Page 88 of Fake Fae-Ancée

He didn't say anything for several long moments. Just staring ahead.

"Didn't Bates tell you?" I asked when I could no longer stand the silence.

"Bates has his own code of discretion," Yuri said slowly.

The way his face softened hit me unprepared.

"Why didn’t you sign?" He shook his head, with that sad smile that caused those cursed dimples to reappear and made my heart skip another beat. "This was all you wanted. All the time."

"Guess I didn’t," I whispered.

He took my hand. His was so big around mine, dwarfing me in a ridiculous way… and still, I had always liked that. His size had always been reassuring. Like being protected by a mountain.

He traced my fingers with his fingertips, his skin a little rough against mine, a ginger touch, almost a little too hesitant. He brushed the ring that was still stuck on my finger.

"I am sorry, you know," he said.

"You already said that." I watched his thumb stroking my ring finger. Up and down.

"For making you feel like you couldn’t trust me."

He was so close right now. My chest was too small for all the air I held in with the hitched breath I just took.

"And I am sorry for all the years you hated me," he finished.

"I so wish I could have hated you…" I leaned in, against his arm, like he was a big old oak. Rested my head into the valley of his bicep. "It would have made things so much easier."

Kai

This time was notrough and tough and greedy, at least not only. More like I was riding a gigantic ocean wave that carried me away.

At some point, I looked down at Yuri, who was lying naked and sweaty beneath me, rough fingers denting my thighs, leaving marks on my skin as I rode him like the world was going to end, with my mind unraveling, and caught his gaze. Rapt happiness was there, his face wearing the same stunned expression I was probably wearing myself right now, mixed with ecstasy and a lot of shell-shocked surprise.

Later, as I lay nestled against him, the heat of his belly and chest at my back, his arm wrapped around me like a protective tree, looking out into the pink night sky, he said:

"I don’t want you to leave."

I shrunk back, craned my neck to meet his gaze. "Why would you say that?"

"Because I think you shouldn’t."

I sighed, trying to pull back, but he held me tight.

"Yuri..".

"Hear me out, please." He pulled me close with that relentless arm of his, dark eyes shimmering in the half-light, raw and open — and serious.

"I don't want you to say yes to anything right now. I don't want you to feel obliged or anything. I have signed the papers and you will sign them when the ball is over. And that doesn't change."

I arched a brow. "But?"

"But I don't want you to go." His voice was low. And I didn’t know what to say. Warmth was spreading through me. A warmth I didn’t really trust.

"Stay," Yuri said. "And maybe see where this could lead... just you and me. No rings, no prophecies, no nothing."

There was a long silence. Apart from our breathing and the crickets droning their endless song in the summer garden, all sound was gone.

"But you will be king," I eventually whispered. Yuri tensed.

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