Page 93 of The Last One Standing (Rogue X Ara #4)

ARA

W hy did it feel like Rogue was making his peace?

He hadn’t said anything in particular over the few days, but it bled into everything: his actions, his expressions, his voice, the words he chose.

He didn’t think he’d survive, or at the very least, he was mentally preparing not to.

Wrong.

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

I had not an ounce of doubt that Rogue would survive. He’d always been a survivor; he couldn’t stop now. That wasn’t in his nature, nor was it in mine to allow such a thing, which was why I’d found myself standing beneath a pitch black sky with an almost full moon, cheered on by thousands of stars.

Frost sparkled on every surface. The wind howled through the bare trees, tent panels whipping as snow swirled from branches.

I pulled Rogue’s fur coat tighter around my shoulders and wiggled my toes, buried within my boots and two pairs of wool socks.

Doran eyed the tent flap. “Is there a reason we’re meeting in the dead of night?”

“Obviously,” I whispered with a roll of my eyes. I handed him the letter from Adonis and held the candle holder up to shed light on it.

He quickly scanned the page. A muscle ticked in his jaw. When he met my eye again, I took the letter and shoved it into my coat pocket.

“Adonis doesn’t know I have my memories, which means he thinks that I think he’ll actually ‘free me.’”

“Yes, and…?”

“If you become Rogue, we can accept his invitation and kill him before he ever steps foot from the ballroom.”

Doran stared flatly . Finally, he released a sigh and shook his head. “Ara, we’ve already tricked him with that once. He won’t fall for it again.”

“That’s exactly why he would fall for it again. Because we’d never be foolish enough to try the same trick twice.”

He ran a hand over his chin. “Where would Rogue be? You can’t be separated.”

“With her,” Rogue growled, his voice low, lethal.

I froze in place, eyes wide. Blood rushed to my cheeks when I felt his presence step up behind me.

Doran, seemingly unaffected, continued, “It could work. I be you, and you blend into the crowd, close by.”

“It could work.” Rogue sealed to my back, his hand on my hip, and I suppressed a whimper, suddenly aware of how cold my front was. “But we can finish this discussion in the morning after the sun rises.”

Doran glanced at me, and I nodded.

“All right,” he said. “I’ll return with the sun.”

I watched as he disappeared into the darkness, my nerves frayed and heart racing. Rogue’s hand tightened on my hip as he dragged me backward into the tent.

Spinning me around, he asked, “What were you thinking?”

I took in every inch of his face, the length of his nose and fullness of his lips, the maroon in his eyes and sharp line of his jaw, and anger rose to mask something much more painful.

My hands curled into fists at my sides. “I was thinking that someone has to put your life first, because you clearly can’t—or won’t.”

He stilled. “Of course, I don’t put mine first. You are first. You are my priority.”

He reached for me again, but I dodged him.

“Well, you are mine,” I shouted. “How can you feel the way you do, love the way you do, and think I’d ever feel any differently? Of course, your life is my priority, because I know you won’t hold it in such high regard, but it’s important to me! You are important to me.”

He clenched his jaw, his chest rising and falling too quickly.

I inhaled a deep breath and closed the distance between us. My hands slid up his arms to his shoulders, over his neck. One moved to his cheek, and the other flattened over his heart, his pulse rapid beneath my palm.

“If you think I would ever let this heart stop, then you don’t know me at all.

This heart means too much to me. It hasn’t even felt an inkling of peace yet.

It hasn’t gotten to rest, and it deserves to, and we’re way too fucking close to give up now.

” He tipped his head to the ceiling, his throat bobbing, but I grabbed his jaw and returned his gaze to mine.

“A moment in this world without you could never be peaceful—could never be right. How could it be? A world without the sun is cold and dark.” My vision blurred, my voice strangled as I pleaded, “Please don’t leave me alone in the cold. ”

“Never.” He crushed me against his chest, his breath shuddering. “I’ll never leave you in the cold, baby. Ever .”

This time, I knew he meant it.

