Page 44 of Regal Queen

I leaned back in the booth, resting my arm on the booth, and she shifted so that she could look at me. I wiped my fingers on my napkin, throwing it on the plate and she just watched me curiously, asking.

“What, your life wasn’t filled with balls and tons of women hanging on to your every word, trying to catch your eye?”

“No.” I shook my head, my gaze penetrating hers. “It was. All that, and more.”

“But you hated it.”

“I hated it.” I repeated her. “Every minute.”

“Because all that didn’t mean shit when it came down to what your life was really like.”

I glanced away, hating that she was speaking out loud the words I’d never wanted to admit, even to myself. “Yeah.”

Her hand ran up my chest, sending a shooting thrill through me, across the knot of my tie, to the skin at my throat, stilling there. Her fingers wrapped around it, not softly, but tight. I stared into her eyes, gazing deep into her soul, not moving an inch.

“Tell me something else, Bourbon. Something you’ve never told anyone else.”

I opened my mouth to speak. Even though she was squeezing my neck, she wasn’t cutting off my air. Not really. But the threat was there.

Not the threat that she could actually kill me, she would never be able to do that unless I let her, but this was about control. She wanted something from me.

I’d done my best to show her these past few days how much she meant to me but she still needed more. And I would give it to her.

It took me a long moment to speak, to force the words through my lips, and when I did, my voice was hoarse and cracked. “Just a few more nights, Bourbon, and we’ll be free.”

Her gaze focused in on my face, her eyes darkening with curiosity. “What is that?”

When she spoke, her voice was soft like the caress of the wind on my cheek, like the trickle of silk over my heart. As if she knew she needed to be soft to break me open further.

And so, I gave her my truth. The only time I’d ever spoken it out loud. “The last words my mother ever spoke to me.”

She didn’t react. Not at first. Just stared into my eyes.

There was a lump in my throat so large, I couldn’t swallow it down. My eyes burned with unshed tears. I’d never cried over my mother’s disappearance. Not once. I could never do it. Maybe it was because something deeply intrinsic in my core didn’t actually believe that she was dead. That any day now, she would appear like an shadow, haunting me for never finding her.

We stared at each other for a long moment, and in that moment, there was no one else in the room but her, and me. Her fingers tightened even further on my throat and she leaned even closer to me, her lips a whisper of a breath from mine. She stared into my eyes as she spoke, giving me a deep, penetrating gaze filled with ferocity.

“We’re going to kill your father. We’re going to hunt him down and kill the son of a bitch.”

God, this woman.

I didn’t even know it until this very moment but her words were exactly what I needed to hear. Not, I’m so sorry, or, that’s terrible, some kind of meaningless, unhelpful, hopeless words like that. Because what did they really mean?

Nothing.

But this. This was a promise that wrapped around my heart, permanently sealing this woman to me.

I was a fucking goner.

I would never in my life want another woman. Because this one, this one was exactly what I needed. She was mine.

I growled, sealing my lips over hers and she tugged me closer, our pressing lips quickly turning into tongues tangling. I grabbed her waist, pulling her up into my lap so that she was straddling me, then slid my hand up her back, wrapping her hair around my hand, fisting it possessively.

“You are my fucking princess, you understand me? You’re my Rapunzel, and I’m going to lock you up in a tower that I make with my own hands, then throw away the key so you can never escape me.”

“No.” She shook her head, staring into my eyes, “Never. I will never be locked up again. Not after Dimitri. You might as well kill me.”

“I can never let you go. Not after this.”

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