by Maisey Yates
To brand her body, so that she would feel it, too.
“Layna...” His words evaporated on his tongue. He didn’t know what to say. Or how to say it. He knew how to flirt, knew how to throw practiced lines at women and get them into bed for the night. But he’d never learned how to keep a woman with him for two nights, much less forever.
But he had to try. He had to try.
Because he’d gotten everything today—acceptance, forgiveness. And still things didn’t feel finished.
“Layna,” he began again, “you have been missing from my life every day since I walked away.”
“Xander, what are you talking about?”
He went over to the desk and rounded to her side, hauled her up into his arms and kissed her. Then he kissed her cheeks, the damaged corner of her mouth, the winkled line of skin that ran along the bridge of her nose.
He pressed his forehead against hers. “I’ve been wandering in the desert for fifteen years. I have had no home. No one to call a friend. And I was okay with that because I didn’t want anyone to get near me. I came back here, it was supposed to be the promised land, so to speak, and I didn’t feel anything. I didn’t feel home. Until I saw you.”
“Xander, please...don’t do that, I don’t need it.”
“I need to tell you.”
“How did your meeting with your father go?”
“That isn’t what I need to talk about.”
“It’s what I need to hear about,” she said.
Layna tried to calm the wild beating of her heart, tried to do something to quell the panic that was racing through her. She didn’t know what to do with this. With his words, his ferocity and sincerity, with such strength that it burrowed beneath her defenses and started pulling them down. Left her feeling raw and exposed. Reminded her of how it had been to lose it all, all of her control, all of her beauty, in front of hundreds of people.
To care so much and have it all torn away...
Zombie Princess. Does he make love to you in the dark?
She closed her eyes and kissed him. She didn’t want to hear him speak anymore. She couldn’t hear more, not now. She could do this. They could kiss. They could make love. They could get married and live together and have children, and rule Kyonos.
So long as she could keep pieces of herself hidden, so that if the world ever fell down around her again, she wouldn’t be left with nothing.
But she had to keep him from saying things like that. He could touch her skin, but she couldn’t let him keep on touching her heart.
She couldn’t risk it.
“Layna,” he growled, kissing her deeper, longer.
It was working. He was focusing on her body now, his hands roaming over her curves. This was what she needed. This overwhelming tide of physical sensation that only he could make her feel.
Because it blocked out the other feelings. The ones that surrounded her heart and pushed at the walls. The ones that she’d made to protect herself.
When he’d said he was going to talk to his father her world had ended for a moment. When he’d made it clear he was willing to take a step that might end what they were building here, and it had made her feel like the earth had simply run out, and she was standing on the edge of a cliff waiting to fall, she’d known she had to shore up her defenses.
And now he was here, and he was saying things. Romantic things. Things that had nothing to do with sex or convenience or honor, and she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t handle it.
This she could do. This was all they needed. He just had to remember that. She would make him remember. That this was good. That it was enough.
“Take me,” she begged against his lips. “Hard. Now.”
But he didn’t obey. He kept kissing her, his lips so tender and sweet it made her ache. She didn’t want to ache. She didn’t want to care.
She didn’t want to love or be loved. She didn’t want to care about anything. About whether or not they called her the Zombie Princess, or if Xander thought she was beautiful. If Xander stayed with her forever or only for a few months.
She didn’t want to care about any of it.
It was too frightening. It asked too much.
“Stop it,” she said, pushing against his chest, pushing him against the back wall. “Stop being gentle. Kiss me like you mean it.” Like there was nothing else. Like the press didn’t exist. Hard enough that he could made her forget, long enough that she wouldn’t be able to breathe. That she might drown in it. In this.
She kissed him again, and she felt his fingers lace through her hair, and he tugged hard, drawing her head back. Yes. This was what she wanted.
“I have to look at you for a moment,” he said. “You’re lovely.” He traced her ruined lips with his thumb, holding her still with his other hand, forked deep in her hair.
She shook her head. “I don’t need you to lie.”
“It’s not a lie. Any man that misses your beauty is a fool.”
“He’s a man who has eyes, Xander.” The whole world had eyes. And they didn’t like what they saw.
He kissed her hard, a punishment for her talking back. The kind of kiss she wanted. The kind she reveled in. “You should know this, Layna,” he said, his voice rough. “Beauty, the kind on your skin, is terribly vain.”
“Inner beauty, Xander? Is that what we’re talking about?”
“No. For the love of God, woman, do you honestly believe that a rough patch of skin takes away who you are? Takes away your allure? Your beauty? Your lips...your hair and eyes. Agape, they are worthy of any man’s praise.”
She could feel the cracks in her defenses widening. Could feel herself, her resolve, weakening.
“But I don’t need praise,” she said. “I need you, here and now.”
“Sex is all you want?” he asked, a strange note to his voice.
“Sex and a partnership. Anything else is gratuitous.”
He tugged her hair harder, kissed her throat. “I can show you gratuitous if you really want.”
“Yes,” she said.
