AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“While my grandfather was alive, it was different,” he said. “My parents were newlyweds and from all I have ever been able to ascertain, they got along well enough. This was no love match, but then, no one expected it should have been. My mother was an excellent support for a crown prince. She provided the heir and the spare in short order. She maintained a full slate of complementary interests. She took great care to create a certain image—elegant, yet approachable. But then my grandfather died. My father became king.”
“‘Heavy is the head...’?”
“Heavy was the ego,” Orion growled. “This is all documented history. It’s not personal. My father was spectacularly ill suited to be the king of anything. He surrounded himself with the worst people. Sycophantic courtiers who told him only what he wished to hear. He’d already secured the bloodline, so why not indulge himself as he pleased? He began to throw parties. He began to neglect his duties. And my mother, always trained to think first and only of my father, went with him wherever he led. How could she not?”
“She was a grown woman,” Calista pointed out. Carefully. “A grown woman and a queen, in fact. With her own courtiers, advisers, and so on. Or so I am informed.”
His mouth twisted. “If you already know, why are you asking me?”
“I want to know how you see this role I am to take in a few weeks.” She lifted her chin and tried to understand why that severe look on his stark face made her want to do dangerous things. Like move closer. Or worse, touch him. “That’s really what matters, isn’t it? What doyouwant from a queen, Orion?”
She didn’t understand why the tension in the room was so intense. But she also didn’t move when he slapped his tumbler down on the sideboard with a decisive click, and then started for her.
Calista stood her ground. Somehow, she stood her ground, when he seemed to her like some kind of avenging angel as he bore down upon her.
And then his fingers were on her shoulders, pulling her close.
As if he wanted to flirt with the same dangers she did.
Because her secret shame was that there was not one single shred of resistance inside her. Not one, when she knew that this wasn’t real. That none of this was anything but elaborate staging.
No matter how it felt.
“I’ve already told you what I want,” he growled at her.
“Sex,” she threw at him, because challenging him was the closest thing she had to a wall and she needed a wall. She neededsomethingbetween them. “That’s what you wanted from the start. You do know that you’re the king, don’t you? You can snap your fingers and have as much sex as you want with whoever you want. You don’t have to marry unwilling women to get it.”
She thought he ought to have been gripping her hard, as if he wanted to hurt her. The way her father would have done. But instead, his thumbs moved restlessly against the exposed skin of her clavicle. And she could feel the fire of it, the rhythm, the deep, drugging song as it spooled out inside her.
“I could snap my fingers, yes,” he agreed, and if there was a wall between them it was made of need. “And then before I know it, I could also have a collection of tabloid articles to my name, one for each new scandal that would rip this kingdom apart. I prefer to keep my private life private. And all scandals in the past.”
There was something in the way he said that. She tilted her head slightly to one side, trying to work it out. Something inside her longed to simply reach out her hand. To lay her palm against his cheek and feel the heat of him.
Another part of her wanted to bury her head against his chest, because she knew, somehow, that if she did, he would gather her against him and hold her tight.
But she could feel that song inside her, the pitch growing higher and more insistent.
And she thought of his mother, bred since her birth to play the supporting role. To disappear while standing in plain sight, there next to her husband. A woman created for the sole purpose of bearing children and smiling prettily beneath the weight of a crown that was never hers.
Calista understood something terrible about herself then. She understood exactly how she’d been lying to herself all this time.
She’d worked so hard, and sacrificed everything, but not only because she wanted to save her sister from her parents. Not only because she wanted to put her father in his place at last.
She’d been doing it for those reasons, yes. But more than that, she’d wanted her own power. She’d wanted to prove that shecoulddo it. She alone. She’d wanted the life she knew she could have had if she’d been born the son her father had always wanted.
She had never trusted anyone.
She didn’t see herself starting now.
And it had all happened too quickly, hadn’t it? She’d been removed from Skyros Media. She’d been shunted off to the palace. She’d spent a week learning about all the ways she could better serve and support the king.
Calista didn’t know if it was galling or pathetic that she’d already drowned, had disappeared in her own mirror, and was the last to know.
“I’ve already said this to you once,” she said now, swaying closer to him because it felt like danger, and that felt like resistance. “You don’t have to go to all these lengths to have sex with me, Your Majesty. You could do it right now, if you wanted. All you have to do is ask.”
“We have a ball to get to,” he gritted out at her, but his thumbs brushed against her skin. And he didn’t let her go.
“My bad,” she replied, smiling because that felt meaner. Edgier and therefore safer. “I should have known. You only want me if it’s a challenge. If there’s some kind of hunt. Even kings are mere men, after all.”
