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And held.
He had been on the verge of kisses before. Though typically, he just took them, and the women he was with claimed them right back. No pausing. No hesitation.
This was not a hesitation.
It was a profound discovery. And he could do nothing but sit there in it. In this realization that what he wanted more than anything, right in that moment, was to taste her.
To taste her vile temper, her recriminations, her compliments. To drink them all in and somehow take them inside of himself. So that he could feel all that she did. That fire and passion. For he had just thought to himself how she was his other half in many ways. And this was the half that he yearned for. The one that contained all that bright, brilliant emotion that his body nearly refused to let him have. Pain, he had that. Anger, aplenty. But the rest... She contained all of that. A great mystery, a great certainty.
“Livia,” he whispered.
“You will marry Violet King?” she asked, her voice sounding almost like she was drunk.
“Yes,” he said.
She moved away from him. “Don’t do that to me again.”
“What did I...”
“Just don’t. Tonight’s been strange, and not at all like what we normally are. Let us not repeat it.”
And then she turned and walked back into the ballroom.
They were at the hotel, and he pulled her out of the car and into his arms on the street. And he kissed her. With all the longing he had felt in that moment at the hotel in Spain. That deep desire to be with her. He had held himself back then because she had asked him to.
Because...
Because he had been resolute in his course then, and he could see now that it had been the wrong one.
What was it about Livia that always made him have to confront his flaws? He preferred to labor under the assumption he had none. That by excising his heart, he had done away with the potential for mistakes. But she was ever a reminder that he was human.
And now he reveled in it.
For only a human, only a man, could enjoy the feel of a woman in his arms quite this way.
And he kissed her, right there on the streets for anyone to see. Claiming.
Because she was his.
From the moment he had taken her off the streets, she had been his.
She had tried to run from it, from him, but they were inevitable.
He could see that now. That night he had brought her to the gala, it had been a trial, for her being his Queen. It was as if something in him had known it before his mind had, and he had never experienced anything quite like that. But in many ways, it was like that thing inside him had known it from the moment he’d seen her out on the street. That she was to be taken in, for just this moment. That her destiny was to be the Queen of Monte Blanco. The country needed her. He was absolutely convinced of that now. She had been guiding him all this time, had been advising him and organizing him, and he could see now that the common bond—other than himself—when it came to all the growth in the country and the growth in himself, was Livia.
She was inevitable.
As was this.
Fate, if you believed in such things.
He did not. But how could he deny that there was something of a higher power at work here? It didn’t matter. Because he was not in a position to deny it, nor did he want to. Tonight, he just wanted her.
When he could drag his mouth away from hers, he led her into the hotel, bringing her into the private elevator that took him to the top floor, to his suite.
His thumbprint allowed the doors to open, bringing them out to the luxury penthouse.
“I...” She sounded dizzy.
“Did you not realize we were not headed to your room?”
“I can’t say that I noticed much of anything.”
“I had us moved.”
Her eyes flickered, and he had a feeling he was about to get a lecture on his arrogance again, so he silenced her with a kiss. And drunk her in deep. He could taste the notes of the wine she had at dinner, could taste the sun somehow, and something that was essentially her.
And he knew that there was no turning back now.
