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"I... I’m not sure Your Majesty," he stutters, fear evident in his face.
Liar.
James snorts. "I highly doubt that," he replies.
Without taking a breath, he once again picks up the sword he had used earlier, and he impales the guard with it. A look of shock crosses the guard's face as he stares down at the sword that is now in his stomach, disbelief at the fact that he was dying all over his face.
I was surprised by James' actions. He had never been bloodthirsty or quick to act on anger during the time that I had known him. Right now, he has a look of satisfaction all over his face.
I couldn't judge though; I probably had the same look of satisfaction all over my features as well.
James pulls the keys from the pocket of the guard he had just killed and uses them to unlock the thick iron cuffs that are around my wrists.
"I obviously can't leave you down here," he says roughly, as if he didn't want me to mistake him letting me out of the cell for kindness but rather as a necessity. I still say nothing.
I still wanted to explain myself to James, but right now I was exhausted.
Exhausted actually seemed too tame a word to describe how I feel at the moment. I was always tired on days that I was pulled across the eternities. Combine that with the emotional wreckage of leaving a man that I'd fallen in love with behind and the stress and anxiety caused by reuniting with a past love who seemed to hate me, it was a recipe for disaster on both my body and my psyche.
I follow behind him. He’s walking strangely, angling his body as if he wanted to make sure that we couldn’t accidently touch at all. I have the absurd desire to reach out and grab his hand, but I manage to hold myself back.
We walk up the faded stone stairs that lead out of the dungeons. The guards hadn’t been lying, the palace really does seem to be asleep. A door opens up ahead and James’ friend, Richard steps into the hallway, clad in a long robe. He rubs his eyes wearily.
“Everything all right, Your Majesty?” he asks.
“Servants are needed to clean up a mess in the prison cells,” James says casually, greatly understating the massacre that would actually be waiting for whatever unsuspecting soul was sent down there.
Richard’s eyes widen, and he quickly looks more awake. Obviously, he understands what James is really saying. I wondered how often such a scene had to be cleaned up down there.
Richard finally notices that I’m standing behind James. James was the tallest of my lovers, and he easily hid me from sight if I was standing behind him. I had always loved how petite he made me feel.
Richard begins to open his mouth to ask about me, his eyes assessing me closely. Evidently, he hadn’t been too concerned about my return earlier when I was being marched out of the Throne Room, but now that I was with the King of England in the middle of the night...looking a mess, I had garnered his attention.
“Just get someone to clean it up,” James orders before Richard can speak, stepping back in front of me to hide me from view. Richard rushes past us to obey James’ order.
“I’m sure you remember him,” James says stiffly as we start to walk again. Richard is now my top advisor.”
I nod even though he can’t see the nod since I’m still behind him. That made sense to me that Richard would have such a prestigious position now that James was the king. He had always been one of James’ closest friends.
James leads me to what I realize are the King's chambers...his chambers now. I had never been inside this set of rooms as James had a different set of rooms when he was the Prince. I look at him curiously as I walk inside and see him watching me closely. I wasn’t sure what I was doing here. He wants me to sleep in the same room with him? That seemed like pretty big progress considering the fact that a second ago he hated me. The scowl that was still etched all over his face seemed to suggest that hadn’t changed.
James walks to the door and closes it behind us. He leans heavily against it, laying his head back and closing his eyes.
It’s like a mask has fallen from his features as soon as were cocooned in his room allowing me to see how he really feels. Exhausted. Confused. Distraught.
I take a step towards him, still holding my shirt closed in front of me.
“James,” I whisper, hoping the love and longing was distinguishable in my voice.
“I can’t,” he whispers. “I can’t talk about it with you tonight.”
He opens his eyes. The blue vulnerability of them cuts right through me. “Can I just hold you tonight and we not speak? It’s one of the things that haunted me over the last six years, the fact that I never knew what it was like to have you in my bed, to know what it felt like to wake up to you.”
My eyes widen. We were going to that step already? I was all for it, but I was pretty sure he wasn’t ready for that.
“Just to sleep,” he clarifies, a breath of heat flashing in his eyes at the thoughts he knew I was having. He walks towards the bed, pulling his white silk shirt off his body as he does so. He casually drops it on the floor behind him.
My breath gets caught in my throat. He was even better than I had remembered. The only time that I had seen him without a shirt was when we went swimming, and back then he was younger, slenderer. This was a man standing in front of me, every inch of him tan, rippling muscles that begged me to touch them. I could feel my hands shaking at my sides from the need to reach out.
