Bors glanced at me and then at my father. “Then now is as good a time as any to formally ask you for her hand in marriage.”
Bors looked at me and lifted his eyebrows in anticipation. I was so startled by the question that I stumbled over my words. “I…I’ve…” But with my hand clasped in his, I told him with my tightest squeeze what I felt in my heart: yes. A thousand times, yes.
“Is that what you want, my dear?” Asked my father, looking uncertain.
Finally, I found my voice. “Yes, more than anything. I love him and I never want to be apart from him.”
But my father’s brow furrowed, and his jaw jutted forward slightly. His was a noble, commanding presence, and it was intimidating to a girl like me. No matter how many times I reassured myself he was my father, he was also my king. It was plain even to me that Bors’ proposal was not entirely to his liking.
“He is the man who returned you to me, and in truth it does my old heart good to see the two of you so deeply in love,” he said. “But the fact of the matter is, no daughter of mine can be allowed to marry a commoner.”
Sir Bors of Mackay was knighted that afternoon, in a ceremony in the royal gardens, beneath my bedroom balcony. I was strong enough to stand and watch the ceremony, with all its ritual and seriousness. When Bors and my father had sworn fealty to one another, my father granted him permission to marry me. And once the ceremony ended, Bors made his way down the garden path and knelt below my balcony, sword planted into the ground before him
“Marry me, Sara. Please.”
“Look at me, knight,” I told him. He raised his face and I was met with a beaming smile. When our eyes locked, I nodded and told him it would be my honor to call myself his wife.
He wasted no time getting back to me in my chambers. His heavy footfalls echoed through the stone hallway outside my room. Once he arrived, I heard my guards step aside with an armored salute.
Finally, we were alone together, at long last.
“Get back in bed,” he said, with a lift of his chin.
“I still outrank you, Sir Bors,” I teased. I took a hellebore from a nearby vase and buried my nose in it as I watched him. “If I am to submit to you, it is on condition that Lenten roses will be our flower, for now and always, to the end of time.”
“Deal. Now into bed,” he said again, even more firmly. So firm and so commanding that it made my thighs tremble.
The flower fell from my fingers as I obeyed his command. He unbuckled his sword belt and removed his dagger from its sheath, placing his weapons on the ground, then he leaned down over me, meeting my lips with his. The kiss was luxurious and unhurried. My clit began pulsing as I tasted his mouth on my lips
I pulled back from the kiss just long enough to say, “I want you inside me.”
I felt him smile as he kissed me again, and he shook his head. Now it was his turn to pull away. “You’re not strong enough. You’re still hurt”
Gazing up at him, I felt warm and safe and protected. “But you are my strength,” I said. One tug on the tie of his britches was enough to make them loosen… and make him groan. “I’m only whole if you’re inside me,” I told him, tugging on his lip with my thumb. I pulled back the comforter and lifted up my skirt. “Make me whole.”
“Fuck,” he growled. Without taking his eyes off of mine, he stroked his cock against my bare leg. I parted my thighs for him and lay back with his help on the soft down pillows.
His thrusts were slow and careful, and with each one I was reminded of his staggering masculine power. He positioned his hips so that as he drove into me, his lower abdomen met with my clit, increasing the overpowering waves of pleasure. As he slid his massive hands behind my body, he held on tight to my hips, taking me again and again and again.
As he made love to me, one orgasm slid through into the next so that I didn’t know where one ended and the other began. Some of my orgasms were explosions that made me dig my teeth into his flesh. Others were like shooting stars in an asteroid shower, or like ripples on a still lake—whispers of bliss in a sea of ecstasy.
“If you weren’t hurt,” he growled against my ear, “I’d fuck you straight through until dawn.”
“We can always try,” I whispered as my body rolled with yet another orgasm and my walls tightened again around the stiff thickness of his cock.