Happily Ever After: (A Cinder & Ella Novel)

by Kelly Oram

  Ella stared down at our joined hands and threaded our fingers together. “If I can’t show you all of me, then I’m not really trusting you all the way, even if I thought I was. But maybe…” She paused a moment, hesitating as if she once again couldn’t figure out how best to put her feelings into words.

  I waited some more. It was all I could do. Finally, I was rewarded with those big blue eyes, shiny from a layer of moisture, staring at me as if permitting me entrance to Ella’s soul. “If I could just give you my complete trust and let you love my flaws for me, I might be able to finally see that they aren’t so bad.”

  The breath left my lungs. She was finally getting it. I’d been trying to tell her this for months. I owed Ellie and Seth big time, because I would have never been able to get through to Ella the way they did with one quick conversation. But whatever she realized tonight, it was finally sinking in like it should have back when we first met.

  “Watching Seth tonight with Ellie, and seeing her respond to him. And just seeing her so…proud of herself—I want that.” Ella’s expression changed, filling with determination and turning fierce. “I did survive hell. I’ve worked so hard to get to where I am now, and Ellie was right; if I woke up tomorrow completely healed with no physical reminders of everything I’ve been through, part of me would be sad about that.”

  I reached up and tucked a lock of her hair that was shielding her beautiful eyes from me behind her ear, offering her the smallest, sincerest smile. “I would be devastated by that.”

  She looked surprised, but it was the honest truth. She wouldn’t be my Ella any other way than she is now.

  She sucked in another deep breath and then nodded, as if accepting the truth of my feelings. Then she pulled herself to her feet and turned to face me. “I trust you, Brian,” she murmured, reaching for the belt holding her robe closed. “I trust you to love the things about me that I don’t.”

  She took one last deep breath and held it as she pulled the tie loose and let her robe fall to the floor.

  I trembled as I pulled myself to my feet. I needed to do this. I didn’t feel ready, but I was beginning to think I’d never feel ready, and I was tired of being afraid. I was sick of not being with the man I loved because I was too scared to let it happen. I wanted Brian. I wanted to be with him in every way. I wanted the physical relationship that went along with two people being as in love with each other as we were. Sure, I was a bit of a prude, but Brian was Brian, and if I hadn’t had the physical issues I did, I wouldn’t have lasted three days against the temptations he presented.

  Brian sat patiently, unmoving and quiet, making sure I had 100 percent control of this situation. It was the perfect reaction. I couldn’t do this any other way.

  Looking at him now, his eyes were on mine and filled with nothing but love and encouragement. That surprised me. I’d expected shock, anticipation, excitement, lust, or even some of the nervousness I felt, but none of that was there. It was as if he wasn’t thinking about the fact that he’d see me almost naked in a moment or that he was going to see the full extent of my damage. His thoughts were on me, not my body—how hard this was for me and what a huge step I was taking.

  He was supporting me, not thinking about anything else. The look of pride and unconditional love in his eyes was the only reason I was able to pull on the tie that was holding my robe shut. “I trust you, Brian.” The words were whispered because I was terrified, but they were fervent. I did trust him. “I trust you to love the things about me that I don’t.”

  I wanted to close my eyes or look away as I tugged off my robe. Fear made me not want to see his face as he took in the sight of me. But I needed to watch his reaction. Brian openly wore his emotions on his face. His feelings would be there for me to see, and that was the whole point of this—for me to see that he wasn’t sickened by my appearance. He wasn’t going to flinch, or shy away, or curl his lips in disgust. He wasn’t.

  As I maneuvered the soft material off my shoulders and let it fall to the floor, I forced myself to hold Brian’s gaze, but I stopped breathing and shook like a leaf. I hadn’t been this terrified since my accident. “This is me. What’s left, anyway,” I whispered, holding out my free hand as the other leaned on my cane for dear life. I was so scared I felt like I was going to pass out at any moment. Candy Cane was the only thing keeping me on my feet.

