A/N: I've had this chapter written for almost a week but, despite trying every single day, today was the first time I was able to read through the whole thing without interruption! Kids…gotta love em!

Oh, and thank you so much to everyone who's been kind enough to leave a review! I heart you all BIG TIME!

9.

Cedric's wand dropped to the floor with a clatter as Sofia devoured his lips with ravenous kisses and desperate bites, teasing her tongue along the seam, begging him to let her in. Instead she was left to want when his hands clamped around her arms, pushing her away.

Her head tilted back, eyes opening to see consternation written all over his features.

"Wh… what are you do…doing?" He stumbled over his words as though the concept of language had suddenly become foreign to him. "I thought…What about your young…."

He stopped trying to speak when she laid her palms against his chest, feeling the warm smoothness of his skin, the play of muscle over the bones beneath. Marveling at the construction of him, so thrillingly different from anyone else.

Her eyes wanted to close against the onslaught of desire. Instead she stared straight into the vortex of emotions playing behind his.

"There is no young man." Her voice was soft.

"What?" He gapped at her as though she'd grown a second head.

"There is no other man." Her voice was stronger this time.

"But…Freddie, he…he said…."

"There's only you."

His grip on her loosened, and though he continued to stare, Sofia could tell he wasn't really seeing her anymore. Cedric was lost inside himself, as she'd been earlier.

"That's…that's not possible." He resisted it, letting go of one of her arms to rake a hand through his hair, sending it spiking in odd directions.

Seizing the moment, Sofia cupped his cheek, bringing him back to her.

"Cedric, you're the man who makes my whole being tremble."

His gaze bored into hers, forceful and intense, searing away her layers, trying to see the truth beneath her surface.

"I only ever wanted you. I love only you!" She watched as everything he thought he knew fell away before this new truth, his expression slowly morphing into one of pure astonishment.

She would have said more, but she could only manage a quick breath before he hauled her back against him.

Arms snaked around her back, fingers digging into her shoulder blades as he crushed their mouths together once more.

Sofia's hands moved to his shoulders, around his back, one returning to his hair, refusing to let him part from her again. The other slipped down, nails raking over his spine.

This time when he felt her tongue against his lips, he didn't resist. His mouth opened to her on a whimper, his tongue meeting hers, letting them slide against each other, allowing her inside before chasing her back to claim a taste of his own.

"Say it again," he whispered raggedly as he nipped at her bottom lip.

"I love you, only you." She whispered back, feeling roaming hands wander down to grasp her bottom.

He began gathering her nightgown, bunching the hem hastily, a shudder running through him as he slipped beneath the thin layer to find nothing underneath but soft, yielding flesh.

Her breath hitched as he began to draw patterns over her skin, touching her everywhere those hands could reach. They swept up her back and dragged back down, skated over her sides to trace her ribs, brushed the swells of her breasts, molded themselves to the curves of her hips, before returning to her bottom to slip into the cleft, their tips brushing the curls that hid her sex.

Sofia couldn't remember ever being so aroused by so little, but she was already trembling, needing desperately to return his caresses before they simply burned her up.

Her forehead fell forward and she began pressing hungry kisses to Cedric's chest, tracing the outlines of the astrological symbols etched there in dark ink. She'd seen them before, once, under very different circumstances, and they'd haunted her fantasies ever since.

Letting her tongue dart out, she tasted them, dragging a wet path along their contours, letting them bring her to his nipple so she could outline the tiny, dark circle with her tongue.

"Sofia!" Her name sounded as though it had been ripped from him.

"Cedric," she answered, just before she felt his fingers open her.

She clung to him as he began to delve inside her. And then words were beyond her, so she encouraged him by wrapping her lips around his nipple and sucking greedily.

He bucked against her, and of its own will, one of her hands came round, teasing its way down his chest and into his pants.

He was searingly hot and steel hard as she wrapped her fingers around him. Sofia's eyes closed as she worked her fist up and down his length, imagining how good it would feel when she finally took him inside her.

The minutes passed as they rocked against each other, clinging together, letting the pleasure escalate. Cedric seemed lost to it, but Sofia had dreamed of this moment for too long to let it end so soon. With a last caress she let him slip from her hand and pulled away.

