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“To protect me. That’s different.”
“Sure,” Violet said. “Look. I don’t know if I’m going to be able to get out of this. I’m trying... But I’m here now. I’m in the palace. Then... The worst part is... I... He’s not the one that I want.”
The door to her bedroom opened, and she turned around, the phone still clutched in her hand, and there Javier was, standing there looking like a forbidding Angel.
“I’m going to have to call you back.”
“No. You can’t say something cryptic like that and then go away.”
“I have to. Sorry.”
“Should I call the police?”
“I’m the captive of a king, Minerva. As in an actual king, not our last name. The police can’t help me.”
She hung the phone up then and stared at Javier. “Have you come to deliver me to my bridegroom?”
They hadn’t been face-to-face since that night. The last time she’d seen him he had been naked. And so had she. Her skin burned with the memory.
“Who are you talking to?”
“My sister. Oddly, I have a lot on my mind.”
“I spoke to Matteo.”
She took a deep breath and braced herself. “And?”
“You are not marrying him.”
A roar of relief filled her ears, and suddenly she felt like she might faint.
“You mean I’m free to go?”
“No,” he said gravely.
“But you just said that I don’t have to marry him.”
“No. But you do have to marry me.”
“I’m sorry, what?”
“It turns out that neither my brother nor your father were honest about the particulars of the situation. You may want to call him and speak to him. But my brother made a commandment. He said one of us had to marry you. But that sending you home was not an option.”
“Except, what’s to stop you from letting me go?”
“I refuse,” Javier said. “He has turned your charge over to me completely. And that means you’re staying here. With me.”
“But I have a life, and you know that. We... We know each other.”
“And you wanted me to be something other than what I am. You want to believe that I am a man made into a beast. But you never gave space to the idea that I might simply be a beast. Given free rein to keep you, I think that I will. We are very compatible, are we not?”
“You...”
And she realized that the strange, leaping, twisting in her heart was because she was as terrified about this new development as she was exhilarated.
This man, this beautiful man, was demanding she become his wife.
And he was the man that she wanted.