  Brian’s gaze held mine for a second before he let it drop, and then he simply looked. He wasn’t overcome with lust. He didn’t make some romantic comment about how beautiful I was. He just…took in the sight of me. It was almost a clinical assessment of my injuries. I didn’t take it personally. It was a lot to process.

  I didn’t have a normal body with some pale, discolored splotches hinting at a past injury. It was so much worse than most people could imagine. I was covered in angry, bumpy scars and skin grafts that tugged together unevenly, making my skin look as if it had been unnaturally stretched over my body. (Which it had been.) It wasn’t pretty; it was shocking and horrific. I looked like a Barbie doll that had been held over an open flame and melted. I was literally deformed in places.

  I didn’t realize that Brian wasn’t breathing until he gasped for air and let it out in a quick puff as if he still needed to take another breath. When he met my gaze again, his eyes were shiny with unshed tears.

  He completely startled me when he suddenly pushed to his feet and grabbed me in a passionate kiss. He cupped my face in his hands and claimed my mouth as if his life depended on it.

  The kiss was all emotion. It was the same reaction he’d had when we were sitting in that restaurant at FantasyCon and I’d first told him about my injuries. He was overwhelmed and reacting to the violent assault of feelings that had blindsided him.

  “Ellamara,” he whispered gruffly as he tried to calm himself. He brushed his lips against mine and corded his hands into my hair. “Ella…”

  He wasn’t the first to be overwhelmed by my scars. Jennifer had been so startled she’d dropped a glass of lemonade on the floor and burst into tears. She’d literally run from the room because she couldn’t deal with it. Juliette had bawled, and Ana had turned white as a ghost and avoided being in the same room as me for over two weeks.

  Seeing me all at once was not a casual thing. The first time people saw the full extent of my injuries was the first time they really understood the nightmare I’d lived through. And it was when people decided that my insecurities, as deep as they were, were justified. That realization must have hit Brian harder than it would anyone else. He loved me so much that my pain and suffering became his as well.

  He kissed me again, this time a little more tenderly, but still completely in an unconscious reaction to his emotions. He urged my lips to part, needing a deeper connection. When I let him in, he kissed me so deeply and intensely that I could taste his sorrow, his fear, and his desperate need to prove to me how much he cared for me. It was as if he were trying to heal me with his kiss, or, at the very least, erase all of the anguish I’d endured since my accident. He was feeling that anguish now, firsthand.

  I let him kiss me as much as he wanted. Not that I minded, of course—Brian could kiss me whenever he felt like it, and I would welcome and cherish it—but this particular kiss was different. Brian needed this kiss, so I held still and let him take it. I kissed him back, letting him know his advance was welcome, but I let him stay in complete control. It was his turn. He’d waited patiently for me to get through my speech and work up the courage to share myself with him. Now I needed to be the calm and collected one, while he tried to make sense of the devastation coursing through him.

  “I’m sorry, Ella,” he whispered in a shaky voice once he was finally able to break our kiss. His hands still held my face, and he leaned his forehead against mine, eyes closed as he tried to calm down and regain his composure. “I almost lost you,” he muttered. “I always knew that, but…”

  With a slow shake of his head, he took a deep breath, and his entire body shuddered.
He pressed another small kiss to my lips. “Thank you for surviving,” he murmured. “Thank you for fighting so hard and for not giving up, and for finding your way to me.”

  My eyes fell shut, a few tears leaking from the corners. “Thank you for giving me something to fight for.”

  When I sniffled, Brian finally released me. He wiped the tears from my face, either ignoring or not realizing that he had trails of wetness down his own cheeks. “I’m sorry,” he said again. “I told myself I wasn’t going to overreact, but I just…all of a sudden I pictured you in that hospital and realized I came so close to never having you in my life. Thought of having never met you…” He shut his eyes against the words, as if they brought him physical pain. “Having to live my whole life never knowing what happened to you. Never having the chance to see your smile in person, or hold you in my arms, or kiss you. I can’t imagine a life without you.”

  Swallowing back another lump of emotion, I shook my head. “I can’t imagine life without you, either.” I wrapped my arms around his neck and stole a small kiss of my own, smiling for the first time since we’d entered my bedroom. “Thank you for loving me so much.”

