by Millie Adams
She found that she liked much better being trusted to take the strength of his darkness, the strength of his need, than being told she was too weak when she had endured so much and had stayed standing. When she had endured the kinds of things that would have reduced lesser people to rubble.
She would rather stand here with him. Her body buzzing, throbbing, feeling fragile and strong all at once. Like the thinnest of unbreakable glass.
“Let us go,” he said, offering her his arm.
“You’re going to leave me alone tonight, aren’t you? You’re not going to listen.”
“You were a virgin,” he said, his voice rough. “Surely even you can see that you might need a little bit of time to recover.”
She would have laughed if she hadn’t felt so fragile. Something as big as a laugh might make her crumble. “Life has never given me a moment to recover.”
“Then consider it the first sensitive thing life has done for you.”
“Eh.” She waved her hand. “Nobody wants a sensitive penis, Maximus. One prefers them hard.”
“You talk a big game for a woman who has seen precisely one.”
“A good one, I think.”
“Annick...”
She saw this moment then, for what it was. He was acting as if she was the innocent, the one who needed protection.
But for whatever reason, it was her soldier who needed this. Who needed this distance.
“Fine. I will let you play the part of gentleman tonight. But only because you need to. I do not need you to. But if you need to feel good, if you need to feel redeemed for what you have done to me, then I allow it. But tomorrow...tomorrow is my coronation. And you must stand up with me. And then tomorrow night... I will be a Queen. And don’t you think then I might be strong enough for you?”
“Remember what this is.”
She lifted a shoulder. “There is no name for what this is. You cannot play the part of a more experienced man. Not now. Not with this. We are both virgins in this, I think.”
She walked on ahead of him, and she knew that her hair might look mussed, that she might not look the perfectly put together warrior woman she had looked when she had first gone into the ballroom tonight. But she felt stronger. Somehow, now, she felt that the armor was underneath her skin, rather than just draped over her body in red fabric.
And there was something to be said for that.
For laying claim to at least one of the mysteries in the universe.
Yes, there was something to be said for that as well.
And even if she still felt raw, and a little bit vulnerable, she also felt strong.
And she would happily take that and lay claim to it.
CHAPTER TEN
“WHAT EXACTLY IS going on?”
Maximus was the unhappy recipient the next morning of a group video call from both of his sisters, and his friend Dante, who was also now his brother-in-law.
He was rocked by the previous night. By his encounter with Annick, and even more so by the conversation after.
I will let you play the part of gentleman tonight. But only because you need to.
He was a man who lived a life in the shadows, and Annick seemed to have the ability to drag him into the light.
If you need to feel redeemed for what you have done to me...
Oh, Annick. If only she knew, there was no redemption, not for a man like him.
“Obviously my engagement has been announced?” he said, shutting his thoughts down and grinning into the screen, as was expected of him.
“Your engagement. To the Princess of a principality that until very recently was run by a crazed despot,” his friend Dante said.
“Yes. The very one.”
“How did that...?” It was Violet who asked that question, though she wasn’t able to finish it. She was staring into the camera, looking comically confused.
“How these things normally work, Violet,” he said, as if his sister was terribly slow. “Kidnap.”
“Kidnap,” she said. “You’re not telling me that tiny little creature kidnapped you. That’s embarrassing. At least I was kidnapped by a very large man.”
She reclined in her chair, round with her pregnancy and looking amusingly embarrassed on his behalf.
“Don’t underestimate a small woman with a large amount of determination, Violet,” he said. “I’ve decided to go ahead and allow the kidnap. Just as I decided to go ahead and pursue an engagement with my beautiful captor. Why wouldn’t I?” He affected the most charming smile he could. “Think of all the things I’ve done. There isn’t a very long list of things I haven’t. Virgin Princesses? Well, that was a stone left unturned. And the opportunity to be King? She’s being crowned Queen today. And in Aillette that makes me King.”
“Seems unearned,” Violet said.
“And strange,” Dante added.
“But you should at least admire her industriousness in procuring herself the husband she wanted. She chloroformed me.”
“Did she?” Minerva looked positively delighted by this news.
“Of course you would like it,” Dante said. “Given you ended up engaged to me because of a rather grand lie you told on TV. It was very nearly kidnap.”
“I did do that,” Minerva said. “I really do admire women who go after what they want. If I would’ve thought of chloroform, I would’ve used that.”
“And to think,” Dante said, addressing Maximus. “You worried about your sister when I married her. You should’ve been worried for me.”
“Don’t worry about me,” Maximus said. “Everything is well in hand. You can tell Dad and Mom that they can come visit the palace sometime.”
“Well, Mom will like that,” Violet said. “Two children married into royalty. And you only married a billionaire, Minerva. You look like the slouch out of the group.”
