Plated Prisoner

She’s so fucking pretty.  

When was the last time I ever got to look at something pretty? I always have the back view of horses’ asses on the road or in bloody battles, or a barracks full of sweat drenched soldiers.  

Pretty? Never had that. 

Looking at Rissa makes me feel like that time a horse kicked me in the chest. Laid out and stunned, breath knocked right out of me.  

I dump the trunk of clothes I got for her on the floor. Didn’t want to waste time going down to the city. Didn’t want to be that far away from her. So I just found an empty trunk and stole shit from wherever I could find. The barracks, the guest rooms, the royal dresser. The old pincushion didn’t like me barging in there and swiping the trousers and shirts he had, but he also didn’t say shit.  

Probably because I look like I might punch someone if anyone says one wrong thing. But I always look like that.  

This time though, I do feel this pent-up worry that’s probably turned into aggression because my brain doesn’t know what the fuck else to do with it. Rissa woke up. She’s healed. But I’m still reeling.  

Because she almost died.  

The fact that she’s okay, breathing and talking and awake, it still has me fucking stunned.  

It made it more real because she let me hold her when she woke up. Not that she could really shove me off, considering I’m a giant compared to her. But she didn’t try. So she was either too tired after almost dying…or she liked me holding her.  

I look at Rissa, her eyes meeting mine in the reflection of the mirror. She looks healthy, cheeks no longer red like they were when she was raging with fever. Instead, they blush pink as she watches me.  

Yep. She liked me holding her.  

“Don’t you knock?” she demands. That pink blooms to life when she looks at me, trying to be all petulant. That look makes my dick hard.  

Inwardly, I tell myself to knock it the fuck off. She just woke up from her deathbed. She’s not in any mood for my cock. I need to remember to handle her gently. She’s so much more fragile than anything I’ve ever dealt with before. I purposely avoid eating or drinking out of glass plates and cups just because I’ve broken one too many by accident. Rissa is way more delicate than that, a fact I’ve seen clearly at her bedside these past weeks.  

Longest fucking weeks of my life.  

“No,” I answer.  

Knock? She’s lucky I gave her privacy to bathe. I’m going to be so far up her ass my lap is going to be her only seat for the foreseeable future.  

That thought makes my dick hard too.  

That’s gonna be a problem, because I need to woo my lady and handle her with care. I make my way across the room, trying really hard not to look at the way her ass is perched on that stool. If it was raised up just a bit more, it would be the perfect height to perch her on while I drove into her… 

I grit my teeth at myself. Those thoughts are not fucking helpful.  

“Great Divine, have you always stepped that loudly?” she huffs.  

I look down at my feet and back to her. “I’m walking normal.”  

Liar. My dick is trying to punch through my pants, and I’m trying not to show it.  

“You practically stampeded.”  

Lifting my head, I look up at my woman, trying not to smirk at her. I love it when she talks all irritably like that to me. Silence descends as we look at each other. 

Fucking hell, those blue eyes. I want to swim in them. I want her gaze to flood me. Don’t even need to breathe, so long as I can be surrounded by her.  

I’m not sure what she sees in my expression—maybe the hunger I can’t help but feel when I stare at her. But her blush deepens on her cheeks.  

Yeah. I hope she complains to me for the rest of our lives, just so she keeps looking at me like that.  

She mumbles something under her breath. I catch something about reading. “What?”  

“Nothing,” she says with embarrassed dismissiveness. Not sure what that’s about, but if she wants books, I’ll tear apart the library and pick out the filthiest ones with all the explicit fucking and illustrated drawings to go with it, and then we can read it together.  

Unless she wants history or some shit. I can get that for her too.  

“Like I said, you need to knock. You can’t just come and go into my private room as you please.” 

I nearly laugh.  

Oh, Yellow Bell… if you’re going to try to put space between us now, you are in for a rude fucking awakening.  

“Yes, I can,” I say bluntly before I drop the trunk to the floor. “Clothes for you.”  