Cedric's eye flew open, uncertainty clouding their depths, only to melt away when she gathered her gown and pulled it over her head, carelessly tossing the expensive silk to the floor.

At first she watched with excitement as his gaze slid over her. His eyes moving over the places he'd just touched with such intensity it made her feel as though he were touching them all over again. But eventually insecurity began to take hold as the minutes passed and he just stood there, continuing to stare.

She knew others had considered her pleasing, had found her body desirable, but none of them were him, none of them had mattered. What if he'd been imagining her as the maid she'd been all those years ago instead of the woman she was now? What if he was disappointed with the changes time had wrought?

Sofia swallowed hard, screwing her courage.

"Say something." Her voice sounded pleading even to her own ears.

Another beat passed in silent stillness and then Cedric fell to his knees, tilting his head to stare up at her, eyes wide with awe and hunger.

"I don't have words," he whispered, "you're so beautiful!"

A smile lit her face, relief, and happiness, and such desperate need swirling inside her.

"Those are pretty good," she laughed softly.

She gripped his shoulders, lifting him back to his feet, and as she did, he pulled her against him again, but more gently this time. When his mouth touched hers, there was an air of veneration to his kiss, and Sofia melted into it, kissing him back with the same reverence.

"I love you," he declared fervently as his lips traveled to her jaw and down the column of her neck. "I've always loved you!"

A sob escaped her, something like joy at hearing the words she'd always longed for, but also like anguish for all the time they'd wasted.

"I know now," She clutched at him desperately, "I know that now."

"Let me show you," he begged, his tongue dipping into the hollow of her throat. "Let me love you, please you, worship you."

This time she was the one left without words and so Sofia nodded, letting the squeeze of her fingers attest to her eagerness.

She was puzzled when he began to move her backwards, but went willingly until she felt one of the posts of the bed against her back.

Cedric leaned her against it, letting his eyes sweep over her one more time before burying his head back into her neck, grazing his teeth along the column.

Sofia's hands left his body, gripping the wood behind her, giving him freedom to do with her body as he pleased.

He grasped her hips tightly, holding her still, or holding her up, she wasn't truly sure, as his mouth moved lower.

"So beautiful," he breathed just a beat before he began showering her breasts with openmouthed kisses.

She moaned as she felt his long nose nuzzle a nipple.

Then it was between his teeth, being worked mercilessly as she began to writhe, trapped so willingly between him and the bed.

He lavished her breasts with single minded adoration for what felt like hours, stirring her into a frenzy.

"Please, please," she didn't know when she'd started chanting the word, begging him shamelessly, but she knew when it stopped. When he went to his knees again and gently pressed her to turn around.

Sofia obeyed, turning to rest her flushed cheek on the cool wood, holding fast to it with a white knuckled grip as she felt him adjust her, pushing lightly on her lower back until her bottom jutted out, then running his fingers in teasing tickles down her thighs till she parted them.

His breath ghosted warm over her damp curls, palms skating back up her thighs until he was cupping the cheeks of her bottom, spreading them wide.

His name tore from her mouth as she felt his tongue sweep from her entrance up to her now tender, bud, and back again.

"Yes!" She breathed, as he did it again and then again.

He squeezed her ass on each pass and it took only an embarrassingly short while to have her bucking against his face, riding his tongue as he learned her most secret places.

"Your fingers," her voice was raspy, as though she were dying of thirst, "please, Cedric, I need them." She begged.

He said nothing, but she felt his mouth turn up into a smile. And then they were there, circling her entrance as he latched onto her clit, beginning to suck in earnest. A move of her hips and they were in her, pumping wetly in and out.

Turning her head to cool her other cheek, Sofia caught sight of them in the huge mirror across the room. She was stunned to see how her fantasies paled in comparison to reality. The sight of him on his knees, face moving against her as he delighted in her taste. The sight of herself, all but bent over, arms stretched taught above her head, face pressed to the bedpost.

She watched, entranced, as she reached behind her, gripping the back of his head as her whole body began to rock back and forth, her breasts swaying to the rhythm. The images melded with the decadent sensation of his touches and brought her to her breaking point.

