Chapter Three
11:53 p.m. 23rd December
He watched as she walked slowly over to him, her legs endlessly long, her blue eyes wide still pools of azure colour, her delicate pale hands running through her hair as she pulled out the clips and bobby pins she had used in her hairstyle. She was utterly beautiful. He loved her in the way that he had never loved before, and knew that, whatever happened, the passion he felt for her would never be felt for anyone else.
"What's wrong?" she sat on the Victorian four poster bed next to him, unashamed of her own sensual locks trailing over his bare chest.
He shifted his dark gaze to meet her eyes, her lovely blue eyes, and let out a low growl of an emotion that was neither desire or pain, but something in between. "I don't deserve you." The words were not so much spoken as communed from his heart to hers without the usually necessity of sound.
"That doesn't mean you shouldn't have me," she smiled and traced the line of his jaw with one slender finger. "I've never met a man yet who deserves the woman he is with."
He dropped his eyes and sighed. "I want you to have the world, to have a god at your side, to have everything that you could ever want, and all I can offer you is my body, my soul and my heart…"
"I have all that I could ever want here, with you," her smile became tinged with sadness. "You don't understand, do you?"
It was his turn to touch his love's face, and he held her chin in strong brown fingers, willing her to let him in. "Understand what?"
"No matter how much we love each other, it's never going to be enough." A tear, a crystal drop from heaven to Shawn, fell down her cheek and trickled across his hand.
He kissed the next one away before it reached his hand, feeling the thunderbolt of love pass between them with a whisper of regret. "Why won't it be enough?"
"Because this isn't a life, it isn't even a day of sunshine, it's two lonely people reaching out one cold night, and that isn't enough. It can't be." She tried to pull away, but she was the prisoner of his eyes, unable to leave the emotion she saw in them.
Shawn smiled, his grin spreading slowly across his face and brightening the darkness of his eyes. "Let's make it a life. Marry me."
She didn't reply, just stared at him as if he was crazy. "We can't get married…"
His grin widened. "Why not?"
"Because…" she trailed off. There was no real reply to that. They were both single people, or would be if Shawn broke off his engagement to the girl in Salem, and she knew that, if she lived for a thousand years, she would never find another love like theirs. The world held nothing for her without him in it, and her own arguments against their love fell into ridicule when she realised her own passion would never permit her to let him leave her. Her own refusal to accept the emotion that burned within her for him, and him alone, would destroy her if she did not refute what she herself had said and take him in her arms to love and cherish forever.
Shawn saw the indecision waver in her eyes, and knelt down at her feet. He raised his fingers to his ear and unhooked the loop that hung there. Holding it before her, he offered her more than a glinting piece of gold, he offered her a love that would never die. "I love you the way I never imagined I would ever love anyone. You are my moon, stars, sun, heart, soul, dreams and angel incarnate. If you leave me, I will never know what is it is to be happy again. You won't just take my sunshine with you, you will take my will to live. I wouldn't care if the world fell down around me, as long as you were by my side. I can't promise you that we will only have good times, I can't promise you that I will never leave your side, and I can't promise you that you will never regret this, but I can promise you this: For as long as I am alive in this world, I will love you, and even once I die, you had better prepare to be haunted because I am never going to let you go. Say yes, and you will have everything I can give you, and you will make me the happiest man on earth. Please. Let me be your husband."
Her blue eyes were full of tears, and she didn't speak a word.
"Please, say something," Shawn's voice was cracking with his heart. "Anything."
She still didn't say a word. Instead, she threw her arms around his neck, knocking him over backwards, and kissed him as she had never kissed anyone before. The lightning love of theirs super novaed into a red giant, and the stars fell from the sky to enter their hearts and light them with a love that could never fade or die.
"Tonight." It was the first word she had said since he had proposed, and it was a choked low sound of passion and need.
It was his turn to be confused. "What?"
She smiled at him softly, her eyes brighter than sapphires and more lovely than the wings of an angel. "Marry me tonight."
He picked her up slowly off the floor, and with the tenderness known only to lovers, wrapped her in her warm winter coat and grey cashmere scarf. He even tied her shoes for her, lacing them so gently that she barely knew they were done, losing herself in the pleasure of being close to him. His fingers found her buttons and rubbed her hands warm as well as giving her tiny lover's kisses of pleasure wherever he touched her, and whether he intended to or not, he gave her an ecstasy of loving she had never known before, intoxicating her mind as well as her body.
She tried, in her turn, to dress him but found her hands shaking so badly that it was impossible. He kissed her palms and sent her downstairs to check out, searching for his shirt and jacket and pulling them on before following her down with all their bags and his new tuxedo under one arm.
"Going somewhere nice?" The man on the front desk was perhaps sixty, his hair a mane of white and his cheeks covered by a soft down of beard, and he smiled at the pair, knowing what he saw that night was extraordinary, but was unable to feel such a selfish passion as envy in the face of such unselfish love.
"Las Vegas," Shawn answered with a smile brighter than a thousand light bulbs.
"We're getting married," she confided softly, her hand finding his as he signed them out and returned the key to their room.
The man smiled, and his blue eyes twinkled in the soft light, reminding her of the Santa Claus that her childhood perception had always created. He seemed a good spirit, a kind elf bestowing magic upon them. "Good luck, but I don't think you'll need it."
Shawn offered him the money for the room, but he shook his head. "Forget it. Think of it as a wedding present. Fare well."
Shawn and his bride to be smiled at each other, seeing the adoration in the other's eyes, and knowing that a lifetime of love lay before them.
Holding hands, they left the hotel and returned to her car.
"Ingrid," Shawn suddenly muttered.
"Who?" For a moment, her face darkened with the first pang of jealousy she had ever felt, and her voice echoed it.
"My car, Ingrid," Shawn grinned down at her, seeing that she was so in love with him that she couldn't even bear him to speak another woman's name. "She's still sitting on the side of the road in the snow."
Her jealousy faded immediately. "We can have her picked up tomorrow."
He fell a little deeper in liking with her, for his love was so deep that it had become unfathomable. She had not only called his car 'her', but had also referred to them being together tomorrow when she had said 'we'. His heart fluttered in his chest as he unlocked and opened her car door for her.
She gave him one of her own megawatt smiles. "Thank you…"
"What for?" his grin faltered slightly.
Her smile became even brighter. "Everything."
"I love you." He told her, not knowing his eyes had proclaimed the truth for longer than he had known it himself.
"I love you too." Suddenly, holding in a giggle of delight, she became almost flippant. "Now shut up, get in the car, and let's go get married!"
Laughing, he followed her instructions, and they did not stop holding hands all the way to the airport, as he 'helped' her change gear, nor on the way to Vegas as she gripped on to him as her fear of flying kicked in. As the plane rose into the air, though, she realised that she was no longer afraid, for as long as he was with her, she was invincible and nothing could harm them.
So it was, twenty-four hours from Salem, that two lonely people found the greatest love they would ever feel, and forgot the rest of the world, even if it did not forget them…