  “You’re welcome.” The atmosphere in the room shifted suddenly as a playful grin crept across Brian’s face. “And thank you for not going with the blue or the pink. This is much better.”

  My eyes nearly bugged out of my head, which of course made Brian laugh. His gaze dropped to my chest. With a wicked smile that spiked my pulse, he removed my hands from around his neck and stepped back so that he could take another look at me.

  My face flamed as the fact that I was standing in my underwear suddenly became about my nakedness and not my scars. This time when Brian’s gaze raked over my body, I saw the heat and the hunger that he’d been suppressing this whole time.

  I swallowed hard and tried to stand proud in the simple lacy matching underwear I’d put on. It’d caught my eye because it was the same canary yellow as my mama’s dress, but I liked it because it was understated compared to most of the stuff I’d received from Lindon’s. It was sexy without being overly sexed up. It was actually more on the playful side, if anything, and it seemed to be having that exact effect on Brian now that he’d recovered from the initial shock of seeing my scars. “Yellow is definitely my favorite color,” he said, unable to take his eyes away from my body.

  I choked out a surprised laugh. “Shut up. It is not. It’s midnight blue, like the custom paint job you had done on Precious.”

  Brain shook his head, eyes still trained well below my face. “Nope. It’s yellow. Has been since the night of The Druid Prince premiere.” He wet his lips and swallowed audibly. “This confirms it. I’m a yellow guy.”

  Finally, he pulled his heated gaze back to mine. It made my heart race so fast I wasn’t sure I wouldn’t rather him stay enthralled with my boobs. He stepped close again and lifted my arms back around his neck. “You are beautiful, Ellamara. The most beautiful woman I have ever seen.”

  I laughed without thinking. “Are you sure? That’s quite a bold declaration, considering you’ve seen a billion women.”

  Brian’s eyes flashed at the quip, and he scooped me into his arms with a playful growl. “That’s it,” he said as I yelped in surprise. “You are going to learn to take a compliment, woman.”

  He walked me around the side of the bed and laid me down on it. I have no doubt he’d have dumped me on it, if I weren’t breakable.

  My breath hitched when he ripped his shirt over his head, dropped his pants to the floor, and then climbed on top of me, straddling my thighs and hovering above me on his hands and knees. He stared down at me with heat blazing from his eyes. His chest heaved with desire. “I am going to kiss every inch of your body until you no longer laugh when I tell you that you are the most beautiful woman on Earth,” he said.

  Holy crap!

  I’d unleashed a beast. A feral, hungry, determined animal. He’d skipped his audiobook book voice and wandered into alpha werewolf territory. It was low, rough, and promised both danger and pleasure. The threat—and it was a threat—sent a shiver through me, spiking my pulse and heating me from the inside out.

  “I’ll remember what you said,” he told me. “We won’t go any further than this. I promise. What’s covered now will stay off-limits.” He grabbed both of my hands and held them against the pillow above my head, weaving his fingers in mine. “But I want to taste every inch of you that isn’t.”

  My lungs seized up. I was overcome with the feeling that I was captured prey, but my nerves took a backseat to the intense desire that swept through me. Fear turned to excitement and then quickly to need. He was terrifying and mesmerizing like this, and so help me I wanted him to devour me.

  Whatever he read in my expression pleased him. He smirked both knowingly and hungrily, then slowly lowered his mouth to mine. After a torturously delicate kiss, he moved his lips to my ear. “Give me permission, Ella.”

  I sucked in another breath and shivered again. When I nodded, he growled. “Not good enough. I need you to tell me, Ella. I want to hear it.”

  So direct. So demanding. And yet I didn’t feel pressured at all. He was being his dominant self, but he was making sure that this was what I wanted. Heaven save me if he ever figured out exactly how much I wanted it. “Okay,” I rasped.

  “Okay what?”

  “You have my permission.”

  Brian pulled back and looked into my eyes again. “I have your permission for what? What would you like me to do, Ella?”