Stars began to burst on the edges of her vision. Her other senses blinked in and out. Sofia thought she called out, but she didn't know because she was falling, her release washing over her in intense, nearly unbearable waves.

It wasn't until she felt Cedric pull her back against him that she realized the whole world hadn't exploded in a burst of bright, blinding light.

"Sofia." He was kissing her neck softly, his hands rubbing up and down her arms.

"I love you. I love you, I love you, I love you." She sobbed over and over again.

Her head lulled onto his shoulder as he held her fast, and she looked up at him with wide, pleasure drunk eyes.

His hair was a mess, his eyes hooded, his mouth and chin wet from her. The sight sent desire rushing through her anew, and she turned with renewed energy to grasp his arms, guiding him to the side of the bed.

She tipped her face up to his, asking permission with a single look, before hooking her fingers into the waist of his pants and pushing them down.

They puddled at his feet and he kicked them away, standing still again, letting her see all of him for the very first time.

But where she had been unsure of his thoughts, he seemed to want to pre-empt hers.

"It's nothing special, I know…."

His steadfast belief in his own inadequacy never failed to prick her.

If only she could make him see himself the way she did. The years had only made him more in her eyes, not less, more powerful, more honorable, more striking, and most especially more enticing.

"Do you know how many times I've dreamed of this?" She asked moving closer, running her hands all over him.

"I never believed you could dream of me at all." The sadness of his words made her heart constrict all the more.

"I did, I do, all the time. And you've put them to shame." She breathed the last against his lips before sealing her mouth over his.

He clutched at her but she wouldn't let him hold her for long. Instead she began to slip down his body, tracing her lips over his chest again, licking the line that ran down the center of his stomach, nipping at the trail of hair that led to his groin, smiling against his skin when her touch raised prickles.

And then she reached out, grasping his hard cock and bringing it to her lips.

She looked up, capturing his gaze as she laid a gentle kiss to his tip, painting her lips with the leaking drops of his essence before darting her tongue out to taste him.

His chest rumbled with a deep groan and his hands came up, sweeping back her hair.

"I've never wanted anyone or anything more." She whispered.

And then she took him in her mouth.

It was Sofia's turn to moan as she felt the velvety soft skin over the hardness beneath. He tasted sweet and forbidden like everything denied to her all these years, and it sent tendrils of heat slithering through her, all pooling between her thighs.

Cedric's eyes slammed shut, his head falling back, as the hands in her hair tightened. With each bob of her head she felt his arms and legs trembling with effort, and knew he wanted to move. She knew he wanted to thrust himself as far down her throat as he could, until he emptied everything he had inside her.

But her didn't.

Instead he stayed perfectly still, giving her the power, letting her have her way with him.

It made her want to please him all the more and so she brought her fingers to his base, caressing back into the shadowy territory beyond, making him gasp with dark delight.

But when she felt his erection begin to throb between her lips she knew she needed to stop. She let him go with a wet pop, and for a moment he seemed to hang there, suspended on the threads of pleasure.

Sofia used the opportunity to gently push him back, watching as he fell on the bed, eyes opening, wide and dark, with unfulfilled lust.

"Next time I won't stop." She whispered as she climbed on top of him.

"I'm going to hold you to that." He said, still somewhat dazed as she straddled his hips. "I can't believe this is truly happening,"

"Then watch," she said, lifting a hand to Cedric's cheek, turning his face in the direction of the mirror.

He made a strangled sounding cry as he caught their reflection, just as she lifted up, positioning him at her entrance.

"Fuck!" He groaned as she sank down on him. "You feel so…"

"Good," she finished for them both, thinking it too meager a word to describe what it was like being full of him.

"You're mine now. You know that don't you?" She found herself asking.

"I've always been yours, didn't you know that?" He countered, turning back to face her, something deeply sorrowful crossing his face.

"No. I was a stupid fool!" Her gaze drifted over to the scattered letters that still littered the pillows.

"We both were." He answered back, reaching up to cup her cheek, bringing her eyes back to his.

"Never again," she vowed, lifting up.

"Never again," he echoed, pressing her back down.

Leaning over, Sofia laid her cheek against his, turning them both back to the sight of their joined bodies.

