“Because I’m fascinated by you.” He closed his eyes. “When I’m not trying to crush you beneath the weight of my royal rage. You’re astonishing, do you know that? You know how few people would have tried to comfort me with any sort of genuine measure?”
“Given that I was the only one in the study, and the only one that you had sex with that night, I suppose the answer is very few people.”
“I’m being quite serious. My circle is very small. I had hoped that my wife and I… Circe and I… When I married her I had hoped that we would find at least companionship.”
“You didn’t.”
“I didn’t. And I don’t know how much of that was my fault.”
“I don’t want you to care about me simply because you regret your first marriage.”
Maybe that wasn’t fair. Maybe it was the hot sun talking. Maybe it was her being grumpy and pregnant and jealous and needy. Greedy for parts of him that no one else had ever had.
“No, that’s not why. I want to know more about you. I want to understand…this.”
“It’s called attraction, I believe. I was a virgin until six months ago, and even I know that.”
“No. It’s something more.”
Her heart lifted in her chest, and she had to smack it back down. Because she had to stop getting excited just because he said something that verged on kind.
He was a man, and likely, he was mainly responding to the intensity of the sex between them. It might even be what she was responding to.
Everything was all mixed up. She had a crush on him before she knew him, and now there was this, and everything was just difficult. Everything was hard to decode. So she didn’t want to. She wanted to recommit to this idea that she wouldn’t protect herself. That she would let herself feel all of her feelings.
Every single one of them.
“While we’re here,” he said. “Let’s be like this.”
While we’re here.
“I think you’ll find, Your Highness, that we have difficulty keeping our hands off of each other at the palace too.”
“But there I’m a king.”
He was hiding behind that. Using it as a shield. She couldn’t blame him. She wished that she had something to use as a shield.
All she had was this intense, overflowing emotion inside of her chest.
All she had was that same feeling she’d had for him all this time.
“Well, Your Highness. Then let us give you a good vacation from your status.”
Chapter Thirteen
They were nakedfor days. They just never put clothes on. There wasn’t a reason to. He ate with her naked, bathed with her, slept with her. He had never experienced anything like this in his life. He felt like a teenager. Hungry for her, desperate to have her body on his, to have himself inside her.
He was utterly and completely captivated by her. Everything that she was.
They were at the waterfall today, Birdie standing beneath the deluge, her nipples tight, her body lush and perfect. She was gaining weight, which he was grateful for. She had become quite thin, and he knew that it was his fault.
He knew that it was because of what a bastard he’d been. And he had been.
It had been a relief, in many ways, to let himself believe that she was duplicitous. Because it meant that nothing he felt was real.
It was cowardice, through and through. That was true. And this was something else entirely. He was allowing himself to actually be on vacation. Something he had never done before. He’d certainly never had a sex vacation, which was what this was. There was no other purpose to it. No greater good. Just him wanting her, needing her, having her.
She laughed, and extended her hand toward him, and he took it, letting her draw him beneath the spray, into her arms. He gripped her chin and kissed her. Deep and slow.
