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Once again, this all seemed to be inching a little too close to topics he did not discuss. Ever. “I only wish to make you feel easy about the choice before you.”
“Is that it?” That blue gaze seemed to see straight through him, again. When he had always considered himself opaque. He had reveled in it, in fact. “Because this is starting to seem as if it’s a great deal more personal.”
But Cayetano thought only of the history of his people. Not his history. Not his family.
Not the choices that had been made when he was too young to have a voice.
Not the things that had happened that he’d been unable to prevent. The wild, raging displays that were his legacy—the legacy he had decidedly turned his back on.
All in the name of one love or another, so that the word itself was suspect.
He spoke of none of this.
And still his heart hammered against his ribs, as if he was that young boy once again. Trapped in the decisions of others so far away from home.
“I’m glad you’ve given no thought to your safety,” he told her silkily. “That either makes you very foolish or me very trustworthy. I choose to believe it is both.”
“Wait—” she began.
“The fact of the matter is this,” he said, cutting her off, no longer worried that he might sound too forbidding. Too ruthless. He was both. “It is not that I dislike the modern take on marriage. I am modern myself in many ways. But falling in love, getting to know another, and wasting so much time... These might seem like virtues, perhaps, on a farm. In this Kansas of yours. But here we speak not of cornfields, but kingdoms. And you already know all you need to know. I am not brutal. I have vowed not to harm you and I have not. In cases like ours, this should be enough.”
“Maybe that’s enough for you. It’s not enough for me.”
And she lifted her chin while she said that, clearly not recognizing that doing that only made her more beautiful to him. Because he was not brutal, that was true. But he was still a warlord. He liked the battle. It was only that the battleground had changed in this modern era. He did not intend to fight Queen Esme on horseback, surrounded by warriors. He did not intend to use his hands. But his future wife?
Well. He would use the weapons he had.
“Do you want romance?” he asked her. “Love?”
He had been taking care not to sound mocking, but she still jerked her head away as if he’d slapped at her. “And if I say yes?” Her eyes flashed. “What then? Will you start spouting poetry?”
“I have already given you a sample of the only poetry I know,” Cayetano told her, dark and low. “And if memory serves, my little farm girl, you loved it.”
“You have never given me a poem.” She glared in that way that sent a bolt of pure desire straight to his sex. “I think I would remember.”
“Memories are so fickle,” he murmured.
Cayetano reached over and hooked his hand around her neck. He pulled her close, taking a deep pleasure in the way her lips parted immediately. The way heat and awareness bloomed in her gaze. And the way she melted into him as if this edgy, encompassing wanting was in her, too. As if it had claimed them both.
“Pay attention, Delaney,” he told her. “This is a sonnet.”
And then he fit his mouth to hers once more.
CHAPTER NINE
DELANEYHADSTUDIEDpoetry in high school like everybody else. She wasn’t any kind of expert on the subject. But one thing she did know was that no poem she’d ever read for English class had exploded inside her like this.
It was different from that kiss her first afternoon here.
Better. Wilder.
He kissed her and he kissed her, his hard mouth making her feel fluttery, everywhere. Parts of her that shouldn’t have fluttered at all couldn’t seem to stop. Maybe she was the flutter. And maybe she didn’t care. She felt reckless and sure as his hard mouth claimed hers again and again.
She meant to push him away, because surely she shouldwantto push him away, but instead her hands got tangled on him. Lost somewhere in the sweep of his wide, hard chest. Her fingers curled around the lapels of the suit he wore, and she relished the fact that she could cling to something. Anything.
Because everything else was a storm of sensation. It pounded through her. It stole her away and redeemed her anew as his tongue stroked hers. It was all pulse and heartbeat, sensation and need.
She hadn’t known that a person could ache like this, filled with an almost pain for something she couldn’t even name. It felt like a prayer.
