Would whisper, "I love you" into your ears while secretly planning to lock you up in his bedroom- blindfolded, with black silken ribbons around your wrists and tied to his bed, helpless and waiting for him.
"I only need you and you alone. You are my everything." He would murmur softly into the quiet room, faint puffs of air the only real noise as you struggled to breathe.
"Don't you love me too?" And you nod, regardless of what your thoughts had been in the beginning- because the hours blended into days and days into weeks, and weeks into months.
You forget how long you had been there, sometimes let into gardens to feel the sunshine on your skin, but he was always next to you in case you tried to run away. How could you, when your legs always felt like liquid every time he brushed his fingers across your lower back?
His hand caresses your waist as he leans down to kiss your forehead, lips faintly pressing against your fluttering eyelids. He notices your knees slowly starting to buckle against his touch and he chuckles quietly before lifting you up into his arms. "Let's go home."
And home was with him. It was your home now too.
So it was good that you couldn't remember how you had come into his embrace all those months ago. Where your family was. How they had screamed your name as you were taken by his guards, tossed into his carriage like a sack.
How you banged on the windows, wailing for anyone to rescue you. How you had fallen to your knees in despair at the sight of blood splattering onto the glass, and how Cale had brushed your hair back from your forehead. How he tilted your chin up to peer into your deadened eyes and tears still streaming down your face.
"It's okay, I'll make sure you can always see them." And he kept that promise to you. A little too well perhaps. That garden you loved to make flower crowns in, had made little rings for the two of you as you hummed a silly tune aimlessly. The smell of roses was always overpowering, the blooms so gorgeous as they swayed under the sun's bright rays.
Little white bones poking out from underneath the soil never ruined the garden's picturesque beauty. As long as you could keep ignoring it.
