by Maisey Yates
Then, he began to move.
He lost himself in it. In that rhythm, deep and steady. And whatever he had been thinking to put her in this position, to make her so much less Latika that she was, it didn’t work. For there was no other woman who felt like her. Who made him feel like this. There was nothing in all the world had ever felt like this.
Pleasure was like an arrow, piercing him, making it difficult to breathe. It was as though it had punched his lung. His heart. He put his hand between her legs and squeezed her, before moving one finger to either side of the center of her need and stroking, until a hoarse cry left her lips and her internal muscles pulsed around him. Only then did he allow the pleasure in him to rage out of control. He pulsed inside of her, pouring himself into her body, spending everything in her.
And when it was done, he collapsed at her side, laying on his back, feeling like a warrior left for dead on the battlefield.
Latika was laying on her stomach, her head turned to one side, the one visible eye appraising him closely.
“Pack your things,” he said. “You’re coming back to Bjornland with me.”
He had embraced all that he was. He had become the conqueror. The marauder.
And yet somehow, as he headed out the door to the hotel, with Latika mutely walking beside him, he felt more the captive than the captor.
* * *
Latika could not untangle the events of the past few hours. And even when she was back in the palace in Bjornland, she felt dazed.
Gunnar had made some noise about the fact the two of them needed to be in residence at the palace for a time, but she hadn’t fully understood why. For what all the implications might be. He had their things moved into the same bedroom, and Latika knew that everything between them would be different now. And not necessarily for the better. The way that he had broken that laptop so decisively, and then claimed her body with such force replayed in her mind over and over.
He had left impressions on her and in her that were so deep she could still feel them reverberating within her hours later.
She could not pretend that she hadn’t been a willing participant. Could not pretend that part of her hadn’t been thrilled that he had come for her.
That he had done exactly what Mauro had done for Astrid, for their child. Crossed borders and made demands.
But she still didn’t get the sense that Gunnar wanted their child out of a sense other than...she couldn’t even fathom what he was doing.
There was a sense of obligation, that she knew, but it didn’t come from a place of love. Not remotely. Either way, it didn’t matter. She was here. He had given her a great many opportunities to turn him away, and she had not. However she might regret it now, however she might feel weaker for it now, the choice had been hers. A strange realization. She had choice. She had given it to him.
“You’re back,” Astrid said, walking with great purpose into Gunnar’s living quarters.
“Yes,” Latika said.
“Why did you leave?”
“Because Ragnar was dead. And I didn’t need to stay.”
“But you’re back,” Astrid pointed out.
Latika knew that she couldn’t keep any of this from her friend. There was no real point to it. She would find out eventually.
She only wished that there was some way she could sidestep the fact that of course she and Gunnar had ended up in a sexual relationship. Mostly because she didn’t want to sit there and have to bear Astrid being right.
She was raw enough without having to admit that she had been wrong about her own desires.
“Gunnar, for his part, did not think that it was a good time to dissolve our marriage,” Latika said.
“Did he not?” Astrid’s tone sounded light, casual and wholly unsurprised.
“No,” she said, knowing that she was being less than forthcoming.
“And why is that?”
“Perhaps because I’m pregnant,” she said crisply.
That succeeded in shocking Astrid into silence. But, Latika could scarcely enjoy that.
“Did you know that when you left?” she asked.
“No,” she said defensively. Though, it wouldn’t have made a difference in her actions. Not after all that he’d said.
“You said my brother didn’t want children.”
“He doesn’t. And he’s quite angry with me. But I seem to recall he was involved in forgetting to use protection.”
Astrid grimaced. But then, her expression softened. “I seem to recall having to cope with a very angry man who seems to think that a lack of protection was entirely my fault.”
“Amazing creatures, men,” Latika said. “Are they not?”
“They are something,” Astrid agreed.
“So you’re staying married?”
“For the time being,” Latika said. Then she sighed. “He does not love me.”
“Do you love him?”
She thought about it. For good while. All that he told her about his relationship with his father... It made her feel things for him. But then... There was the way he was acting about this child. All the things he had said. But then, the way he behaved as well. It was difficult to sort out what was true. And it was very hard for her to figure out her response.
“He doesn’t want our baby. But he also doesn’t want to let it go. I find... I don’t know how I can love a man who will not love his child.”
Astrid nodded gravely. “Give him time. And a chance to change.”
“Some men never do,” she said, thinking of their father.
“No,” she said. “Some men never do.”
“And if he doesn’t?” Latika asked.
“Then I will be first in line to help set you free. But barring anything egregious... I think the two of you need to work this out for yourselves.”
