by Maisey Yates
She had thought then that she’d hated Alex. But she recognized now that the intensity of emotion she felt in his presence was desire, and not hatred.
She had rejected it at the time because she had been young. But... But if he had kissed her? If he had offered her comfort in her moment of being made a fool of, would she have given him her virginity even then? And what would he have thought then? Discovering that she had never been with his brother?
And she waited. She waited to feel something. To feel disgust. To feel angry with him for that. For allowing that low moment to occur, so that he could try to take advantage of it, except all she felt was...
A sense of regret.
For it was possible that she could have been with Alex even then.
Yes, and you would’ve felt guilt forever. If you’d been sleeping with Alex while Dionysus was being attacked.
It was true. Any resentment that she felt toward Alex all these years... It would’ve been worse, would’ve been magnified had the things between them come to a head then.
And she’d...she’d needed those years away.
She’d needed to spend time on her own. To learn things, and find things out about herself.
For the woman she was now with Alex was not the woman she’d been then. Eighteen and full of doubt in regard to herself.
No, she hadn’t been the same woman then at all.
She’d truly been a girl. And not ready for any of the situations she’d found herself in.
But she had become more. She had become stronger and better since.
And she knew Alex had too.
“Alex, no matter what... It was still his choice. It was still...”
“It was my weakness. My selfishness. And then, that same weakness nearly got you killed as well. For I do not know who I am when I’m around you. I do not know...
“I thought that I could turn you into a duty, and I thought that I could fix this. I thought you were more dangerous wandering around in the world belonging to another man than you ever could have been as my Queen. But I underestimate the power of this curse on my family. I underestimate the power of my own weakness.”
“Look at me,” she said, poking her own chest. “I am not eaten by wolves. I’m here. In front of you. I am the woman that you wanted then, but I’m stronger now. I’m choosing to stand here. Whatever you might think. I choose to be with you. We are stronger than this. What happened all those years ago was a tragedy. And I wish... I only wish that if we could have been together then, we were able to be strong enough to recognize the feelings we had. But I wasn’t. I was young, and I was immature. And I couldn’t figure out what I wanted. I was happy to go along pleasing my father because I could get no approval from my mother. I felt resentment toward you because you were the brother my mom wanted me to be with. And because you made me feel things I wasn’t ready to feel. I wouldn’t have been ready for your seduction then. It would’ve burnt me alive.”
She blinked furiously. “And you... You were still punishing yourself. And you still are. But it has to stop. We are more than this. We can be more. I love you. And it doesn’t matter what happened then. It doesn’t matter who my father thought I should be with, who your father thought you should be with. It doesn’t matter that my mother wants me to be Queen. I don’t care about being Queen. But I do care about being your wife. I love you, Alexius. King and man, it makes no difference to me, but you have to understand I would take you gladly without the title of King. But I could never take a king that wasn’t you. So in the end, it’s not all the same. It is the man that matters. For it is the man that makes a difference. It is the man I want. It is the man I need. And I don’t care that you think you were weak. I find you to be strong.”
“You don’t care about the truth? You don’t care about lies? That’s all this is. Pretty lies you’re telling yourself to make it all feel okay. Because you’re drunk on sex and desire, and you don’t understand the difference between that and love.”
“No. You don’t understand the difference between a curse and life. You don’t understand the difference between a king and a martyr. You want to blame yourself for all of this, and for the life of me I can’t understand why. Why is it so important to you that all of this is your fault?”
“Enough,” he said, his voice hard. “If you wish to be my Queen, come here and demonstrate your supplication.”
It was so clear what he was doing. What he had always done. This thing between them was so intense, so undeniable that he wanted distance. He’d done it by disapproving. He did it now with cruelty. But she could see him. She could see what he was doing. “Is that what you want? You want to degrade me?”
She took a step toward him, her heart thundering in her chest. “You can’t.”
He reached out and curved his hand around her throat, urging her toward him. The dominant hold sent a shock of desire, of excitement and trepidation through her. “I can degrade you. You have only seen a taste of my destruction, Tinley.”
“The only person you’re destroying is yourself. And you cannot degrade me if I choose everything that happens between us here.” She dropped to her knees. “It’s my choice. Does that make it degradation or worship?” She reached up, undoing his slacks, and freeing his manhood. She squeezed him tight, running her hand up and down his hard length. “Am I to feel degraded now?”
She looked up at him, at the torment on his face. “I think it’s you who feels shame. I don’t feel shame. I love you. And this thing between us could never feel wrong. Not to me.”
He reached out and wrapped his fingers around her hair. “What do you know? You’ve gone from hating me to wanting me to loving me in the space of weeks. How will it change, then, tomorrow?”
“It won’t.”
