Page 36 of Forbidden Royal Vows

Mila had not expected the romance of familiarity. Handing him the utensil he needed before he asked for it. The way he moved around her, with the brush of his hand against her hip to let her know where he was, or the touch of his arm to hers because they were close.

The truth she did not know how to process was that she didn’t know how she was going to do without this.

This forbidden intimacy she hadn’t known she hungered for so deeply.

And this time she couldn’t tell herself that the memories she had of him were overblown, that he was just a madness induced by those months of living a life she could never have.

Now he gazed at her as they sat before the fire. They had eaten, speaking in their new, slightly careful manner about things like history, change, and the march of progress, even in monarchies like hers. When she had suggested something sweet to finish off the meal, they had decided the best dessert around was each other.

He had risen, eventually, to bring the wine over and now they were sprawled out on the plush, cozy rug that was tossed out before the fire. She rather felt that they were in some kind of a cave tonight. As if they could as easily be ancient people doing ancient things, with only the light of the fire as witness.

More lives she could only daydream about, she knew.

“Are you throwing me out already?” he asked, mildly enough, but she didn’t much like that, either. It was the way he sounded now, no longer all that marvelously textured gold. There was something like flint in it.

His wizard’s eyes still gleamed, he was right here, but she couldn’t reach him.

Mila hated it.

And she was making herself sick with all her decorum. With how much it cost to maintain her composure when they talked, if not when he was inside her.

It made her ache.

But, “I’m not throwing you out at all,” she told him, and took more pride than necessary in how calm she sounded despite that ache, that sickness. How serene, with a glass of courage in her hand. “Yet in two days’ time, like it or not, I will have to return to the palace. In all of my state. There will be no nudity near the fireplace, because what if the servants saw me? There will certainly be no unmarried cavorting of any kind.” Ever again, she thought, and she meant to laugh. But the sound that came out didn’t quite qualify as laughter, and that ache in her hardened into something far more precarious. “It doesn’t seem like there’s a whole lot to recommend it, if I’m honest.”

“But you must do your duty.”

Mila didn’t much care for the way he said that, with that unmistakable edge to it.

Or maybe she didn’t like it because it was true. “I must,” she agreed.

And when he reached over and tugged her close, so she could sprawl across his body and he could set his mouth at her collarbone, she was grateful.

Because this fire, she understood.

Maybe it was better to stop talking altogether. That the way they devoured each other, rested as briefly as possible, and then went back for more was the only conversation that was necessary.

The next day they stayed too long in bed together in the morning. He rolled her beneath him, stretched out over her, and broke her into very small, very jagged pieces by taking it slow.

So slow there was nothing to do but stay there. In that gaze of his, all that lost magic she couldn’t bear to lose again. In his arms, where she fit so beautifully. In the sheer, glowing wonder of this thing she couldn’t have.

Caius set a pace that made her want to cry, it was so devastating. It was so shattering, so demanding, so intensely revealing.

He wrung every bit of emotion from her, brought her close to relief and then kept going, and Mila thought it was possible she would never recover.

That she would never feel clothed again, having let him strip her so naked.

She couldn’t tell if she wanted to rejoice in that, or collapse somewhere and sob.

In the shower, before he joined her, she could pretend it wasn’t tears on her face. She could prop herself against the wall and ask herself if it was possible for her to die from all this vulnerability.

Or if its curse was she would only feel as if she might.

As if she had.

She was the one who suggested a long walk to get the blood pumping more productively.

“You and I have very different definitions of the word productive,” Caius told her darkly as they set out.

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