Page 110 of My Queendom for a Horse

“That day, when I stumbled?” He releases me entirely and drops to a seat on the edge of my bed. He closes his eyes. “I thought they were there. I was certain of it. The ground became terribly hot beneath my hooves, and I turned to look at the stands, and I saw Mikhail. That’s why I stumbled. The second time, I saw Boris. You weren’t physically touching me, thanks to the saddle, your boots, and your gloves. I couldn’t have done a thing to keep you safe—I was powerless and vulnerable.”

“Wait, Mikhail and Boris? Is that—”

“Boris Yurovsky and Mikhail Kurakin,” he says. “I’d been waiting for them to find me since the day I woke up, but the day had finally come. When they didn’t come after me initially, I panicked a bit. What if they waited until it was just me and you? What if I couldn’t keep you safe? I had no idea how many of them there were.”

“Did they find you?” I can’t believe I sent him away to deal with that alone.

“When the curse was broken that very day, I saw it as a sign. I needed to get away from you and deal with my past. I needed to be clear of all that before I could risk being with you.” He shakes his head. “You’d been through enough.”

“And?”

He shrugs. “I must’ve been mistaken. If there’s one thing they’d surely take note of, it was me moving back into my ancestral home. If it really was them, if they’re still alive, they’d have come for me. They never did.”

“It’s been months, now.” A shiver shoots up my spine, but not a good one. An ominous one.

“Even once I was back in Russia, I couldn’t find the Romanovs or the Khilkovs, either. I searched every lead I could find.” He shrugs. “I’m sorry I stayed away so long—I needed to make sure you’d be safe with me. And I thought I’d give you time to realize that you cared for me.”

“I knew that all along.”

“I’ve been terrified that my desire to keep you safe might have made enough space for that stupid British moron to squeeze in.”

“I didn’t have enough room in my heart for anyone but you.” I clap my hand over my mouth.

But it’s too late. Aleks has never smiled quite this big. Not once. “Say it again.”

“You.”

“Ha.” He stands up and begins to advance on me again. “Did I mention that I love seeing you wearing nothing but my shirt?”

The inside of my stomach drops out. My body begins to tremble, and I back up, slowly. “What did you want me to say, exactly?” I bat my eyes at him, wondering if it’s actually cute or whether I look idiotic.

“You said you felt a certain way about me.” His sideways grin is cockier than I’ve ever seen it.

“Why don’t you tell me how you feel, and then we’ll see what I want to say in return?”

“Kristiana Liepa,” he says, “from the moment you climbed up on me and rode me—”

“That sounds really dirty.”

“Oh, I should hope so.”

I roll my eyes. “Start over.”

He laughs. “Fine. From the moment I set my horsey eye on you that day at Down Royal until today, I have felt almost exactly the same. There’s no one else in the world I’d rather be with, and that’s why I was already in England when I got your message—I had lost patience with waiting on you, and I was going to be here for your race.”

He was already here?

I was out drinking, wallowing, thinking about racing on the track where my mom died alone, and wishing he was here with me, and he was already here?

“We’re both idiots,” I say.

“But we both figured it out, in the end.” His eyes darken a bit, and his gaze intensifies. “When you’re willing to do absolutely anything for someone, when you’re willing to kill anyone—”

“Kill anyone?” I can’t help giggling. “You’re really bad at this. You shouldn’t talk about killing people when you’re supposed to be telling me you love me.”

“Who says?” He frowns. “I think it would be sexy, knowing you’d do anything for me.”

“I wouldn’t kill someone for you,” I say.

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