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Carefully, as if one or both of them had been made of glass.

She had let out the tiniest sigh, but he’d felt it as if it had moved through him, too.

The next time he’d kissed her, seconds later that had felt like an entire lifetime of longing, he had angled his head so he could slip his tongue into her mouth, to taste her fully.

And everything had changed.

Everything had shattered into a kaleidoscope of vibrant sensation, constellations shining only when they touched, and it had never gone back to the way it had been before. There had been no possible way to go back, not once they’d known.

Not once they’d stopped pretending.

That kiss had marked them both. Sometimes he considered it a kind of scar, dividing his life into two distinct halves, before that night in the gallery and after.

Now, as he kissed her and tasted her and let heat and scent surround him on a couch in Chicago, a world away from his kingdom high in the Alps, he could remember it all. Every kiss. Every touch. Every stolen moment.

The tiny little house on the outskirts of the Royal City, where she would wait for him when she flew in on her stolen weekends, year after year. How he would leave in an unmarked car from the palace and only exit that vehicle when the garage door closed behind him, concealing him from view.

How he would run up the stairs, his heart pounding and the joy flooding through him when he saw her waiting for him. She was usually right there at the top of the stairs so that they wouldn’t waste a single second. So that every stolen hour was theirs from start to finish.

She was melting into him in that same way now, here. He turned, still holding her, so they lay side by side on the couch. Then he pulled her leg over his, so he could get closer. So he could feel even more of her body against his.

The kiss grew hotter, and as always, caught fire.

He had bemoaned this chemistry. He had wondered if it was a curse. Some years he had considered it a kind of witchcraft, at the very least. In the beginning, he’d told himself that its power was only that it was forbidden. That he could not have her in the way he wanted her.

There was no possible way that anything could feel like this long term.

But it had. For three years, it had felt exactly like this. Never enough. Never lessening.

If anything, it grew. It consumed more and more of both of them, getting better and better and better.

He had dreamed of her when they were apart. He had counted the days until they were together again. In some ways, this thing between them allowed him to ignore the unfortunate reality of his actual personal life, because he had Aeryn to think about instead.

To his mind, in his more rational moments, he assumed this was yet more proof that their connection was nothing more than a last gasp affair. It was merely evidence that he did not wish to do what was required of him.

But then, two years ago, the date for his wedding had been set. It might as well have been carved in stone. That was how serious and immovable the wedding date between the King of Liandero and Lady Sintia, his betrothed, was held to be on all sides.

Shortly after, Aeryn had gotten a strange little sickness that refused to go away. Looking back, he thought that they’d both accepted that it was no one’s fault that her illness turned out to be morning sickness. That somehow, all the birth control they had faithfully used had failed to work.

After all, some nights when she visited, he didn’t think they’d stopped until they literally passed out, usually with him still deep inside of her. Really, what had he imagined might happen?

He had expected her to terminate the pregnancy. He had also known that when she did, the only logical thing that could be done in their situation, he would find it difficult to get past. He could remember thinking that the termination would be a natural end to their breathless, all-consuming affair, because it was bringing reality and consequences into the bubble they’d created.

What was surprising was that he’d found himself grieving the loss of her, and their baby, before it happened.

But when they’d met on their appointed weekend, when he’d expected that she would tell him that she’d done it while she’d been back in the States, Aeryn had instead confessed that she’d been unable to make herself do it. That she didn’t think she could do it.

Then she’d looked at him, very seriously, and told him that she would do whatever he deemed necessary to protect him and his throne, but she was keeping her baby.

For a while, he had allowed himself to be furious about that. It was easier to face than what lurked beneath that fury.

More consequences he had not wished to face, and none of them painting her in a bad light. Only him. Only the man he’d believed he was before he’d met her.

On the couch, Aeryn moved closer, wrapping her arms tight around his neck. He marveled, the way he always did, that two bodies could fit together so perfectly. That she seemed to have been crafted precisely for him, to fit just like this.

That she still held him the way she did, with that surprisingly hard grip of hers—like she was prepared to hold onto him no matter what, come what may.

He remembered all of it now. They’d met only a few more times, and the end had been as tragic and terrible as expected. He’d left her sobbing. Hopeless.