“Marry me,” I whispered in a rush. “Marry me here. Now. It doesn’t have to be traditional, but it can be ours.”

He scanned my face, wiping the tears from my cheeks.

“My beautiful girl,” he murmured, tilting his head. “My beautiful bride.”

Another cry burned in my throat, and I pressed a hand over my mouth, but he gently pulled it away to run his thumb over my bottom lip.

“There is only one thing in this existence I’d love more than to be your husband, and that would be to have you as my wife.” He brushed his lips over mine. “My wife.” He captured my bottom lip with his teeth, a quick nip, then a slow, drugging kiss. “My wife.”

“ My husband.”

A deep groan reverberated through his chest. “Say that again.”

But he recaptured my mouth before I had the chance, more demanding this time, lighting a fire in my belly.

I stood on my tiptoes and wound my fingers into his hair. “My husband.”

With another throaty groan, his hands found my ass and pulled my hips into his, his length hard. “Again.”

I repeated the two words again and again, growing more desperate for his hands, his mouth, his cock, his flames. All of him.

I needed all of him, and I needed him now.

His lips seared a path down my neck, and my head fell back to grant him more access. When teeth grazed the mate mark, my fingers dug into his biceps.

I gasped and panted, “How do…Fae marriage vows…go?”

He grinned against my skin, and my heart fluttered—among other places.

I squeezed my thighs together in an attempt to stifle the burn in my core, but he snapped forward to bite the mate mark.

I froze, though a whimper escaped. He bit harder, but not enough to break skin, as he used his knee to nudge my legs apart. He inhaled deeply, scenting my arousal.

Dear Goddess above, he didn’t need his fire magic to burn me alive.

I’m already burning alive.

“Please,” I begged.

He chuckled, the wicked sound only flaming the fire.

I can’t handle this. I need—I need ? —

His canine teeth lengthened. Sharpened.

They broke the skin, and I melted into him with a moan. He caught me with a hand on my lower back as he sank his teeth in farther, rebreaking the entire mark.

Euphoria poured through my veins while he leisurely licked the droplets of blood away. Cupping my jaw, he sealed his mouth to mine. The metallic tinge merged with the taste of him, evidence of his claim—and I needed him right fucking now.

I wound my arms around his neck, and his chest vibrated with a low laugh as I climbed up him and wrapped my legs around his waist. One hand cupped my ass while the other slid up the length of my spine.

As I moved to unbutton his trousers, he turned us to the bed and lay me down gently. He traced my jaw and tipped my chin up. “Bite me.”

I didn’t have to be told twice. I curled my fingers around the nape of his neck and lowered him to my mouth. His breaths grew uneven as I trailed kisses along his jaw to his ear and down his neck. When I found my teeth marks on his skin, I licked the mark, and he let out a low groan.

He rolled onto his back and pulled me with him, so I straddled his hips. I circled my hips, my core over his hard cock, finally finding friction, and moaned into his throat.

He gripped my hips and growled, “Ara.”

“Patience,” I teased and kissed the mark. I kissed it again and again, enjoying the way he grew increasingly more on edge, then sank my teeth in.

“Oh, fuck,” he hissed, grinding his cock into my soaked core, his fingers tightening to the point of bruising.

I licked my lips and started to sit up, but he yanked me down by the nape of my neck.

He thrust his tongue into my mouth while his other hand freed his cock, and I nearly sobbed with relief.

He burned my trousers off in a flash, lined himself up at my entrance, and eased into me, slow and torturous, inch by inch, until he was fully sheathed.

A broken cry tore from my throat.

Finally.

He swallowed the sound and angled for more as he pulled out and thrust back in, deep enough to reach my fucking soul.

He sat us up, a hand laced around my throat. “Repeat after me.”

I nodded as I held onto his shoulders and met each thrust with a roll of my hips. Oh, Goddess, this is—he is ? —

My head lolled back, but he knotted his hand in my hair and tugged me forward until our lips were a hair’s breadth from each other.

Grinning, he started the vow. “Before the Goddess and her stars, I name you my heart’s home.”

