by Maisey Yates
“I feel it will be apparent who is right for you when you’re both in the same room.”
“Are you playing Cupid?”
“Nothing of the kind.”
“Do I get to choose?”
“You get to choose,” he said. “I’m certainly not frog-marching you down the aisle.”
A thoughtful expression crossed her face. “And who will be in attendance? Will there be anyone I can look at beforehand?”
“You make it sound as if you’re buying a used car.”
“Well, it seems only right that I be able to kick the tires of my future husband.”
“Certainly,” he said. And then he realized that he had not personally overseen any of the guest list. He had handed it off, as was his typical practice when he felt a deep aversion to something.
And he shouldn’t.
You don’t want to share.
“Well, tell me about them.”
“Of course.”
He pulled out a file for the event, and perused the guest list. He found he did know a few of them.
“Robert Martin,” he said. “He’s an American philanthropist. Very wealthy. You’ll like him.”
“How old is he?”
“Near my age, I believe.”
“Does he have all his teeth?”
“I’ve never asked.”
“Who else?”
“Marcus Weber. He’s British. Descendent of some minor nobility or another. An innovator in green technologies.”
“Well, I like the sound of both of them.”
“So there. You will be quite happy.”
“When am I expected to make a decision?” She asked. “Do I have until midnight on my birthday?”
“Tinley,” he said. “It is not so easy.”
“You’re the one who came in issuing commands. I want a timeline. Don’t you have...a way that you think this will work?”
“We will evaluate after the ball.”
“You’re very cavalier with my life.”
“I’m not being cavalier. I can assure you that I never have been, not for one moment. You have me confused with someone else.” He let the words settle between them.
“No,” she said softly. “I would never confuse the two of you.” She began to move away from his desk, and then she stopped. “You’re a king. You’re kind of...all-powerful. You don’t know what it’s like to have this much of your freedom tied up. I can leave, but I’ll leave with nothing. You don’t have any clue what that’s like.”
She had no idea. None at all. He’d had to live under the shadow of two deaths. He’d had to hold himself back when he’d wanted nothing more than to destroy the agreements made between their families.
She knew nothing about his life.
About the curse he lived under.
“I know all about not having freedom,” he said, rage pouring through him. “Do you think that if left to my own devices I would’ve chosen to live as I did? Of course not. I was born a man like any other, but I must be a king instead. Do you not think I would’ve enjoyed womanizing and drinking as my brother did? Perhaps I would have. But I had to be strong. I had to be a symbol, not a human being, and I continue to act in that way. Do you think that I’m choosing my own wife now? For sentimental reasons? Or even for the reason of desire?” He stood, and rounded the desk, which he knew was a mistake, even as he did it.
He knew it was a mistake. A dark thrill worked its way through his body. For he did not make mistakes. But he made this one, and deliberately. Because the word desire arced between them like an electric current, and he could feel it, resonating down below his belt. Throbbing there.
He had sex. And plenty of it. With women who were willing. With women who knew the score, absolutely and completely. All of his decisions about sex were made clearly and consciously. He did not act on impulse.
The first time he had realized he wanted to deviate from that had been when he had cornered Tinley in the corridor of the palace once, at barely eighteen. When that initial kick of desire he’d tried to push off as an aberration when he’d seen her in her swimsuit had turned into something darker, sharper.
Something he couldn’t ignore.
She and his brother had caused some sort of spectacle at a state dinner, and he had felt compelled to scold them both. But her before Dionysus, and he hadn’t immediately known why. But he had followed her, that trail of red hair and humor, down the hall from the dining room, and when she had turned and looked up at him, those eyes had been wide. And then she had licked her lips and he had felt it like a glide of her tongue against his manhood. And he had known then. What forbidden was. What desire was. And why those two things together created something delicious that he would never be able to explore.
His brother was a known womanizer, so even then, he doubted that Tinley was a virgin. Would it be so bad then for him to touch her?
He had entertained that, if only for a moment.
For virgin or not, she was his brother’s. If he’d decided that he wanted her, and then desired to return her to Dionysus, he would be within his right to do so. He was the King. The future King. And no one could tell him he could not. His weight and rank far outstripped his brother. And there was nothing his brother had that he could not.
He knew the true temptation of an abuse of power then as well.
And none of it would have been half so dangerous if he hadn’t seen a strange, innocent desire in her eyes too. The sort of desire he imagined she didn’t quite understand.
But with the right touch, the right kiss, she would have.
And that was when he took a step back. Because he was pondering violating everything that he was supposed to be for the chance to touch a woman who was unsuitable. A woman who should not possess the ability to tempt him. And she tempted him now. Still. Four years later.
A glaring testament to the weakness that lived inside of him.
