Page 38 of The Wicked Prince

The instant his palm touched her leg, she nearly jumped out of her skin but stayed where she was. John lowered his gaze, unable to bury his smirk. He started gently massaging her leg, making sure not to press too hard or dig in too deep. He didn’t want to risk causing her more pain and her declaring he had no idea what he was doing and pull away.

He tried not to think too much about what he was doing and simply fall into the rhythm of his movements. It wasn’t like he was doing anything inappropriate. They were married even if it was in name only. But that didn’t change the fact that his palm was running over her skin, and if he spent the rest of his life doing this, he wouldn’t complain. Her cold skin warmed beneath his touch and the heat of the fireplace, and the tension he could feel in her muscles slowly ebbed, and she sank into the sofa a little more.

He slowly, carefully looked up as he continued massaging her leg to see Robin had her head leaned against her hand, propped up on the arm of the couch and she was watching him, her cheeks still flushed, but a sharp look in her eyes.

His throat was dry and his tongue felt like lead but he managed to say, “See? I’m good for something after all.”

“Your father had physicians do this every night for him?”

“At first,” John said, lowering his gaze again and focusing his attention on her ankle and the green slipper on her foot that perfectly matched the shade of her dress. Her handmaids’ doing no doubt given she couldn’t match an outfit to save her life. He’d once spotted her with black slippers under a tan and green dress. Feral woman, at least she had worn shoes. He rubbed his thumb over her ankle as he said, “Then my mother had the physicians teach her how to do it and then she took over.”

“Why?”

John gave a small shrug as he looked up again at Robin. Her fingers were tangling in her hair, starting to knock the pins loose and send a few strands dangling. He forgot to breathe for a moment before he said, “Because it was her way of showing him that she loved him.”

“Didn’t he know?”

“Theirs was a political match, like many royal marriages.” The ‘like ours’ went unspoken, but Robin immediately turned back toward the fire. She shifted and pulled her leg back slightly, not out of his lap completely, but putting distance between the rest of them. John’s palm was splayed out on the middle of her calf, fingers curling around the side unable to let go yet.

“Couldn’t she have just told him?”

If only it was so easy for some people.

“My mother was always the kind of person who wasn’t good at voicing her feelings; she let her love show in other ways. She liked to take care of the people she loved however she could.”

Everyone knew how Richard was practically their father reincarnated. John was nothing like him, but he was very much like his mother.

Lucky for him he didn’t have anyone he loved.

By the time John pulled his hands back, Robin had dozed off into her hand, no pain in her peaceful expression and a small smile on her face.

Well… he’d thought he didn’t.

No. He couldn’t. He was just confusing himself. He was obviously attracted to Robin; that had been evident since the first time he’d seen her. He was drawn to her and fascinated by her which had spurred on his schemes to catch her and marry her instead of executing her. Despite the rocky start, she genuinely had fulfilled her purpose of protecting him from being sent to the frontlines and had made his life easier as regent. She worked hard and while there were plenty of people still unhappy with the crown, there were plenty who believed Robin was working against him as princess to protect them. He couldn’t deny he enjoyed her company; they spent the vast majority of the day together, mostly working, sometimes her beating him into the ground with a smirk, but John would rather all of that than give up a second in her presence. They’d settled into an amiable friendship as a result of spending so much time together and working toward the same goals. He cared about her.

He couldn’t love her. Because even if she didn’t vehemently hate him anymore—and he had no idea if she was just good at putting it aside while it still sat in her heart and her resentment toward him for trapping her festered—she could never love him.

The expression on her face when she’d found his drawings of her… Even just that had gotten him a knife pointed at his heart. She would be repulsed even more by any kind of feeling that was deeper than their current truce.

So he couldn’t love her. Because he couldn’t bear what would happen if it slipped out. He couldn’t lose what little he did have with her. No matter how much he wanted more.

He was the scheming villain who’d caught her in his trap, and she was the righteous hero making the best of her fate. They were a noble tragedy, not a love story.

Robin shifted in her sleep, stretching her other leg out and onto his lap as she relaxed even further. Her hair had fallen out of the pins and was spilling over her shoulder.

John rested his hand on her leg again and closed his eyes, unable to pretend he didn’t feel his heart swelling so much it was about to break right out of his chest.

He loved her.

And he could never let her find out.

Chapter15

Robin was torn between her humiliation and her relief every time John caught her rubbing at her leg when they were working at night in his room. After the fifth time, she stopped putting up a fight and was just grateful no one was ever going to know about it. Robin didn’t like needing people. She’d relied on her men of course, but they’d needed each other. Their skills all worked together and they looked out for each other. It had ensured their survival, and she’d done everything humanly possible to prove herself just as capable.

This… This was something else.

Robin couldn’t figure out what John got out of it.

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