The Queen's Baby Scandal

by Maisey Yates

  “All right. I’ll give you a moment with each other, and to get dressed, and then I will have everything cleared from here, and leave you alone. The child is healthy. Congratulations.”

  And with that, she left them. Astrid sat up, wiping the jelly from her stomach with a warm cloth that had been placed by the bedside. “I expected that we would get to find out it was a boy. Not so soon. I’m glad... I’m glad we were together when we found out.”

  “You are happy?” he asked. The idea of her being unhappy with his son upset him even more than the idea of his own conflicted feelings.

  “Yes,” she said. “Really, his life will be easier. Easier because he’s a boy. Easier because he won’t have opposition to him. And I suppose what I hoped for was a chance to test out just how much we could modernize the country. But I cannot stand in his way for his gender any more than my father should have doubted me for mine. He will be a good king. We’ll raise him to be.”

  They would raise him. Yes. They would. Of course they would. He gritted his teeth, squaring his jaw. “Yes.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “I’m glad we’re doing this together,” she said. “I think I really wouldn’t have wanted to do it alone.

  “You won’t be alone,” he said, trying to harden his heart against the words.

  “I guess not. Technically. I would’ve had nannies, and whatever else. But I am glad. I’m glad to have you. I’m glad our child will have you. Because a nanny is no substitute for a father. And what I did I did without thinking about the people involved. Not just you. But our child. It wasn’t only you I would have deprived. And I’m glad things are like this. I’m glad that we’ll be... I’m glad we’ll be a family.”

  That word made him feel like he’d been cracked open. And after she spoke them, Mauro couldn’t think of a single thing to say.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  MAURO HAD GONE off to work quickly after the doctor visit, and Astrid knew that something wasn’t quite right, but she also could not for the life of her figure out what to do about it.

  Perhaps, Mauro had legitimately needed to go into the office. That was entirely possible. Or perhaps he was running from something, which she also suspected might be true, but didn’t have a clue as to what she was supposed to do if that was the case.

  The idea of him running was a strange one, but in many ways she understood. She had never been more terrified in her entire life than she was when she had seen that baby. So real and vivid on the ultrasound screen. A boy. Their son. There was something undeniable about that. Something real and heavy. And if he needed a moment alone after, she would have certainly understood.

  Of course, he would likely rather die than admit that.

  Which is why, she suspected, he had simply excused himself.

  Because the man was too alpha to function, and God forbid he have a feeling in her presence.

  That very thought made a smile that curved her lips upward. She supposed the same could be said about her.

  But he made her want to be not quite so soft. Not quite so stubborn and closed off.

  She wondered if he needed something from her now, and simply didn’t have the ability to express it.

  Then she wondered why on earth she was thinking about him when she had just gotten such momentous news about her life, her future. She was having a boy. That should consume her thoughts. Utterly and totally. And yet, she found that she was consumed with him.

  She was lately. Quite a bit.

  She had... Feelings for him.

  If she was honest with herself she had for an impossible amount of time.

  She had felt a strange sort of connection with him just looking at his pictures, and while she had initially told herself it was a response to his genetics, and then had told herself it was chemistry, now she wondered if it was something more. Something that made no sense at all.

  And if it hadn’t been since looking at the photos, it was definitely since the first time they had made love.

  The way that he touched her. The way that he made her feel... It was all a strange kind of magic. He made her feel happy to be a woman, made her glory in the way that she had been made. Made her feel as if she understood and embraced her femininity for the first time, really and truly. When Mauro finally did arrive home, he was distant. He shut himself in his home office for a time, coming out only to ask if she was hungry for dinner.

  When she said that she was, he set about cooking in the small, high-gloss kitchen. She watched his movements, sure and confident as he set about preparing their food.

  “I didn’t know you cooked,” she said.

  “I’m quite accomplished at it,” he said. “I can make a fairly gourmet meal out of deeply underwhelming ingredients. A skill I picked up as a boy. Of course, now I prefer to make truly wonderful food out of excellent ingredients. It’s always nice when you have the option.”

  “Well,” she said. “Yes.”

  “I hope you like filet mignon.”

  “I think I can make do,” she said, smiling. “I don’t know how to cook. I’ve never had to do it. Everyone always does it for me. And I’ve never seen the point in picking up a skill when it can just as easily be done.”

  “Sometimes it’s simply good to have the skill for the sake of it,” he pointed out.

  “I suppose. But there’s always been... An idea around me that I could concern myself with more important things. And anything that’s trivial... Well, anything that’s a triviality I can leave to other people.”

  “I can see how feeding yourself might be considered trivial,” he said drily.

  “Well, you don’t have to be ridiculous about it.”

  “I’m not being ridiculous. I’m being practical.”

  “What are you making? In all your practicality?”