To the dark terror he truly suspected. That the world was random and he was the lion of nothing. Not chosen for any one particular thing. Just alive.
A man who had let his brother wander into the woods so he could have a taste of what his brother had. Who perhaps had wanted to ensure that he could never be challenged by this spare who had no true responsibilities. And who had a woman that made Alex’s heart beat faster and his blood run hotter.
She reminded him of all those things, of all those potential shortcomings, even now. And it ate at him like acid in his gut.
But worse, the look on her face set a fire to his blood, made it flow hot and fast and low, pooling below his belt. Making him hard.
“I’m engaged,” he said.
“You are?” The question came out a hoarse whisper.
“Perhaps not in the way you might think of it. But I’m in the process of drawing up an agreement with an Arabian socialite. Nadia is exactly what I want in a queen. She is everything suitable to this position. The position of Queen. And that is why I have chosen her.”
“I...”
“You must marry in your twenty-third year. I must marry by my thirty-fifth. And so, we are both in the middle of the deadline, you see.”
“And you just chose someone. Just like that?”
“Yes.”
“What about love?”
“What about it?”
“Did your parents love each other?”
“I don’t know. I never asked.”
“I didn’t have to ask mine. They didn’t. And it made the lives of everyone around them quite miserable.”
“No one is around me.”
The truth of his own words struck him then.
“What are you talking about? You have an entire household of people around you.”
“It is not the same. We are separate. By station.”
“And when you
have children?”
He did not like to think of such things, nor of the future. Living here in this palace on the edge of a forest that had consumed so much. But it would be different. He would be different. “We will have nannies. Guards.”
“And you won’t do any parenting?”
“It won’t be necessary. I am King, and I will protect.”
She reached out, and her fingertips made contact with his suit jacket sleeve.
He shrugged her off. “Do not test me, Tinley.”
“What would I be testing?” She took a step toward him, and the expression on her face reminded him so much of when he had caught her out in the corridor four years ago.
Hours before his brother’s death.
“If you don’t know,” he growled. “Then you should truly think before you put a hand on me.”
“Why have you always hated me? I know you never thought I was worthy of him.”
“I don’t hate you. It would be simpler to hate you. And as for worthiness? It is not as simple as that.”
“What is it then?”
“You stand out. That is not in the job description for a princess.”
“That will always be the issue, won’t it? My standing out. I’m sorry that I was born objectionable. But your brother did not seem to find me objectionable at all.”
Rage poured through him. At him, at her. At Dionysus. At everything. He hated it. For it was grandly out of control, because it made him like her. And he was different. He had to be different. For the weight of the crown rested on his shoulders.
And the minute he took his focus away from what mattered, everything could be so easily destroyed.
But his focus was off everything but her. Everything but those glimmering green eyes, and everything that seemed to shimmer beneath the surface of her skin. Everything he wondered about, but had taken steps not to.
She haunted him.
And he mourned his brother, but he saw him for who he was. She still defended him. Above Alex.
As everyone did.
“My brother found every woman who would warm his bed acceptable. And believe me when I tell you he had counted on a life where he could have you and whoever else he fancied. Do not think my brother was going to promise you fidelity. Do not think that you were some great love of his. It is a shame that you build your life as a monument to him when he would never have done the same for you.”
“You don’t know,” she said, color rising in her face. “He was my friend.”
“Friendship does not keep a spark alive in the marriage bed.”
“And you speak with such great authority on marriage? On relationships? You’re brokering a business deal for your own.”
He scoffed. “What makes you think yours was any different? Business between our fathers. A reward for time spent serving in my father’s court. Your mother might have found you unsuitable, but your father found you an easy pawn.”
“He didn’t,” she said. “He loved me.” Her voice faltered there.
“There is no question he did, Tinley, but he was a man. Flesh and blood mortal. And we all of us are subject to the weakness inherent in that state. And perhaps in part for all that he could gain from having a daughter. Most men would want a son, but not a man with the ear of the King. For his daughter could marry into our family.”
“Even if that played a role in my relationship with my father,” she said, her tone dripping with disdain as she took a step toward him. “It is no different than you. Your father had three sons. An heir and two spares. How lucky for him. Except your family is cursed. Strife between brothers or death. You’re no less an accident of birth than I am.”
“An accident of death spared you.” He reached out and grabbed hold of her chin. Her skin was impossibly soft beneath his own, and it reminded him of yesterday’s dance. Yesterday’s failure. “For you would have wasted away here. Bored. Your bed empty while your husband went and amused himself elsewhere. You could have become a jaded courtier. Entertaining extra lovers as you saw fit while the staff raised your children.”
