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“I know what love is, Delaney,” he told her. Mercilessly. “I know what it does. And I decided a long time ago that I would never allow it in my life. You will have to live with that.”
And that should have cut her in two. She imagined it was meant to. She could see the recklessness he’d accused his father of in his gaze then, and on some level, she understood it.
He thought that if he hurt her enough, it would save him from what he must have spent all these years believing was his fate. But she knew better than most that fate was only fate until perspective shifted.
Until the truth was told.
“No,” she told him, clearly. Her gaze steady on his. “I don’t have to live with that. And I won’t.”
“I won’t love you,” he threw at her, as if this was a fight and he had to respond with every last bit of rage and anguish within him. “I can’t.”
“Cayetano,” she said, with all the certainty of the ferocious heart in her chest, “I think we both know you already do.”
And she watched as something immense slammed into him. It was as if she’d taken some kind of sledgehammer to the top of his head, cracking open the armor that surrounded him so that the light trapped inside poured out.
So much light that it rivaled the sunset.
He looked dazed. Then he surged forward, taking her upper arms in his hands and lifting her up to her toes.
“It is a death sentence,” he growled at her. “Or a lifetime imprisonment in a cell of your own making. That’s what love would do for you, Delaney. Is that what you want?”
“I want you,” she threw back at him, letting herself blaze in turn. “All of you. If that ends badly, Cayetano, maybe we deserve such a terrible fate. For not loving enough. For not loving well. For letting all the rest of this twist us into pieces.”
He shook his head. His grip tightened, but she melted against him and slid her palms on his chest. He was hot, hard. He was mouthwatering. He was Cayetano.
And he was hers.
Whether he knew it or not.
“I promise you that I will love you more than enough, and well,” she told him then, and this time, she could see that he was riveted to these vows she made. Unlike the ceremony in the courtyard. “I will put you first. Before crowns and thrones, the reporters who follow you around, the lies people tell. Your heart and my heart, Cayetano. And what we build together. That’s what I love. That’s what I want. All of you.” She slid her right hand up to cover his heart and held it there as she felt it pound. “And all of me. Forever.”
He looked haunted. Ravaged straight through. She could see the storm that worked in him, and she almost thought she could hear it, too, like thunder everywhere.
Inside and out.
But she was from Kansas. No storm could scare her.
When he spoke, it was to whisper her name. Again and again, like a melody.
“I don’t know how to do this,” he told her, when the storm had faded into song, and only the thunder of his heartbeat remained.
Still, she held his gaze. She reminded herself that she was a warrior. Fearless and ferocious.
“Do you want to?” she asked quietly. “All you have to do iswantto love me. We can build anything we like from there.”
It seemed to her then that the golden sunlight of the last of this day...changed. That it fell across him in a new way. Or maybe it was simply the way he looked at her, something so raw and intense in his gaze she wasn’t certain how she could ever look away.
His hands moved on her arms, smoothing up, then down. Then he let out a ragged breath, that she knew, without doubt, was as close as this man of granite ever came to a sob.
“I want to,” he whispered, his eyes dark with longing and need, and his voice rough. “Delaney... I want nothing more.”
She felt moisture threaten the backs of her eyes. But she moved closer, tipping her face up so she could be closer to him. So she could see all of him.
Because he was still and always the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen.
“That was the hard part,” she promised him. “Everything else is downhill.”
Cayetano shifted so he could hold her face between his hands.
