Page 14 of King's Heir of Hate

That was the word that got stuck in his head. The word that grew until it drowned everything else out, even her.

Oralmosther.

Tadeo pulled away and found her eyes glazed, dark and starry, and her lips ripe from his. He could feel the way he wanted her like a broken bone. Like a crack and a shattering, a rending apart.

But he was a king now. There had never been any room in his life for this. There wasn’t now.

“This,” he bit out at her, though for a moment he wasn’t sure that his mouth wouldn’t kiss her of its own accord. That his body wouldn’t mount its own rebellion, the way he could feel it wanted to in every cell. “This is the problem.”

“It’s not a problem,” she returned, even though she was breathless. Even though she looked kissed within an inch of her life and she was round with his child but still hadlipslike that, lips that tasted like everything he’d ever wanted. “You just want it to be.”

It took a Herculean effort, and he hated that it was so difficult, but Tadeo pushed himself upright and stood back. He knew that she could see exactly what she did to him. His cock was so heavy that it ached and he was certain she could see it clearly as it pressed against his trousers. He could see that greedy look in her luminous eyes. He knew what it meant.

Tadeo could also think of any number of ways that she could help him with this issue—but that was how they’d gotten into this mess.

Back in Boston. Five months ago. Every time he thought he’d found a measure of self-control, Esme proved him wrong.

Every single time.

“I don’t need you to understand this,” he managed to grit out, though he had to dig deep. “I don’t need your comfort or your help.”

“So you have said. Many times.”

He hated when she used that voice, so arch andamusedwhen he was stretched over quicksand and could lose his footing at any moment. Tadeo ran a hand over his face, though it did nothing to remove the taste of her from his mouth. “What you fail to understand is that I don’twantto be the kind of man who feels the things that you make me feel, Esme.”

That landed. He could see it got to her, though she covered it beautifully in an instant. Sometimes he thought he was the only one who could see behind the masks she wore. Other times he thought that the fact he could was part of this curse she’d laid on him at first sight.

And he had never found a way to stop caring when he hurt her. He never took any pleasure in it.

But it still had to be done.

“I have never wanted it,” he told her, very deliberately. “Boston should never have happened. You seem to think that what happened there is the truth of things between us, but surely the past seven years should have proved to you that Boston was the aberration.”

“What exactly do you think would have happened if we hadn’t met in Boston?” Esme asked. She did not look as wrecked as he felt, or even as wrecked as she’d seemed for a flash a moment ago—but then, she never did. She dabbed at the corner of her mouth with a delicate finger, and shrugged. “What do you suppose it would have been like if we’d met for the first time when you decided to start courting me? How do you think that would have gone?”

He knew exactly how it would have gone. And he understood her point, though he would have preferred it if he had not.

They were conflagrations waiting to happen, the two of them. When they were together, they burst into flame. It was as simple and complicated as that.

It was entirely possible that if he’d met her for the first time on one of those public dinner dates, the whole world would have seen him toss her up against a wall and kiss her wildly, savagely, the way he had after that night in Boston.

Then, too, the whole world would have seen the way they couldn’t keep their hands off each other that whole year. They would have known that he’d neglected his duties and his studies so he could spend days in bed with her, unable to do anything if it meant he had to stop touching her.

That he had even imagined himself head over heels in love.

It was the kind of alternate timeline that could keep a man up at night. And Tadeo had already lost enough sleep over this woman.

“I know exactly what would have happened, and so do you,” she said, as if she could read his mind. Sometimes he thought she could.

“I’m not debating that. The difference between us is that I know that the relationship we had—and, indeed, still have—was toxic. You seem to think it was a love story.”

For the first time, he saw something in her…shake. There was a flash in her dark eyes, but more than that, he thought he saw her tremble.

A direct hit, he supposed, but he couldn’t say he felt good about it. She didn’t have one of her quick responses ready and he found he didn’t like that either.

Esme was sitting in an ancient chair in a room noted widely for its charm and beauty, but she was the only thing he could see. She was the focal point and it was not only because she was so impractically pretty, though she was. It was because there wassomething about her, some lightning that crackled all over her and drew people to her.

She lit up every room she entered. She took the light with her when she left.