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I’d seal us together forever. And there was fuck all anybody could do about it if we had an heir on the way.
But as I ran up a staircase and into another long, dark, arched hallway that ran beneath the great ballroom, a secret tunnel between my chambers and Anika’s, I had to face the reality that no matter how much I wanted her, no matter how I loved her, she didn’t love me. Not yet. Certainly not after the way I’d treated her.
The things I wanted to do to Anika weren’t polite, they weren’t gentle. Not rape, not that. Never that. But I wanted to walk that line of consent with her, I wanted to play with the flames of yes and no. I wanted to take her to places of passion and intensity that she’d never fucking imagined before. My love for her was fucking consuming and overpowering. It was a dirty fucking thing to ask a young sweet girl like Anika to take a beast like me. She deserved better.
But I’d never give her up. Never fucking ever.
Now I was at her bedroom door. I took one second to collect myself, like a hunter taking a breath before loosing his arrow.
This was it. I was going to walk in there, kiss her, and get my cock inside her as fast as fucking possible. It was time to claim her as mine. There was not a second to waste.
Three hard knocks on the door and it swung open. I was so wild with passion and need that I barged right in uninvited, shouldering past Maria to get inside. But when I scanned the room, there was no sign of Anika. And it wasn’t just that I couldn’t see her, either. I couldn’t feel her presence. She wasn’t here. She wasn’t nearby.
“Where the fuck is she?” I asked.
Maria scurried around in front of me, clutching her apron. Her eyes widened in horror and realization.
“Isn’t she with you?”
Fuck. Fuck. “Of all the fucking times for her to slip past me,” I said, fuming as I walked to the window to see outside. “Did she say anything to you?”
“Nothing at all,” Maria said. “Not a word. She was just… gone.”
“Goddamn it,” I said, smacking the stone windowsill with my fist.
Maria seized me by the shoulders and looked up into my eyes. “Find her. Please, my prince. You must.”
I scanned the grounds, everywhere, for any sign of Anika on horseback or on foot. The view from her window gave me a good sense of the expanse of lands near the castle, but I saw nothing. Fucking nothing.
“Go,” Maria urged me. “Please.”
I pressed my fist against my lips and growled.
“I’m the last person she’s going to want to see. If she sees me she’ll only quicken her pace.”
Maria sucked in a hiss. “Oh, for heaven’s sake. Are you so blind you cannot see? She’s in love with you.”
“Bullshit,” I snarled. “I’ve seen the way she looks at me. Fucking bullshit.”
“Not bullshit,” Maria snapped back. “You know it, I know it, she knows it. Go!” She shoved my shoulder to push me toward the hallway. “Save her. Help her.”
She wasn’t just talking about right now, I knew that. She was talking about saving her from her future, too.
The room damn near swirled around me. I felt like I was waking up from a knockout punch. In less than an hour, my entire understanding of my situation with Anika had flipped. Now here was Maria, fucking telling me that Anika wanted me, as much as I wanted her.
“If you’re joking around with me, Maria, I’ll kill you. No shit. Right here. With my bare hands.”
“You don’t think I know that?” Maria said, actually stamping on the floor. “You’re terrifying. She is the one person that isn’t scared of you at her core. Because she loves you.”
For one second, we stared each other down—Maria with pleading eyes, me with nothing but doubt. But I could see plainly that she wasn’t shitting me. Anika wanted me. Anika loved me. She’d be mine willingly. I just had to fucking find her.
I thundered from the room, down the great staircase, and through the main hall. I shouldered open the side door, and then I grabbed the first horse I saw. He was a pure-white stallion that I’d ridden before. Hot-blooded, quick, and unstoppable. Just the horse for the job. I slung my leg over and took off at a gallop before I’d even gotten my boots in the stirrups.
As we barreled into the forest, the skies opened up. Fist-sized drops of rain pelted my back as a huge storm rumbled in, turning day to night. The first tropical storm of the season.
And in Estana, that could turn the land into a deathtrap.
CHAPTER 14
Anika
I was shivering so hard that I couldn’t get a fire started, and I was too exhausted to keep trying. I chattered in the freezing darkness of a small cave I’d managed to find in the torrential cyclone, and drew my knees up to my chest. I was soaked to the bone and deliriously tired. And terrified.
