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She was his endgame.
And still he wanted to wait. Not so he could stage a wedding that would captivate the imaginations of the world as he was doing now. What he was doing now made sense. This urge in him to let her find her way to him was a traitor.
Because you want her to want you, came a voice within.Not the warlord of this valley, the true King of this island. But you. Cayetano. The man.
But that was a treachery he did not intend to allow this night. It was far too seismic to take on.
“I’m sympathetic to the whiplash you must feel, given your change in circumstances,” he told her, hoping he gave no hint of his inner turmoil. Or how desperately he wanted her in all the ways he shouldn’t. “It cannot be easy to have the world you know swept from beneath you so swiftly. I cannot apologize for it, but I do understand it can’t be easy.”
She looked at him for a long while, there in the darkness with only the lantern light between them. It made everything seem closer. Warmer.
It made him wonder iffeelingwas not so terrible after all.
“I suppose I am trying to think of it all as a gift,” she said, as if she was confessing. As if it was not easy to get out the words. “It’s not a gift I would have chosen. But it’s better to know the truth than live a lie, right?” She let out a laugh, though it was rueful. “That’s what my grandmother always said.”
“She sounds a wise woman,” Cayetano said.
He chose not to point out that her actual grandmother had been the icy Queen Carlota, notable for both her cruelty and her voracious appetites. Not a font of wisdom, the little-mourned Carlota.
But he kept that to himself.
And felt virtuous in his restraint.
“I can’t say that I’m coming to terms with it, exactly,” Delaney told him in the same confessional tone. “It helps that every time I try to call my mother, she’s too busy setting up her new life to talk to me for more than five minutes. And she sounds happy. Two weeks ago she barely had a life. For that alone, I guess I’m grateful.”
“Then perhaps, little one, you do not need so many years after all.”
“Accepting that it’s true isn’t the same thing as accepting it’s who I am.” Delaney pulled in a breath and straightened her shoulders, and the way she looked at him changed. Intensified, maybe. “But it’s the other part that I’m more worried about. Because what I accept or don’t accept doesn’t have a time limit, does it? But this wedding of yours does.”
“You said that your primary objection is marrying a stranger,” Cayetano reminded her. “But I’m not so strange, am I?”
That fine line between her brows made an appearance. “I don’t know you at all.”
“You know the most important things.” He inclined his head. “You know that I need you, which gives you power.”
If he’d expected that to make her easy, he was disappointed. She scowled at him.
“When my grandmother used to talk about falling in love with my grandfather, she talked about a lot of things. How quiet he was with everyone except her. How he looked at her as if she was prettier every day. The nicknames that were only theirs. She never once mentionedpowerunless it was a story about waiting out a tornado.” Delaney shook her head. At him. “Weirdly, she was much more focused on love.”
Once again, he was struck by how much he liked the sheen of temper in her gaze. He wanted to taste her fire. He wanted a woman who could handle his own. He could not help but think this all boded well.
Despite this talk of feelings.
“Love is a wondrous thing, or so I’m told,” he said dismissively. “But it is not all things. Love is blind, but with the power you already possess, you also know certain truths. I cannot harm you, for how would that look? The eyes of the world will be upon us the moment your true status is known. That makes you safe. I assume it is why you came with me so easily.”
She did not nod along enthusiastically to that. On the contrary, her eyes narrowed, and she looked at him as if he didn’t make sense. “It hadn’t actually occurred to me to be worried about my safety. Until now.”
“Then you are even more sheltered than I imagined.” He could hear that his voice had gone rough. “What could possibly be more important than your safety?”
Delaney laughed a little, and looked something like dazed. “When you put it that way, it does seem silly. But I’ve always felt safe.” She shook her head slightly. “Even though it’s very clear to me that you are by far the most dangerous man I’ve ever met.”
There was something so innocent in the way she said that. It nearly unmanned him. Because she did not seem to understand the great compliment she was giving him.
And he could not bear to tell her.
Though turned out, he could not bear to let it slide by unremarked, either. “I will never hurt you, Delaney,” he managed to grit out. “Know this, if nothing else.”
She nodded, slowly, as if she was busy considering him. “Cayetano. Why would you think that my expectation is that you would hurt me?”
