“My father is the pastor. I’ll get in trouble if I don’t go.”
“And would you get in trouble if he found out you were here?”
He was even more beautiful up close. His chest was covered then, thank God, or I probably would have expired on the spot. It was a weakness, I knew, the way that I looked at him. The way that I hungrily took in every inch of bronze skin that was on display. Just a wedge, where the fabric of his white shirt was separated.
I knew that I was wicked.
Like a sudden answer to my restlessness had locked into place and printed the definition in my brain.
Wicked.
It was evidenced in the way I feasted on every detail of his handsome, sculpted face. But I couldn’t help it, and for the first time, I didn’t want to.
He looked familiar, but I couldn’t place him. That square, sharp jaw and compelling mouth, those dark, intense eyes.
“Possibly,” I said. “I’m supposed to be careful about talking to... Well, most people who come here during the summer are very important. And also...of a certain sort of character.”
“Whoremongers and the like?” he asked, a glint of humor in his eyes.
I felt my cheeks heat. “I suppose so.”
“Sadly, I’m both,” he said. “You should probably run away.”
“Okay,” I said and instantly turned to flee, doing exactly as I was told, because I didn’t know another way to be.
“Do you always do what people tell you to?” he asked me, stopping me in my tracks.
“I... Yes.”
“You should stop that. Figure out what you want.”
“I’ll probably just get a job here. Get married.” Just mentioning that word in front of him made my insides feel jittery.
He arched a brow. “But is it what you want?”
He was looking at me so intently, and I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why a man such as him would look at a girl like me the way that he was.
Of course, I didn’t exactly know what the look was. I had never spoken to a man I didn’t know from church. Not outside of exchanged pleasantries on a street. We didn’t even know each other.
I didn’t know his name, and he didn’t know mine.
He was an admitted whoremonger, and someone very important. And there I was, talking to him anyway. Feeling pinned to the spot by all that intensity.
“I’ve never thought about it,” I finally admitted.
“Do,” he said. “And get back to me.”
I didn’t see him for the next few days, but I was consumed by schoolwork anyway. It was summer, but as I was homeschooled, my parents didn’t much acknowledge breaks. It was fine, because I was on the verge of graduating at sixteen, though to what end, I didn’t know. I had considered going away for a while on a mission, which was something that my parents heartily approved of.
I went back to check on Saturday again to see if I could find the mystery man.
I didn’t.
But I did again, that next Sunday.
“Have you thought about what you want?” he asked.
I just stared at him blankly, because no, I hadn’t. I had thought about him. And that was it.
That began a strange sort of friendship. We would talk by the seashore when he was alone. About everything and nothing. Not about ourselves, but the world.
He’d been everywhere, and I’d been nowhere. We both found that fascinating.
We didn’t exchange names. He gave me a seashell, and he told me that the way it swirled at the center reminded him of the way my hair curled. I put it in a box and hid it under my bed.
When the summer ended, I couldn’t breathe.
He was gone and the world was gray. It was silly to grieve over a man who was alive, but not with me. A man whose name I didn’t know.
But I grieved all the same.
Sometime in the middle of winter a photograph on the front page of a tabloid in the grocery store caught my eye—it was him. It was him with a beautiful woman on his arm and his name plastered right there on the newsprint, and I had to ask myself how I could be so stupid.
I wasn’t one to pay attention to popular culture—in fact, my father expressly forbade it—and often I averted my eyes even when waiting in the checkout line, so there was a certain sort of sense in the fact that I hadn’t realized immediately who my seaside friend was.
Not just someone important.
A prince.
Prince Hercules Xenakis of Pelion, one of the most renowned playboys in the entire world.
That night I took the box out from under my bed and stared at the seashell, and I told myself I should get rid of it.
He wouldn’t be coming back to the island—I was certain of it.
I would never see him again. Our meeting—our friendship—had been a fluke, and what was more, I was sure that I meant nothing to him. I was a schoolgirl, a common one at that, and he was one of the most wealthy, desirable men on the planet.
I couldn’t bring myself to throw it away.
Summer rolled around, marking my birthday and marking the return of the seasonal residents.
And there he was.
Sunday afternoon.
I told myself not to smile like a giddy fool when I saw him, but I did. And he smiled at me.
“You’re still here,” he said, shoving his hands in his pockets.
“I live here. So it’s not truly that surprising. You came back,” I said. I looked away from him. “You’re a prince.”
“Ah,” he said. “So you’ve discovered my secret.” He sounded regretful.
I peered at him while still trying to keep my head tilted down. “I’m not sure how it can be a secret, given you are frequently on the cover of newspapers.”
