AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He had told her about it. Mostly because he had wanted to see her wear those for him. Those rubies and nothing more. But also he had... He hadn’t understood. But suddenly, here, with those bracelets on her wrist, in a church, where they were about to make vows... Where she had brought the carnal into the sacred and blended them together, made them one, he could not understand how this bond could remain just another promise he decided to keep.
Because as she spoke her vows, low and grave in a voice that only he could hear, he felt them imprint beneath his skin. Down to his soul. And when he spoke his in return, they were like that gold chain on her wrist. But they wrapped around them both, binding them in a way that he had not anticipated.
He had thought he knew what this meant.
Because that day he had discovered the sorts of treachery his father protected. That day that he had realized that the orders he had taken for years had been in service of an insidious plan, and nothing that protected or bettered his people, he had sworn that he would uphold a set of principles. That he would not be led by his heart.
That he would not be led by anything other than a code of honor.
But now he had made vows to another person, and not an ideal.
When it came time to kiss her, it took all of his self-control not to claim her utterly and completely right there in front of the roomful of people. He touched her face, and he exercised restraint he did not feel, kissing her slowly but firmly, making sure that she knew it was a promise of more. A promise for later.
He had been restrained these past weeks.
But it was over now.
The vows were made. His course was set.
There was no turning back. Not now.
Whatever would become of this. Of them... It was too late.
You chose this.
He gritted his teeth against the truth of it.
It had been easy to say that he had done it for Matteo. That he was doing it to atone for the sin of taking her in the first place. But the fact of the matter was he was far too selfish to turn away from her.
The idea of giving her to another man had been anathema to him. An impossibility. Had his brother insisted on marrying her, he would have...
He would have betrayed him. He would have stolen her. Secreted her out of the country. Abandoned his post. Abandoned all that
they had built.
The truth of that roared in his blood.
Like the beast that he was.
But there was nothing to be done about that now. She was his, so it didn’t matter. She was his, so it couldn’t matter.
He pushed it all away as he continued to kiss her, and when he was through, the congregation was clapping, and they were introduced.
But he didn’t hear any of it.
There was nothing.
Nothing but the pounding of his blood in his veins, the demand that burned through his body like molten lava.
He would endure the reception for as long as he had to. For as long as he had to pretend to care about flowers and ice cream and all manner of things that were only stand-ins for what he had truly wanted all along.
He didn’t care to touch the petals of an alarmingly soft purple flower. He wanted Violet. Her skin beneath his hands. He didn’t wish to lick an ice-cream cone. He wished to lick her.
And he would play the game if he had to, but that was all it was to him. A game. A game until he could get to her. Because that was all that mattered.
She talked to her family, and he knew that he could not rush her away from them. She was speaking, even to her father, and though there was cautiousness between them, he wondered if she might make amends with him. Javier didn’t know how.
He asked her that very question once they got back to their room. In spite of the fact that his blood roared with desire, he had to know.
