Astor // Arthur Shelby x Reader - Peaky Blinders

Chapter 31

My eyelids flutter open as the first glimpse of daylight threatens to break through the room. The roosters crow from their area of the farm, a distant call that reaches my ears in the quiet morning. For a moment, I tense up — guilt and anxiety forming in my stomach as a subconscious response, my mind lurching straight to the previous day, trying to recall anything I did to upset Luca, anything that might mean he's still angry with me.

It only lasts a second.

And then I'm aware of Arthur's warm, bare chest beneath me. I remember. I release a small sigh as I run my hand across the light dusting of dark hair across his chest, tracing his tattoo with my fingertips.

He's really here. My soldier, a man I'd thought was lost to me forever. Neroli and petitgrain float in the air around him and I've never been so warm without a fire roaring in the hearth.

I've never wanted to stay in bed so badly past dawn.

"Would someone tell that bloody rooster to shut up," Arthur grumbles, kissing the top of my head and wrapping his arms tighter around me, holding me.

I laugh softly. "I thought you were asleep."

"I was until the racket began." He yawns. "Turned into a light sleeper the past few years."

"You did sleep, though?"

I glance up at him hopefully, worriedly. His face is perfectly calm. Each eyelash catches the morning light as he blinks.

"Can't remember the last time I slept so well," he tells me quietly. "Don't know if I ever have, even before the war."

I turn a little in his arms and trace the outline of his shoulder muscles. "If I had to guess, I'd have thought you'd be a fantastic sleeper. One of those men who can nap anywhere."

He smiles. "Full of surprises, eh?"

"One day I shall know all these things about you," I tell him, stroking a hand through his hair.

"And what happens once you know everything? You'll be bored shitless."

"I could never be bored of you, Arthur Shelby." I gaze into his hooded eyes. "Do you fear you'll find me boring, after a time?"

He takes my hand and kisses it softly. "My girl, you could be reading one of Ada's thousand-page-long books about politics, and I'd still be enthralled by every word."

"How about in five years from now?" I ask.

"Even more so.

"Ten?"

"I'll still be dying to know how the working class might overthrow the ruling class."

I roll my eyes. "Wouldn't that be you overthrowing me?"

He kisses me, sucking gently on my lower lip as he pulls away. "I'll overthrow you right now, if you like."

"Please do," I smile against him. "I might never have to wear a ball gown again."

"Hmm... you've got me rethinking now." His lips burn a warm trail of kisses down my neck, across my collarbone, as he talks. "I'd quite like to see you in one."

"I bloody hope not. Or that would mean my parents are nearby, and at least a handful of their friends, and you might never speak to me again if you see what I have to put up with."

He smiles, but then he looks into my eyes, and he's deadly serious. "I'll never stop wanting to speak to you. I'll never get bored of you. I'm going to love you for as long as I fucking live." He begins kissing me again until I'm covered in goosebumps. "I'm going to make you my wife. And I'm going to work until I can give you everything you'll ever want. A full stable. All those Saint Bernards." His lips reach my breasts and my head tips back. "I'll till every fucking acre of the farm soil with a shovel myself if I have to. Point a gun at every restaurant owner from Bristol to Doncaster. And the chickens, if they keep eating your fucking corn." He delivers his next words into my ear. "I'm going to kill Luca Changretta. And I'm going to give you the life you deserve."