One corner of her mouth lifted. “Yup.”
He bent over her until they were nose to nose. “Do not think for one minute that I have forgotten how you ordered me out of the room earlier,” he whispered.
“Actually I had kind of forgotten about that.” Her gaze widened. “I did, didn’t I?”
“Yes, you did.” He slid his own hand to the back of her neck, gripping her gently. “Do you know what I thought?”
She shook her head, staring at him mesmerized. “Huh-uh.”
He growled, “I thought it was sexy as hell.”
Her lovely, triangular features lit up. Surreptitiously she slipped her fingers into the edge of his black fatigues at his waist, and she tugged at the material gently. “I don’t suppose we could put off this whole war thing until we got ten or twelve hours in the sack, could we? We could send a note to Gaeleval and ask him to take a day off.”
Invisible fire danced along his skin. He bent to brush her lips with his. “If we had any chance of that succeeding, I would be all for it.”
“It’s been much too long,” she whimpered.
He swallowed the tiny sound she made as the fire reached his brain. Before Pia, he had gone centuries between taking lovers, and he had never felt the lack. The women meant nothing. He had never remembered their names, and now he couldn’t remember their faces.
He mouthed against her pouting lips, “We still haven’t added manacles to any of the bedrooms. That’s going to be the first thing we take care of when we get back home.”
“Yeah, okay,” she muttered, as her body trembled. He slipped an arm around her waist, holding her against him. Her head fell back and she looked at him with glazed, unfocused eyes. “Dragos?”
“Yes,” he murmured. They were surrounded by people, but there was nobody else, anywhere, nobody at all.
“We’re going to get married, right?”
He would have smiled at how dazed she looked, except he knew exactly how she felt. What they generated together was blinding. She was not only the most precious person in the universe to him, but she was also the most powerful. “I can’t believe you framed that as a question.”
She tried to scowl at him. “I was using the question as a conversation starter.”
He licked at her lower lip. “And?”
She didn’t sound like she could breathe right. “And I wanted to know if we were going to go on a honeymoon too. We haven’t even gone on a date yet.”
He lifted his head. Actually, he hadn’t thought much beyond the big diamond ring and a lavish public display where the whole world watched as he claimed her. “Of course we are going on a honeymoon,” he said. “What kind do you want?”
She heaved a big sigh. “No bodyguards,” she said dreamily. “No urgent business calls, and no sentinels. No housecleaners or staff of any kind—and certainly that means no Stanford, even though he’ll claim to be heartbroken, of course. If you think he wouldn’t dream of intruding on our honeymoon, think again. He would insist that I need a dresser, and I’m not talking about a piece of furniture.”
She surprised him into snorting. He was loving the sound of a honeymoon more and more as she talked. “I’ll swear there’ll be no one but us,” he promised. “Along with the peanut, of course, because he won’t be born by then. We’ll have our honeymoon as soon as I get the sentinels settled into place.”
She looked at him from between her eyelashes. “That means a quick, quiet wedding, you know,” she remarked casually. “There won’t be time to set up anything else.”
He frowned. “Wait a minute.”
“I love the idea,” she gushed. She threw her arms around his waist, hugging him tightly. “A quiet wedding and a quick getaway, and we’ll be all alone. Do you realize we haven’t even really been alone since we were kidnapped by Goblins, and we escaped and ran away? The only private time we get is when we close our bedroom door—and even then somebody may call or get in touch with you telepathically over some emergency or other.”
He had to admit, she had a point. He scowled. “I was planning on a big wedding.”
She gave him a coaxing smile. “I don’t know why. You don’t even like crowds, and you hate having your picture taken.”
Apparently she was full of good points tonight. “We’ll talk about this later. I can only give in so much, you know.”
“I know,” she said soothingly. “It’s so hard being you.”
“Well, it is,” Dragos admitted. He grinned as she laughed. “You pretty much got everything you wanted in this conversation, didn’t you?”
Her laughter died and she gave him a completely serious look. “I feel that is how every conversation should go.”