I repeated, albeit much more breathlessly.

“Through storm and stillness, I will not turn away.”

My eyes stung as I said the words, and our movements turned slower, gentler.

“When your light fades, I will be your fire. When you fall, I will rise beside you.”

Somewhere between laughing and sobbing, I managed to repeat it back to him. Cupping his cheeks, I kissed his lips, his chin, the tip of his nose, his forehead, everywhere.

“By earth and sky, by body and soul, I bind myself to you. For all my days, and all that may come after.”

As soon as I completed my vow, he released a shuddering breath and kissed me again, slow and thorough.

He kissed me until I was drunk on the taste of him, and the world folded in on itself, leaving only him.

One hand slid down the column of my throat.

Another gripped my hip as he thrust deeper, hitting the sensitive spot inside me again and again.

Wisps of smoke caressed my skin where he couldn’t, and his lips?—

He kissed me like we had all the time in the world, and he wanted to spend every second right here.

“I love you,” I cried, wrapping my arms around his neck.

He rolled me onto my back and lifted my knee to spread my legs wider. Sinking in slowly, he swallowed my moan as I bowed off the bed.

Buried to the hilt, he hooked my leg on his shoulder. “I love you, too, little storm. More than you’ll ever know.”

Pale sunshine washed over us as a new day rose, and I suddenly wished I could stop time.

The air was still, quiet, as we lay entangled in the bed, impossibly relaxed given everything we’d been through and everything that was to come. His fingertips traced my shoulder blades, my head on his chest.

I wasn’t ready to untangle myself from him and get dressed, much less leave the tent. There was too much out there: people, responsibility, pressure, fear, and war on the horizon. Adonis was out there.

Just when a sense of impending doom started to swallow me, Rogue kissed the top of my head. “I have something for you.”

I peeked up at him and stilled.

A stray beam of sunlight sliced over his face and caught his maroon irises. This time, they glowed without flame. They’d become two sunlit rubies.

He was so painfully stunning, it hurt to breathe—beautiful like ancient ruins withstanding the centuries, cracked by time and overrun by those same blood red vines swallowing Draig Hearth, but standing all the same.

There was beauty in strength, and he was proof of that.

Though he didn’t seem to notice how awestruck I was as he slipped out of bed. He retrieved his satchel, buzzing with an almost giddy excitement that bled into me.

I sat up on my knees and waited as he stuck his hand in a tiny, hidden pocket. When he pulled out a ring, my heart stopped.

“May I?” he asked.

A hot knot formed in my throat, but it was nothing compared to the warmth that bloomed in my chest. I nodded and held my hand out.

He slipped it onto my ring finger, gazing at it for a few beats before kissing it.

I lifted my hand to get a better look, stunned at how unique it was—uniquely beautiful and perfectly us. Three rough-cut stones were bound in silver vines. Obsidian sat on either side of the larger storm’s eye in the center.

My eyes burned. “Where did you find this?”

“Find?” He chuckled and pinched my chin to drag my mouth to his. He kissed my lips once, twice, three times. “No, baby, I commissioned a jeweler.”

I wiped my eyes as moisture blurred my view of him.

“The obsidian is from the Hearth, but the storm’s eye… Well, that was much harder to find.” He ran his thumb over my trembling bottom lip. “As it turns out, the brook that winds through our wildflower field near Nautia is downstream of a crystal ore.”

“Oh,” I cried, crumbling in his hands.

He cupped my cheeks. “I went there desperate to find even the faintest hint of you in the scent of those flowers, but I found the stone instead. I kept it in my pocket for a while until I stumbled across that jeweler, and the idea struck me. I commissioned the ring that very day, because I knew I’d marry you, and I wanted to be ready when that day came.

Couldn’t have my wife walking around without a ring, now could I? ”

“I love it,” I managed through broken breaths, “and I love you.”

“Good, because I intend for you to spend many centuries with this on your finger.” With a faint grin, he kissed my forehead and lingered there to whisper, “And I love you, too.”