She glances down at it before looking back at me, and there’s surprise in her face. I don’t like the surprise. As if she doesn’t think I’ll take care of her.  

Need to fix that belief real fucking fast.  

“Thanks, but no, you really can’t—”  

Alright, enough. Time to set my woman straight. I’ve given her several hours since she woke up. That’s plenty of time.  

I spin her on the stool until she’s facing me. She sucks in a breath as I lean in front of her, and I love how her eyes widen. How they drop down to my lips and her breathing gets faster. “You were almost dead, Yellow Bell,” I tell her. “Hours ago, I was fucking saying goodbye to you.” 

She pauses, breath getting stuck in her throat with the weight of my words. I want her to feel that weight, because I sure as shit won’t ever stop carrying it, and I don’t want to.  

I want to always remember how damn lucky I am to be given a second chance. I won’t be wasting it and I won’t let her try to waste it either.  

But her expression changes, and I can see her tossing up her defenses like it’s a stone barrier. I’m an army captain. I can see those blockades from a mile away. I know when I’m walking into a battle.  

“I didn’t die. So you can stop this,” she declares.  

“Stop what exactly?”  

Instead of backing up, she just digs in.  

“I know what this is. You felt guilty. That’s why you were at my bedside night and day. You felt guilty that I was attacked, because you’re the captain of the army and in charge of the security of the castle and I was hurt. But I free you of that burden of guilt. It wasn’t your fault. So you can stop hovering over me. I’m perfectly fine now, thanks to that girl who healed me. You don’t need to worry about me anymore. Consider me out of your messy hair.”  

That’s what she thinks? That I care about her out of guilt?  

Oh, Yellow Bell. So very pretty.  

So very wrong.  

“There were so many fucked up things in that little speech, I don’t even know where to start.”  

She practically flinches. “Excuse me?”  

She’s not excused. Not by a long shot.  

I reach forward and grab her from her stool and start carrying her across the 

room. It feels good to have her in my arms. Feels right.  

“What are you doing?” she screeches.  

I sit down on the sofa, positioning her so she’s on my lap. She stares at me wide-eyed, like a fearful little doe.  

Fucking cute.  

I let myself enjoy the feel of her in my arms and how she doesn’t try to push me away. Then I drop my voice, trying to give her the gentleness she deserves while also telling her how it’s going to be. “I know things are a lot right now,” I begin. “Because we were fighting this thing between us, and then before we could set it straight, you were attacked and nearly died.”  

Died. Fucking hate that word when it’s attached to her.  

“But while you were fighting for your life, unconscious, I was very fucking conscious. I watched every minute of your suffering, but I wasn’t sitting there just for fucking guilt. You want to know what I felt?”  

She holds her breath. “What?”  

I go for complete honesty. “So fucking devastated that I was going to lose you. That I was going to lose you before I could tell you that I love you.” 

This time, I think her heart stops too. “Love?”  

I dip my head, thumbs smoothing over her skin, soaking up every inch of her body pressed against mine. Makes me never want to stop holding her. “Yes, Rissa Bell. I fucking love you.”  

Probably could’ve done without the fuck, but I’m no poet.  

“But… we barely know each other. We’ve barely spent any time together,” she argues. “We can’t even stand each other!”  

I smirk, nearly letting out a chuckle.  

Such a little liar.  

“We like the fire. We each don’t back down to the other, and we like it that way. So don’t lie and try to act like we can’t stand each other, because we both know that’s not true.” 

She blinks, and I know I’ve hit the nail on the head. She has to stop pretending eventually. This defensive wall she’s put up? I’ll climb right the fuck over it.  

“You almost died.” I have to say this again, because clearly, she’s not getting the gravity of the situation. “And I’ll never fucking forget how close it was. Just like I won’t waste any more time now that we’ve gotten a second chance. We can’t fight this anymore, Rissa. I’m claiming you as mine.”  

Her mouth opens and closes repeatedly. She looks at me like I’m crazy.  

I am. For her.  

