Page 99 of Vow to Claim You

I turn toward her. She’s standing beside the bed now, gathering things from her suitcase.

“Efficient,” she echoes, with a dry curl to it, like she’s learning that word is one of my favorites for things that are anything but.

“That’s all it is,” I say.

I arranged the timing so this would be over quickly, Chiara would be safe, and I could take my wife home.

Ayanna nods slowly. “I’m going to shower.”

She gives me a fleeting glance as she heads toward the en suite bathroom. The door clicks shut, and the water starts a moment later.

I’m left standing in the middle of the room holding a drink I’m not going to touch, and I fail, comprehensively, to think about anything except the woman on the other side of that wall. I drag a hand down my face and exhale slowly through my nose, as though that has ever once helped a single thing. It does nothing. It was never going to.

When the water cuts off, I make myself look at the window. The sea. The black water, the lights strung along the coast. Anything that isn’t the door.

She comes out wrapped in a robe, hair damp and pushed back off her face, bare-legged, scrubbed of the night, and somehow more dangerous like this than she was in the dress, and every effort I just made evaporates. My gaze drifts toward her on its own, and she catches me looking. A slow, knowing curve pulls at her mouth.

“You keep pouring those,” she says, nodding at the untouched glass in my hand, “and you never drink them.”

I glance down at it like I’d forgotten it was there. “Old habit.”

“Mm,” she hums as if amused.

And then, entirely oblivious to the war she’s leaving behind her, she makes her way to the bed and slides under the covers. “Good night, Aric.”

I take the shower cold. It’s a tactic that has never once worked, and I use it anyway.

By the time I come out, she’s asleep. Her breathing has gone slow and even, all that royal composure finally gone her face. I stand there longer than I should, looking at the woman whose name I once resented and now worship as though it were sacred. I watch her sleep a moment longer because I can’t bring myself to tear my gaze away.

Eventually, I lie beside her on my back, stare at the ceiling, and do not touch her.

It should be easy. I’ve shared a bed with her before and survived it. But tonight, my mind refuses to obey. The taste of her lingers, clinging to me like a sin I’m unwilling to confess. I lie there, staring into the darkness, burning with a hunger I have no intention of feeding. Finally, I accept the inevitable. I won’t fall asleep with her three feet away and her kiss still haunting my mouth.

I give up.

I pull on a shirt and go out into the night, because staying would mean gambling with the one promise I have no intention of breaking.

The garden is cool and dark and almost empty, the wedding long since collapsed into its embers—a few staff clearing glasses. The cold helps. A little.

Then I see her, and it doesn’t help at all.

Chiara. Alone at the far edge of the terrace, a wrap pulled around her shoulders, looking out at the black water.

For half a second, I consider turning around. Slipping back inside before she knows I’m here. It would be easier. Then I discard it, because leaving would be a coward’s move. I have many faults, but that has never been one of them.

She sees me before I decide anything else.

“What are you doing out here?” Her voice carries across the quiet.

“I could ask you the same.”

“I couldn’t sleep.” She turns back to the water. “It’s difficult. Sleeping next to a man you don’t know.” She breathes quietly. “Especially after the performance you put on earlier.”

I don’t pretend not to understand her. “I didn’t plan it.”

She scoffs. “Of course you didn’t.”

“I didn’t, Chiara.”