“Oh my God, Marina,” I moaned.
She hollowed her cheeks and inched her way down, the warmth of her mouth the most fantastic thing I’d ever experienced. Her tongue swirled around, covering my sensitive skin with slick heat. A tight, intense coil of pressure started to build within my core, building and building until I just couldn’t take it any longer.
“Marina, slow down,” I growled.
She looked up coyly, smiling around me. “Problem?”
“There will be if you don’t get up here.”
Marina rose, basking in the sunlight. Her luxurious blonde locks looked almost white, a halo about her head like an angel. She lowered herself onto my length, threading her fingers through mine for stability as she started to rock her hips. The pleasure that flooded through me left me speechless. Combined with her blinding beauty, Marina had rendered me an absolutely useless fool. I couldn’t believe my luck.
I’d fallen in love with a goddess.
It wasn’t just that I was in love with her body, as gorgeous as it was. I was in love with her mind, with her very soul and being. The desire I felt for her couldn’t properly be put into words. I needed her like I needed air, food, and water. I had no idea how I managed to survive this long without her.
We lost ourselves in each other. The sounds of our heavy breathing and pounding hearts were the only things I could truly register. Every time Marina rocked her hips against me, she drove me that much closer to the edge.
Marina leaned down and kissed me hard as she climaxed, her whole body trembling against me as she did. The sweet cries that escaped her lips spurred me on. I wrapped my arms around her and rolled us over, snapping my hips against her in search of more of that sweet friction. A burst of pleasure overcame my senses. My nerve endings were tingling with delight. Time slowed, the world stilled. Nothing else mattered to me now that I had Marina in my arms.
I couldn’t tell how long we laid in bed together. The afternoon sun gradually turned into the soft, silver glow of the moon. Marina curled into me easily, resting her head against my chest as she drew little circles into my skin. We talked about everything and anything. In truth, I was happy just to be breathing the same air as her.
I ran my fingers across her cheek and plucked a rose petal out of her hair. We stared into each other’s eyes for hours. I’d be perfectly content to do it for days.
Marina giggled, stroking my beard calmly. “I like this.”
“Yeah?”
She nodded. “It makes you look so serious. It’s a nice change.”
I chuckled. “I’m always serious.”
“No, you’re the biggest goofball I know.”
I gawked at her, feigning offense. “I think we both know that title goes to Oliver.”
“Maybe you’re right.” Marina laughed softly. “What were you working on when I came into the room?”
“Homework.”
“Seriously?”
I nodded. “I’m half-way through my first year of law school.”
“Really? That’s amazing,” she said sweetly. “Are you enjoying it so far?”
I shrugged a shoulder. “I could probably enjoy classes more if I could see you more often.”
Marina’s eyes fluttered closed, the tiniest hint of worry fraying her brow. “I want you to come home,” she whispered. “I want you to tell me about your day, about your classes. I want you to tell me about your life in Allendes.”
“Even the boring stuff?”
Marina nodded. “Especially the boring stuff.”
“I want to go home too.”
“Then come back with me,” she urged. “I’ll explain everything to my father. You had nothing to do with the attack.”
I wanted to tell her yes. I would have returned to Brooklandia with Marina in a heartbeat. But things weren’t that simple.
“I can’t leave my mother behind,” I mumbled. “And even if I did go back, people wouldn’t see me. They’d hear my name, and I’d be guilty by association. The King would never let me near you.”
Marina sat up in bed, clutching the silk sheet over herself. “Who put that idea in your head?”
“No one. I’m just telling you the truth.”
Marina furrowed her brows, nibbling on her bottom lip. “Then… What are we doing, Rodrigo? Don’t you… Don’t you want to be with me.”
I sat up, immediately moving to cup her face in my hands. “I really, really do.”
The conflict was easy to read in her expression. “Then… What…” Marina shook her head. “I can’t stand this.”
“What? Being with me?”
“No. The secrecy.” The rims of her eyes turned red, glossing over with tears. “I don’t want this to end up being a relationship where I see you once, maybe twice a year.”
“I know. I don’t want that either.”
I hated how defeated Marina looked. What we had between us was still new, but it felt so right. There wasn’t a doubt in my mind that I wanted to be with her.
“Marry me,” I said abruptly.
Her face blanked. “What?”
I took her hands in mine and gave them a squeeze. My heart was racing, beating at a feverish pace. “I’m serious. Marina, will you marry me?”
She laughed nervously, but the spark in her eyes was undeniable. “You’re joking,” she argued half-heartedly, confused. “You’re joking, right?”
“I’ve never been more sure about anything in my entire life.” I beamed at her. “We’ll run away. We’ll get married and live on a farm or something. We’ll make our own way in the world. I understand if you think it’s too hard to stay in Brooklandia and fight for us at the same time. I’d never want to put you in a position where you had to choose your family and your people over me. So let’s just run away and make a life for ourselves and live by our own terms.”
Marina grinned at me, giggling excitedly. “Oh my God, you are serious.”
