by Maisey Yates
“Unbelievable,” said Felipe, shaking his head. “You would think that two princes and a billionaire would be able to find wives without having to resort to force.”
“I’m not his wife,” Charlotte repeated.
“So you said,” Felipe responded.
“Though, you should be the first to hear,” Rafe said, “that Charlotte and I are having twins.”
Adam’s eyebrows shot up, and Felipe grinned. “Congratulations.”
“Congratulations is the right sentiment, yes?” Adam asked.
“Yes,” he responded, sounding annoyed now.
It was a funny thing to see Rafe with friends. She had never imagined him having any. Because at her father’s he was in a very isolated place, as was she. And in the time since she had continued to be isolated, so even though tabloid stories had painted a different picture, she had imagined him that way in some regards. Yes, she had imagined him with lovers, but not with relationships.
“Well, we do expect to be invited to the wedding,” Felipe said. “Since, as you continue to point out, she is not your wife. Which means she will be eventually.”
“He hasn’t asked me,” Charlotte said.
That earned him heated glares from the women.
“It was nice to meet you, Charlotte.” Princess Briar extended her hand. “I have to go and make the rounds now. As is expected of me. But we will see each other again, I think.”
The princess gave a slight curtsy, then wandered back into the throng.
Felipe chuckled. “I had better make the rounds too. I must ensure that my wife is adequately fêted. As is fitting of her status.” He walked off then, following Princess Briar’s path.
Leaving Charlotte and Rafe with the darker, quieter presence of his friends Adam and Belle.
“I think I need something to eat,” Belle said, looking apologetic. “And drink. It’s hot in here.”
Charlotte felt like she was looking into her future just then.
“Of course,” Adam said, his expression one of concern. He was so clearly besotted with his bride, it warmed Charlotte. And only made her slightly jealous.
He left then, and that left Charlotte alone with Rafe.
“Your friends seem nice,” she said. “Surprisingly so. All things considered.”
“Which things considered?”
“Your personality?”
He laughed. “You don’t seem to mind it.”
“I don’t.” She looped her arm through his, and they walked through the gallery and into the first room that was set up for dancing. The music was playing, swelling around them, and her heart began to beat faster. “Dance with me?”
“We have practiced for it, have we not?” He paused next to the wall, and leaned his cane up against it before tightening his hold on her.
“Yes, we have.”
And then he was the one leading her out onto the dance floor, blazing a path through the crowd, a man who clearly expected for everyone else to part the way for him, so that he would have no concerns about where he should stand. “I suppose we are about to make that scene we were just discussing.”
“Possibly.” She put her hand on his face. “That’s why they’ll stare.”
“Or they will probably stare if I step on people.”
“Well, likely not. You’re a powerful billionaire, after all. They would probably just decide that they should step on people too. You know, in case it’s a trend.”
Then they were moving, and in perfect time with the music. Charlotte kept her eyes open this time, making sure that they didn’t actually step on anyone. People were watching them. Probably because Rafe Costa never brought women out in public. And possibly because he was dancing. But she didn’t care why. She only cared that she was finally out with the man that she loved. Being held in his arms for all the world to see. That there was nothing to hide, nothing to be ashamed of. That this was a moment denied her for so many years, finally happening now.
Maybe she didn’t have a grand plan. Maybe she didn’t have drive like Prince Felipe’s wife. But she had this. And it was new, and special, different. She had that great, ill-fated love. The one that had broken her heart. The one that had broken the man she had cared for. They had kept it hidden, and had touched only ever in secret.
But not now. Not this time. It made it all feel bright. New and possible.
He spun her, then brought her back into his body, his hold firm, his steps unerring. He spun her until she was dizzy, breathless, until they might as well be the only people in the room, as they had been back in his castle.
Then, with every eye on them, they walked through the ballroom hand in hand, into the art gallery.
He stood behind her, his hands placed possessively on her stomach. He bent down, whispered in her ear. “Tell me about the paintings.”
“This one here, directly in front of us, is an evening scene. There are rolling hills set behind a large, expansive field. Nestled into the hills are houses. There are lights on in the windows. It’s probably dinnertime. Dark outside but not late enough to sleep. Families all gathered around the table. I bet it’s winter. And early. Cold the way that those evenings get, where the chill bites into your skin. And the warmth in the house makes your cheeks tingle when you go inside. All of these people that live in the houses, I bet they have families they’re sitting with. Talking to. Telling them about their days.”
“You see all that?” he asked, his voice gruff.
“I don’t know. Not really, I guess. It made me feel it, though.”
“Even if I had my sight I don’t think I would see that,” he said. “I would just see lights on in houses. Not families. Not happy homes. That you still have the ability to imagine such things, that you do it so easily, is nothing short of a miracle.”
“I don’t feel very special,” she said. “Or very miraculous. I’m only Charlotte. I haven’t...put together an amazing gallery like the princess here. I haven’t done anything at all. I was set free, and the first thing I did was come to find you.”
She looked up at him, and saw that his face had gone pale.
