Page 9 of Forbidden Royal Vows

“I have no wish to control you. The world is yours, Caius. Go be as uncontrolled as you like, with my blessing. Only let me end this marriage first.”

But he was on a roll. And he didn’t believe in her blessings anyway. “This palace is yours. All of these people, yours. Yet you and I know that where it matters, Mila, you have been and always will be mine.”

Again, he saw the way her gaze flared with temper, though there was otherwise little sign of it on her face. Maybe her jaw was more firm, but that was all. “This isn’t a game, Caius.”

“But to me, everything is.” He leaned in then, so close but he did not reach for her. And the sharp pleasure of denying himself almost gave way to the bright flame of indulgence. Almost. “Have you forgotten when you said that to me? Because I have not, Mila. I have not forgotten one word.”

“I was not trying to insult you. I was trying to explain.”

And years had passed. He believed her. She had, truly, simply been explaining her position to him, but in a way, that made it all the more insulting. Had she been trying to insult him, he would have been able to dismiss the things she’d said. Standing there so earnestly before him after the time they’d shared.

But she had been trying to be kind. He remembered that part too well. That had made it worse.

That had made it unforgivable.

“You have had the opportunity to change,” she said now, and there was a different sort of tension in the way she held herself, then. “It is impossible to avoid your exploits, and believe me, I have tried. So instead, I watched them. I watched you. I waited to see if even the slightest, faintest hint that anything I’d said to you had landed. If you’d thought for even one moment about my position, or what I need—”

“There was a time when I thought of nothing else.” And it was not perhaps the greatest strategy to say something like that so boldly, with so little finesse.

Then again, maybe it was the best strategy, because he heard her breath hitch. He watched, transfixed, as she lifted one hand and held it to her neck as if attempting to conceal the way her pulse pounded.

But he could see the way her fingers shook.

It should have made him feel small, the way that echoed in him like a new heat. Like a blessing all its own.

Luckily Caius was not that kind of man.

There was nothing small about him.

“You can’t want money,” she said after a moment, insulting him anew. “Can you?”

“Perhaps you have forgotten that I have too many fortunes to name,” he said, and this time, he forgot to keep the danger from his voice. Because she was even more maddening up close than she had been from afar all these years. He had not expected that. “Perhaps you have forgotten everything.”

“I have forgotten nothing,” she shot back.

“All the same,” he said, turning toward her at last and feeling that same electricity flood him the way it had since the moment they’d clapped eyes on each other, all those years ago and now again, too, “I think a small reminder is in order. To remind us who we are, Your Majesty.”

And he did not wait for her raised brow, her queenly armor.

He did not wait for her response at all.

Caius simply hooked a palm around the nape of her neck, aware that she still fit him perfectly.

Then he pulled her to him and kissed her the way he’d wanted to for years.

CHAPTER THREE

MILA TASTED HIM again and died.

Or maybe it was that she came back to life.

It was that intense, that glorious, the way it always had been. The way she had known it would be from the start. The way he had showed her it could be between them.

And tonight his kiss sent her spiraling back through time.

Straight back into all the things she’d forgotten—or tried her very best to forget, with failures she only admitted to in the very dark of night. Then tried to deny come morning.

He took her mouth the way he always had, as if he knew her body and its needs better than she ever could. It was deep, familiar shock of pure desire, as expansive and overwhelming as all of that California sunshine mixed in with days of intense fog that they’d once walked through together.

---