Minerva did look angry about that, since she historically felt left behind. “But I gave them their first grandchild,” she said.
Regret kicked against his stomach. Because he had not used birth control with Annick last night. And though children between them was somewhat inevitable, she was young and it did not have to be now. He did his best to push the thought aside. What was done was done. He had a feeling there would be no asking Annick to procure any sort of emergency contraceptives. He could only imagine the scathing that would earn him. She would do precisely what she pleased and nothing else. That much he knew.
“You will all be invited to the wedding, of course.” To do anything else would be strange. He was almost troubled by how easily he lied to his family. But he’d been doing it for so many years that it was second nature. Second nature to smile like this, to make jokes about how he was doing this simply to enrich the portfolio of all that he’d done. Yes, this kind of subterfuge was easy. He didn’t even feel guilty about it.
No, what he felt guilty about was taking Annick’s virginity. A novelty within a novelty. He had been...rough. He should not have taken her on a stone bench without a care for the pain she might’ve experienced. But he had.
He thought back to what she’d said.
You need this...
He pushed it aside. He didn’t need anything. And he didn’t need to have her again.
Control was his.
He would not give in to the beast inside of him.
To do otherwise made him no different than the men he took out of this world. The men he hated above all else.
If he could not protect her, then his life was forfeit.
And so, today he would go to her coronation, and tonight, he would reinstitute the distance between them.
There really was nothing else to be done.
* * *
She was to be Queen today.
Annick looked in the mirror at her sleek reflection. Her hair was piled up atop her head, re
ady for a crown. For coronation. She wondered what it would have been like if life had gone the way it was supposed to.
Her parents would still be dead. That was the nature of coronations. It was why they were, in her opinion, sort of a terribly barbarous thing. A ceremony. Passing the torch. But only when the flame of your loved one was extinguished.
And Annick... Well, she never should’ve been Queen.
She squeezed her eyes shut and tried her best not to think of Marcus, her older brother. The one who should have been standing here today. The one who should have always been here.
And then she tried not to think of Maximus. Of the way her body burned when she remembered what had transpired between them last night.
This day was to be a ceremony, celebrating her becoming Queen. A coronation. Essentially, she was being recognized as a woman. At the moment, it all felt a bit too literal. For last night, she had been introduced to another dimension of what it meant to be a woman. For last night, she had...
And he had turned away from her.
She had never felt half so alone as she did going back into that ballroom without him. As she did for the whole rest of the evening, in a space filled with hundreds of people.
She had given a good speech, had found a strength in herself that she had not known was there, but it had done nothing to ease the loneliness in her.
She was good at standing alone.
But she was tired of it.
And she had not yet seen him today.
Today she was wearing emerald green. A brocade fabric made up the gown, which was shaped like a large bell, the fabric making dramatic folds, billowing out around her feet.
The door to her chamber opened, and there he was. He looked stern and striking in a black suit with a black shirt and tie. He looked... Well, he looked like the King. Of her country. And of death.
He looked every inch the assassin that he was.
How did other people not see this? How did they see him and think that he was nothing more than a feckless playboy? It was so patently untrue. So clearly not all he was. Not even remotely.
“The guard has been vetted, checked over and completely cleared. The perimeter is secure. You have nothing to worry about tonight, Annick. I have seen it is safe.”
“Well. You had better,” she said, keeping her eyes on her own reflection, only glancing at him in the mirror. “It is, after all, why you are here.”
“Yes. It is.”
“To do anything else would be an abject failure. Are you a failure, Maximus?”
“I think you know that I’m not.” He straightened the cuffs on his sleeves, the movement inescapably catching her eye. She looked away as quickly as possible.
“You will escort me to the front of the room for the ceremony today. And when the country pledges their allegiance to me, you will also.”
“Will I?”
“Yes,” she said. “You know you cannot be King of this country and not be a citizen thereof.”
“And is a King beneath his Queen here?”
That brought to mind images of his strong, hard body beneath hers. All that power trapped between her thighs. And in her image, he looked up at her, his eyes fierce, and she knew that to imagine that she might be in control if she were on top was a fiction.
She blinked, ignoring the scorching heat in her cheeks.
“I believe you know he’s not,” she said, feeling particularly scabby. “But that does not mean I must submit to your nonsense.”
“I would never ask you to submit to such a thing.”
“Why did you leave me?”
Why could she not keep these sorts of questions inside? Why was she incapable of holding her tongue around him?
It was the strangest thing, for with him she found the core of what she claimed to want: a space where she could be wholly herself.
It was just she could not seem to entirely control it. And that was... Well, that was a double-edged sword.
