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No longer the king and the street urchin. But two people unraveled, undone. Broken by desire and pleasure. Brought down to nothing but needed.
And need they had found sated only in each other.
And as she lay there against the mattress, breathing hard, her heart beating erratically, she felt that same rush of joy she had felt when he told her he wasn’t going to marry Violet. When all seemed possible and new.
And it did. Like the sky had opened up. Right there over the bed.
“Apparently, Violet has fallen in love with Javier.”
Livia looked up from her computer. “He... She... What?”
“While we were gone, it turns out. While we were handling that big important alliance for Monte Blanco, my brother was stealing my bride.”
“You don’t seem upset.” She narrowed her eyes and examined him.
“I’m not. It is what I wanted for him, after all. I wanted him to find love, I just didn’t assume it would be with my fiancée. But I suppose all’s well that ends well. Monte Blanco could still have the benefit of Violet’s influence, and she and Javier can be happy. And not even you can be angry at me anymore, Mouse.”
“I think I’ll find some new reasons,” she said absently.
She sat there for a moment, her heart buoyant in her chest.
And suddenly, it felt like it might have burst open. He wasn’t marrying Violet. She was going to marry Javier. She...
“Will you excuse me for a moment?”
“Certainly.”
She left the office, and ducked into the nearest alcove of the palace, leaning against the stone wall and pressing her hand to her breast. “He’s not marrying her.”
She wanted to shout. She wanted to cry. For everything that had transpired on the trip had been... She had never felt like Matteo might have noticed her in that way, but during this trip she had. The way he had held her chin, the way he had looked at her...
Her foolish heart had begun to dream, and now...now he wasn’t even engaged and he...
Then the cold hard dagger of reality stabbed into her.
He had seen how she was with diplomats on the trip. He had been impressed with her. And he had reiterated just how important she was to him. How he didn’t want her to leave him even if she were to marry someone else. And she knew Matteo. Knew that his arrogance far surpassed just about anything else, and what he wanted, he went out and got.
Matteo was going to propose to her.
He would wait. He would wait until Javier and Violet had married. Until there had been a suitable lapse in time so that it was clear that he had not betrayed his fiancée in any way. And then he would... He would ask her to be his wife. No, he would demand it. Because that’s who he was. It would never occur to him that she would say no. Not because he thought she was in love with him—thank God for that—but because he would simply assume that what he was asking was so logical no one would deny him. And immediately, her heart crumpled with pain.
She didn’t know what to do. The reality of the situation was that things had changed. He was the same man. It didn’t matter that the circumstances had shifted. He hadn’t. He wouldn’t. He was King Matteo of Monte Blanco, a man who considered possession of emotions to be a near crime as far as his own heart was concerned. That wouldn’t change just because his circumstances with Violet King had changed. And she could see the path that he would take, and the reason he would get on it. She could see that he would choose her as a logical course of action, and it would be worse...
It would be worse than watching him marry someone else.
Because if she had to stand back and watch him marry Violet, then she would’ve had to watch that other woman be consigned to a life without love. And she wouldn’t have envied her half so much as she might have otherwise. That would’ve been bearable. In a strange, small, twisted way, she found that she would have been able to bear that.
But she couldn’t bear it for herself. She couldn’t bear a life without love.
Not loving him the way that she did. If she hadn’t loved him, it would be an entirely different story. If she hadn’t felt the way that she did for him, cutting down deep into her soul, then it wouldn’t be so painful. So impossible. But she did, and it was.
And she knew what it was like.
When someone else could drop you off callously, leave you standing there, alone and frightened and confused, with nothing but a sugary sweet to comfort you. Yes, she knew what that was like. She had endured it once, and she refused to put herself through it again. She refused to ever expose herself to such pain ever again.
Not for him. Not for anyone.
Not for king. Not for country.
