ease the turmoil in his expression, and he closes his eyes, as if he can’t look at me while he says what he says next because otherwise he won’t have the strength to say it. “Charlotte, please. Please don’t compromise on this. Don’t compromise for me.”
I don’t spare him the truth. “I’m not,” I tell him bluntly. “I don’t trust you right now and I can’t tell you that tomorrow will be the same as today. I definitely can’t promise you that I’ll ever put on a wedding dress for you again.”
His eyes open at this, full of shame, and I hate that my proud Church is willing to look my blame in the face but not my love.
“I don’t have answers to a lot of questions about us,” I admit, and I think of the four-years-ago Charlotte, trying not to cry on the Tube while people politely ignored the way her dress spilled over their feet. I won’t betray that Charlotte by unequivocally forgiving what was done to her. But I also can’t betray the Charlotte I am today—the one who is desperately in love with the possessive, hungry mystery that is James Cason. “But when I ask myself, what do I want today, I know the answer to that. I want you. I want to see if I can find all those other answers in your arms. I want that more than anything.”
His sapphire eyes search mine. “Are you sure, Charlotte?”
I take a deep breath. It feels good to admit this, it feels so good to set down resentment to reach for something sweeter. “Today, Church. Today, I’m sure.”
He gets slowly to his feet, setting his clothes to rights without ever taking his eyes from mine. Once he’s completely dressed again, he puts his hand over my heart, like he owns it.
“This is mine again?” he asks in a low, shaking voice. There’s fear there, and awe, and hope. Trembling, eager hope.
“Today, Church. And you can ask me again tomorrow.”
He leans and catches my mouth with his—a brushing, stirring kiss that promises wicked, greedy things. “Then I better make today count.”
And in true Church fashion, he tugs me impatiently out of the exhibit and down the stairs. He tugs me all the way to his house—and once the estate agent is booted from the premises and my brother knows I’ll be out late—we finally do what we want most in the world to do.
We worship.
Epilogue
Church
“I don’t want to go home,” Charlotte says with a sigh. In front of her, the Mediterranean sparkles blue and brilliant, and a warm Tel Aviv breeze toys with her curls, occasionally revealing flashes of her delightfully freckled neck.
“I’ll bring you back,” I say, coming to join her on the balcony. “You’ll need to have more experience out here if you want to curate Levantine collections anyway.”
She pouts a little, that freckled lower lip making a plump little curve. “Do we really have to go back to Oxford?”
“We do,” I tell her, wrapping her in my arms and pulling her so her back rests against my chest. We look out at the turquoise sea together while I nuzzle against her hair. She smells like sunshine and shampoo—when we got back to Tel Aviv and a real hotel after four weeks digging near a dusty tell, she went straight for the shower and scrubbed her hair for about forty minutes. “But I’ll take you to that standing stone you like and fuck you for hours next to it. Will that scratch your prehistory itch?”
“It’s not the same,” she fusses, but she does push her bottom against my lap. “But you can still fuck me for hours. That part’s okay.”
“Hmm. How about we start on it now?”
“But we’re supposed to go to dinner with—”
I’m already slinging her over my shoulder and taking her back to the bed. I give her backside a swat before throwing her on the bed and then crawling over her. “Legs open, little supplicant. Show me what I want.”
I’m barely patient enough to wait for her to obey, wanting to tear her dress off with my teeth and then spear her with my neglected cock. Having Charlotte on a dig with me again was profoundly wonderful—I loved seeing her face as she finally freed some tiny, broken treasure from the earth, and I savored having her thoughts and observations available to me in the field. But it was also a problem, because all of the things that made it fulfilling also made me fucking horny. And turns out it’s next to impossible to get a leg over in the middle of the desert, so I’ve been very, very deprived.
Since that day three years ago in the museum, it feels like everything and nothing has changed. I rented a modest flat in London and stayed close to Charlotte while Jax finished school. Charlotte refused to move in with me—but she did finally accept my gift of rent that first year, which meant she could quit catering and sign up for night classes at UCL. She graduated—with honors—at the same time Jax did. And now she’s pursuing her graduate degree at Oxford, where I’ve also taken a post. Apparently my reputation was good enough to withstand my abrupt departure from UCL, and since we both came to Oxford at the same time, it was easy to prevent any nepotist speculation from the get-go.
Besides, I’m only at Oxford because she’s there. Once she wants to leave, I’ll follow her to wherever she finds the job of her dreams. She’s my passion now, and my calling.
Three years ago, Charlotte said five fateful words to me. Today, the answer is yes. And I’ve spent every day since then asking her, as gently and patiently as a monster like me is able, what about today?
