Sometimes he just watches her. After they make love usually it’s him who falls asleep first, his arm wrapped around her, their heartbeats blending as one, but occasionally he keeps the dreams at bay until he feels her breathing ease, her body relax against him. Then he opens his eyes and watches her.

The chin that might be a little too strong for true beauty, the firm jaw line that juts forward when they argue, almost an entity in its own right. The small scar that only he knows about just beneath her right ear where a man tried to slit her throat when she was eighteen. He’s glad the man failed, that the would-be murderer lies beneath six feet of earth.

Her lips, soft, pale pink, that swell under his. Bowed delicately at the top, they are just the right size for his mouth, even when she is railing against something stupid he’s done. He smiles. And good teeth.

She moves a little, settling more securely into the crook of his shoulder. A slight sigh escapes those very lips he has been contemplating, and they turn up at the ends.

He wonders what she is dreaming about, hoping it is about him, and that the smile is for no-one else. He continues.

Her nose is just a nose, neither too long nor too short, with just the slightest hint of an upturned end. Freckles, too, a mere handful of tiny dark specks, apart from one larger just beyond the corner of her eye, adorning a cheek that holds round apples of flesh when she grins.

Her eyes he has to envision, closed as they are, the lashes fluttering as her dream progresses. But it is only the work of a moment to conjure their hazel hues, containing the small flecks of gold that dazzle him. When she laughs he melts from the way she looks at him, but when she cries he wants to be her hero and put the ‘verse to right.

And when she says she loves him, that emotion shouts as clearly from her eyes as a man shouting from a church steeple.

What do those eyes see when she looks at him? Does she see the nose that is too big, the lips that thin in anger, the eyes that can burn like blue fire when he is enraged? Or does she see the honesty that is inside, the good man he tries to be, the hope he carries in his heart?

He would go onto her eyebrows, dark like her short brown hair, but he always stops, needing her to look at him, to gaze at him with such adoration that he can believe again. He yearns for those long eyelashes to flicker open, for the window of her soul to look upon him …

She knows, as she always knows, and her eyes slowly lift, their heat piercing him to the core, pinning him with the love she feels, capturing him once more.

“Sorry,” he whispers, wanting to drown in her eyes and be saved.

“Don’t be.”

How could he have forgotten her voice? Warm, soft, wrapping itself around his heart.

“I just …”

“I know.”

She reaches for him, her hands running over his skin, igniting fires that are never extinguished.

“I love you,” he murmurs, afraid to say it too loudly in case the words vanish into the night.

“I love you too.”

And she is there, next to him, her body against his flesh, and he can let his soul free, protected by her as it rises and soars above them. His being is so full of love that he can barely speak, breathing in to capture her essence, to hold it inside, filling him.

“Sleepy?” he asked, her head dropping to fit his shoulder.

“Mmn.”

There is a silver hair nestled among the brown, but he’ll never tell her. She’ll be young to him forever, as he knows he will to her, warmed by the youthful flame of their utter commitment.

She has drifted off again, her lips slightly parted, and he places a kiss like a butterfly’s wing. His wife. His ai ren. At his side, his strength, his companion, knowing she’ll be there for ever. And a day.

Sleep fills his mind like a heavy cloth, and he settles back, smiling as he imagines her beautiful eyes …