“It will,” he growled. “It will, because it inevitably does. I will fail you in some regard and lose your good favor. And once it’s gone, it will be gone forever. Mistakes change you. And they change how you are seen. No one loves unconditionally.”
“My feelings haven’t changed. But I have. And I recognize now what burned within me all those years ago. But I couldn’t have you, Alex. What was the point of feeling these things? What was the point when I could never have you? And so they sat inside of me, fuzzy and half realized, and nothing quite like what they are now.”
“Do not test me.”
But she did. She leaned forward and flicked her tongue over his heated length, desire gathering at the base of her spine. She loved him. Every inch of him. Strong and hard and masculine. Glorious. He was everything that she could ever want. Everything she could ever hope for. He was a man. Tortured, alone in a hell of his own making.
His own making? Somebody put him here.
It was true. And she recognized the truth of that as soon as she had the thought. As soon as it entered her head.
His hell had been created by someone. By Dionysus? Who had told him all these things? Who had given him love once and then taken it away?
And so she set about showing him that she never would. She took him deeply into her mouth, luxuriating in him. In all that he was. And all the two of them created together. The heat and the fire. The need too.
There was something blessed about needing another person like this. Something glorious and outrageous, and far beyond anything she had ever hoped to experience before.
It was a relief, actually. To need.
She couldn’t explain it. Except that it made her feel more connected, more, than she ever had before. Except that it created in her a deep sense of purpose and desire.
It made her feel important. It was that belonging, and being belonged to.
That singular relationship she had found with him.
Fate, maybe.
Except... If they had always been fated, they might have found each other earlier. But even fate required a choice.
&nbs
p; And she was grateful for the choice.
Grateful for the power that she found within it.
He was shaking beneath her, trembling with need. And oh, how she loved it. She pushed them both to the edge, until he growled and hauled her to her feet. “Enough. Undress me.”
She removed the rest of his clothes, leaving him a glorious, naked warrior before her. A man carved from stone, but a man all the same.
He wanted her. And he might hate himself for it, but he could not be icy when they were together like this. It was impossible.
For in this, there was power. Real power. And maybe here, she would be able to show him that she wasn’t lying. That her love was unconditional. But there wasn’t a horrible story about mistakes he made that he could tell her that would have her turning against him.
No.
He kissed her. Fierce and hard, with everything he had.
And she thought, for a moment, for a glimmer, that he might know. That he might feel it. He stripped her clothes from her body, his movements forceful, intense. And when she was naked before him, she opened her arms to receive him, and found herself being turned over onto her stomach.
“You say you want a man,” he said. “But there is no man. King or beast. That’s all there is. You may have the beast, since you seem so eager to test me.”
He urged her up onto her knees, and she felt his hardness pressing up against the slick entrance to her body.
“Alex...”
And then he was inside of her, deep and rough, and she cried out, half agony, half ecstasy.
He gripped the back of her neck with one hand, and held her hip fast with the other as he poured his fury, his rage into her body.
He was trying to take their connection and twist it. Trying to turn it into something it wasn’t. Trying to make them something they weren’t.
She knew because for some reason it was important to him that this be a sin. That this be a failure.
Not a desire. Not love.
It was so important to him that this be a mistake, that she not love him, that he not love her.
He was determined to villainize himself, to weaponize this thing against himself.
And she could not understand why.
The reason was just out of her reach, and as pleasure built inside of her—in spite of the fact that this was rough and dizzying—the answer moved further out of reach.
She couldn’t think when he was like this.
She could only feel.
That’s the answer. Feeling.
He was thinking. He was doing mental gymnastics to come up with ways to explain away all that they were, but that wasn’t right. It wasn’t it. It wasn’t them.
And so she closed off her mind, and she opened up her heart. A feeling.
“Alex,” she whispered, his name on her lips the only sound in the room beyond the harsh slap of their skin as he pounded into her like an animal.
But it wasn’t an animal. And he wasn’t a beast. Just like all those disparate pieces of her needed to come together, so did his.
He wasn’t a man. He wasn’t a king. He wasn’t the beast.
He was all of them. All at once.
He was desperate and sad and lonely and powerful and weak and vulnerable and dangerous, all at once.
He was everything.
Her world. Her potential destruction.
And it was all so much, so deep, so real and raw that of course he was desperate to turn away from it, because this could be their undoing.
But it could also be their making.
She was certainly determined to have it be hers.
“I love you,” she whispered.
He growled and slammed into her one last time, and it sent her over the edge, sparks bursting behind her eyelids. “I love you,” she said again. “I love you.”
“Stop,” he growled.
“I love you,” she said. “Why does it scare you so damn much?”
“You cannot love me,” he snarled. “I am unlovable.”
“You’re not.”
