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Telling Melody the story of his mother reminded him, forcefully, of the one inescapable truth he never should have let himself forget.
He had left his own mother to die.
What he had left was a promise to his brother and a wife he was sworn to protect, no matter what. He deserved nothing more.
And that meant, no matter who he blamed or how he felt about it, that first and foremost he needed to protect Melody from himself.
Especially if she was foolish enough to feel safe in his presence.
“I never should have touched you,” he told her, almost formally. “I betrayed both you and myself when I allowed the truth of who you are to cloud my judgment.”
“That did not feel like a cloud to me, Griffin. It felt like clarity.”
He ignored that. This was about keeping his promise to himself—the one he’d made the morning his mother had been found. That never again would he let anyone too close to him. Not when it was so clear that he couldn’t be trusted.
“We will return to our initial arrangement. Wiser, I hope.”
“We can’t return to me cowering and cringing and you imagining that’s real,” Melody replied, matter-of-factly. And it kicked about inside him, the way she said such things. With total conviction and absolutely no fear. “So what is there to return to?”
“Something more civil than this,” he blurted out. “The way marriages between people like us have always been.”
Melody considered him for a moment that seemed to stretch out. And ache.
“If you make yourself a priest, riddled with the glory of your abstinence, would that make up for it, do you think?”
He stiffened as if she’d shot him. Some part of him would have preferred it if she had. He thought of the knife he’d carried in his boot since his soldier days, and how easy it would be to simply take it out, hand it to her, and let her do her worst. How much quicker and more elegant.
At least then there would be no waiting. No quiet tyranny of day after day ofwantingall these things he couldn’t have.
No more of this, he ordered himself. It was time to retreat into duty. Into the ascetic life he’d planned to live once he married. No scandals, no secrets, and none of this ruinouspassion.That was a risk other men might take, but not him.
He should have known better. He had.
Now it was time to enforce it.
“You wanted to understand and I have told you,” he said, scowling at her even as he drew himself up. She might think there was clarity in the way they’d come together, that howling, greedy madness, but he knew better. Clarity was clean. It was a kept promise, not a messy vow. “And it doesn’t matter if you agree with my reasoning or not, Melody. This is how it will be.”
He heard the ring of finality in his own voice and, for the first time since he’d seen a wild and cringing creature in his soon-to-be sister-in-law’s company, thought he might actually be himself again. It was a gift.
He told himself it was a gift he wanted.
“Because you are the Prince?” Melody asked, a strange note in her voice. “You think you can order me around?”
“That and because I’m bigger than you. Either way, this ends here.”
Griffin picked her up and set her back another few feet, so there could be no argument. And no possible impediment to him walking out of this room and into a quieter, more reasonable future.
“I hope that in time you’ll see the beauty of this arrangement and understand the need for—” he began as he made for the door.
But the world was upended.
Something hit him, hard.
Then he could do nothing but lie there, blinking, as it slowly dawned on him that he was...on the floor.
He was on the floor of the main reception room, in fact. And his angel of a wife was standing over him, her hands in a position even he could see was decidedly martial.
More critical, to his mind, was the foot at his neck.
