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“They must be. People have them every day.”
“Happy endings are not for beasts who spirit young maidens away to their castle. How about that?”
“I don’t know. We all have that story. Every culture. Some version of it. We must want to believe it. That no matter how much of a beast you feel you might be, you can always find a happy ending.”
“Simplistic.”
“What’s wrong with being simplistic? What is the benefit of cynicism? And anyway, what makes cynicism more complex?”
“It’s not cynicism. It is a life lived seeing very difficult things. Seeing tragedy unfold all around you. Knowing there is no happy ending possible for some people. Understanding for the first time that when you have power, you must find ways to keep it from corrupting you or you will destroy the world around you. Great power gives life or takes it, it’s not neutral.”
“All right. But in here... In the library, it’s just us, isn’t it? What does anyone have to know outside this room? It doesn’t have to touch anything. It never has to go beyond here.”
That wasn’t the point of what she was doing. She should want Matteo to know. She should want there to be consequences.
But she wasn’t lying to Javier.
Because suddenly, she just wanted to take that heaviness from his shoulders. For just one moment. She wanted to soften those hard lines on his face. Wanted to ease the suffering she knew he carried around in his soul.
Because he truly thought that he was a monster.
And he believed that he had to be above reproach in order to keep that monster from gaining hold.
She had intended to taunt him. To ask why he was so loyal to a brother who left him behind to be a babysitter.
But she didn’t want to. Not now.
She didn’t want this moment to have anything to do with the world beyond the two of them.
Beyond these walls.
Beyond this ring of warmth provided by the fire.
The heat created by the desire between them.
She had never wanted a man before.
And whatever the circumstances behind her coming to be in this country, in this castle, she wanted this man.
She had waited for desire, and she had found it here.
But it was somehow more, something deeper than she had imagined attraction might be. But maybe that was just her ignorance. Maybe this was always what desire was supposed to be. Something that went beyond the mere physical need to be touched.
A bone-deep desire to be seen. To be touched deeper than hands ever could.
There was something inside of her that responded to that bleakness in him, and she didn’t even know what it was.
Her life had been a whirlwind. Her loud, wonderful family, who she loved, including her father, even though he had wounded her as he had done. Parties. Vacations. Things.
The triumph in her business. The constant roar of social media.
But now all of it had faded away, and for the first time in her life...
For the first time in her life Violet King was truly self-made.
Was truly standing on her own feet.
Was making decisions for herself, and for no other reason at all.