And as much as Latika would like to disagree, she couldn’t. Because she might have been forced into the marriage mess, but no one had forced her into his bed. Twice. She was responsible for her own part in this. And she would not pawn that responsibility off. No matter how difficult it was. And right now, it was all pretty damn stiff.
* * *
Women had never made Gunnar nervous. He was a man who had a certain effect on the fairer sex, and he was well aware of that fact. He had always enjoyed the sort of attention he’d received in that regard. But he was walking on uneven ground with Latika. He felt off balance and out of his depth. He disliked that greatly. “Did you have a good day?” he asked.
“Yes,” she responded.
“What did you do?”
“I spent some time with Astrid.”
“And?”
“And we had a nice time,” she said. “But I always do with your sister.”
“Good.”
She said nothing. Instead, she began to move about the room, ignoring him pointedly as she sifted through drawers in the large, ornate armoire at the back wall.
“What are you looking for?”
“Something to sleep in,” she said.
“I certainly don’t require that you wear anything to bed.”
She looked at him, her expression verging on incredulous. “Do you expect that I’m going to have sex with you?”
He had. He had very much expected that. After all, she had seemed fully and completely into his body when he had encountered her that morning.
It had only been that morning.
It seemed an eternity now.
“It’s no secret that you’re attracted to me,” he said.
“It’s no secret that you have rejected our child. That’s why I left. No, I didn’t know I was pregnant, but I could not abide the idea of being married to a man who would see a child the way that you do.”
“Things are different now that it’s a reality,” he said, believing that the moment th
e words left his lips.
“In what way?”
“In the sense that I understand deeply that I have an obligation to this child. And I intend to fulfill that obligation.”
“A child should be more than an obligation. Just as a child should be more than a means to an end for an avaricious father intent on having his will be done through his descendants. You should love a child.”
“I understand loyalty,” he said. “I’m not certain that I understand love.”
The look on Latika’s face was what made him realize that there was something heavy in those words. Something shocking and wrong. He’d always known that to be true about himself. That he didn’t understand that kind of depth.
He had been forced to exist in dark, enclosed spaces and he’d grown armor to protect himself. But it had cost. Because all those layers he’d built up had smothered a flame inside of him.
Or maybe...maybe that flame that existed inside other people had never been in him.
“What about Astrid?”
“You are the one who accused me of not caring for my sister, and now you seek to hold her up as an example of how I do?”
“No I... I’m sorry. I never should have implied that you didn’t love Astrid. Of course you do.”
“I don’t know that I do,” he said. “I am bonded to her. She is my twin. We are in many ways pieces of one. She is the head of the nation. And I have been her shield. That’s different than love.”
“What do you think love is?”
For a man convinced of his own rightness in the universe, his own deep sense of knowing who he was, a question like that was confronting.
Because when he dug down to the bottom of himself and searched for the answer, he found it wasn’t there. “I don’t know.”
“Do you think that maybe it could be the way that you protected your sister. At the expense of yourself.”
“No,” he said.
“You don’t think that love sacrifices itself?”
“If that is love, then love is a cruelty visited on the world. As cruel as hatred.”
Her throat worked up and down. “Will you be involved with our child?”
“No,” he said, something in his gut twisting, repulsion making his skin crawl.
“I don’t understand, Gunnar. I don’t understand why you would come for me like you did if you are not willing to offer me anything.” She frowned. “Why did you come? How did you know I was pregnant?”
“I tracked your name in a database which attached you to that clinic. I knew why you must’ve gone there.”
“You came to me knowing that I was having a child. And even now you can’t bring yourself to admit that you might want to be in that child’s life?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I cannot explain what drives me. I don’t like that. Not at all. I am a man who has always known how to stand firm in his convictions. I had to fight for those convictions. I had to fight my own father. I had to withstand torture. And I am not a man given to change, particularly not quickly. What I have always known is that I did not want to bring a child into the world, but now I am. Now we are. And what I know, with equal ferocity is that I cannot abandon the child.” The words were like acid on his tongue, like sharp knives in his chest. “I don’t know what love is. And I don’t know how to be any sort of decent person. But I do know protection. I know I can offer that. And I offer it to you. To our child. I can pledge allegiance to you. To the baby. I don’t know what I can give beyond that. But what I always want my child to know is that I will be a protector. Because Astrid and I never had that. Not from our father. I would have our child know he is loved. I don’t know how to do that,” he said, his voice raw. “I will need to count on you for that. For you to show the child that which I cannot.”
She looked at him, and the well of pity in her eyes was almost too much for him to bear.