  “Filet mignon with a red wine reduction. And mixed steamed vegetables. Truly. Nothing overly elaborate.”

  “It all seems elaborate to me,” she said.

  She sat back and watched him work, not at all goaded into getting up and helping simply because he had taunted her about not knowing how to cook. She enjoyed watching him work. Anyway, she was a bit fatigued. Not terribly, but just a bit more than she was used to. But this time away with him had been... Well, it had been nice. Like a snippet of another life. A life she could have had if she had been just a regular woman. One who had met a man and fallen in love by chance.

  In love? Was that what this was?

  Her mind went blank for a moment, nothing there except for that one word, heavy, terrifying, looming above her.

  Love.

  Did she love him?

  Her first instinct was to push it down. To hide. To never, ever admit to herself that she felt these things, let alone admit it to him.

  But she saw clearly, suddenly, the fabric of her life. Her parents. Her mother’s ferocity, and her unfailing need for Astrid to succeed, and her father’s cool indifference.

  And both of those things had a wall. A firm wall between her and Astrid. She was ideological for her mother. A point of contention for her father. And they had loved her. They had.

  She supposed.

  But the layers that kept them back from her... Pride. All of it was protective. And it had taught her to do the same. It was what she’d always done, and so much of it was because of her position, easy to sink into naturally. But so much of it had been to protect herself. From scrutiny, from criticism. From disappointing her mother, from failing in the eyes of her father, when he so clearly imagined that she would.

  It all became so clear right then.

  That no wall had ever healed. That no wall had ever truly protected. She had been concerned, from the beginning, that Mauro was the barbarian at the gate. But she had not imagined how apt that description was. Not really. And somethi
ng had to change. Something inside her. It had begun, all those months ago, with that trip to the club.

  Continued as they had grown intimate, as they had given and taken from each other, as she had found power in her surrender.

  And perhaps now this was the next stage of that lesson. Strength in vulnerability.

  In becoming the one thing she had always feared she might be.

  Weak. Vulnerable. Open.

  But perhaps it was the only way. Perhaps, it was the only path to what was real.

  Something she had not considered, not truly, as she had started out this journey, was the fact that it was about more than simply gaining independence from a council. It was about more than living in defiance of her father’s last-ditch effort to control her. It was about becoming more of a person than a figurehead. It was about defying some of what her mother had instilled in her, as well. The need to be perfect. The need to be a symbol.

  She didn’t want to be a symbol to her son. She wanted to be his mother. She didn’t want to live her life as someone worthy of being carved onto a coin. She wanted to live her life. To do the best she could. To be the best she could, but to be her. To be Astrid von Bjornland, as she was. As she was meant to be.

  Not in a constant state of trying to prove herself, not in an eternal struggle to appear worthy. No. She wanted to be herself.

  She was flawed. She was strong. She was weak. She was angry. She was in love. She was filled with hope for the future, and terror about it, as well.

  She was everything, not simply one thing.

  And it would start here. It had to start here.

  “Mauro,” she said slowly. “I love you.”

  He barely paused in his movements. “That’s only because I’m cooking steak for you.”

  She shook her head. “No. I am in love with you. I have been. For quite some time. And today... The ultrasound, the baby... All of it crystallized something for me. I cannot be the mother that I want to be, the ruler I want to be, the woman I want to be. If I’m going to be the best mother, the best ruler, the best wife, then I have to... I have to be different. I have to break the cycle.”

  “What cycle?”

  “This cycle where I care only for my own feelings. Honestly, that I gave even a moment’s thought to wishing he was a girl, to further my own cause, this cause that I’ve been fighting all of my life. It shows me that my parents impacted me in ways I wish they hadn’t. I know my mother did. She meant well. She believed in me. But I was a battleground. I don’t want to do that to our child. I don’t want to live that way with you. I don’t want to live the way my parents did. I want something more. I’m willing to give whatever I need to, to make that happen. I love you, and I think that... We can be happy. I think we can be wonderful, not just an arrangement. I think we could be everything.”

  He turned away from her, and went back to cooking, saying nothing. Doing nothing.

  “The food is finished,” he said, putting the steak on a plate and dishing vegetables beside it. “Let’s eat.”

  There with him in the dining room in stunned silence, trying to focus, while emotions were spinning through her like cracks of light. Finally, she stood.

  “I’m afraid,” she said. “I have been. That my father was secretly right. I wasn’t strong. That’s why I never doubted myself. I couldn’t afford to. Why I went forward with my crazy plan to trick you into getting me pregnant. Because I had gotten myself to a place where I was so convinced that anything that I might want was a betrayal of what I needed to be. Well, I’m not doing it. Not anymore. I’m afraid. I’m afraid I won’t do a good job. But I’m doing it anyway. I’m afraid I won’t be a good mother. I’m afraid you will leave me. But I... I want it enough for me. For us.”