“Rafe,” she said, “what is it?”
“Nothing,” he responded. “Though I do believe you’re the first person other than your father—who wanted me dead—to ever seek me out. And so, I would not call it nothing.”
They continued walking down the hall, and she continued to describe the scenes in the paintings for him. She did so until her throat ached, until her feet were tired. And until she was about ready to fall asleep standing up.
“We had a long day of travel,” Rafe said, “and I know that Felipe has set aside a room for us. Perhaps, it is time we went back to the palace?”
“My second palace in only a couple of weeks. It all feels quite extravagant.”
“I should like you to have extravagance. Though, every time I promise you extravagance you remind me that your father gave it to you, as well, and that it was little more than a comfortable prison. And so, I’m at a loss as to how to present you with such things.”
“Being with you is not a prison,” she said, feeling guilty, because he was right. He had offered her things, and she continually played them down. Because they weren’t what she wanted, not really. She wanted him. He was very willing to give things, but he held parts of himself back.
So controlled was his existence. So controlled was he. She wanted more, but she had a feeling that were she to ask for more he would claim he had already given everything.
She allowed him to guide her back to the front of the museum, and she waited as he spoke to a man out front about getting them a car. They rode in silence back to the palace.
Once they arrived, they were escorted to a side entrance that led them the most direct route to a room—or rather a series of rooms—that was tucked back behind all of the others. It felt like a private little retreat. Something intimate enclosed inside the mammoth space.
Once the doors closed behind them, Rafe turned his focus to her, his da
rk eyes glittering. And she saw it there. The spark of something completely uncontrolled. Wild. Animal even. She felt goose bumps rise up on her skin, and her entire body shivered beneath his unseeing gaze.
“I have but one request, darling Charlotte,” he said, his voice hard. “Let down your hair.”
And this time, Charlotte wanted nothing more than to comply. She wanted to give him this. Give it to him with all of herself, with no coercion at all. Because all this time she had saved that hair for Rafe. And she had held it back over the past weeks because she had been holding back her heart. But if she wanted all of him, then she could hold nothing of herself in reserve.
She could no longer protect herself.
She was—in so many ways—jaded. Her own father had not loved her. Had treated her like a thing. A prize pawn in a game. She had been emotionally abused. Had lost the only man she had ever loved—imagined herself abandoned by him. And then she had spent five years living in a strange kind of isolation.
But she also felt...so green, so inexperienced. As if life held a great many wonders that she had not yet seen. That she was desperate to see.
She didn’t know how she could hold both of those feelings inside of her. Both the bone-deep sense of world weariness and a fascination with the same world.
But she did. It was all a part of her, whether it made sense or not.
She reached up and worked one of her hairpins free, allowing the pin to drop to the floor as one silken curl unwound itself and fell, thick and heavy down her back.
A muscle in his jaw ticked, his expression going hard as stone.
Then she removed another pin, and another, letting them all drop to the floor, the small sound swelling in the otherwise silent room.
Her hair fell in long, heavy coils, the blond waves falling down well past her waist. Hair that had felt like a burden, that had felt like part of her imprisonment, something that belonged to her father and never to her, until Rafe.
Until he had changed it. Changed her. Changed her entire perception on the world.
“Only for you, my prince,” she said, once the task was finished.
She didn’t wait for him to come to her. Instead, she moved across the space and wrapped her arms around his neck, pressed a kiss to his lips. He lifted his hands, threading them through her hair, winding around his fist, holding tight and tugging as he tilted her head back and deepened his exploration of her mouth, his tongue sliding against hers, his teeth scraping the edge of her lower lip.
She moaned, reveling in this, in this prelude to something that she knew was going to destroy her. Change her irrevocably. And even knowing that, she couldn’t regret it. Didn’t want to stop it.
She wanted all of this, all of him. Every single thing that he would offer, she would take.
And perhaps, that was her gift. Perhaps that was her. The thing that made her special. This ability to love, this ability to hope in spite of all that she had been through. It had seemed like nothing. Like something commonplace. And yet, having met his friends, having seen Rafe himself, she knew that it was not. Love and hope could be burned out of a person by the dark, cruel things in the world.
And that she had been subjected to some of the worst of it, and yet had continued to hold it in her heart. While she was in exile. Even knowing that it was doomed, she had fallen in love with Rafe. Had continued to love him deep inside of herself in spite of what she had thought to be a betrayal.
She knew that she could be a mother to her children. Knew that she would love them unconditionally, with unfettered grace in spite of the transgressions that had been committed against her by her own father.
In spite of the fact that she had never known a mother, she knew that she could be one.
She had not considered those gifts. She had not considered it having a sense of direction for her life. And yet it was. It was a miraculous thing, a wonderful thing, and it’d been inside of her all along. Opening herself up now, allowing him all of her, allowing him this moment, this moment of reckless love that she wanted to pour out on him regardless of what he might give in return, made her feel more whole, more complete than she could remember ever feeling.