“Gunnar...”
“Forgive me,” he said. “For what I said. I was angry, because I was afraid. And it gets me to say that. All of the things my father did to me and I was never afraid. But it’s as if it was all stored inside of me for later. For when I was the one with power. Because I do not wish to use mine in the way that he did. And I thought it best... For the longest time, to avoid what I thought made him the monster he was.”
“You thought somehow you made him a monster?”
“If I had not been born, then what choice would he have had? He would have had to accept Astrid. Power corrupts. And in me, my father saw the promise of power.”
“I think you’ve proven that you’re incorruptible in those stakes,” she said, her voice soft.
“I have never trusted it. Why should I be innately better than my father?”
“Because you want to be?”
She sounded so confident and yet he didn’t see how she could be. “Do you ever worry?” he asked. “After what your parents did to you, don’t you worry that something inside of you might be broken?”
She looked so serene, and he could not understand it. He could not understand how this woman seemed so utterly and completely without fear for the future. For the child that she carried in her body.
“No,” she said. “I worry about some things, but not being like my parents. That life didn’t make me happy. And their goal was to have more of that life. They cared so deeply about what other people thought. They cared about power and prestige. I lived there, in that life, and it made me miserable. Their pursuit of more made me miserable. I understand that there is no value in treating people like a commodity. Because I understand not only that more things will never make me happy, but that it does unrelenting damage to the person that you put that on. I know everything I don’t want to do. I’m sure along the way I will stumble upon more things I shouldn’t do, or things I should do more of. I want to be the best mother that I can be. And I know that that begins with not being like my own. I was raised by nannies and teachers. I was raised by everyone but my parents. Their presence only served to make my life miserable. As they brought their expectations down upon me, as they told me all the ways in which I wasn’t meeting them. No, I don’t worry that I’ll be like my parents. And I don’t think you should worry you’ll be like your father.”
“But we have no guide,” he said.
“Even if we did, that child will not be you, and it will not be me. It will be different than either of us, its whole own person. We would not be able to plan perfectly even if our parents had been wonderful.”
“You won’t use nannies?”
“Oh, I imagine we will to a degree. But we will be involved too. Not because we have to be, but because I want to be.”
“What if I’m bad at it? What if it would be better if I weren’t involved?”
“We can speak of that as the time comes,” she said.
And somehow that was more reassuring than if she had simply told him that everything would be fine. Because the fact of the matter was she didn’t know. Gunnar was desperately boggled by this uncertainty inside of him. It was nothing like he usually was, and nothing like he wanted to be at all.
That was the root of all that fear he’d felt when they had first made love without a condom.
Like the world had spun out of his control. And control had been his linchpin ever since he had been a boy, attempting to withstand his father’s torture.
That deep base he had built inside of himself had been the only secure and certain thing. It was the thing he relied on. That internal compass. He had no idea how he’d come by it, because it certainly hadn’t been taught to him by his father. He had no idea how he’d been so fortunate as to have something like that inside of himself. He had often felt like maybe it was part of that connection with Astrid.
At the very least, Astrid had had something more of a connection with their mother.
Their mother hadn’t been inte
rested in Gunnar at all, but she had cared deeply for Astrid.
He had always been grateful that his sister had that.
“We can figure it out together,” Latika said. “And if something is going wrong, we can change it. We are not made of stone. Our ways aren’t set. We can choose who we want to be. I believe that. All I wanted, all my life was my chance to choose my own path. I’ll do so now. And so will you. We can do it. We are not bound by this. We don’t have to be.”
He didn’t want to speak anymore. Not now. Instead, he reached out and picked Latika up off of the seat she was on and carried her over to the bed.
He was desperate for oblivion. He craved it. The future was a bright, blaring light of some uncertainty. Of so many things he had not planned. So many things he had always told himself he didn’t want. The only thing he was certain of was that he wanted her. With a desperation that bordered on insanity. Yes, that he was certain of.
He stripped her bare, and he spent the rest of the night proving to her that while he might be uncertain about some things, there were others he was infinitely confident in.
For now, that was enough.
The future would have to handle itself.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
THE NEXT FEW weeks went by smoothly. Latika felt at ease with Gunnar in a way that she hadn’t ever before.
They spent their days companionably enough, Gunnar busying himself with work, but often including her in discussions about new projects. She enjoyed that.
It gave her a purpose.
One beyond dwelling on her current morning sickness.
It was really such a terrible thing, and she found that she could barely rise before ten a.m. Which was completely unusual for her. But she was living on unsweetened herbal tea and dry toast and crystallized ginger candies.