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She had already survived him once. She would again. Of course she would.
That was the thing about being a mother. There was no room to brood herself into a state. There was no pacing around San Francisco this time, wishing the world might end so it would match how she felt inside.
She was going to have to live through this man again. No matter what happened.
And maybe because she had no expectations of happy endings this time, she was able to give herself over to the time they did have in a way she hadn’t before. Because this time, she knew that these moments with Paris Apollo were precious and would be taken away again when this fever between them subsided.
No matter what he said.
“You act as if the very notion of being my queen is an insult,” he said one night. He had insisted she join him and his ministers at a formal dinner, where everyone had peered at her as if she was a specimen beneath glass. Waiting, she assumed, for her to prove that she was an embarrassment to the crown.
She had taken a certain amount of pleasure in demonstrating the perfect manners that she had learned by watching some of the high-end guests at the resorts in Tahoe.
Paris Apollo had demonstrated his appreciation. Comprehensively.
“Not an insult,” she murmured, her eyes closed as she lay pressed up against him, boneless with leftover delight. “But apprehensive, that’s all. I already know how this will end.”
“Do you, indeed.”
She didn’t heed the warning in his voice, the rumble she could feel beneath her ear. “Sooner or later, I will climb the wrong stair and find you barricaded behind another door. I accept it.”
That was a lie. But in that moment, still burning up from the pleasure he gave her, it didn’t feel like one.
Paris Apollo flipped her over, making her gasp a little, then laugh.
“I am a father now. A king,” he told her, something fierce on his beautiful face. “And I do not betray the vows I have made, the promises I intend to keep.”
Even though she knew better, Madelyn found she was tempted to believe him.
But then, wasn’t that the trouble? She was always tempted where he was concerned.
And he took her again, in a passionate fury that had her sleeping so deep that she was sure she imagined waking—only slightly—to see him dressed in black again and leaving the room.
Particularly because he was there again in the morning, sleeping beside her when she woke with the sun.
“Your prison isn’t so terrible, is it,” he murmured another night, moving deep inside her. “You might live after all.”
“Then again,” she replied, her mouth against his neck, “I might not.”
She would survive. Madelyn knew she wouldsurvive. But that wasn’t necessarilyliving,was it?
Particularly because this time, she was less worried about the potential of other women circling Paris Apollo or locked bedchamber doors than she was about the times she woke up to find him gone. She found herself awake one night, her hand on the pillow beside her—gone cool—as she thought about that shadow she’d seen her first night here.
About the wall she knew he’d climbed then. About the reason a man might want tactical gear, especially the son of murdered parents.
And about the articles she read in the papers every day that suggested someone was out there cleaning up the streets of Ilonia.
Madelyn didn’t want to admit that she knew—that shethoughtshe knew—who that someone was.
Yet in the daylight, it was difficult to brood too much about the fact that she was in a prison, no matter how beautiful and laced through with that particular Paris Apollo fire, when Troy found the whole experience so delightful.
Because he not only had a father, his father was aking.
“That makes me aprince,” he told her with great authority. “And you’re going to be aqueen.”
“Well.” Madelyn had not expected the subject to come up over orange juice, but here they were. She cleared her throat. “You know, sweetheart, I don’t have to become a queen for you to be the Prince here. You already are.”
Troy looked at her as if she was very stupid but he loved her anyway. “I know, Mom. But you need to match.”