They watched intently as she began to move on him, and after a moment he joined her, making her shiver at the sight and feel of him thrusting up as she came down.

"It's so good. It's so good." She found herself chanting in time to their rhythm, wanting him to know how exquisite he felt.

Eventually the pleasure became too intense, her need to urgent, and she reared up, sitting astride him as she began to move faster.

He watched her ride him with dark, passion drugged eyes. "You have no idea how many times I've imagined you like this!"

He turned back to her then, the mirror forgotten, and reached up. His hands caressed her breasts and all her senses began to focus, filtering out everything but the pleasure growing inside her.

"Cedric!"

He answered her cry by plucking at her nipples, sending jolts of pleasure careening through her body, causing her to collapse on his chest as she came apart.

Arms went tight around her as Cedric began pumping wildly into her trembling body, rhythm forgotten in the need to reach his release. A handful of hard strokes was all it took, and she felt him erupt, jetting hot and quick into her as he muffled his cries in the bend of her neck.

Then there was silence, long minutes passing by as they panted through the aftershocks, bodies stilling and calming.

Finally Sofia felt in control of herself enough to move, sure she was crushing Cedric with her weight.

"No," he breathed, tightening the hold on her that had gone slack when he'd come.

"There's a whole lot more bed," she laughed, looking up at him as much as his embrace would allow. "You don't have to sleep with your legs hanging off the side."

"I don't care about that," he hugged her even tighter. "I don't want to let you go." His words held a forlorn earnestness.

"What if I promise never to go again?" She offered, kissing the bands of ink around his arm, which she saw now where incantations.

He shook his head.

"It wasn't your fault. You had to go because I wouldn't hold on to you. All of this, from the beginning, was my fault for letting you go. I'll never make that mistake again." His face nuzzled into her hair and she smiled.

"Well if you want to try to spend the next five decades inside me, I'm not going to argue. Though the King may have an objection or two when I go to see him tomorrow."

That got a snort.

His arms slackened and Sofia lifted up, groaning slightly as he slipped from inside her.

Crawling to the pillows, she gathered her mother's letter, folding it carefully and tucking it safely in her bedside table. The other she left out.

Cedric came up behind her, pulling back the covers and helping her settle before getting in beside her. A few seconds of arranging themselves and she lay on her back, pressed firmly into his side, her head under his chin. He threw one of his legs over hers, one hands stroking her stomach and chest as the other burrowed under her pillow.

"How long have you loved me?" She asked after a long while of just enjoying the play of his fingertips over her.

"Forever," he answered as his hand squeezed her hip.

Sofia's head tilted to the side. "How long?"

He sighed.

"I hardly know anymore. Not since the beginning of course, but I'd already loved you for years the day you told me you were marrying…you were going to Freezenberg."

"I've loved you just as long."

He kissed he hair sweetly.

"Cedric, why didn't you ever say anything?"

That elicited a bitter laugh.

"I believed there was nothing to say. You were a girl, so young and beautiful. Filled with such optimism and eagerness for life's coming adventures. And I was already a grown man. A bitter, cynical, hobgoblin haunting a tower. I believed my feelings were hopeless. After all, if it wasn't for my magic you wouldn't have ever even noticed I was alive."

"That's not true." She turned and kissed his shoulder, passionately. "I never saw you that way. And even though it was magic that brought us together, it was you Cedric, every brilliant, guarded, precious part of you that made me fall in love."

"Then why didn't you ever say anything?"

Sofia closed her eyes and took a deep breath. He hadn't understood what she was truly asking that day.

"I tried, in a way. I didn't come to you that day hoping you'd help me disappear, Cedric. I came hoping you'd run away with me."

His eyes went wide with disbelief.

"But when you seemed so happy about the whole thing, I thought it was obvious you didn't feel for me the way I felt for you. I thought you still saw me as the annoying little girl who interrupted your work and pestered you for favors. And I shut you out, and hurt us both, because I was nineteen and scared and wounded… and angry. And then you married her. And I spent the last decade and half thinking you were longing for her, believing I could never have you because your love for her was always there, in the shadows, forbidding it."

