And so I knew this day was coming, the day when Simon and Dean, the boy whom Simon and I had welcomed into our family, would butt heads
Not because he doesn’t like Dean or anything like that.
But because Simon will have trouble letting go of the second love of his life, his daughter.
That’s exactly what’s happening, and I should probably tell him that.
Or my husband will agonize over it for days on end; it still takes time for him to understand things that involve emotions, especially his.
My Ice King.
It’s almost midnight. Brendan is fast asleep but I know Fallon is up even though the light in her room is switched out.
It was a tense dinner after Dean abruptly left. I wanted to talk to Simon then and there, but I knew he needed some time to put whatever happened in his study with Dean behind him. And Fallon needed to calm down as well.
So I waited for him to come upstairs to our bedroom but he never did.
That’s his thing too. Sometimes he shuts down and disappears into his work if he can’t process what’s happening around him, and I have to pull him out.
Tonight is one of those nights, I think, and I knock at his office door.
“Come in.”
His deep masculine voice reaches through the thick brown door and strangely, tonight it reminds me of our days at Heartstone, the time in my life when everything was so bleak and hard.
When I was eighteen, I tried to kill myself by jumping off a roof. Then I tried to lie about it because this thing inside of me, my illness—depression—made me feel weak. And I didn’t want to feel weak. So I lied and made up stories about the fall until everyone around me thought I should be sent to a psychiatric hospital.
And then, I found him.
The man with gray eyes and a stoic but stunning face, who looked like a king and reminded me of my favorite thing: rain.
He made me realize that I’m a warrior. My illness isn’t my weakness. My illness is what makes me strong. The fact that I get out of bed every morning even when I don’t want to. The fact that I’m living even when some days I don’t feel like it.
He made me realize that my fall from that roof isn’t something to be ashamed of. And in turn, he made me fall for him.
It wasn’t an easy road for us. He was my psychiatrist and I was his patient. There was a stigma, people’s judgement, Simon’s own moral conflict and issues. But we made it and here we are now twenty years later with a family and a castle-like home.
I open the door and step in.
He’s sitting behind his desk in his big monstrosity of a leather chair that I told him I hated the day he bought it some eight years ago.
This is insane, Simon. It looks like it came from the eighties.
You see the room in it, he said and pointed to the broad seat, his voice low and rough, his eyes hooded. You’ll be the one thanking me for it when you ride my cock on it later.
Well, I hate to say it but I did thank him for it. I’ve thanked him countless times since. So maybe I don’t hate this chair so much but it still is a throwback to the eighties.
“Hey,” I greet him as I close and lock the door behind me.
He gazes at me for a few silent seconds, his eyes so beautiful behind his thick glasses.
“Hey,” he says finally, and it’s evident in his splintered and thready voice that he’s struggling.
Not that anyone will be able to tell.
Nope, with him no one can tell anything except me.
He has a good poker face. He always did. Broad jaw, high cheekbones, a smooth forehead that might be slightly marred with lines of age but nothing too crazy.
And he’s sitting in his chair with his muscular shoulders straight and his fingers steepled like the king he is.
Only I know that besides being a cold and icy king, he’s also a man. A man with vulnerabilities and cracks in his polished façade like the rest of us.
I keep walking over to him, to my king, his office a reflection of the man he is: strong wood and polished leather.
And he keeps watching me from behind his desk.
“Do you remember when I used to come into your office?” I ask him softly, my feet quiet on the hardwood floor even though everything inside of me is buzzing like it always does when we stare at each other. “Back at Heartstone?”
I’m up to the other side of his desk now, my thighs pressing into the edge of it.
For some insane reason, I was going to stop there, stop at his giant desk covered in his books and papers.
But he pushes his chair back slightly and turns it to make room for me, silently inviting me closer, and of course, I go.
I round the desk under his intense stare and approach him, approach his sprawled thighs that appear so freaking powerful and muscular even through his pants.
As soon as I’m within touching distance, Simon unwinds his fingers and reaches out an arm, grabbing my wrist. He pulls me forward and a second later, I’m sitting on his lap with my side pressing into his chest that’s only grown harder over the years and his arm that makes a tight band around my waist.
“I do, yeah,” he replies to my earlier question. “I’d watch the time constantly. Send people away, end meetings abruptly if they ran over.”
“You were obsessed with me,” I tease.
“I was.”
Chuckling, I circle my arms around his neck and toy with his thick dark hair. Well, dark sprinkled with silver that somehow makes him look even more royal and handsome.
A king ruling over his kingdom for years. Ruling over his Snow Princess, or rather his Queen now, for years too.
“I used to sit in your lap there as well,” I whisper over his shadowed jaw.
His arm flexes around me. “You still sit in my lap.”
I kiss the corner of his mouth. “Even after twenty years.”
His other hand creeps up and into my loose silver hair. He tilts my head back slightly and kisses the corner of my mouth in answer to mine. “You’ll sit in my lap after another twenty too.”
My chest fills up with pounding heartbeats.
I don’t know how he can do this to me even after two decades of being together, but he does. In fact, he does it even more now.
With every year that passes, with every new thing that I discover about him, I fall for him even more. I think it’s endless and bottomless, this falling for him.
Rubbing my nose with his, I whisper, “You know, you aren’t half bad in the romance department if you apply yourself.”
One side of his mouth tugs up and I run my finger over the lines, the tracks of his smile. “I’ve learned from the best.”
“Have you?”
“Yes.” He eyes lower to my nightgown. “From my Snow Princess.”
I have his favorite nightgown on, a white, frilly thing that he likes. He tells me I look exactly like a snow princess in it, his Snow Princess.
And then, I have to kiss him when he’s being so sweet, my Ice King.
My husband is wonderful all the time but when he’s actually using his own words to express himself, there’s no stopping the hot rush in my blood.