  He said nothing, only assessed her with cool, dark eyes. She moved down the table to where he sat. And, heart hammering in her chest, desperation pouring into her like a fountain, she dropped to her knees in front of him. “I’m your servant,” she said. “Let me give you what you need.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  MAURO COULDN’T BREATHE. He couldn’t think. He had spent the entire day away at the office for a reason.

  Because everything with Astrid, with the baby, had simply been too much for him to take on board. It had been too much for him to handle. And now this. Now she was throwing herself at his feet, confessing love, prostrate before him. And worst of all, worse than watching her kneel before him, was the fact that it intensified the growing ache inside.

  He couldn’t even blame the child, which ultimately he had rationalized as being a natural response. Very few men faced impending fatherhood without some sort of panic. But that wasn’t it.

  It was her. She did this to him.

  And then, she began to strip off the dress she was wearing, began to reveal her body, and he could not turn away.

  “Whatever you need from me... Let me give it. Let me be everything you need.”

  It was so perilously close to what he had wished he could get from her earlier today. That he could see that vulnerability, that he could understand what scared her, what drove her, what made her. And now, it was as if she was showing him, but not only that, was asking him to do the same.

  He wanted her to stop. Wanted to tell her enough was enough.

  Yet he found it impossible to turn away, especially as she revealed those pale, perfect breasts for inspection, especially when all of her soft, silky beauty was laid out before him. She took everything off except for her shoes, just as she had done that first night they were together.

  She stretched out on her back, on the floor in front of him, her arms lifted over her head, her wrists crossed, her knees locked criminally together, as if it might spare some of her modesty. And he no longer hungered for the food on his plate. No. All the hunger he possessed was for her. Utterly. His desire like a living thing roaring through his body, right now.

  No.

  Part of him wanted to run away from, from that feeling she created inside, but that same part of himself would not allow it. Would not allow for him to admit she did strange and dark, magical things that no one else had ever done.

  She terrified him. Him. A man who had sold his body to survive, who had spent nights sleeping on the street, wondering if the wrong kind of people would find him, and if he would wake up at all.

  He feared nothing. And yet this one, fragile queen seemed to have the power to tear him apart from the inside out.

  This woman who seemed to be able to give and take in equal measure. Who seemed to be able to take charge and then give her power over at will.

  He didn’t understand.

  He did not understand how she had spoken to him as she had, so raw and real and broken. So revealing. As if she were bulletproof. When he could see full well she was not. All that tender skin so very capable of being destroyed.

  And yet... Yet. He dropped to his knees, forced her thighs apart, exposed all of that luscious body of hers.

  He should turn away. Should not take her in his current state of mind. It took all of his strength to even admit that. That she’d pushed him to this place.

  And he had none left to resist.

  He touched her breasts, her stomach, that tender place between her legs. Let himself drink in every inch of her beauty.

  He held himself back, keeping a distance between them as he undid the closure on his slacks.

  He gripped himself, stroking his hardened length twice while looking down at her.

  Then he reached down, gripping her thigh and draping her leg up over his shoulder, repeating the motion with the other.

  Then he rocked forward, one arm like a bar over her thighs as he gripped himself with his free hand and slid himself over the slick entrance of her body, before pressing his arousal against her opening.

  She gasped, letting her head fall back, and he lost himself
. Poured every emotion, every pain, every deep sharp jagged thing that was making him feel, into her. He wrapped them up, let it cut them both, and he let them both get lost in the animal need that was driving him forward, making him into a thing he didn’t recognize. A thing he feared was closer to real than anything he’d allowed himself to feel for decades.

  And when he came, it was on a ferocious roar, with a bastard’s body pulsing around his.

  And he thought that maybe, just maybe, that had fixed things. That it had drowned everything else out. But then, she lifted her hand and touched his face.

  “I love you.”

  And he could not endure it.

  * * *

  Astrid could tell the moment that she had lost him. The moment when she had pushed too far.

  But what could they do? What could she do? She loved him. They were married. She was having his baby. They were bonded, whether he wanted that to be true or not. And she could see something more than a lack of love in his eyes. That wasn’t what she saw there at all. It was anguish. It was fear. It was abject terror. And desire. A deep, unending desire.

  To take what she had offered, she was certain of it. And yet, something was holding him back. She couldn’t figure out what it was, couldn’t quite say where the fear was coming from, only that it was there.

  “Don’t do this,” she said softly.

  “Don’t,” he said. “Don’t act like you can read my mind because you shared my bed. Any number of women have done this with me.”

  She stayed right where she was on the floor. “Any number of women have submitted themselves to you completely?”

  “It is only sex,” he said.