  He wanted me to say it. He liked the talk. Did he know how hard that was for a shy woman? How scary and embarrassing? But I couldn’t deny his forwardness was a turn on, and I couldn’t blame him for wanting to know exactly what he was and wasn’t allowed to do with me. He didn’t want to cross any lines accidentally. I was grateful to him for that, so if he needed vocal confirmation, as uncomfortable as it was, I would give it. I met his waiting gaze, took a deep breath, and with as much confidence as I could muster, said, “I want you to explore me, Brian.”

  His eyes flashed again, and he sucked in a sharp breath through his nose. I thrilled at the thought that I’d made him respond that way, and it made me bold. “I want you to kiss me and touch me everywhere. I want you to get to know my body as well as you know me, so that I’ll never fear you again.” My voice cracked, and I quietly added, “Help me accept this, Brian. Make me feel beautiful and desired. Please.”

  The sizzling lust that had been driving Brian faded at my request. He smiled tenderly as he brushed my hair away from my forehead. “You have nothing to fear from me,” he said softly, claiming my lips with his. “And you are going to accept the truth because you are beautiful and so damn desirable. Ellamara, you are perfect.”

  His mouth quickly found my jaw, and he began trailing light kisses down my neck. “You’re perfect here,” he murmured when his mouth met the base of my throat.

  Instead of moving his lips lower to the cleavage my tiny yellow bra put proudly on display, he swept his mouth along my collarbone until he found my shoulder—the same damaged one he’d kissed earlier. “You’re perfect here,” he murmured as he pressed his lips to the scarred skin.

  My eyes fluttered shut as I soaked in the tenderness of his kisses. Each one made my heart ache in the sweetest way, as if Brian was repairing all the invisible cracks and tears in it one at a time.

  He shuffled above me, and then I gasped when his lips swept over my stomach, searching for their next spot to kiss. He placed his hands on my hips, dropped his lips to my stomach just above my navel, and pressed down firmly. “You are definitely perfect here.”

  My eyes burned as I enjoyed the sensation. My stomach had taken severe burn damage and was a complete mess. To have Brian’s mouth there, caressing me as if I were precious, stole my breath from me.

  Tears leaked from the corners of my eyes as I lay there, completely at his mercy, and allowed him to become intimate with the worst parts of my body. They were tears
of love, gratitude, joy, and relief.

  Since my accident, I’d given up on the possibility of ever having a moment like this. I didn’t think anyone would ever be able to accept me for what I am and love me despite my flaws. Yet, here Brian was, and he wasn’t just doing this to humor me or make me feel better. He wanted this. Wanted me. In fact, from the way he’d become so tense, I knew he was struggling not to take this even further, to places I wasn’t ready to go. To him, I really was beautiful and desirable. To him, I was as perfect as he was to me. It seemed like a miracle.

  He continued his heavenly torture, kissing scar after scar, until a sob burst my chest and I began to cry in earnest. It was all just so overwhelming. It was so beautiful, and so much more than I ever thought I’d be able to have. It was the best moment of my life.

  Brian understood my tears, and instead of asking if I was all right, he climbed off of me and pulled the covers back on my bed. We crawled in together, and he held me against him, constantly running his fingertips over my bare back while I had a good cry in his arms. Once I started to settle down, he kissed the side of my head and said, “That’s enough for tonight. Sleep now, my beautiful Ellamara.”

  The line was so something out of a melodramatic movie, but I didn’t laugh this time. I smiled to myself, secretly grateful that he constantly spouted cheesy romantic nonsense. He was an actor. Movie dialogue was what he knew. And I loved that about him.

  Resisting the urge to tease him, I sniffed away the last of my tears and settled against his chest with a sigh of contentment. He continued to graze my skin with his fingertips, lulling me into a state of blissful relaxation. I never wanted to move from this spot ever again. Never wanted to leave the security of his arms. Never wanted to spend another night alone in this bed. Already drifting into a sleepy daze, I realized something and muttered a drowsy curse. “Darn, you were right. I should have just let you buy us a new house.”