What they had was nothing more than a mercenary arrangement. He was only able to be King because he would be married to her. And she needed his protection. She would’ve had to marry someday anyway, so it had been the smartest thing to agree to his demand. Of course it had been. To do anything else would’ve been stupid. He was the one securing her forces. He was the one making sure she was safe.
Any other man would have far too much power and she would have to be certain she could trust him. There was no reason not to marry Maximus. And there was no reason to be soft and tender about what had occurred between them in the garden. It would have happened eventually. An inevitability. And yet she felt soft and tender, and it didn’t matter if it was inevitable.
She wanted to rest her head against his chest.
You are a fool, Annick. You never went soft in all your years of captivity, and now you wish to snuggle up against this hunk of stone?
“I left because it was the best thing to do,” he said. “You asked me here to protect you, not to defile you.”
“Did we not agree that defiling would happen at a certain point?”
“I believe I told you to take another lover first.”
“And what about what I wanted? I didn’t want another lover.”
“You said that you suspected you were a glutton. That you might wish to make love to any number of men in your lifetime. Why should you settle for having me first?”
“I wanted you. Why should I do anything but have what I want? If I want a pastry for dinner, why should I not have it? If I want you as a lover, why should I not have you?”
“I was not able to be as gentle with you as I should’ve been.”
“I did not ask for gentle,” she said. “The world has not been gentle with me, Maximus King. The world has treated me roughly. And here, I find something that I want. Your body and your mind. Why should I not have this? Because you say so? Because you think you know me? You do not know me. You do not know me any more than I know you. Sharing pastries before dinner together and speaking of sex and gluttony is not knowing me. You do not get to decide how strong I am.”
“I would never seek to make decisions about what you can handle. But you don’t know me. And you know nothing of sex.”
“I know some of it now. That men are hard. And that it hurts when you are inside at first. But then it feels wonderful.”
“It won’t hurt every time.”
“How can it not? You are so very vast.”
His lips twitched. “You have a way with words.”
“I say it as it is,” she said. “And I know my mind.”
“We can help each other.”
“Can we? Tell me how we can. And tell me why sex would get in the way.”
“It’s because of me. I need control. Especially on a day like today. I am helping you. Protecting you. Keeping you safe. I can’t afford to be distracted.”
“And why? I feel I have a right to know. What is this distraction you feel you might face? For I have never seen you distracted.”
“In the garden last night, an assassin could’ve come upon us and I would never have known.” He touched her chin then, his hands rough. “Until an assassin’s bullet pierced your skin.”
She shivered. But not with fear.
It was desire, but then... It was a deep, searing pain as she looked into his eyes and saw the echo of old demons there.
This was not a fear rooted in the abstract.
He was afraid. He was angry, at himself.
“But he did not,” she said, her tone gentle.
“It could’ve happened. I let my guard down once, and the consequences were severe.”
“Tell me.” This was the loss he’d suffered. She knew well that he had.
“This is not a topic of discussion open between us,” he said.
“Why?”
&
nbsp; “Don’t test me.”
And like that it was over.
He resisted this honesty between them and she could not help it.
He extended his arm, and she took it and he led her out of the chamber.
“Why? I’m not a prisoner anymore. This is not a dungeon, and you are not a dictator. You don’t get to tell me what I’m curious about.”
“And it is my life. I don’t have to share it with you if I don’t want to. You are the reason I’m here. You brought us together. You presented a case that was so compelling I couldn’t turn away from you. And I have found ways that you could be of use to me. That this arrangement could be of use to me. I’m tired,” he said, his eyes nearly black now, “of going on missions, of trying to rid the world of evil, one man at a time. It is... It is a dark pursuit. On that you can trust me. If I had a soul, it was shed somewhere along that road in the past fifteen years. And I have not seen it since.”
“Then why bother to help me at all? Why bother to try and rid the world of terrible men? If you do not care, if you have no soul inside of your chest, then why are you here at all?”
“Because there was a woman,” he said, the words immediately sending a chill through her body. “And she did have a soul. A lovely one. More beautiful than you could imagine. And when she died, I vowed that I would do something about the injustice in the world. Because if I did, then...more people like her would not die.”
“Who was she?”
“It doesn’t matter. Now you know. Now you understand.”
That was not understanding, and his skeleton of a story was not telling. She was reeling, trying to piece the details together, but too soon they arrived at the small chapel where her coronation would be held.
And she had to push aside all thoughts that were not about this moment.
It was a smaller gathering than at the ball last night. Nobility and dignitaries from the country, who had been driven underground during the previous regime, were all there and resplendent in their finery. There were leaders from around the world and a select group of citizens who had been chosen to attend.
It was wonderful. A look at her country in the best light possible. Free and happy and ready to move into the future.