Promise Me

Chapter Twelve

Sunlight managed its way through the dusty windowpanes, hitting Boromir in the face to rouse him from sleep. He lay there for a long moment, the surroundings wholly unfamiliar. The bed was narrow, the room small and dingy, with heavy furnishings too big and dark for the space. A hint of a sour smell lingered in the air. Dust motes swirled in the faint beams of light that managed to make their way through those smudged panes.

Then he smiled. Firm breasts pressed into his back. A slender arm draped about his hips. The room was small and dingy and odd-smelling, but with Gabby curved up against him, it hardly mattered.

Her fingers swept gently along his stomach and warm lips pressed into his back just above his shoulder blade. Then came another kiss. And another still.

"Mmm... this is a nice way to awaken," he murmured.

"You should not have stayed here," she murmured back, snuggling closer, the fronts of her thighs firm against the backs of his. "If anyone should see you, they would surely talk."

"Let them. You've agreed to marry me, Gabby. The worst that could come from any gossip? We push our wedding up sooner." He carefully shifted to face her. "And that is not exactly a terrible thing, is it?"

"Well, no," she tucked her hands beneath her cheek as she smiled at him, "but I'd rather not be gossiped about if I might help it."

"I will silence any loose lips who dare speak ill of you."

"That might grow complicated."

"You are worth a bit of complication, love." He smiled at the delicate flush that swept up into her cheeks and without thinking, added, "Have you any idea how beautiful you are, Gabriella?"

That flush deepened as she averted her gaze for a moment. "You have to say such things."

"I say them because they are true and for no other reason." He reached over to cup her cheek with one hand. "You are beautiful, and I've thought so since the first time I saw you."

"When I was but thirteen?"

He thought back to that moment on the riverbanks, when he'd seen her for the first time, how the sight of her stopped him in his tracks and left him staring at her as if struck dumb, which, of course, he was.

At supper that night, he mentioned seeing a pretty girl down by the river and his father quickly disabused him of the notion of pursuing her.

"Your duty is to Gondor first," he'd said with a scowl, reaching for his goblet of mead with one hand, placing his other over the fork Faramir rapped against the table. "Enough with that, boy."

Boromir glanced at his brother, then back to his father. "But you didn't see her, Father. She was... oh, there are no words..."

"You will not chase girls when you have far more important matters needing your attention. Lust fades. Passion dies. Gondor... that is all that matters. Our power. That is all that matters."

But, those words were hardly enough to deter him, and what began as the pursuit of youthful lust became a friendship he treasured more than any others. He'd waited nearly a quarter of a century for this moment, for her, and she had been worth every second of that wait.

"Ah, but I was only sixteen. And sixteen year old me thought thirteen year old you was beautiful." He came up over her then, urging her onto her back. "And you are far more so now, you know."

"I think you have kept this side hidden from me for far too long, Boromir. I've always thought of you as a warrior and not a poet, but now I wonder."

He offered up a grin. "You've brought it out in me, I suppose."