by Millie Adams
“I think having to watch me join with you might have begun to teach him a lesson,” she said.
“What does that mean?” he growled.
“Only that you are a bit more feral and frightening than I think he imagined my royal husband might be.”
“The beast, remember?”
“Yes. I think... We are husband and wife now. And I would like to know... Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why did you become the beast? The sins of your father. We talked about that. But it’s deeper than that. I know it is. Because you changed when you found that little girl...”
“What do you think I was doing all those years before? I was seeing to his orders. Arresting men when he demanded that I arrest them. And women. Separating families as he commanded. And he would tell me it was for a reason. Because they were traitors. Because it was upholding the health of the country. But I realize now they were freedom fighters. People who wanted to escape his oppressive regime, and it was oppressive. That innocent people were put behind bars, tried and... I helped. I upheld his rule of law, and I regret it.”
“You didn’t know.”
“Maybe not. But when you have believed so wholeheartedly in a lie, you can never trust yourself again. You can never trust in the clarity of your own judgment because you have been so fooled. Because you were a villain and all the while imagined yourself a hero. And you will never, ever be able to walk through life without wondering which side you’re on again. You will never be able to take it for granted.”
“It takes such courage to admit that. You are brave. And I can see that you’ll never take the easy way. You can trust yourself.”
He shook his head. “No. I can’t. I love my father and I allowed those feelings to blind myself to his faults.”
“Well. So did I with mine.”
“Your father is not a maniacal dictator. As challenging as he might be.”
“No. I suppose not.” She put her hand on his face, and he closed his eyes, relishing the feel of her delicate fingers against him. “You saved that girl, Javier.”
“But so many more I did not save. So many I harmed myself. Arrested. Sent to a prison run by my father, where they were undoubtedly tortured. There is no salvation for such sins. My hands will not wash clean. But I can use them to serve.”
“I’m sorry, but I know you, Javier. You’re not a monster.”
“I must assume that I am,” he said, moving away. “The better to protect the world from any harm that I might do.”
“I don’t think you are,” she said.
“This is not a fairy tale. The things that I have done cannot be undone. I can only move forward trying to do right now that I understand. Now that I have the power. It is not about being transformed by magic. Such a thing is not possible.”
She moved to him and she bracketed his face with her hands.
He had no chance to respond to that, because she kissed his mouth, and he was dragged into the swirling undertow of desire by the softness of her lips, the slow, sweet sweep of her tongue against his. She was inexperienced, his beautiful goddess, but she had a sort of witchcraft about her that ensnared him and entranced him.
That made him fall utterly and completely under her spell.
How could the magic fail here? Because of him. That had to be it.
She was made entirely of magic. Glorious soft skin and otherworldly beauty wrapped around galaxies of light. She was something other than beauty. Something more.
Something that made his heart beat new and made him want to defy a lifetime of commitment to honor.
He had devoted himself to believing only in a code. A list of principles that helped him determine what was right and wrong because he knew full well that his own blood, his own heart could lead him in the direction of that which would destroy him and all those around him.
His belief in that had been unwavering.
When he looked at her, his Violet, his wife, he knew that he could believe entirely in her. In her magic. In the way her soft mouth rained kisses down over his skin, in the way her delicate fingertips brushed over his body. The way that she undid the buttons on his shirt and tackled the buckle on his belt. Yes. He could believe in that.
He could drop to his knees and pledge his loyalty to her and her alone, seal his utter and total devotion by losing himself in her womanly flavor. By drowning in the desire that rose up between them like a wave, threatening to decimate everything that he had built.
And he didn’t care.
Just like he hadn’t cared that first time they had kissed in the ballroom those weeks ago, when she had belonged to another man and his loyalty should have stood the test of time but crumbled beneath all that she was.
She was magic. And she was deadly.
And now, just now, he did not have the strength to deny her. To deny them.
And so, why not surrender? Why not drown in it? She was his, after all. He had gone down this path weeks ago, and it was too late to turn back. He had made her his.
His.
And tonight he would make that matter. He would revel in it.
He stole the power of the kiss from her, taking control, growling as he wrapped his arms around her and walked her back against the wall, pinning her there, devouring her, claiming her as his own.
He had spoken vows, but they were not enough; he needed to seal them with his body. He needed her to know.
He needed her to understand.
The way that she destroyed him. The way that he was broken inside. So that she would know. And he didn’t know why he needed her to know, just like he didn’t know why he had been in the library that night they had first made love. Why he had been looking through that same book that she was, trying to read the same story and find some meaning in it.
To try to see through her eyes the way that she might see him.
And it shouldn’t matter. It never should have. Because she had been his brother’s and he had been toying with betrayal even then.