Every day, in a blessing I don’t understand or deserve, the answer has been the same as it was on the first.
Charlotte pulls up her dress and spreads her thighs and I feel as thunderstruck by the sight as I did the first time I saw it seven years ago. Without bothering to do anything else, I pull my linen pants down to expose my aching erection and then push it against where she’s wet. I love this part, when I can just begin to feel the tight grip of her, because it means I’m about to be as close to her as I possibly can. It means that, at least for a while, I’ll be able to make her feel as breathless and split open as she makes me.
&nbs
p; “I forgot to ask this morning,” I say as I jab forward. Her back arches deliciously and I lean down to bite at my favorite freckle. “What about today?”
I expect her to give her usual answer, and so I’m already stroking my cock into her pussy, ready to segue to the part of the fucking where she’s too well-pleasured for conversation, when she says, “Today, the answer is forever.”
My body gets the message before my mind can process it, and I go still, looking down at her. “What?” I ask blankly.
Her mouth twitches in a small smile that’s smug, and a little nervous. She reaches into the pocket of her dress, and I feel her slim fingers brushing against my hip as she searches.
And then she pulls out a ring.
It’s a silky, matte gold, finely—but still visibly—beaten, with the small hammer marks making angles and faces all around the band.
“I made it,” she says shyly. “There’s a local blacksmith who helped. I couldn’t find a ring antique enough to be interesting to us, so I thought I’d fashion it myself.”
“Charlotte,” I say, trying to be careful, but failing, failing. My heart is massive, huge, it’s taking up my entire body—except, of course, the part still nestled in Charlotte’s snug warmth. That part just continues to throb happily. “What is this?”
“It’s an engagement ring,” she says. “Will you marry me?”
I can barely think over my giant, bloody heart. “Do you—are you very sure, little one? Because I don’t need this. I’ll live the rest of my life as the happiest man alive even if we’re still taking it day by day.”
She shakes her head on the pillow, gray eyes clear but serious. “I don’t want that. I needed time to trust you again—and trust myself. I needed space to see my promises to myself and my brother through. I needed to make sure that if I forgave you, I was doing it for the right reasons. But the past three years have given me that. And I want more. I want everything.”
“I do owe you everything.”
“You do.”
“I don’t deserve to give it you.”
She pulls one lovely shoulder up to her ear in the laying-down version of a shrug. “I’m ready for you to deserve it.”
I didn’t think my heart could get any bigger, but here it is, bigger than me, big enough to hold her inside it. “Charlott . . .”
She smiles up at me. “What about your answer, my Church? What about today?”
I take in a long breath that’s full of her and our sex and the sparkling Tel Aviv evening. If she’s ready for me to deserve it, then I shall, and I’ll give her everything in return. “Today, the answer is forever,” I tell her.
Her smile is so big, it could light up all of Tel Aviv. She reaches for my hand, and soon I have her ring on it. I can barely take my eyes off it, but I do, because nothing is ever as beautiful as my sunny little supplicant.
Tears burn behind my eyes as I scoop my arms underneath her and begin thrusting into my perfect girl, and I murmur everything into her hair as I strum orgasms out of her like music from a harp. I murmur every last word about how gorgeous she is, how clever, how blessed I am, how wrecked she makes me, how I’ll never, ever abandon her again. And when I finally come with the sea rushing outside and her ring glinting on my hand, I’m not an angry god or a cold temple.
I am her supplicant.
And I will worship at her feet forever.
Also by Sierra Simone
Thornchapel:
A Lesson in Thorns
Feast of Sparks
Harvest of Sighs
Door of Bruises
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Misadventures:
Misadventures with a Professor
Misadventures of a Curvy Girl
Misadventures in Blue
* * *
The New Camelot Trilogy:
American Queen
American Prince
American King
The Moon (Merlin’s Novella)
American Squire (A Thornchapel and New Camelot Crossover)
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The Priest Series:
Priest
Midnight Mass: A Priest Novella
Sinner
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Co-Written with Laurelin Paige
Porn Star
Hot Cop
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The Markham Hall Series:
The Awakening of Ivy Leavold
The Education of Ivy Leavold
The Punishment of Ivy Leavold
The Reclaiming of Ivy Leavold
* * *
The London Lovers:
The Seduction of Molly O’Flaherty
The Persuasion of Molly O’Flaherty
The Wedding of Molly O’Flaherty
About the Author
Sierra Simone is a USA Today bestselling former librarian who spent too much time reading romance novels at the information desk. She lives with her husband and family in Kansas City.
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www.thesierrasimone.com
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