And that was how he wanted it. Wanted her warm and willing as she had been all night and every night since then. So much so that his body still pulsed at the memory, the burn of hunger not subdued even by the ache of appeasement.
But surely something that burned so white hot inevitably risked burning itself out? How long would this last and when it did end what did they have to put in its place? He had told himself that this was the only way to keep her safe. To marry her for now and then later—when it no longer mattered—he would let her go.
When it no longer mattered? How could it no longer matter? He had come alive, had lived in a new degree of intensity in the past weeks. How could something that felt this way ever fade into nothingness?
But would he ever be justified in keeping her here with him like this? He might call her father a bully but wasn’t he trapping her into marriage just as much as Gregor had wanted to do? She had never wanted to be queen, just as he had never wanted to be king. Together they had built a way to take Mecjoria into a peaceful and prosperous future. But would that be enough to create their own futures?
If it wasn’t then he’d have to set her free. But not yet. He couldn’t let her go yet.
‘We make a good team. But I’m not a monster—I won’t force you to stay in this marriage for ever.’
The abrupt change of subject caught Ria unaware. One moment she had felt that they had moved to a new understanding, then this had come out of nowhere. Just as she had thought they had been celebrating a new beginning, it seemed that Alexei had already been thinking of the prospect of an end. She supposed she should have expected it. But the real horror was in the way he said it, as if he was offering her something worthwhile. Something that he believed she wanted.
‘We could set a limit on the time it has to last,’ Alexei stated flatly. ‘Two years—three.’
Not a life sentence, then. She should feel relieved. Three weeks ago that was what she would have felt. It would have been a relief to her then to know that she hadn’t signed her life away in this heartless marriage of convenience. But relief was not the emotion flooding through her now at the thought of a very limited future with this man. The terrible, tearing sense of loss threatened to rip her heart to pieces. She felt the blood drain down from her cheeks and she was sure that she must look as if she had seen a ghost. The ghost of her hopes and dreams. Dreams she had barely yet acknowledged to herself existed.
‘I would give you a generous divorce settlement, of course.’
‘Of course,’ Ria echoed cynically. ‘Once you have been king for a decent amount of time.’
‘For which I will have you to thank.’
Again there was the sting of knowing that he meant it as a compliment. Because really he hadn’t needed her in the end.
‘You’ve won your own place in the hearts of the country. Surely you could see that yesterday?’
‘Your help has been invaluable.’ He was addressing her like he was at a public meeting. As if she was one of the ministers of state he had been spending so much time with of late. ‘I knew you would make a perfect queen.’
‘But only for a strictly limited time.’ It was impossible to keep the bitterness from her voice. ‘So perhaps we’d better really discuss the precise terms of this arrangement before we go any further? I’m to—what...?’
Sitting up in bed pulling the covers up around her because she felt too vulnerable otherwise, she checked off the points on the fingers of one hand.
‘To be your fiancée, create the image of that fairy-tale romance, appear at your side in public, warm your bed in private. Marry you—provide you with an heir... No?’
His reaction had startled her. Shocked her. It was as if a sheet of ice had come down into the room, cutting them off from each other and freezing all the air in the room.
An heir. Of course she had known that was a touchy subject. But that had been when she had been concentrating on the future of Mecjoria. Now she had let herself think about his past, about the way he had fathered a child already, only to neglect the tiny girl who had died so tragically. He hadn’t even tried to deny it when she had raised the accusation.
Why should I deny the facts when the world and his wife know what happened? And no one would believe a word that’s different. The memory of the bitter words made her flinch inside, her stomach lurching nauseously.
An heir. Alexei felt as if someone had reached inside his heart and ripped away the dressing he had thought he had slapped on there to protect it, revealing a wound that hadn’t really healed but was still raw and vulnerable. A wound that he had been trying to ignore ever since that night that Ria had come to his room. The night that he had thoughtlessly made love to her without using a condom, breaking the number-one rule by which he’d lived his life since Belle had died.
And now this. Now with that one short word she had forced him to face what he had been pushing to the back of his mind, focussing his attention on the duties of being a king—the public duties—while ignoring the one private element that would always be there, needing to be considered for the future.
Ria had put her finger unerringly on it, dragged it out of the darkened corner to which he’d confined it, brought it kicking and screaming into the light—and it couldn’t have come at a worse time.
He’d slept badly. Dark dreams had plagued his night. And it was with Ria’s words that he had understood why. Yesterday had been a triumph. He knew there was no other word for it. But then there had been the small boy who had wanted his attention.
His heart kicked hard as he remembered the tug on his trousers, barely at calf level. He’d looked down into a pair of wide blue eyes, seen the curly fair hair, the gap-toothed grin. The impulse to pick the child up had been instant and spontaneous. The feel of that strong, compact little body in his arms had been nothing at all like the tiny, fragile speck of life that Belle had been but in a way that had been so much worse. It had hit home so hard with all the might-have-beens that he’d struggled with, forced him to look down into the dark chasm that he’d thought he’d put a lid on once and for all. The chasm he knew he was going to have to open up again someday or fail in his duty to Mecjoria.
Because how could he be a true king if he left the country without an heir for the future? That would mean that all this—that Ria’s sacrifice—would be for nothing. The country needed an heir. Poor child with him as its father. But with Ria as its mother...
But how could he ever hope to follow through his resolution to let Ria go if he had made her pregnant?
‘This will be a real marriage. In all possible ways. Of course.’ It was flat and unemotional, the dangerous truth hidden behind blanked-off eyes. ‘What else had you expected? That was what would have happened with Ivan. Wasn’t it?’