But she’s yours now.
Yes, she was his. For better or worse.
He feared very much it might be worse. Because he hurt people. It felt like a natural part of what he was. That monster.
But perhaps if it was only this, if it was only lust, he could control it.
He wrenched that beautiful dress off her body. She was an Angel in it, far too pure for him, and it nearly hurt to look at her. Burned his hands to pull the filmy fabric away from her. But it left her standing there in white, angelic underthings. Garments that spoke of purity, and he knew that he was unequal to the task of touching them. Just as he had been unworthy of touching her in the first place.
But he had.
And he would.
He tore them away from her body, leaving her naked before him. Except for those jewels. The necklace glittering at the base of her throat, the cuffs heavy on her wrist, the chain wound around them. And the ring, his ring, glittering on her finger, telling the world that she belonged to him.
He had never had her in a bed.
He hadn’t realized that until this moment. And tonight he would have her in his bed. Their bed.
She would not have her own room, not after this.
It was often customary for royal couples to keep their own spaces, but they would not.
She would be here. Under the covers, in his bed with him. Her naked body wrapped around his. Yes. That was what he required. It was what he would demand.
He picked her up and carried her there, set her down at the center of the mattress and looked at her. He leaned over, spreading her hair out around her like a dark halo, and then he stood, looking at the beautiful picture that she made. Her soft, bare skin pale against the deep crimson red of the quilt. She took a sharp breath, her breasts rising with the motion, her nipples beading.
&nbs
p; “Such a lovely picture you make, My Princess.”
“I didn’t think my official title was Princess.”
“It doesn’t matter. You are my princess. Mine.”
He bent down, cupping her breast with his hand, letting it fill his palm.
She was soft, so delicate and exquisite, and it amazed him that something half so fragile could put such a deep crack in the foundation of what he was. But she had.
He lowered his head and took one perfect, puckered nipple between his lips and sucked all her glory into his mouth. She arched beneath him, crying out in soft, sweet pleasure, and it spurred him on. He growled, lavishing her with attention, licking and sucking, stroking her between her thighs.
His wife. His beautiful, perfect wife, who threatened to destroy all that he was.
How had he ever thought that it was possible to maintain superior connections to this country. To duty and honor when the marriage bed presented shackles that could not be seen with the human eye. Perhaps that was why the cuffs existed. Not to create a sense that they were bound to each other, but to turn them physical. All the better to remove them when one chose to.
Because the ties that existed in his heart he could not see, he could not touch and he did not know how to unleash.
It was supernatural in a way that he would have said he did not believe in.
It was strong in a way he would have told anyone such a thing could not be.
And he was linked to her in a way he would have said he could not be to another human being.
Because he had given those things away so long ago. Because he had pledged loyalty to Matteo and not love. Because he had pledged his blood to Monte Blanco, but not love.
And what he wanted to give to Violet was deeper, and he was afraid that she was right. That magic had always only ever been love, and that it could turn and twist into something dark and evil, just like magic.
All that magic that she was.
All that... He did not wish to give the word a place, not even in his mind.
And so he covered his thoughts with a blanket of pleasure, wrapping them both in the dark velvet of his desire, lapping his way down her body, her stomach, down to that sweet place between her legs. He buried himself there. Lost himself in giving her pleasure.
Got drunk on it.
Because there was nothing to do now but revel in it. Afterward... Afterward there would be time for reckonings and for fixing all of this. But not now.
Now was the time to embrace it.
The only time.
Here in the bedroom.
And maybe that was what the cuffs were for.
To create a space where the world didn’t matter. Where there could be an escape.
And maybe for other men that would have worked. But not for him.
Because he didn’t know how to create space.
He only knew how to be all or nothing.
How to be an agent of his father, or a war machine acting against him.
How to be a man, vulnerable and useless. Or how to be a beast.
But he had the freedom to be that beast with her. And somehow, with that freedom he became both. Wholly a man and wholly an animal in her arms, and she seemed to accept him no matter what. She shouldn’t.
She should push him away. She always should have pushed him away.
But she had gone with him, from the beginning.
She had chosen to be with him.
And when he rose up and positioned himself between her thighs, when he thrust into her body, and when her beautiful eyes opened, connected with his, he felt a shudder of something crack through his entire body like a bolt of lightning.
She lifted her head, pressed her soft mouth to his, and he felt words vibrating against his lips. He couldn’t understand them. Couldn’t do anything but feel them, as the sweet, tight heat of her body closed around his.
She clung to his shoulders as he drove them both to the pinnacle of pleasure. And when she released, he went with her. Pleasure pounding through him like a relentless rain.
