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“Hey,” Willow says cheerily as she enters the room. “So I just finished calling my parents and told them the news!”
Robert stares at the extinguished fireplace. “Oh?”
“It took a while for the shock to wear off but I think they’re glad,” she says, kicking off her heels from behind the sofa and coming around to sit next to him, smiling as she tucks her hair behind her ear. “They said I sounded happy so that’s probably why. They’re really looking forward to meeting you.”
A moment passes and he rises abruptly from his seat. Robert walks over to the oak table and pours himself a glass of scotch. His eyes meet hers for the first time since she’d entered the room and Willow can suddenly feel the quiet she’d walked in on settle between them.
“What’s wrong?” she asks, turning in her seat to look at him fully.
“Do you want one?” He gestures to the expensive glass bottle, taking a sip from the tumbler.
“No,” Willow responds, shaking her head as she stands. “I want you to tell me why you look upset.”
Robert stares at her, contemplating her, like he’s working to figure out an answer to a problem Willow can’t even begin to understand. “Why did you agree to my proposal so quickly?”
“What?”
“I thought perhaps you were going to take some time.”
“You’ve been telling me lately how you were brought up not to make impulsive decisions,” Willow says, approaching him slowly, “I don’t really make impulsive decisions either. In hindsight maybe I should have waited until tomorrow with everything that’s happened at dinner. But, it's like you told me, it felt right – it feels right – and I didn’t want to wait any longer. And I didn’t want to hide how I felt about it from you.”
Robert looks at her, mouth pressed in a thin line. “But you don’t love me either.”
The sharpness in his tone shocks her a little. She reaches for his arm but he side-steps her, moving in the direction of the sofa. “Robert–”
“I’m only saying it because you told me you didn’t want to be married if it wasn’t a real marriage,” he says, turning to her again, his words catching around the fringe of something Willow can’t quite place. “If you weren’t in love like your mother was.”
Willow exhales, crossing her arms around her midsection. Her heart is beating so hard she can feel it press against the inside of her chest. “My feelings for you are real and I am falling in love with you. I know I wouldn’t have asked you to reconsider me in the first place.”
She bites her lip, a little lost.
“I don’t know what it is you want me to say right now, Robert.”
Maybe it’s the sincerity of her words or the uncertainty on her face but she can see his eyes soften a little. Willow smiles weakly at him, still unsure. “Perhaps I did decide a bit too quickly–”
“I’m sorry,” Robert stops her, sighing before he downs the rest of his scotch. He places the empty glass on the side table and turns back to look at her. This time his expression is less hard, his look more distant, and Willow can feel her concern grow stronger. “Do you have feelings for Liam too?”
“Is that what this–”
“You didn’t tell me.”
“I thought you knew?”
“I had an idea.”
“But?”
“It didn’t matter before,” he answers, rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands. “Before I grew to have feelings for you in return.”
Willow holds his gaze. “I didn’t tell you because it never crossed my mind. I don’t have feelings for Liam. I haven’t for a very long time. And even when I did it wasn’t like… It’s not what I feel for you. It’s nothing like what I feel for you. Not even close.”
She wants to laugh, really, at the incredulousness of it. But maybe it’s what Robert needs to hear. She looks at him, wide-eyed and waiting, and Willow can feel the shell he’s built around himself come away. The sort of feeling you get when you start to lose and gain portions of yourself with someone else, in all its unyielding and unpredictable ways. The pieces weigh strangely over her now, the knowledge that this is something that bothers him. It shouldn’t surprise her; maybe if Robert were indifferent that might be a greater cause for concern.
“I’m sorry,” Robert says again, reaching to take her hand. “I didn’t mean to sound accusatory or want you to think I was demeaning your feelings.”
“I get it,” she shrugs a little, her corners of her lips turning upward. “Jealousy is a perfectly natural–”
“Jealousy?” He raises an eyebrow at her. “Surely Wilhelmina Moreno is above such a trifling emotional response?”
Willow tilts her head at him. “That day all those bridal candidates came to the palace? I was basically ready to set them on fire.”
Robert smirks, squeezing her hands gently. “I remember.”
“It didn’t frighten you?”
“Not at all.”
She wrinkles her nose at him. “Are we alright?”
“Yeah, I got a little lost in my head,” Robert admits and then smiles simply, hand on her neck and thumb tracing the edge of her chin. “I’m really looking forward to meeting your parents, too.”
“I hope you know you can always be open with me,” Willow replies, leaning into his hand. “As open as you can be.”
“Well…”
“What is it?” She frowns, her voice rising.
“It’s been a long night and…we never got a chance to celebrate our good news.”
Willow laughs, wrapping her arms around him as she leans up to kiss him. “Smooth.”
She thinks about Robert a lot. It’s not surprising, given how closely she works with him. But recently she’s been having all sorts of thoughts about him too, his body next to hers, the phantom heat of their kisses, a ghost following Willow around that she’s got no clue what to do with. She is gone for Robert, in a way she never anticipated or ever really felt before, because she knows he feels this way about her too.
When she pulls away to catch her breath, Robert’s lips follow hers, his hands coming to hold her face. It makes Willow feel emboldened so she presses closer, her fingers coming to clench around Robert’s shirt where it meets the waistline of his trousers.
“There are two things I’ve been meaning to tell you all evening,” he says.
Willow hums, lips swollen as she looks at him through her lashes. “Did you propose to someone else?”
“I certainly did not.”
“Then proceed,” Willow sighs.
