“Are you still here?” she joked dryly.
He threw back his head and laughed. “Men are the same everywhere.”
“Sadly, yes,” she said with a twinkle of mischief in her eyes.
He rolled onto his back, pulling her on top of him as he went. “Give me a day to recuperate and I will remind you of our differences as well.”
She kissed him. “What makes you think I’ll give you the chance to?”
“This,” he said, kissing her back, deeper and slower. When the kiss ended, her cheeks had flushed beautifully. “My bed is your bed from now on.”
She cocked her head to one side as she looked down at him. “Some men might phrase that as a question.”
He dug his hands into her hair and brought her lips to his again, this time for a possessive kiss. Nothing separated her skin from his, so he felt how his words affected her. Her body, although well loved, tightened with excitement. He shifted beneath her so his quickly hardening cock was cupped by her wet sex. “Other men do not matter to me, and they will no longer matter to you.” Before she had a chance to respond, he angled his pelvis back so his tip parted her folds. “You’re mine, Rachelle.”
She brought her lips back to his, opening her mouth to him, her body to him again. He was hard and ready. She took him deep inside her, then arched so her breasts danced before his mouth. He worshipped them with his tongue and teeth while she moved up and down on his cock. He loved the moment his independent woman followed her own pleasure and sat up. She steadied herself by holding his outstretched hands and ground herself against him, taking him deeper and deeper. His pleasure this time was found in the pleasure she brought herself. She came before he did and then sagged with a pleased smile. He rolled her gently beneath him and found his orgasm in the sweet warmth of hers.
It was only later when she was once again beneath the covers and in his arms that he realized they hadn’t used a condom the final time. With any other woman, he would have been furious with himself, but in his mind, she was already his. Only the details of how and when it would become legal were still under negotiation.
Chapter Twenty-One
There were few times in Rachelle’s life she considered so beautiful, so perfect, she tried to ingrain them into her memories. The week that followed her early-morning dance with Magnus was one of those magical times.
They stayed at his family home for a couple of days, long enough to have gone into town as a couple. The wonder of seeing Magnus with the people in the town was that he didn’t act like a royal with them. He sat with them, laughed with them, even traded playful insults with a few. Just like the rest of the men in town, he also sat up straighter when Zinnia spoke to him. Rachelle asked him if she’d ever gotten him with her switch. He’d laughed, but he hadn’t denied it.
In the town he called his home, he and Rachelle ate sinfully rich foods, drank too much coffee in cafés, and spent hours talking in the corner of a bar while Benito played modern pop music. Magnus asked her endless questions about her childhood, her interests, her current bucket list. She countered with questions of her own and loved that he held nothing back. Every day she handed a little more of her heart over to him; every night she found pleasure in his arms.
When they finally returned to the capital city, Magnus left her each morning to work but gave her his afternoons and evenings. And, of course, his nights.
Every piece of what had seemed like an impossible puzzle was beginning to fit together. She and Magnus visited with Eric and the children on the other side of the hospital. They met with architects to design housing for families of the sick children and chose a nearby lot that presently housed only a warehouse. Even Delinda was supportive. Well, if the definition of supportive was not actively trying to destroy or devalue her relationship with Magnus, as Rachelle had expected her grandmother to. They hadn’t yet returned to see his father, but the reception for the orphans was that night, and they would see him then. She was attending as Magnus’s official date. Magnus said he would present her to his father again and announce his intentions.
Although Rachelle wasn’t entirely sure what intentions he was referring to, she trusted Magnus. The more time she spent with him, the more she saw that he expressed his feelings with actions rather than words. He didn’t fawn over his people or try to win them with charm, but he delivered each and every time they needed him. They loved him for it in a way that almost no one loved a leader anymore.
How could she not fall for him?
He still said ridiculously sexist things that made her eyes roll skyward, but he wasn’t bothered when in private she took him to task for them. In fact, more than once she’d wondered if he said some of them simply to get a rise out of her.
He was never the type to gush words of love and flattery, but Rachelle had been with a man like that, and none of it had been sincere, anyway. When she’d needed that man, he hadn’t wanted to be bothered with her problems. However much Magnus might sometimes frustrate her, she was beginning to believe he might show his feelings for her the same way he did with his people—with actions rather than words. Measured that way, he put to shame the men who’d come before him.
She smiled as she sat in a chair while having her hair and makeup done. She met her eyes in the mirror and realized she’d never seen herself look happier or more beautiful. Right or wrong, love or only lust, what she had with Magnus was giving her the confidence she’d lacked.
He could have chosen any woman, but he chose me.
Take that, all you girls who got dates every Friday night in high school.
I may have bloomed late, but look at who it brought me.
The past week should have been one of the best for Magnus, but outside of his time with Rachelle, it had been riddled with frustration. He had not planned to return to the capital city until he’d cornered and questioned Alethea Narcharios. Unfortunately, she had proved more elusive than anticipated.
Left without other options, Magnus had gone directly to the source of one of his issues—Delinda Westerly herself. It hadn’t been easy to catch her without his father by her side. Another point of irritation for him.
When he finally caught her alone, he could have asked her what she sought to gain by attempting to hack his life, but instead he’d explained how boundaries were important in any family. At first she’d puffed up like an angry cat, but when he explained that he wanted this clarified before he again asked Rachelle to marry him, she became agitated for another reason.
“Again? You’ve already asked her?” Delinda had asked in a hurt tone. “Why am I hearing this from you and not her?”
“Would the truth change how you behave? Rachelle has told me all about your relationship. Not much of it was good.”
She’d been offended, of course. There were the expected threats, some even involving the contacts she was inviting to the ball she was still organizing with his father.
“What brought you here, Mrs. Westerly? What’s your endgame?”
“I told you—Rachelle.”
“She doesn’t believe that, nor do I.”
“I don’t care what you believe.”
He’d finally lost his patience and growled, “Rachelle loves you, but she won’t let you near anything she cares about. If I were you, I’d ask myself why.”
Their exchange had ended on that sour note. Like everything else he’d tried to accomplish that week, it hadn’t gone as well as he’d hoped. His people had followed a money trail connected to Petek’s death back to Vandorra, but they were still working on who had hired him and then killed him off. Which meant the threat to Rachelle might come from any direction. She was presently better protected than he was, but Magnus wouldn’t sleep well at night until he knew why Petek had been hired to follow Rachelle.