“Are you out of your mind? You can’t just…claim me!”  

“I just did.”  

Simple.  

She stiffens in my arms. “I am an independent woman. I decide who to be with.”  

I shrug. “You’ll decide to be with me.”  

Her pretty blues narrow. “You cocky son of a bitch.”  

“And yours.” 

“Mine?” She tries to slap at my hands, as if that would make me let go. It doesn’t. “What, you’re mine until we have a real argument one day that actually pisses you off, where you get to storm off as your big captain-of-the-army important self, leaving me here to wait while you go and find a saddle at a brothel house?”  

The fuck? 

“No,” I growl. “I said I’m claiming you, and I mean it. You think I give a fuck if you argue with me? If you piss me off? You think I’d be such a piece of shit to go fuck someone else out of spite?”  

“That’s what men do to their wives. Either after an argument or because they’re suddenly bored of them, or just because they can. I know, because I used to be one of those saddles at a brothel house that they came to. I know exactly what men are like.”  

I know where this is coming from. Considering her past, I fucking get it. But I don’t like it. I don’t like that she doesn’t realize how deep my feelings for her run. I have never chosen a woman, and I never thought I would. But now that I’ve chosen her, that’s it. Done. It will never be anyone else.  

“Those are weak men. You think I’m weak?” I challenge firmly.  

Her voice softens. She suddenly looks so fucking lost. And I don’t want her to feel that way.  

“I don’t know what to think. I woke up and now all of this…”  

I’m being shit at this. I always knew I would be shit at this — the words, the wooing. But I want to be better for her. So I tug her in, tuck her against my chest, and she melts against me. No resistance, no restraint. Just lets me fold her up and hold her close.  

“I know, Yellow Bell,” I say quietly.  

Her whisper comes against my neck. “I’m scared.”  

I think, for her, she’s never admitted something like that before, and my throat closes up, because she’s dropping her barrier. For me.  

I can’t fuck this up.  

“I know that too,” I tell her.  

She starts to cry, and it kills me. Makes me want to take every scared feeling away. I’ll prove to her that she can trust me. Trust this.  

“You can’t love me,” she says, but there’s hope in it. Hope that I can prove her wrong.  

“I can,” I promise her.  

She swallows hard. Making her delicate throat bob. I want to kiss her right there. Kiss her everywhere. Litter her with so much adoration her skin turns pink all over and she realizes how deadly serious I really am.  

“You don’t want me really.”  

“I do.” 

She tries one last time. “You won’t always.”  

“I will.”  

I fucking will.  

With her eyes still shiny, wearing her heart right there on her lashes, she asks, “Are we a mistake?” 

It brings me right back to when we traveled together to Fourth Kingdom. I knew I was going to claim her as soon as she’d let me. A mistake? The gods sure made a mistake by crossing our paths together. Because fuck knows I don’t deserve her. Not a bloody mercenary turned army captain.  

But too fucking bad. She’s mine now.  

“Like I told you before, you’re the best mistake I want to make. Over and over again. For the rest of our lives,” I tell her. And I mean every damn word. “So what do you say?” 

Come on, Rissa Bell. No more waiting. No more fighting it. 

She shocks me by reaching up and gripping my beard. Hard. “Don’t let me down, Osrik. Don’t you dare, ever, make me regret this.”  

My lips flinch at the ferocity of her words. At the fire that I love that’s never doused, no matter how ocean-blue her eyes are.  

“You threatening me, Yellow Bell?”  

Gods, I fucking hope so.  

“I absolutely am,” she replies.  

I reach up and cup her face, drag my thumbs over her pretty pink cheeks. She’s so damned soft. I want to feel every inch of her. With my hands, my lips, my tongue… 

“Good,” I tell her. “Because the two of us? We threaten anything that might try to tear us apart — including each other.”  

I can tell she likes those words, but she stays firm. “You won’t let me down?” 

“Never, Rissa,” I promise. “I will never, ever make you fucking regret this.” 

And never, in my entire fucking life, have I ever meant anything more.