He leaned down and picked her up, carrying her over to the desk, which was quite clean—and she had the vague thought that it was a good thing it was—and set her down on top of it, stripping himself of his clothes as quickly as possible. “Take them off,” he said to her. “All of them.”
And she obeyed. From her position on the desk she stripped off her top, pants, underwear and shoes, and stayed perched on the edge while he positioned himself between her thighs. He braced his hands on her hips and slid slowly, making her aware of every inch of him as he entered her.
He lifted one hand and gripped her chin. “Look at me,” he demanded.
“No.” She didn’t know exactly why, but she couldn’t.
“Look at me, Layna,” he said, thrusting hard into her.
“Xander, please...”
Her eyes flew to his, shock preventing her from doing anything else. From thinking it through. And the minute she saw him, really saw him, her heart started to feel too big for its cage. She looked down again, squeezing her eyes closed.
“Don’t shut me out,” he said.
“Xander...”
“I love you.”
“No,” she said, shaking her head, closing her eyes tighter, a tear tracking down her cheek.
“Layna, I love you.” He kept moving inside of her, his thrusts matching the terrified rhythm of her heart, as he drove her to the brink with his body while his words delivered fatal damage to the walls surrounding her heart.
“No. Don’t love me. Don’t ask me to love you.”
He cupped her face and kissed her lips, moving hard and deep within her, his mouth covering hers, swallowing her denial, and the cry of pleasure that followed it as her orgasm crashed over her in
a perfect storm of agony and ecstasy.
Just like everything with Xander.
Perfect pleasure. Perfect pain. Perfect misery mingled with joy.
When she came back to herself, his arms were around her, and he was holding her tight against his chest. She realized she was shaking. Sobbing.
Because of him. She pushed away from him.
“Xander, I can’t...”
“You don’t love me?”
“Why do you think you love me?” she asked, even though she didn’t want to know the answer. Didn’t want to hear any more. “No. Don’t answer that. I can’t...I can’t breathe, Xander. I can’t.” She started hunting for her clothes, tugging them on as quickly as possible.
“Why not?”
“I thought I could...” She was gasping now, panicking. “I thought I could do this. But do you know why I cling to my contentment? Because at least if I don’t...if I don’t love anything, if I’m never excited, or overjoyed, I can’t go back to the low place again. If I don’t care about my looks then I can’t be destroyed when people call me names. If I don’t love you I can’t fall apart when you leave. I can’t fall into depression, and that...fog, Xander, that horrible fog. I won’t do it again.”
“I’m not going to leave you, Layna,” he said, walking forward, gripping her arms. “Ever. I made a promise. And I will keep it.”
“You didn’t mean it, though. You still went to your father and told him the truth, even though it might mean you would lose this. Lose me...”
“I don’t have to be king to have you, but I do need you to be a good man. I need you. You don’t understand.”
“That’s just it! So what happens when you don’t need me anymore? And you run.”
“You don’t trust me at all, do you?”
She wrapped her arms around herself, trying to hold it all, hold herself, together. “I don’t trust in anything. Not you...not...”
“God?”
“Don’t. You don’t know what it’s like. Fine if you have a trauma, you just get to run and run. But the rest of us are left with nothing. I couldn’t run from my pain, Xander it was in me. And you don’t know what that is!”
“Oh, I don’t?” he growled. “Because throwing my life away on drugs and drinking and sex wasn’t a horrible existence? It was, Layna. It was. It was every bit as dark, and every bit as rock-bottom.”
“I don’t suppose you ever thought about killing yourself. Because I did. I thought about it a lot.”
“I never thought about it,” he said. “I just assumed that running toward death at full speed like I was would eventually amount to it. One day you drink too hard, you take too much of the wrong thing, and you don’t wake up again. I was sort of hoping for that day, just too much of a coward to pursue it with any kind of real dedication. Or maybe it was the ties here. But for whatever reason, I didn’t. Still, I know that place you’re talking about. I know that kind of darkness. But I walked up out of it for real today and I want you to do it, too.”
She shook her head. “I can’t. I can’t do it again, Xander. And I’m sure you think that I’m weak. And maybe I am. But I used up all my strength already and I can’t possibly put myself at risk like this again. I can’t just...put myself out there. All of me, and risk being pushed down into the darkness again.”
Xander looked down at the desk. The desk where they had just made love. He was still naked. And he didn’t seem all that concerned about it.
“My father told me that I was his son. No matter what the paternity test might say.” He looked up at her. “He’s my father no matter what.”
“I’m happy for you. I’m happy for...you don’t have to have a wife now, do you? Not one like me. You’re accepted and your people love you. And I’m the Zombie Princess. You don’t need me, Xander.”
He hauled her against his chest, holding her to him. “I do need you, Layna.”
“No, Xander, you don’t. And more than that? I’m starting to hurt things for you. At first...at first maybe people loved you for sticking with me, but now I’m just a burden. An embarrassment. It’s going to be...I’ll be ridiculed by the world. Kyonos will be.”
