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Thinking about that, I couldn’t help but laugh to myself a little. She’d fought me like a fucking champ. And beat me in the end.
A knock at the door jolted me back to reality. My father barked at the door to come in. Ivan the old butler emerged, looking apologetic.
“There’s a visitor for you, sir,” he said.
“Tell them to wait!” my father huffed. “I’m in the middle of something. Or trying to be!” He turned his frustrated eyes on me.
“Not for you, sir,” the butler said, bowing now towards me. “It’s a visitor for you, Mr. Vasile. And I would say it’s rather… important.”
Important? Please. There was only one thing that was actually important, and that was her.
“Who is it?” I asked.
The old butler lifted his gaze, with a small but definite smile on his face.
“It’s Princess Valeria Valentine, sir.”
She was here, in this house? To see me? I was so fucking stunned that I sat there, completely speechless, until I finally got my shit together and managed to ask, “Is she… is she okay?”
“Oh yes, sir,” he said with a little sparkle in his eye. “Quite as lovely as ever. She’s waiting for you in the drawing room.”
Holy fuck.* * *My heart banged like canon fire in my chest as I entered the drawing room.
She sat across the room, near the window, wearing a yellow silk dress and hat looking fucking beautiful as ever. Thinner than she had been though, not nearly as voluptuous as my eyes, hands and mouth remembered.
Something about her looked more fragile. And my urge to possess and protect her came rushing back like a blaze through a dry forest.
When she saw me, she smiled that big, beautiful smile. Fuck, I wanted her. I wanted to be inside her right then and there. She was a goddamned vision. The woman of my dreams.
But I didn’t dare let myself think about why she was there to see me. Didn’t fucking dare let myself hope. Just the fact that she was sitting there, waiting for me, was enough. One glimpse at her and I felt like a starving man who’d had his first bite of food in ages.
For the first time, I felt awkward and tongue tied in front of her. Fucking love-struck. I reached out to take her hand and she offered it to me. I kissed the back of her palm, giving her all the reverence she deserved. Not just because of her title. But because of what she meant and would always mean to me.
She was my Queen. My one and only.
I stopped short of actually dropping to one knee and bowing to her, though fuck knows I wanted to. Instead, I managed to pull my pussy-whipped self together and sit down in the chair across from her.
“I missed you so fucking much,” I said, my voice gravelly and deep.
Hearing that embarrassed her, clearly, but she had too much poise to let her veneer drop completely. She nibbled her lip as she looked at her hands in her lap, then raised her bright green eyes to me. They looked bigger and more innocent than I’d remembered yet more powerful somehow.
“I wanted to come to thank you,” she said. “For sending the doctor to help us. To help my dad. It made all the difference.”
“You don’t need to thank me,” I said. “Never.”
“But I am thanking you,” she said, her voice almost sharp now. Demanding almost. My fucking Queen, indeed.
“You’re very welcome,” I said. “How did you know I’d be here?”
She shrugged on a thin smile. “I went to the manor first. Daniel told me you were here.”
I nodded, making note to reward him somehow.
“And…” She stammered now, glancing out at the window as if to collect her thoughts. “I also came to ask if you really did stay with me, when I was so sick. My dad said you were there for days.”
It had been more than a week that I stayed there by her side, wracked with grief and worry like a fucking wild man. While I’d stayed with her, I’d hardly eaten, hardly slept. Only when she was out of the woods for sure did I make myself scarce.
“An army couldn’t have stopped me.”
She blinked a few times in quick, embarrassed succession, searching my face for something, though I didn’t know what.
“Thank you. I saw you, in my dreams. I wasn’t sure it was really you. But you didn’t have to do that,” she said.
“The fuck I didn’t,” I growled
She pursed her lips and looked away, swallowing hard as a beautiful blush came up into her too-pale cheeks. I leaned toward her, just a few inches, hanging on her every word and movement. She closed her eyes, as if to collect herself, and then returned to face me with all that royal self-command that I’d seen in her so many times before.