“First, you look so extraordinary in this dress,” Robert answers, hands resting on her hips. “Second, I actually hate this dress because of how much I want you out of it.”
Willow chuckles, “I might have chosen it to impress you.”
“I can’t abide it.”
“I knew there had to be something about you that couldn’t be perfect.”
“It pains me to say this but several things about me are not perfect.”
Willow looks into his blue eyes and sees the mirth, certainty, and vulnerability all there. All mixed into one feeling and loves him for it. For showing that to her. In his own way. It reminds Willow of how much she knows him but how there’s still much to learn. How much of an enigma Robert is and all the ways that excites and terrifies her.
“Robert,” she says his name once, softly, leaning her head back to kiss him again. It’s much more heated this time, demanding even, and Willow can already feel him hard against her, what she’s doing to him. Willow bites his bottom lip before pulling away, her own mouth red and shining. “Take me to bed.”
And so he does.
Robert haphazardly turns on the lights, throwing off his shirt as they go. He helps unzip her dress, mouth at the back of her neck. Willow steps out of it as it falls to her feet, turning around in his arms and kissing him soundlessly.
“You are remarkable,” Robert says before she nudges him back until he falls onto the bed, climbing in with him. She straddles his waist, grinding down a little as she reaches behind her to unfasten and drop her bra.
Robert sucks in a sharp breath and her hands go straight to unbuckling his belt and unzipping his trousers. She reaches inside without a second thought. He groans as Willow wraps her hands around him, stroking slowly. The sound of him, deep and guttural and new, makes her realize there’s nothing else keeping her back from this. Willow didn’t even know she’d been waiting for him for this long of a time either.
“All this for me?” she whispers boldly.
“Whatever you want,” Robert says back, his hands reach up to touch her breasts, warm and big. He brushes and holds her delicate flesh in tandem with the movements of her own fingers.
When his hand moves to her panties, his thumb slipping underneath the hem of the fabric at her inner thigh, Willow is certain he knows how much she wants him. Robert starts to press eager circles against her and she has to angle her hips to get his fingers where she needs them, mouth falling open silently. She’s so wet and Willow almost tells him this when she shifts above him to take her panties off.
“I’m not waiting anymore.” Is what she says instead, which is still more honest than she intends. It’s a little alarming how there are suddenly a hundred things she wants to do with him but she can’t. Not when she’s suddenly this frustrated and unrepentant with how much she wants him. But Robert appears to like it anyway, because his cock jumps in her hand and his smirk grows wider when he goes to slip off his trousers and briefs.
Willow leans back on her elbows as his hands run up her legs, sending a pulse up her spine. She pushes Robert’s hair back, and gives him a gentle kiss when he settles in the cradle of her thighs.
“Alright?” He mumbles, damp against her mouth, and she laughs a little, nodding.
“Alright,” she echoes, her hands roaming his chest and backside. She notices the dips and edges of his skin and decides she’d like to explore them later.
When Robert slides into her, Willow's fingers flex in their grip on his shoulder, her breath hot against his neck, their ribs pushing and contracting together. He’s so hard that it’s all Willow can register at first, how she stretches to fit him, how easily it happens. Her ankle hooks over Robert’s calf like they’ve done this before and she whimpers in a way that doesn’t feel foreign at all, like her body knows how to work with his.
He kisses the corner of her mouth when Willow tilts her hips up and presses at the small of his back. She can see where their bodies frantically meet in her peripheral vision and gets a little lost in the muscles on his stomach bumping against her and the way Robert’s kissing her neck, all hot and wet, leaving goosebumps. Willow can’t help when her hips suddenly move a little off-time, slipping, and causing the little grunt Robert gives when she clenches down on him to regain their pacing.
Robert rolls them over and she runs her hands down his chest, pinning him to the bed. Willow leans over to give him a kiss before taking him inside her again, biting her lips and sinking slowly. She moans again and he makes sounds of encouragement too as she rides him, his hands pressing into her waist, her back, the peaks of her breasts, kneading the skin there. Robert looks so good under her, panting and sheen, his eyes steady with hers as she moves over him, and Willow wants to watch him come apart for her.
He sits up suddenly, his chest hard against hers. If she concentrates enough, she can feel his heartbeat rattle inside her ribcage.
“Robbie,” she whines when his arms slip around her. He pulls her impossibly close and holds her there as he restarts their movements with a sharp roll of his hips from under her. Willow whimpers, desperate for release, for him, as her arms encircling his broad shoulders. She starts moving again too, setting a rhythm that makes them both moan, eyes never leaving his. Willow leaves open-mouthed kisses on the side of his face as she grinds down on him, her thighs shaking around his midsection and her insides curling tightly. Robert presses his lips to every bit of her he can from his position, her shoulders, her neck and collarbone and if she arches just a little, just like that, he can drag his mouth across her nipple and make her head spin all over again.
“You’re so beautiful,” he groans. One of Robert’s hands moves into her hair, cradling the back of her head and then pulling her into a kiss. She smiles against his lips, listening and trying to remember how to breathe, committing the feel of him to memory.
Afterwards, with her make up smeared, her hair an utter mess and her body spent with exhaustion, she lays down next to him, hand on his shoulder, the ring catching the faint lamplight in the room.
“There are things I want to tell you,” Robert says, turning to her, arm underneath his pillow.
“Then tell me.”
“I don’t know how,” he replies, eyes a little uncertain. Like what he might say will scare her, like he might lose her.
“Yes,” she moves her hand to his face. “You do.”