He had let himself think, for years, she might have been happy with Dionysus. But he’d been lying to himself. Not Tinley. Tinley would never have sat back and been contented with that life, not forever.
He’d thought because of how she’d been during their engagement she might be.
But she’d been young. That was all.
And now...now less so.
“Why are you like this?” Her eyes glittered, not with anger, with unshed tears, and it was that show of emotion that saw him dropping his hand to his side and taking a step away.
“You have to believe it, don’t you? You have to believe all those things about him. Otherwise you might feel truly guilty for the fact you didn’t protect the remaining son your parents had that wasn’t you. That wasn’t anything more than an icon of the crown. Dionysus was a person. You’re... You’re not a man. You’re a beast. At best. A rock at worst. Stone. Unfeeling and cruel. You have to believe Dionysus would have disappointed me because otherwise you don’t know how you live with the guilt. It doesn’t matter if he could have been responsible for his actions. You’re the King. Even if you weren’t on the throne then, you always had that power in you. You should have stopped him. You were his older brother and you didn’t. You had the power to remove me from my home and bring me here. To demand that I marry. You had the power to stop him that night. To stop himself from making a fool of the family and wandering into his certain death. You certainly could’ve stopped him from having another woman at the party. But you didn’t want to, because you didn’t want me with him anyway. Is that the truth of it? That you liked him parading that other girl around on his arm? Because you knew it might get back to me?”
“I didn’t think it would hurt you to know the truth.”
Her words cut deep, because there was a truth to them. His brother had been more and more careless with his whoring. And there was a time when it had mattered little, because Tinley was young and he wasn’t going to be in an intimate relationship with someone her age. But they were at the point where their marriage would have been coming soon, and the engagement had been officially announced. And that meant there was no excuse for him appearing in public with other women.
The fact was she wasn’t wrong about any of it.
He had been angry with Dionysus and he had been happy to allow his brother to make a fool of himself so that he actually had a mess to clean up.
He had been happy to give himself a moment to indulge himself in what he wanted most of all.
Dionysus had female company for the evening, and it wasn’t Tinley so why shouldn’t Alex have...
And had it gone that way, he would feel no guilt. But the consequences for allowing him to go off on his drunken night had been permanent and irreversible. He was only grateful the woman who had been with Dionysus had not been an unintended casualty. She had been traumatized, certainly. But not harmed.
“If you consider it my job as King to conceal people from the truth, then you’re correct,” he said, his voice stone. “I was lax in my duties. I thought he was your friend. I thought you knew him. You certainly weren’t my friend.”
The truth of it resonated between them. They’d known each other years, and they were not friends.
They never would be.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if you didn’t have any friends.”
“Kings don’t have them.”
“Your father did. So I suppose that’s just a lie you tell yourself to feel better about living here. By yourself. With no one. At least, no one who likes you.” She turned to leave and that same recklessness that was only ever present when Tinley was near fired through him. He reached out and grabbed her arm, stopped her from leaving. She turned around, her eyes wide, her lips parted softly. He could see her breath coming shorter, harder
. Faster.
“You might not like me,” he said, his voice like gravel. A stranger’s voice. “But you feel something else, something more than hate, and I think you find it disturbing.”
“What do you think I feel?”
He reached out and touched a lock of that unruly hair, and the fire inside of him nearly exploded. But outwardly, he kept himself still. She was frozen, like a startled doe caught in the headlights. The pulse of the base of her throat beat rapidly. He moved his hand, cupping her face, sliding his thumb along her cheekbone, then tracing the line of her lower lip.
She was so soft. Impossibly so.
The beach.
The ballroom.
The corridor.
It all burned between them now.
Those moments filled with anger and recrimination and resistance.
“You’re not so naïve that you don’t know what this means.”
His words broke the spell, and she jerked away from him.
“Nothing,” she said. “I find you disgusting.”
“So disgusting that your heart is beating fast, and your pupils have dilated so that your eyes are nearly black.”
“Fear,” she said, her voice breathless.
“You don’t fear me. You should. But you don’t. Perhaps that’s the problem, Tinley. You’re a woman who wants a challenge. I’m the biggest challenge around. Perhaps what you really want is to test your strength against mine.”
“There’s no way I could fight you. You would destroy me.”
“I don’t mean a fight. Perhaps you wish to test your strength against mine. In a bed.”
He could see the moment he had pushed her too far, and he realized he had been trying for just that. Because if she took one step toward him they were both lost. So he had no choice but to try and force her into taking a step away.
“Why would I want that?”
“I’ve heard that sex often holds more appeal when the object of desire is forbidden.” And then she did something he did not expect. She turned and she ran. She left his office door wide open as she did, not even taking the time to close it behind her.
He had done it. He had pushed her away. And he supposed he should feel some triumph in that.