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And then again, when an inkling bloomed inside her.
“Orion.”
He sounded amused. “Calista.”
“You don’t... You can’t mean...?”
“Indeed I do.”
Calista pushed away from him. Something great and terrible was expanding inside her chest, fast and hot. And she really didn’t know if it was a sob or if she was about to scream, or some mad combination of both—
“You can’t...?”
She turned around in the water, ignoring the way it sloshed alarmingly at the sides of the tub. Then she knelt there, facing him.
Her heart kicking at her so hard she was astonished she wasn’t running flat out.
His eyes glittered dark gold. But otherwise, he looked almost entirely at his ease. His mouth in its usual stern line. His head high. Not in the least bit concerned about what he’d just told her.
What he’d just admitted to her.
“You can’t possibly mean...?” she whispered.
“That is exactly what I mean,” he replied, quietly. Almost as if he was relishing this, she thought. “You are my only lover, Calista. And soon to be my wife and queen. Your reaction suggests you did not enjoy yourself when I feel certain you did.”
“I... That’s not the point! You’re supposed to disclose things like that!”
He lifted a shoulder, then lowered it, looking entirely unconcerned. “I apologize if this upsets you in some way.”
“Upsets me?” She felt a deep, shuddering thing, rattling through her. As if her bones were coming apart.As if your heart is breaking, something in her whispered. “Of course it doesn’t upset me, I just don’t believe it.”
She didn’t know what she imagined a virgin ought to look like—or someone who had so recently been a virgin—but she was sure it wasn’t this. Orion, every inch of him majestic in all ways, lounging back in the bath they shared. An enigmatic look on his face and not a single shred of anything like insecurity about his performance or her reaction anywhere.
Not that he should have been insecure. But surely there should have been fumbling. Mistakes or even misfires. Not...all that fierce possession that made her clench with need all over again, just thinking of it.
“Why would a man lie about such a thing?” he asked idly. “Surely it is more likely that the lies go in the other direction. Men do like to spin tales of their prowess, do they not?”
The gleam in his dark gaze suggested that he knew full well that he did not need to brag about his prowess or anything else. That, too, made a shiver snake its way down her spine.
“But you... But that...” She ordered herself to stop stammering. To get a hold of herself. “How?”
There was the faintest curve in the corner of Orion’s mouth, then. He kept his dark gold gaze on her. “It was clear to me from a very young age that one of the primary ways in which my father was weak was his complete inability to avoid the sexual invitations that came his way. He did nothing to hide them. Indeed, he flaunted his various conquests in magazines like your father’s or right here in the palace. And at the age when I might have started experimenting with such things, I was too busy engaged in what was already my life’s work. Cleaning up his messes.” His eyes glittered. “I decided I had no need to clean up mine, as well. It started as a rash decision when I was no more than thirteen. But it became a vow, and I kept it.”
“How did you possibly...?”
Calista couldn’t finish the sentence. She was terribly afraid that her heart was going to claw its way out of her chest, right there in the tub. She felt weak, somehow. And more profoundly thrown than she ever had before.
Or maybe, a voice inside her that sounded suspiciously like her sister whispered,what you actually feel is vulnerable.
Because he had given her something he had kept to himself all this time. He had made this thing between them real, and it made her want to sob. She wanted to lean forward, take his hands in hers, or his face, and tell him to be careful. That she could not be trusted and would only betray him in the end. How could he not know that already?
“Do you imagine that men cannot control themselves?” Orion sounded amused again. “I will note that no one thinks anything of it if a woman chooses to hold on to her virtue. But there must be something wrong with a man if he does the same.”
“You did this to stay virtuous?”
“My brother would tell you that I’m ill-suited to be a king, because the monastic life suits me so much better.” Again, the hint of a smile played with his mouth. Not as if he couldn’t understand her reaction. But as if he found it entertaining. “I have always been intensely physical. I have merely restricted myself to other expressions of it. Until now.” He inclined his head. “Until you.”
That same emotion walloped her again. Was she going to surrender to it and sob? Or was she going to let it wrench her apart? Was she mad to imagine she could choose when it felt as if she might burst where she sat?
