“No. We couldn’t find common ground, as it happens. She was a good queen. She served our people. She made good changes. She hated being my wife. She didn’t like me. I’m not sure that I liked her.”
“Well, I can understand that. I’m not sure that I like you either.”
“Good news. If my first marriage proved anything it’s that two people can be married for quite some time without liking one another.”
“True. But a counterpoint. I don’t want to live that way. I was so exhausted earlier because I was thinking about how this is just more of the same. How I have been forced to live in homes where I’m unwanted, disliked. And here I am again. Your unwanted queen. I don’t want to do it. I want us to like each other. And maybe the difference between you and I, and you and Circe, is that we do have a child on the way. I would rather not despise my child’s father. I would rather he didn’t despise me.”
“You make a good point.”
“I often do. Which you would discover if you spent a little bit less time hating me.”
“I’m not sure that I hate you.”
“Oh. You aren’t sure. Well, how nice for me.”
“Nothing is going to change the fact that my first responsibility is to the country. My second will be to the child.”
Something uncomfortable shifted inside of her. “Your first responsibility should be to your child,” she said.
“Perhaps in an ideal world. But this is not an ideal world. It is a monarchy. And I am unable to offer something substantially different than what was offered to me.”
“Did your father put the country first?”
Onyx looked away. “My father was a wonderful man. Everything he did, was for the good of everyone. He raised me to be his heir. Raised me to be exactly what he needed me to be. I am forever grateful to him. Because he died when I was so young, and all that was left were his lessons. Yes, I am extremely grateful to have those lessons.”
“Let’s have dinner tonight,” he said. “You and I.”
She reached out and took a guava from the crook of his arm. “We could have dinner right now.”
“No. I want to learn more about you. You are right. There is no reason for the two of us to be at odds.”
“So everything must be a plan. You can’t just be?”
“No,” he said. “I can’t. That is what it means to be king.” He deposited the guavas into her arms, and began to walk away from her. Leaving her standing there with an armful of fruit.
“See you at dinner,” she said.
She couldn’t quite decide then if she had gotten the upper hand, or if she had somehow made things worse by allowing herself to see something of the actual man.
It was easier to hate him. Easier to resent him for what he had made her feel.
It was much more complicated to acknowledge that much in the same way she was, he was simply a product of everything that life had made him into.
Chapter Eleven
He had noidea what to wear to dinner. It was a very foolish thought to have as Onyx stood in the expansive master bedroom in the island home, looking around for what he might wear to sit across from his queen.
There was no one here. No one but her. It didn’t matter.
He thought of the way she had looked earlier today. Wearing a bikini, a flowing cover-up thrown on top. Her breasts were full and lovely, her belly gently rounded, and he had been so aware of the fact that he had been inside of her. Touched her. Kissed her. And that all the intimacy since then had been lost, and he was left to crave it. Obsessed himself over it.
And what was the point of that? He had never in his life been obsessed with a woman, and it had been this way with her ever since they’d first touched. But it wasn’t that way when she was in his study cleaning. Wasn’t that way when she was nothing more than the little maid who brought him tea during the day.
The trouble was, she was more than that. It was becoming harder and harder for him to deny it. She was more than that, and what she was had taken over his life.
He growled fiercely, took a white shirt out of the closet and put it on, rolling the sleeves up. He wore a pair of linen pants with it, because he didn’t need to wear a whole suit, and it felt distressingly informal. He had no idea how much a full suit had become armor for him.
He didn’t know when he had begun needing armor.
