Page 29 of Forbidden Royal Vows

His expression was wry. “It is not a big thing either, not when one is encumbered with a portfolio like mine.”

“Don’t worry,” she said, smiling at him. “I won’t tell anyone that secretly, deep down, the famously jaded Caius Candriano cares deeply about the things he makes.”

And she was surprised, then, when he shifted, moving to sit up. And she had a moment of something like dizziness that they were sitting there, disheveled and undressed, and she didn’t have to worry about how it would look should someone stumble in.

About what she would do or how she would explain this away.

Something seemed to clutch at her, but she didn’t know what it was. She pushed it aside, because Caius had his elbows on his knees and was shoving his hair back from his brow with both hands.

“This is the part I try to forget,” he said in a low voice. “I don’t want you to understand me, Mila. Not when that understanding doesn’t go anywhere. Not when it’s like throwing stones at the moon.”

She sighed, and that clutching thing inside her intensified. “Do we have to do this now?”

But he didn’t answer her. He raked a hand through his hair instead, and the laugh he let out twisted in her, too sharp. Too hard.

“I made the films for you.” When she didn’t respond to that, or not with words, anyway, he turned so he could look at her. “You must know that, surely. I made them all for you. Love stories, writ large. Like love letters I did not dare send to your palace.”

He gazed at her. And she shook her head, slowly.

Then again. “I didn’t know,” she told him. When he looked incredulous, she lifted her hands. “I do not watch as many television shows or films as other people do. I hate to stumble over some or other representation of myself, or royalty in general. I prefer books.”

And for a moment, she thought he might explode. She’d seen his temper before—always a bright flare followed by instant regret. As if he bubbled over sometimes, could not contain it, and then wished that he had.

But then, she thought the next moment, that was a different version of him.

This version looked at her with a sad curve of that sensual mouth of his and a kind of bleakness in his gaze. “That sounds about right. I am nothing if not predictable. Forever tilting at windmills when you have no use for wind, or mills, or down-market knights of any kind.”

She moved closer to him so she could take his face in her hands. She pressed her lips to that space between his brows. To one eyelid, then the next. She pressed kisses everywhere her lips could touch, from temple to chin to that corner of his mouth where that mocking little curve lived. She kissed him over and over, until she felt the tension in his big, rangy body ease.

And when she pulled back, there was something sweet there between them. Something new.

“What I can give you,” she told him quietly, solemnly, “is September. Will you take it?”

And she knew he would. They were twined together again, tangled up tight. She knew he wasn’t going to storm back out of those tunnels. Not today.

Because they were nothing if not trapped here together.

Maybe she wanted him to admit to it.

“I will take it,” he said, as if they were making vows again. “But Mila, I warn you, that will not be the only thing I take.”

And she chose, then, to misunderstand him. She made her smile go sultry. And then she licked at his mouth, kissing him deep.

Chasing that dragon once again.

“Challenge accepted,” she whispered, and then she wrapped herself around him once more, and set them both into flight.

CHAPTER SEVEN

SEPTEMBER WAS LIKE a dream—the kind of dream that Caius had woken up from, wild with desire, unsettled, and without her, more times than he could count over these past five years.

This high in the mountains, autumn was already making its appearance. The mornings were cold, though they warmed into achingly blue days and crisp nights that came earlier all the time. The trees were turning bright, bold colors, as if gripping on tight to the long summer days already past. Caius could relate.

It was a dream, these September days, but Caius could not fool himself the way he had once before. Because this time, he knew how this dream was going to end. There was no point in imagining otherwise, the way he had once before.

What he couldn’t understand was how, knowing what was to come, he still couldn’t bring himself to change a thing.

“I thought you were going to enact some kind of dastardly revenge plan,” Mila said one evening as they moved around the kitchen together. They had taken to playing music as they assembled their meals, the kitchen brightly lit against the dark that waited there outside the windows, music dancing in the air like some kind of spell to keep the world away.

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