He touched me then. His fingertips brushed my chin, and I lifted my head, my eyes meeting his. The impact left me breathless. “Does that change things?”
I was stunned. “Doesn’t it have to?”
“I don’t think so,” he said. “I knew I was a prince this whole time. And anyway, that you didn’t is part of why I liked spending time with you.”
I held that close for the rest of the week.
He liked me. He liked me because I didn’t know he was a prince, and he didn’t think I was a fool.
That next week I told him my name. “Marissa,” I said. “Since I know yours.”
“Yes, it’s quite a difficult name to use in conversation, don’t you think?”
“I assume that’s helped by the fact that most people probably call you by an honorific.”
“Indeed. But I would rather you did not.”
“Hercules?” His name tasted strange on my lips, and not just because it was foreign.
“Yes,” he said, smiling at me.
“Then I will.”
I knew he was older than me, richer than me, more experienced than me, impossible in every way. But in that moment, as his smile lit his face, I fell in love with him.
He gave me another seashell, and I thought maybe he might feel something for me.
When he went away that summer, I couldn’t help but follow the headlines about him. I made myself sick with them.
Because there he was, with beautiful women on his arm, and if he felt for me even a fraction of what I did for him, there was no way that he would be with them. I bought an entertainment magazine with his picture on it, and I knew that if my father found it, I would be in trouble. I put it in the box with the seashells. I felt guilty, because now I had secrets.
Now I didn’t do what I was told.
I seemed to do things because of Hercules instead, and that was something entirely different.
I finished school, but I didn’t want to go away on a mission trip, because he would be coming back. So I made an excuse about wanting a job
, got one at a local coffeehouse called the Snowy Owl.
And mostly, I lived for Sundays.
Of course, nobody scheduled me to work on a Sunday, because my father would forbid that I do anything on the Sabbath.
I didn’t care about that. I cared about him.
“You’re back,” I said to him. First thing, just as I had done the year before.
I was eighteen, and I burned with a strange kind of conviction in my chest, because I didn’t feel quite so helpless. Quite like there was such a barrier between us.
Oh sure, there was the Prince thing. The fact that he spent the year dating supermodels and traveling around on private jets. But I was a woman now. And I felt like that had to mean something.
“Of course.”
“I’m glad,” I said.
“So am I.”
Then he reached out his hand and took hold of mine. “Shall we go for a walk?”
“Yes,” I said.
And for the first time, I held a man’s hand. His fingers were so warm, and it made my stomach turn over, made my heart feel like it was going to race right out of my chest. I looked at him, and he looked completely unaffected, but he still held on to me, and so I held on to that.
He kissed me on one of those Sunday afternoons.
My whole body felt like it would burst into flame. His lips were firm and sure on mine, and he was so impossibly beautiful.
Every feeling he called up in me I had been taught to identify as a sin, but it was so beautiful, and part of him, and I couldn’t bring myself to turn away from it.
So instead, I wrapped my arms around him and kissed him back. Parted my lips for him and allowed him to brush his tongue against mine.
I allowed all kinds of things on those Sunday afternoons. For his touch to become more familiar. For the feeling of his body against mine to become the dearest and most precious thing in the world. All that hard, powerful muscle, gentled as he held me.
I wanted to tell him he didn’t have to leash that strength. But I didn’t have the words for it. I didn’t have the vocabulary for what I wanted at all.
“Can you meet me tonight?”
It was near the end of summer when he asked me that, and I wanted to. Desperately. But I knew that I would get in so much trouble if I were caught.
Do you always do what you’re told?
That earlier question came back to haunt me. And no, I didn’t do what I was told. Not anymore. Not now.
I lived for Hercules.
It wasn’t about whether I might marry him and become a princess. I never thought about the future. I only thought about us, as we were, there on the beach. His life outside of that didn’t matter, and neither did mine.
And so I made the decision to expand it. To push outside those isolated Sunday afternoons and see something more.
“Yes.”
I climbed out my window that night and met him there at our spot, in the darkness. He had a blanket and a bottle of wine, and I had never tried alcohol before. I declined the wine, but I got drunk on his mouth, on his touch. And before I knew it, things had gone much further than I had intended.
It went on like that over the weeks, until I didn’t care anymore what was supposed to be right. The only thing that felt right was being in his arms. And when I gave him my virginity, I gave it easily, joyously. And he showed me what pleasure meant, and why people jumped into ruin with careless abandon and joy in their hearts.
It was the night he left that it happened.