And then, he heard her speaking again, her lips moving against the side of his neck, and this time, the words crystallized in his mind.
The words that he had been trying, trying and failing, not to hear. Not to understand.
“I love you,” she whispered. Her lips moved against his skin, tattooing the words there, making it impossible for him not to feel them. He was branded with them.
“I love you. I love you.”
“No,” he said, the denial bursting forth from him.
He moved away from her, pushing his hands through his hair. Panic clawed at him and he couldn’t say why. He was not a man who panicked. Ever. He was not a man acquainted with fear. Because what did he care for his own life? The only thing he feared was the darkness in himself, and maybe that was the problem now. Maybe it called to the weakness that he had inside of his chest.
The desire to sink into her. To drop to his knees and pledge loyalty to her no matter what.
Even if she asked him to mobilize against his brother. Against his people.
And it didn’t matter that she wouldn’t.
What mattered was losing the anchor that kept him from harming those around him.
What mattered was losing the only moral compass he knew how to read.
What mattered was Monte Blanco and it was becoming impossible for him to hold on to that.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “You don’t get to tell me that I don’t love you.”
“I cannot,” he said.
“Why not?”
“Haven’t you been listening? Haven’t you heard anything that I’ve told you? Love is the enemy. You’re right. Magic. And magic can be dark as easily as it can work for good.”
“So why can’t you trust that between us it will be good?”
“Because I cannot trust myself,” he said.
She put her hand on his chest and he wrapped his fingers around her wrist and ripped it away. She stared at him, the hurt in her eyes far too intense to bear.
Because he did not have the freedom to be himself with her. It was far too dangerous. And he had been lying. Evidence of his own weakness if it ever existed.
That he had wanted to pretend that what he knew to be true wasn’t. That he wanted to give himself freedom when he knew that he could not afford it. This woman was a gift that some men could have. But not him.
Yet he had been weak, far too weak from the beginning to turn away from her. He’d been given every chance. Every roadblock in his personal arsenal had been set up. She had been intended for his brother, and if that could not keep him away from her, then nothing could.
She was dangerous. Deadly.
A threat to his own personal code in ways that he should have seen from the beginning.
Because she had been eroding the foundation that he had built from the beginning. Just a touch. A kiss. And then he had stormed into his brother’s office to tell him that Matteo could not marry her. To tell him that he could not see through the plan that he had to make their country better, because Javier had wanted Violet for himself. He had never wanted to let her go. He would have gone after her. That much he knew.
But his brother had given him options that he had liked, and so he had taken them. Made it easy to keep on going down that slippery slope.
So he had done.
And now... Now he was sitting here in the consequences of it. She loved him. He could not give her that love in return.
He had broken not only his own sacred vows, but in the end he would break her too. And that was unacceptable.
But he had married her. And that was done. Consummated. Presented before the entire world.
But they did not have to live together as man and wife. He could give her the freedom that she had wanted. But he c
ould not give her this.
“Love is not to be,” he said. “Not for me.”
“I know that you don’t trust it,” she said. “And I understand why. But you have to understand that what I feel for you has nothing to do with the way you were manipulated into caring for your father.”
“Was I manipulated? Or did I simply want to accept the easiest thing. The easiest reality.”
“Do you think that I’m going to trick you into doing something wrong? Do you think that I’m secretly here to destroy your country?”
“No,” he growled. “No,” he said again. “It’s not that. It has nothing to do with that. But a man cannot serve two masters. And my master must be my people. It must be my country. It must be to duty, and to honor. That is where I must pledge my allegiance, and I cannot be split between a wife and a nation.”
“Then make me part of your people. Make me one of those that you have a responsibility to. Surely that can’t be so difficult.”
Except that he knew it would destroy her. It was not what she wanted. It was not what she deserved. And without it she truly would be in captivity for all of his life. And he would be her jailer. And so he was trapped. Between violating all that he needed to be for his country and destroying the life of the woman who had married him.
He reached over to her and unclasped the first bracelet from her wrist. He unwound the chain that she had wrapped there, and then unclipped the second bracelet.
Her eyes filled with tears as she stared at him, but he knew that it would be a kindness. It was a kindness whether she saw it that way or not.
“What are you doing?”
“You are not my prisoner,” he said. “And I will not make you a prisoner.”
“Now you say this? Now, after we’ve been married? After I told you that I love you? That’s when you decide to give me freedom?”
“We must remain married,” he said. “That much is obvious. My brother would take a dim view on there being a divorce so quickly. It would cause scandal. And... I do not wish to undo all that you have done for my country. But you may go back to California. To your life. There is no reason that you must stay here. You do not need to be under my thumb.”