“I love you,” I said firmly. “Wow, that feels good to say. I love you, Marina. Marry me, and I promise I will do absolutely everything I can to give you a good life. It won’t be as fancy as life inside the palace. I probably won’t be able to hire a personal chef to cook you delicious food, but I can learn to do that for you. I probably won’t be able to make enough that you can wear designer clothes, but I promise to try.”
“Maybe we can just ask Oliver and Brandon to make clothes and cook for us.”
I laughed. “Sure. They can live with us, I guess. Maybe they can help take care of the babysitting.”
“Babysitting? You want kids?”
“Of course! A houseful of them. I want to be one of those fathers who’s tired all the time and barely holding it together because his kids are crawling all over him. I really don’t think I’d mind, though.”
Marina was smiling brilliantly at me. With some hesitation, she nodded. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“I mean, I don’t know if I can really abandon the throne. It’s my birthright. If I leave, the question of succession… Well, it’d get messy.” She squeezed my hands back. “But I do know that I want to be with you. So, okay. Let’s run away. Let’s–”
Before she could finish her sentence and give me an answer, three hard knocks at the suite’s front door shook the room. Whoever was on the other side continued to slam their fists against it, an urgency in every knock.
“Princess Marina!” a man’s voice shouted. “Open this door immediately.”
Marina jumped out of bed so quickly that she was a blur in the corner of my vision. She hastily threw her clothes back on, eyes wide in terror.
“Oh no,” she gasped. “Oh no, no, no.”
“Who is it?” I whisper-shouted to her.
“That’s Charles, my bodyguard. I thought he went to bed already.”
I slipped out of bed, throwing on my pants in a frantic hurry. “Can’t you send him away?”
“Princess Marina! Open this door, or I’ll kick it down.”
“Yo
u have to hide,” she told me. “I don’t know what they’ll do if they catch you.”
My eyes darted around the room in search of a hiding spot. There was no room under the bed, I couldn’t escape out the window because we were on the top floor, and the closet was on the other side of the room so I’d never make it in time. Even if I hid in the en-suite bathroom, ducking for cover in the bathtub, her bodyguard would likely check in there.
The front door burst open, pieces of wood splintering off the frame. In ran four massively built men, all dressed in stuffy black suits and radio pieces stuck in their ears. There was no time to hide. Even if there had been, I wouldn’t have been able to get rid of all the evidence that I was in the room. There were still rose petals everywhere, and my laptop and work was still scattered across the desk’s surface.
The bodyguards stormed the bedroom. One of them immediately tackled me and forced me to the ground. I landed hard enough to force the air out of my lungs. The man almost yanked my arms out of their sockets as he tied my wrists behind my back with thick black zip ties. My muscles and skin burned like fire where they grabbed me, using way more force than necessary.
Marina shrieked. “What are you doing? Let him go, Charles!”
The man who’d apprehended me, Charles, shook his head. He snatched me by the shoulders and forced me to my feet. “I’m sorry, Princess. I can’t do that.”
“You answer to me,” she stressed. “I command that you let him go.”
“I’m afraid my orders come from above your station, Princess.”
Marina’s lips were pressed into a thin line. “The King sent you,” she realized. “How did he know?”
“I wasn’t supposed to tell you, but a surveillance team has been watching over Mr. Sabatino and his mother for some time.”
The acid in my stomach rose up violently into my throat. I fought against my bindings, felt the hard plastic of the zip ties bite into my flesh. “You’ve been tailing me?” I hissed. “What the fuck?”
Charles’ grip on my arm tightened. His nails dug into my muscles and pierced my skin. “I received confirmation that you were the one who booked this room two minutes ago. I knew I should have inspected the floor first.”
“You’re out of your jurisdiction,” snapped Marina. “You can’t have Rodrigo arrested here. This isn’t Brooklandia.”
Charles reached into his blazer’s pocket and pulled out a folded piece of parchment. The King’s seal was imprinted in the red wax that sealed it shut. “This is a Royal Decree the King gave to me prior to us leaving the kingdom. It says that I am allowed to act as I see fit to ensure your safety.”
“A diplomatic pardon,” I realized aloud. I’d actually learned about them in one of my introductory classes to international politics and law. They were rare, but Royal Decrees could be used in extraneous cases.
Like this one, apparently.
“No,” whimpered Marina. “No, you can’t do this. Rodrigo’s done nothing wrong. Let him go! Let him go this instant!” She started to cry in earnest, tears streaking her pale cheeks. “Let him go,” she sobbed weakly. “Please.”
It killed me that I couldn’t reach out to comfort her. Before I could even get a word in, the bodyguard dragged me away, half-naked and humiliated. My cheeks burned, and my head throbbed. What had started as a wonderful day full of promise and dreams was now dashed. Tarnished.
“Rodrigo!” she screamed after me. “I love you too. I love you.”
My heart wanted to soar at her words. It wasn’t the way I wanted to hear it, but it was going to have to do. I committed her declaration to memory, carried it with me as closely as I could. I did my best to think of happier times, refusing to let these last moments with Marina be tainted by fear and panic.
I wondered what I did in a past life to deserve this. I wondered why things couldn’t just be simple like when we were children. We used to be joined at the hip, Marina and I. Our days of exploring the palace together, playing in the gardens, studying together—did any of it even matter to these people? Did they care that they were tearing us apart? Did they care that they were hurting us?
