Page 32 of Forbidden Royal Vows

“You think.”

“It’s this,” she said, and waved a hand back and forth between them.

He thought of the way that same hand had wrapped around the hardest part of him earlier in the shower, las she’d looked up at him so boldly while taking him into her mouth.

“This...intensity. How does that fit into my life? Or your life, for that matter?”

She could hardly think around the man. Much less rule in the way that was required of her. Or she couldn’t imagine how she might go about it, anyway. It felt impossible.

“Do you know what I often wonder?” But she didn’t wait for him to answer that. “If I hadn’t left you, you almost certainly would have left me. If I had to guess, I would say that you would have found a way to manufacture some scandal or another so that I would have no choice but to leave.”

“Again.” His voice was a mere scratch. “It really is a dim view, isn’t it?”

He could see she didn’t like that by the way her chin inched up. “It’s who you are. It’s who I am. Those things can’t mesh.”

“You mean your pedigreed status and the fact I am a mongrel, I suppose.”

“I mean that you like to immerse yourself in intensity. You like projects with a beginning and an end, and when it’s done, you move on. And I...” She sighed, and shook her head a little as if the sigh was a cold wind and now she could not shake the chill. “Everything I do must be sealed in eternity. I must be a walking, talking study in permanence. How could it ever work?”

“It does work, Mila. Behold, it’s working right now.”

“We are magic,” she agreed, though her voice was rougher than he’d heard it in years. Since she had looked at him with the same gray eyes but a stranger’s face and had said, There has been some news. My father, the King, is dead. Here, now, she leaned a little bit closer over that island between them. “But it can only be a temporary magic, Caius. Like before. I thought you understood.”

But she laughed—looking startled—when he came around the island, swept her into his arms, and then demonstrated how powerful his temporary magic was, right there on the old wood table.

More than once, for good measure.

Still, Caius found he continued to brood over that a day or two later.

She’d had to take an extra call that day, in the alcove off the main living room that she’d told him at least five of her predecessors had sat in to do the work of the kingdom. He stayed nearer the fire, but he could hear the cool, collected way she spoke to her ministers. Not the words themselves, but her cadence. Her tone.

It didn’t matter what she was saying. It was all regal.

Every single thing that made Mila who she was, he understood, was another nail in the coffin that was the two of them. And this month that was winnowing its way out.

He pulled out his mobile and didn’t bother scrolling through his messages. He knew what he would see—that his voicemail was full and there were so many texts that he might as well toss the bloody thing off the side of the mountain, then start over.

The way he did several times a year, usually without explanation. Everyone he wanted to talk to always found him again.

But he didn’t get rid of his mobile just yet, though the mountainside beckoned. Instead, he looked up a number he rarely called, then pressed the call button before he could think better of it.

Well. Not before he thought better. Just before think better of it could stop him.

It rang and rang. And when it was finally answered, it was in a great flurry that shouted drama is occurring and you might be the cause and he could feel himself tensing already. Before she even said a word.

Though it was always the same word. Lavinia and he had long ago decided that she could not recall their names. Not in a pinch.

“Darling. I was beginning to think the worst.”

“Hello, Countess,” Caius drawled. Because his mother did not take kindly to the term mother. Or any other version of that word. Or anything that suggested an age differential of any kind.

The last time he’d tried he had been six. He had gone racing into her room, called her Mama, and had gotten slapped soundly across the face.

After all, she’d been entertaining. It had been his fault.

She had made certain he knew that he’d done it to himself.

Now, his mother was prattling on, the way she did. It was always so tempting to think of her as insubstantial when she wittered on about dresses and wherever she was living now and the cost of something after which he hadn’t inquired.

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