“My own mother didn’t love me, Tinley, you can’t. She loved her little boy that wasn’t going to be King. The one she could have. The one who belonged to her. Not me. I belong to this country. To my father. She would not hold me at Lazarus’s funeral, so little was I her child. I’m not a man. I cannot be. I cannot be yours.”
“Alex...”
“The wedding is off.”
“What are you saying?”
“The wedding must be called off. This cannot happen. It cannot be.”
“Alex, it’s too late to call it off. You said so yourself. Everyone is coming. My mother is coming...”
“And that matters to you so very much? I thought it didn’t. I thought that you didn’t care what she wanted.”
“I don’t,” she said, desperation making her words flow out wrong. Desperation making her clumsy. “That isn’t what I meant at all.”
And she lay there looking at him, realizing that there was a gulf between them they would not be able to cross unless he chose to. Realizing that he didn’t trust her. And if he didn’t trust her, there was nothing that could be done.
It isn’t you he doesn’t trust. It’s himself.
Her heart squeezed tight. Burned inside of her chest.
“Alexius...”
“Dionysus was her new pride and joy. She didn’t let him near me at all while he was growing up. She didn’t trust me with her new son. How could she? I let Lazarus die.”
“You didn’t,” she said, tears starting to fall down her face. Because she knew that whatever she said, it didn’t matter. Because his mother had told him these things were true. His mother.
Her own mother had told her that she wasn’t good enough. She had believed it. She had believed it because it was so easy. Because the person who taught you to speak, taught you to walk, taught you all those important things, taught you how to feel about yourself. And he was no different. King or not.
“She would rather I had died,” he said.
“She would never say that to you,” Tinley said, horror rising up in her breast.
“She did,” Alex said. “She did. She wished so much that it were me. Lazarus would’ve been a better king anyway.”
“You were a boy,” she said.
“It doesn’t matter. A boy in my position is never just a boy.”
“Sometimes the world is just cruel. And we need something to blame so that we feel like we can control it. We need a villain. Your mother made you a villain. But you were just a child. You are not responsible for this. You’re not.”
“It doesn’t matter. That’s what she believed.”
“So make a new story. About who you are. About who you can be. It’s not too late for that. It’s not.”
“You are a sweet girl. And you see the world in a rosy sort of way. You care about too many things. Small things. But it makes you blind to the big truth that is right in front of you. I cannot love you, and even if I could, it would only mean destruction for you.”
“No,” she said.
“It’s true, Tinley. You must be reasonable. About this. About us.”
“Alex...”
“I will give you all the money you need to care for your charity. I will give you a platform. But you will not be Queen. We will not marry.”
“But I want to marry you. Are you so perverse that now that I want it, you don’t want to give it to me?”
“It is not about want. It is about what must be done. And about what I must be. You can tell me all you want what you believe to be true, but I’ve seen the opposite to be so. It isn’t just general weakness. You are my weakness. And it cannot be.”
“Alex...”
“Get out.” He was a raw, wounded animal, his words shredded, his eyes h
aunted. And they hurt her, his words. But they were designed to. He wanted to hurt her, as he was hurt. Hurt her so she would run.
Knowing it didn’t make it hurt less.
“You can’t possibly be sending me away.”
“I am. Because I must.”
“You don’t have to do anything. You can make a new choice. You can start over. Your mother is dead. She doesn’t get to decide who you are.”
“My brothers are also dead. And they can never decide who they want to be. And that’s because of me.”
“This is only impossible because you’re making it impossible.”
“If that’s how you have to see it, then that is the way of it. I am the King. And if I choose for it to be impossible, then it will be impossible.”
“Don’t do this.”
“It is done,” he said. “And we cannot go back.”
Despair broke inside of her like a dam. And instead of following orders, she dropped to her knees.
And she knew that she should be ashamed. Except... She wasn’t. She felt brave, even as she was falling apart. She felt powerful. Because she wasn’t scared to love in this capacity. With this depth that created despair in her that seemed to block out any and all hope.
He was, though. He was afraid of letting go of the past. He was afraid of what it would mean if he let himself love. He was lost in the middle of the Dark Wood, not her. He had never come back out the day he had gone to search for his brother.
“You have to choose to be found,” she said softly. “Nobody can do it for you, Alex. You have to choose.”
“I’ve made my choice.”
A broken sob escaped her lips. “Very well,” she said. “If this is what you want, I can’t make you do anything else. I’m not a king. I’m just a girl who loves you. But think of all the things you have dominion over. Think of all the things you can buy, all the things you can control, and ask yourself if I’m one of them. You could not force this. You could not buy it. I had to choose it. And you have to choose it back. There is no fate. The only person keeping you from being happy right now is you. You can choose to be as good as you want to be. As happy as you want. As miserable as you want. You can choose to be defined by what happened. Or you can choose to move forward. It’s up to you. You know where to find me.”
