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Well. She didn’t intend to let that happen.
And no matter that she could still taste him in her mouth.
Orion reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out his mobile, more evidence that his royal blood did not prevent him from being a mortal man like anyone else. Like everyone else, even. She pretended not to watch him scrolling through whatever messages waited him with an expression that was entirely too calm for her tastes.
Surely if she felt wrecked, torn inside out and made new despite herself, he should feel the same. And it should show.
But Calista had turned biting her tongue into an art, or she never would have survived her childhood, and she did it now. She jerked her gaze away from Orion. She folded her hands in her lap, maneuvering around the unfamiliar ring that sat on her hand, so beautiful she didn’t dare look at directly. And yet heavy enough to feel like a portable dungeon.
She directed her gaze out the window instead, at the royal city that slipped by as the car took them toward this destiny of hers that she had never wanted.
This destiny she had felt fairly smug about until tonight, if she was honest. Before he’d kissed her. Before he’d taken her mouth with such raw, consuming mastery that she still felt fluttery, knocked off balance, and a little silly.
And Calista had no experience whatsoever withsilly. She hardly knew what to do with herself.
Especially when Orion appeared to expect this union of theirs to be permanent.
“I hope you’re prepared,” Orion said from beside her, surprising her. Once again, his voice went off inside her like a tuning fork and everything in her yearned toward him, like a song.
She would cut out her own tongue before she gave in and actually sang, thank you very much. She promised herself that no matter what, she would ignore that odd urge.
Calista cleared her throat. She felt almost misshapen, as if he’d kissed her so thoroughly that if she were to look in a mirror just now, she wouldn’t recognize her own face. She didn’t test that theory.
“What sort of preparation do you mean?” she asked, as smoothly as she could, and congratulated herself on sounding anything but shaken up. “I’m the vice president at a multinational corporation, but thank you. I don’t normally need to be reminded to prepare for a party.”
“I cannot speak to corporate wrangling, of course,” Orion said. With a glint in those grave eyes of his that she was tempted to consider evidence of a heretofore unknown sense of humor in the new, stern king. Surely not, she thought. Her head must still be spinning. “Or party planning, for that matter. But you must know that the moment you emerge from this vehicle on my arm, your life will change.”
She waited for him to laugh. Or even smirk.
He didn’t.
And she felt herself go cold. “What do you mean by that? I don’t want my life to change. I like my life.” Or she would soon enough, anyway. “I’ve worked hard on the life I have.”
With single-minded focus, in fact. All pushing toward the finish line she could finally—finally—see before her.
But the cheers from outside the car seemed to press in on her, then. The way the city slid by as if it, too, danced attendance on this man. Then again, maybe it was the way he studied her expression, the look on his face a bit too close to pity for her liking.
“Surely you cannot be so naive,” Orion said, and the fact that his tone was gentle kept her still.
So still it prevented her from snapping at him, or even getting her back up in the first place. Both of which she would have preferred, because the alternative was staring back at him, feeling awfully close to stricken.
“Every time I escort a woman to an event, it is like a feeding frenzy,” he told her in the same way. Kind enough. Gentle, too. But certain all the same. “No matter how many times I tell them that the women in question are my poor cousins, the result is the same. A complete and utter circus.”
She knew all about that circus. She’d seen enough of it without even looking for it—on the television, in all the newsagents. She’d even known, the way everyone did, that if Orion had ever dated, he’d managed to keep it quiet.
She’d known all of that in the way she knew what month Christmas was. Or that snow was cold, little though it fell in Idylla. It wasn’t anything personal, it was just a fact.
Her heart squeezed tight in her chest, then began to beat like a drum.
He continued to eye her with that mix of pity and patience. “But I have never before arrived at one of the holiday balls with a woman I was not related to, Calista. You should prepare yourself, at the very least, for the reaction the crowd will have when you exit the car.”
“But... But I...”
But Orion wasn’t finished. And worse, he seemed inclined to keep sounding kind, which was the last thing Calista wanted. It made everything so much harder.
It made her feel so much weaker.
“All of that will pale in comparison to the fervor that will grip the nation, the press, and a good part of the world once we announce that our engagement is finally going ahead tonight, all these years after my father arranged it.” His voice was as grave as his expression, then. And the small gleam she saw in his eyes had nothing to do with amusement, she was sure. “I do hope you know what you’ve gotten yourself into.”