It was a risk. And she knew it. But it was necessary. Without this. This freely given gift. This wild and reckless love, she would always be in a cage. A cage of her own making. She refused to give her father that. Refused to give that to her stepmother. She refused to let them beat her.
She refused to be hidden.
She had stood in the light earlier with Rafe on the dance floor, so she would stand in it now. With him.
“I want you to tell me about this beautiful dress while I take it off your exquisite body,” he murmured against her lips.
“Of course,” she complied. “It’s a dark, rich purple, with long sleeves that fall off the shoulder. There is a zipper in the back.”
He reached around behind her, taking hold of the zipper and lowering it slowly.
“The skirt flows away from my body. Doesn’t give very much away. It’s quite discreet.”
“I like that. That I am the keeper of your secrets.”
She looked up at him, pressed her thumb to the line on one side of his mouth and smoothed it. “You are. And I hope that I am yours.”
He said nothing to that. Instead, he released his hold on her hair and pushed the rich velvet dress from her body and consigned it to the floor.
“What about your underwear?” he asked.
“That...is less discreet. I chose them thinking about describing them to you. They’re black. And thin.”
As if to test her claims he lifted his hand, brushing his thumb over her nipple, achingly sensitive through the sheer lace bra.
Then he unhooked it, and moved his hands down over her curves, to her hips, pulling her panties down and discarding them too.
Then he turned her around abruptly so that she was facing away from him and pressing his hand between her shoulder blades, stroking all the way down, over her back, over the silken curtain of her hair.
“So beautiful,” he said. “So soft. It is like silk in my hands. And if I remember right, it is the color of raw spun gold. I dreamed of this. Of touching you like this. You and all your soft, incredible beauty. Your hair, which is like no other woman’s ever.”
“I kept it for you,” she said, feeling like now was the time to tell him that. Now that she was no longer holding back. “Only for you.”
“Because you knew I liked it?”
“Yes,” she said. “Because something inside of me refused to give us up. In spite of what I had been told. In spite of...everything. There was a large part of my heart that could never let go of you.”
And it never will.
But she didn’t speak that last part out loud.
He gathered her hair up into his hand, twisted it around his fist again. Then he drew her up against his body, and she could feel the hard, insistent arousal pressed against her rear.
She gasped, wiggling against him, feeling as though she would die if she didn’t have him. All of him. His hands, his skin. His full possession.
She was naked, and he was still fully clothed. It felt far too real. A too-honest appraisal of the entire situation. That she was ready to expose herself. Utterly and completely, and he was still holding back.
But she had no time to protest. He leaned in, his voice rough, fractured. “Tell me about the layout of the room.”
She could hardly think, let alone offer him a description of the space. But, she did her best to gather her thoughts. To do as he asked. “The bed is directly in front of us,” she said. “Over to your right is a door, I assume that leads into the bathroom.”
“Is there a vanity?”
“Yes,” she responded. “To the left, in the center of the far wall. There is.”
Keeping his hold on her, he began to move in the direction she’d said the vanity was in. “Take us to it,” he asked her roughly. She complied. Moving to stand in front of it.
<
br /> “Brace your hands on the top,” he commanded.
She complied, pressing her palms flat against the shining mahogany surface, her heart thundering as she did. She heard him working his belt, then undoing the zipper on his pants.
He coiled her hair more tightly around his fist, pulled tight, so that her head was forced backward. She looked at their reflection. Rafe, looming large and dark behind her, looking like an avenging angel. The sight of her pale, bare body in the mirror, with his hands gripping her hips tight enough to leave marks behind on her skin made her entire body shiver with erotic anticipation.
This was something that probably would have frightened her five years ago. Something that would have reminded her of being tethered. Being held back. But, with all of her recent revelations, it didn’t bother her at all. It excited her. Because she knew her own power here. With him. She knew exactly what she wanted. And she knew that even though he was the one with all the physical strength, that he was the one holding her tight, pinning her in this submissive position, that she possessed her own kind of strength.
That she had the power to bring this man to his knees.
Only she didn’t want that.
He had been brought to his knees already. Had been wounded. Betrayed. Left for dead by both of the men who had played the part of father figure in his life.
She would not ask that of him.
She would never require it.
He positioned himself at the entrance of her body, rocking his hips forward, pressing her more firmly against the edge of the vanity.
“I want you to watch us,” he said. “There is a mirror, yes?”
“Yes,” she said, her voice trembling.
“Watch us,” he commanded. “Tell me what you see.”
He thrust completely inside of her, and she gasped, looking up as he had asked her to do. “I...”
He thrust harder, increasing the pace, and though she wanted to obey him, she didn’t know where to begin. Didn’t know what to say. The woman looking back at her was clearly in the throes of ecstasy. Her cheeks a heightened color, her eyes glistening with need.
Her breasts moved each time he thrust into her body, her nipples tight. And then there was him. Big, muscular and perfect. His dark eyes were full of black fire, his jaw tight, his teeth clenched, his lips curled into a near snarl.