“Whether the people approve of you, or me, or not. I need you because you are the only woman for me. Because I love you beyond words. Because you have reached down deep inside me and shined a light on the real me. Made me look at myself and see who I am, and who I want to be. Because back when I was a selfish, entitled, wreck of a man, you were the only woman for me, and no matter what life has thrown at me in the meantime, at the end of it all, you’re still the only woman for me.”
“I can’t be the woman for you.” She pulled out of his hold, and he let her go. “I can’t live like this. With...with the press closing in around me all the time. They took pictures of me, Xander. And a reporter called and...”
“What?”
“He asked if you made love to me in the dark.”
“Layna...”
“So even if the people love me. Even if they love you being with me. Even if I don’t end up embarrassing the nation I can’t...I can’t do this to myself. They’ll never leave me alone. They’ll harass me. Forever. For all of my life and I can’t...do it.”
“And you don’t love me?” he asked, his tone flat.
She shook her head, the walls around her heart strengthening, folding in around it like a concrete blockade. “No.”
“I see.”
“I’m going to go.”
“To your room.”
“No. Away from here. Just...away from you.”
“You’re running?” he asked, his tone even, deadly. “I thought we agreed we weren’t going to do that anymore. I thought we promised.”
“No, Xander,” she said, her voice a whisper. “You promised. I didn’t. I don’t want any of this. I don’t want to be in the public eye, I don’t want to be under scrutiny like this. I don’t want your love.”
“But you have it. I want you to want it all, Layna, I want you to have it all.”
“How dare you?” she screamed, angry now, cracking apart inside. “How dare you take my safety away from me! How dare you pull me from my home, from my quiet life and bring me here! You said we would be partners, you didn’t say you would demand my soul.”
“Nothing less, agape. Because you have mine.”
“Well, you don’t have mine. And I’m going. Goodbye, Xander. I wish you the best of luck in ruling, and in finding your future queen. She won’t be me.”
“What can I do?” he asked, a desperate thread in his voice that seemed tied to her heart, squeezing her tight, making it impossible to breathe.
“Show me the future. Show me nothing will happen. Show me that if I choose to want again, to feel again, to need again, that I won’t have it all ripped from me. Prove to me you won’t leave, you won’t cheat. Prove to me that things will be well. Show me. Show me that when you don’t need me anymore, when your reputation isn’t helped by me, you won’t want someone else. You won’t regret me.”
He ran his hand down his face, looking so impossibly tired, so defeated. “You of little faith,” he said, laughing bitterly.
“I don’t know how you can say that to me.”
“I don’t know how you can claim to be anything different. You spend fifteen years in a convent, pretending to be a woman of faith when you don’t have enough to feel an emotion that transcends anything more than basic contentment. You’re afraid to take a deep breath, Layna Xenakos, afraid to make a ripple for fear God might notice you and strike at you again. Afraid to live.”
“I’m not. That’s not it....”
“The hell it’s not. At least I can do this. At least I can put the past behind me and walk forward. You don’t want to go back to that hell you were living in, but you keep one foot in it to remind y
ourself. You keep yourself afraid. You keep yourself from ever feeling happiness. From ever feeling love. What’s the point of protecting yourself if all you’re protecting is a life half-lived?”
“Tell me why I should trust you,” she spat, “when all your history proves that when things get hard, you’ll leave. You haven’t earned my faith, so don’t stand there and talk about how I don’t have it.”
He jerked back like he’d been slapped. But he was only stunned for a moment. “I haven’t earned your faith?” he asked. “All that I have given you, all that I have promised you, my body, my soul, and I have not earned your faith? Think of what I promised you before I ran the last time. Nothing. Engagements end, which happened with ours. I had not made vows to you, I had not promised undying love. I hadn’t even promised you undying lust. I promise it all to you now and then some. I give you my word, my vow, that I will never leave you, no matter what comes. I give you everything I am. I’m laying it at your feet here, Layna. But now you tell me I have not earned your faith.”
She looked at him, at his eyes, blazing with anger and hurt, burning inside her so that she had no choice but to look away. Because what she’d said was worthy of anger. Insults he didn’t deserve.
She took her ring off. Shaking, she put it in his hand, forcing his fingers to close around it. “This is the second time I’ve returned a ring to your family. Maybe...maybe don’t offer me one again.”
“Is that really what you want?” he asked, his voice strained.
She nodded, trying to keep the tears from falling. “Yes. It is.”
She walked out of the office and ignored Xander shouting her name. Ignored the sound of his footsteps behind her as she ran to her room. She looked around, at all the pretty things. And decided she didn’t need any of it.
She wouldn’t stop running again until she’d reached safety. Until she could feel safely hidden from the wall of grief that was threatening to overwhelm her.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
LAYNA RODE UNTIL her thigh muscles burned and her lungs ached. Across the fields and up to the highest point on the hilltop, where she could look over the ocean. The wind was blowing her hair everywhere, her horse shifting his weight beneath her.