Free Until the End of Time by Nikki Winter Page B

lightly skated over her ribcage and she
opened her lids to find Sansone hovering by, diamonds
spattered over his lashes and in his hair. “Hi.”
    Nyssa’s lips curved and she righted herself so that
her feet touched the sand beneath them. “Hi.”
    He caught a thicket of her soaked twists to toss them
over her shoulder. “Want to tell me why you’ve suddenly gone Garden of Eden? My
complaints are nonexistent, mind you, mostly because I get to nourish this very
interesting daydream of you rescuing me from a shipwreck wearing nothing but a
string of pearls and a tail that disappears when you’re aroused.”
    She released a sigh and brushed her hand against the
short length of his beard. “Have I told you today that you’re a strange, strange man?”
    He rocked his head from side to side. “Meh…once or
twice.”
    “Well consider this the third.”
    “Are you saying that you wouldn’t be willing to look for a ginger colored wig to wear for
just a few—”
    “No,” she cut in, looking beyond his shoulder when
his lips curved downward. “But only because I don’t think ginger is my particular hair ministry. I would,
however, be open to a lovely ash blond.”
    He lifted her by the waist, nudging her knees to
either side of his hips as he walked them towards the deck. “The world would be
such a wondrous place if everyone had a wife made in your likeness.”
    Nyssa snorted, throwing her arms around his shoulders
when he began to climb the ladder. “Would it?”
    Sansone stopped at the top
and quirked a brow down at her. “You dare doubt my heartfelt terms of
endearment?”
    Her lips curved wanly and she focused on the hollow
of his throat. “Just a week ago you were ready to cattle prod me.”
    With a grimace, he pulled them up and out onto the
deck, water dripping onto the hardwood. “ Cara—”
    “You would have been well within your rights to,”
Nyssa interrupted, staring him in the eye. “I got a bit…enthusiastic.”
    His hand curled around her hip. “I’m an incredible
specimen, of course you’re interested in seeing my legacy continue.”
    She didn’t laugh. “I’m serious, Sansone .
It’s never, ever, been about my lack
of faith in you or my doubt that you’d love me whether we had one child or
filled the earth with them.”
    “Normally I would ask you to call me Father Abraham
after a statement such as that but I sense you’re attempting to tell me
something,” he responded, sitting down on a lounger.
    “I trust you,” Nyssa confessed, her hands on his face.
“You’re my best friend, my potty-mouthed knight with the incredible sense of
comedic timing that I attribute to your relationship with the devil.”
    “Hey!”
    She placed a hand over his mouth. “But you have to
consider that I haven’t always trusted myself. Sometimes I still don’t. At
least not until you pluck me and tell me to cut it out.” Removing her hand, she
pressed her forehead to his and whispered, “I’m my harshest critic. A taskmaster without mercy. And I hate the
thought,”—she stopped, swallowed—“I hate the thought that I could
accomplish so much in this life and go on without the one thing that I wasn’t
even sure I wanted until I was told that I possibly couldn’t have it.” Nyssa
blinked back the sudden and uncomfortable burn of tears. “It was never a
question as to whether or not you could love me through this and alwaysa
question as to whether or not I could
love me.”
    He gazed at her for a stretch of time that seemed to
imitate hours and announced, “My God, I want to have so much sex with you right now.”
    Nyssa slapped his shoulder. “ Sansone !”
    His kiss was hard and fast. “The dirtiest variety of sex.” Another kiss. “Because you talked to me.”
Another. “You talked to me and told me all your feels without me having to
spank you to get you to do it.”
    She halted the next brush of his lips. “Spanking was
an option?”
    “One I weighed the merits of more than