Page 56 of His Highness's Hidden Heir

“And my wife? My queen?” His expression flexed with some unnamed emotion. “Say you love me again.”

Her mouth clamped reflexively into a hard line.

“Let me respond properly this time.” He hitched forward in his seat and extended his hand.

“I don’t want you to say something you don’t mean.” She bit her lips, trying to steady them. “I meant it when I said it’s fine. I’ll stay. You’ll have more responsibilities and won’t have as much flexibility for Rolf. It wouldn’t be a good look for me to choose now to pursue my own interests. If you can stand my reputation, I’ll take on the role of queen.”

“You won’t say it?” he asked grittily. “I killed those feelings in you? You are not that fickle.” He rose and pointed at her, staring down his nose at her. “Fine. Don’t say it. I told you not to say it because I didn’t feel I deserved to hear it. I still don’t.” He turned his back on her.

“Oh, do you have some horrible nude photos that the internet keeps regurgitating?” she asked scathingly.

“That.” He gave his beard a scrub as he turned to face her, pointing again. “That is one of the reasons I don’t deserve your love. I can’t make all that poison go away no matter how hard I try. I make it worse. Being my wife makes all of that worse for you.” He exhaled, sounding exhausted, and dropped his hands to his sides. “When I talked to my father on Christmas Day, he told me he held on to his anger for so long because he hadn’t had any choice in what had happened. That he felt my mother had made all his choices for him. When he said that, I realized that I hadn’t given you a choice. At first, I was able to believe I was justified, but you haven’t been happy, Lexi.”

“Because I could tellyouweren’t happy. I thought it was because of all the bad press.”

“I’m going to say this one last time.” He closed his eyes and tilted his head to the ceiling. “Then we will never talk about it again.Screw the press.They can all go to hell. I know who you are, Lexi. And I love you. Exactly as you are.”

Love was an arrow. It went into her chest with the sweetest burn, sitting there vibrating and stinging, putting tears into her eyes.

She hugged herself, voice a thin rattle. “Do you really?”

“Yes, damn you.” His expression turned so tender, it broke her all over again. “I think it started in Paris, when you asked who was in charge. You knew damned well it was me. And you will never know how hard it was for me to say no to you in Monte Carlo.”

“It was hard for me to ask,” she muttered with a pang of remembered hurt.

“I know. And I will always be angry with myself for giving up that time I could have had with you, but I didn’t know then how much you meant to me. I didn’t really understand it until Rolf’s birth. Everything about that day scared me, Lexi, especially when I realized I could lose you. I didn’t want to face what that meant, though. I didn’t accept how much I loved you until you accused me of being jealous of a gay man whom you think of as a brother and I was.”

“You said you weren’t!”

“I lied. I won’t do it again,” he promised, running his hand down his face and tugging at his beard. “But he made you smile in a way I hadn’t seen in weeks. I couldn’t stand that he could give you that and I didn’t.”

“It was nostalgia, Magnus. I didn’t have a care in the world back then. We were children. You give me other things that are more important than candy bars stolen from craft services.”

“Orgasms?” he scoffed.

“Our son. An identity that has substance. The power to affect lives.”

“The weight of responsibility,” he countered. “Duty. Expectations that are difficult to live up to.”

“All true, but were you serious?” She rose and moved toward him, feeling as though she inched onto a plank over an abyss. “Do you love me? Have you given me your heart?”

“Yes,” he said promptly. “It’s all yours, Lexi. If you’re not with me, then I don’t have one.” He cupped her face, looking into her eyes with such swirls of emotion in his that she felt lifted off the floor and plunged into a whirlpool at the same time. “Will you say it again?”

“I love you, Magnus. I loveyou. The man and the father and the king.”

“You’ll be my queen.”

“I would be honored.”

For a few seconds, his mask was completely gone and all she saw was love. So much love it should have frightened her. But the swell of her love for him was so great, it met and matched his, melding into something greater than both of them combined.

When he kissed her, it tasted as reverent and holy as renewing their vows. It was tender and loving and sweet. Eternal.

Then, because they were Magnus and Lexi, she tipped back her head, wrapped her arms around his neck and encouraged him to plunder.

He groaned and angled his head, then slid his hands down to her ass, picking her up so she wrapped her legs around his waist.

“How much time do we have?” he asked against her cheek.

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