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He fit his hands over her sweet belly that had nurtured his son. “I’m so sorry that I missed this,” he whispered. “That I missed every change in this beautiful body of yours. That I wasn’t there to worship you as you deserve and keep you from struggling and worrying for even a moment.”
She whispered his name, though it was a broken sound, but he didn’t mistake it for anything but the joy that danced all around them now, like a moon across the water in the bright light of the summer day.
“It is easier to plot revenge than it is to do this,” he confessed to her, gazing up at her. “My parents loved each other so completely, so fully, that no one who came near them was ever in any doubt. I have never known how they did it. I never thought that I was capable of such emotion, but then I looked up in a pub and there you were.”
“I remember.” Her smile widened. “And I can’t believe you pretended you didn’t.”
“Maybe I wanted to believe Icouldforget you,” he said, drinking her in. “Because otherwise, what would be required of me? That I...feelall of that again? That I feel it forever?”
“Yes,” Madelyn whispered, still smiling, as if she’d known all along. “It requires everything.”
Paris Apollo trailed kisses from her navel to one breast, then the other, anointing them both with his tongue. “I will make myself vulnerable. I will open myself to you, Madelyn, and show you all these dark things in me. For you, and my son, I will give whatever you wish. Whatever is needed. Whatever makes us whole.”
“And I will do the same,” she said, wiping at her face, though her smile was so wide he thought he could lose himself in it. “I promise you, I will not make up stories in my head and decide they’re real. Never again. I promise you that I will not treat our child the way my parents treated me, never good enough. Always on pins and needles, waiting for the other shoe to drop. I want him happy. So loved it never occurs to him to doubt it.”
“How could he be anything else?” Paris Apollo asked.
She moved against him, making him suck in a breath. “And I’d like him to be the first, Paris Apollo. Of many.”
A family, Paris Apollo thought, letting the notion take hold of him. He had lost a family, and now he’d gained one. He only wished he could tell his parents that their fondest dreams for him had finally come true.
“I don’t know how I am so lucky,” Paris Apollo told her then. “But I promise you, Madelyn, I will do all I can to make you feel this lucky in return. Every day, for the rest of your life.”
And then, there on the floor where he had wrapped himself in darkness for years, Paris Apollo and the woman who loved him even when he was not sure he loved himself found their way to light.
Again and again and again.
Later, he made a brief phone call to the staff back at the palace, telling them that the wedding was still on.
And because he was their king, they acted as if they had never doubted that it would be so.
Or perhaps that was down to his queen.
Then he and Madelyn renewed the vows they had just made in every possible way they could. They ate, sitting on the counters in the kitchen and telling each other stories. They sat in the sauna and then stood out in the cold, laughing at the rush of sensation it brought. They made love, at last, and over and over again.
In the morning, they went down to the palace once more. Truly united.
And that was where they became the King and the Queen of Ilonia, presented the Crown Prince to the kingdom, and proceeded to live happily and joyfully forever.
Because Madelyn would have it no other way.
And Paris Apollo was besotted—openly—and made sure that whatever she desired, whatever she needed, she got.
By royal decree, if necessary.
CHAPTER TWELVE
TROYMETHISgrandparents at the wedding and was not impressed.
“You don’t live in California,” he said distinctly. Angie and Timothy frowned at him, making Paris Apollo consider calling for the guards. “If you did, you would visit us.”
“Out of the mouths of babes,” Paris Apollo murmured, and only smiled when his bride shot him a quelling look.
“Thank you for coming,” said the new Queen of Ilonia to the two dour-faced people who did not deserve to call themselves her parents. “It meant more than you know.”
And when she turned back to the reception that spilled out onto the palace’s sloping lawn, she held Troy’s hand on one side and Paris Apollo’s on the other.
Her real family, Paris Apollo thought. And his.