He had to go. He couldn’t stay away from home any longer.
He didn’t ask me to go with him.
I told myself he couldn’t.
He and I forgot everything. We made love on a blanket in the sand until neither of us could breathe, and it wasn’t until later that I realized he’d forgotten protection of any kind.
He was gone the next day.
And three weeks later I knew my life had changed forever.
I had no idea how to begin contacting the palace.
But that wasn’t even what worried me, not right at first. It was telling my parents. But I knew that I had to call Hercules first.
I knew you couldn’t just call up a palace. Still, I had to try.
I called the palace directory. I left a message. I heard nothing.
I called again. Again and again.
Finally, in my desperation I told the person on the other end of the line that I had to get in touch with Prince Hercules, since I was having his baby.
The next day, men in suits came to the coffeehouse.
They whisked me into the manager’s office, and they told me that I was never to reach out to Hercules again. And that if I agreed to sign stacks of thick legal documents and never reveal the paternity of my child, I would be given enough money to live more than comfortably forever.
My heart shattered into pieces. Desperate, enraged, I threw the papers and ran. I ran all the way back home.
My secret burst out of me. Flowing like the tears that were pouring down my face. I admitted to my parents that I was pregnant.
My father’s face turned to stone. He asked if I intended to marry the father of my child, and quickly. I told him I could not, because he had abandoned me.
He didn’t have to say anything. His face said it all. He had warned me. He had told me. And I had failed. I was wicked, just like the rest of them. And that was when he told me he would have to wash his hands of me. Because there was no way that he could have his daughter wandering into Sunday service visibly fallen as I was.
I stumbled out of the house on numb feet, trembling.
And the men in suits were there.
They opened the door to the limousine and bade me to get inside. I obeyed, because I had reverted to being obedient again, there at the center of my grand demolition.
“What does the paperwork demand of me?” I asked.
The men looked at me, hard, neither of them sympathetic at all. “You must stay away from here for a period of five years at least. You must never attempt to contact Prince Hercules. You must never come to the country. If you do that, the sum of money will be yours.”
He pointed to a figure outlined on the contract, and my vision blurred. I would never have to work again. My child would want for nothing. And given that I was currently homeless, that was important.
But I could only think of one thing.
“How many times have you had to do this for him?”
“All these things are a matter of private palace business. Will you sign or not?”
And I knew that I’d been had. My virginity taken by a careless seducer of women. He hadn’t waited for me because he cared; he had simply waited until it was legal. And then he had sent strangers to do this to me. To dehumanize me, to take what had been a beautiful gift on my part and turn it into something tawdry and worse than common.
“I’ll sign.”
And so I had. Because what other choice did I have?
Yes, I remembered the first time I saw Hercules Xenakis.
It had been the beginning of the utter destruction of my life as I knew it.
But I rebuilt it into something beautiful. Something that centered around our daughter. My daughter.
And I did not violate that agreement. Not in that whole time. Except...
Except I had come back to Medland for the first time, at the end of my five-year exile. And there had been rumors he would be here in the lead-up to his wedding.
I’d told myself I was going for a walk.
But that walk ended at a place I knew I was likely to find him.
There he was on a balcony at the country club, overlooking the ocean below. With a woman standing next to him, a giant ring glittering on her fourth finger. I knew who she was—I wasn’t a fool. I didn’t avoid headlines about him. I didn�
�t seek them out either. I refused to let him become a sickness for me, ever again.
But I knew he was getting married.
A part of me had to wonder if I was here out of a true desire to reconcile with my mother, now that my father was gone, or if I had really come in the hope of this.
Because of course he still came here. This site of my ruin. The site of his betrayal.
And he was with her.
There had been many hers over the years.
I’d forced myself to look at them all and imagine what lies he told them.
But seeing them in person...
It made my whole body ache. I suddenly wished that I had Lily with me. Because at least then I could’ve turned to her, used her as some sort of distraction.
No.
I would never, ever allow Lily to be exposed to him.
He didn’t want her. He didn’t want her, and he didn’t deserve to see her. Did not deserve to set eyes on the miracle that we had created. The only good and beautiful thing that I had in my life. He had rejected her, and he never, ever deserved to have even a moment of that pure love that she possessed.
But then he turned, as if an invisible force had tapped him on the shoulder. And his eyes caught mine.
And the expression I saw there was one of pure hatred.
Copyright © 2020 by Maisey Yates
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ISBN-13: 9781488068638
The Forbidden Cabrera Brother
Copyright © 2020 by Cathy Williams
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
The Forbidden Cabrera Brother Page 17