Cedric's arm tightened around her, his head dipping to kiss her shoulder.

"I married her in a delusional attempt to try and move on from you. As much as I yearned for your love I was content as long as I had you in some way, but then you…turned from me, and I found myself so lost in the darkness, I thought it swallow me. I'd spent so much time happily wrapped up in you, I thought the answer was to wrap myself in someone else. That I could force myself to be happy. But it was a disaster. The only thing I felt when she left was…relief."

"I know…now. I know and I'm so sorry!"

"What happened tonight Sofia? What made you cry? It couldn't have been my words in the library."

She turned to the table, grabbing Lucy's letter, handing it to him silently.

He lifted to rest his weight on a forearm, scanning the lines quickly.

"Merlin's mushrooms."

"Freddie brought it to me tonight. They found it in Carl's things. He intercepted this, probably as you were fighting to save Freddie and I from dying, and he kept it all these years, to keep me from knowing the truth. He kept a letter from my mother too. Her dying words to me, because she knew. All the time we've wasted because we were too afraid to believe possible what everyone else saw so clearly.

So no more doubting Cedric. I don't care about our age difference. I don't care what titles you do or don't have. I don't care what other people think of you. I don't even care what you think of you. I love you and I will not waste the next five decades like we wasted the last two."

"You're being a bit optimistic about my longevity don't you think?"

Sofia shook her head.

"Your father is pushing ninety without any signs of slowing down."

Cedric snorted.

"Well of course, how can he continue being so vocally disappointed in all his many offspring if he keels over and dies?"

"Well, you'll just have to find something to be similarly disgruntled about. I refused to let you die once, I'll do it again if I have to!"

"As if I would ever disobey my princess." He whispered against her lips before taking her in a heated, possessive kiss, clutching at the back of her neck and sliding his hand up her ribs to fondle her breast.

Sofia responded with a whimper, startled to realize she was already eager for him again.

"Well there you have it." She breathed between kisses. "I command you to stay by my side, to stay in my bed, forever."

Sofia began caressing his chest, moving down his stomach until her hand disappeared beneath the sheets.

"I want to," he answered, eyes closing. "But can you truly be content, even though it can never be more than that?"

Her hand stilled and his eyes opened, sorrow staining their dark warmth.

"What do you mean?"

His head dropped, as though defeated. "Sofia…I'm still married."

Her hand dropped from him and she felt the world tilt sideways.

"What?"

He kissed her forehead, and despite her shock she clung to him, terrified he'd somehow be ripped away.

"I told you, your father has never done anything but maintain the status quo. Divorce is still illegal in Enchancia. I haven't seen or talked to her in fourteen years, but it makes no difference." He fell back on the bed, pushing both hands through his hair. "Out of a life of so many mistakes, if I could take back just one of them..."

Sofia lay still beside him, letting his words settle.

"Sofia?"

Turning on her side, she raised a hand to brush his cheek, looking at him earnestly.

"You love me?" She asked again.

Cedric's hand gripped the back of her neck, pulling her on top of him.

"Only you, until I draw my last breath." He kissed her, hard, with everything in him.

"And you'll stay here with me? Live with me?"

His face went into her hair now, his lips against her throat.

"Of course. I told you I wasn't ever going to let you go again, but Sofia, if we can't marry than no one can know. We'll have to hide."

She nodded, tightening her hold on him.

"Not completely. The people I'd bring here, like Anna-Grete…she already knows I love you, she's known for years. But outside this house yes. We'd have to be…discrete." Sofia shrugged. "I guess my words were truer than I thought. I'm done with marriage and princes and dukes and all that." She took his head from her neck so they could see each other. "But I've only just started with you!"

He smiled, but there was a wariness in his eyes.

"Are you sure? This was never how I wanted it between us."

Sofia nodded.

"I don't need you to marry me, Cedric. I hate that after everything we still can't be together openly, but as long as you love me, as long as we can be together without Carl or Lucy or anyone else in the way, that's all I want. That's more than I ever thought possible."

He looked up at her then, cupping her face in his hands.

"I'm yours Sofia, I always was, and I always will be. Though you may come to regret it."

She smiled at him, even as a single tear slipped from her eye.

"I could never regret you."