Hurting her?
I didn’t know if I was ever going to see Marina again, but what could I do? All the fight had left my body. No matter what I did, I couldn’t stop them from dragging me away. My only wish was that Marina would stop crying. I didn’t deserve her tears.
16
Marina
I didn’t care if the whole palace heard me. The servants could gossip and whisper amongst themselves to their hearts’ content. I was so furious, so blindingly enraged that keeping my volume under control was the least of my worries. I was so full of rage that Mount Vesuvius had nothing on me. My head was about to blow off, and everybody in Brooklandia was at risk.
“I can’t believe you!” I shrieked, my shrill words echoing off the high ceilings of the throne room.
Father was sitting on his golden throne, Mother next to him in her slightly smaller silver one. My throne, made of intricate bronze working, had been placed off to the side. There was something incredibly weird about this whole scene, something unreal. It was like I was watching myself yell at my parents, an out of body experience brought on by my unquenchable need to scream and scream and scream.
I wondered how many people before me had found themselves in this exact same spot in this exact same room, pleading with the King. If I wasn’t so concerned with telling my parents off, I would have found it fascinating the number of verdicts and bargains that were struck in the very place in which I stood. There was so much history in this room, so much protocol and tradition and power.
And it was that exact power that I was fighting against.
I glared at the both of them, clenching my jaw so tight I was scared my teeth would crack from the pressure. “Release Rodrigo now.”
My father took a deep breath and stared at me down the length of his nose. He raised his chin slightly to accentuate the darkness of his frown. The man sitting before me wasn’t Father. With his shoulders pulled back and chest puffed out, the man before me was the King.
“Watch your mouth,” he hissed at me. “How dare you try to give me orders.”
“Rodrigo had nothing to do with the revolt,” I insisted. “You know he didn’t.”
Mother shook her head. She felt colder, closed off. Warmth and love normally radiated off of her. But now, we were better off as strangers. Mother could barely look me in the eye as she said, “You have no proof of that. He could be plotting to use you against us.”
“Are you even hearing the things coming out of your mouths? You know Rodrigo. We grew up together. He’d never do something like that!”
“He’s only getting close to you to get to me,” boomed the King. “Are you that naïve? Or are you really that stupid?”
“I’m not stupid, but you two definitely are if you think–”
The King brought his fist down on the throne’s armrest, the violent slap of his skin against the wood reverberating through the hall. “Quiet!” he seethed. Fury seeped out of every one of his pores, venom leaked out of his eyes and dripped of his tongue. “My word is final. Rodrigo will remain in prison until his innocence can be proven. I’ve already ordered a thorough investigation.”
“That could take months,” I protested. “Meanwhile, you’ll have him rot behind bars!”
“I am doing what is best for the kingdom.”
“You’re doing what’s best for you.”
“Marina,” warned my mother, “enough of this. Go back to your room.”
“I’m not a child anymore. I’m twenty-two years old, for fuck’s sake. You can’t tell me what to do!”
“Stop!” the King bellowed. “I won’t hear another word. Leave immediately.”
“Or what?”
“I’ll have you physically removed.”
I shook my head, bitter and fuming. “You two are disgusting, you know that?”
Mother’s mouth dropped open in dismay. �
�Marina, you can’t–”
“Stop trying to control me and my life,” I grumbled. “I’m my own woman, and I will make my own decisions even if you don’t approve. I love Rodrigo, and you two are the reason why I can’t be with him. This stupid thing between you and the Sabatinos has to stop. It’s not healthy. Are we going to live the rest of our lives hating one another? Is that it?”
“Marina,” Mother sighed, “Senator Sabatino tried to throw a coup. That can’t go unpunished.”
“He ran me through with a knife,” reminded the King. “He’s lucky I haven’t decided to execute him yet.”
“And why is that?” I challenged. “If you hate him so much, why don’t you just hurry up and put him out of his misery instead of wasting the taxpayers’ dollar on his cell upkeep?”
He paused, the tendons in his face tensing as he set his jaw.
“I’ll tell you why,” I continued. “It’s because, once upon a time, you two used to be friends. I really have to wonder if you’re doing this out of spite, or some other incredibly dumb reason. Did he hurt your pride, Father? Are you embarrassed that he managed to convince your people to turn on you? Are you secretly ashamed that you’ve dropped the ball and now you’re trying to save face? The people are still suffering, by the way. You haven’t exactly done anything in the last couple of years to help the poor or increase employment rates.”
The King was stunned silent.
Looks like I hit the nail on the head.
Mother tried to swoop in to defend him. “You… You were the one who tricked us. You said you were going on vacation when you were actually cavorting with the enemy.”
I scoffed. “‘Cavorting?’ Seriously? You want to pin the blame on me? Why don’t you have me arrested, then?”
“You’re being ridiculous, Marina,” Father huffed.
“Am I?” I shook my head. “I’m leaving.”
Mother rose from her seat, visibly shaking with rage. “And where exactly do you think you’re leaving to, young lady?”
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