weakness. And when she took a step toward him, he knew that his fate was sealed.
He had spent much of his life denying a belief in fate.
For the legends about his family and fate were dark indeed, and they suggested that there was no hand stronger or mightier than that of an invisible, immovable force that might decide to rearrange the whole kingdom on a whim.
To kill young princes and leave but one remaining.
In his position, a belief in fate had always felt somewhat grim.
That he was chosen for some reason beyond anything he had done or could do. But his brothers had been chosen for death.
That belief did not make him stronger or better. That belief meant that trying was truly a pointless exercise. And so he had rejected it. But Tinley. Tinley had gotten under his skin for all these long years, and he had convinced himself that there was nothing in this world that was inevitable.
Here she was, a slick, bare inevitability that seemed to make a mockery of the idea that he could outrun anything. Her red hair hung damp and curling down her back, a couple of stray locks falling into her face. And as she walked toward him, the water moved around her, concealing the most womanly part of her from his view. It changed nothing.
It changed nothing and everything.
It simply was.
And down here, in this ancient, traditional place, ceremonial in many ways, and important to the royal family, it felt sacred.
A confirmation.
One he might have tried to outrun, but he... decided not to.
And so he stood firm and fast as his doom closed the distance between them.
He looked down, saw that her nipples were hard. That her breathing had gone shallow.
“You’re right,” she said. “I’m not afraid of you.” She reached out, delicate fingertips touching the side of his face. They drifted downward slowly, making contact with his broad chest.
Like on the beach. But this time she did not touch him in anger. And this time she didn’t stop there. Her hand went down farther. He breathed hard, his stomach pitching as her fingertips ended where the water began. Just above where he was hard and aching for her.
“I didn’t understand,” she whispered. “But I want to.”
“Do you know what you’re doing?”
Those green eyes, always filled with challenge, with rebellion, sparked. “Of course I do. I’m not a child. I know what it means to walk into a room with a naked man. To touch him. I know what I’m asking you for.”
“But do you know how it will change things?”
For it would. It would change the entire way he had arranged the world.
It would have to.
Damn it all. Burn it all.
Tinley Markham was his. Everything else could go straight to hell.
He’d made this choice once before and as he looked at her...he had the sense he would make it again and again until the end of days.
So why not make her a duty, rather than a sin in waiting?
Why not embrace it, and her.
Her body. Her lips. He would sink inside of her and claim her. And he did not care if his brother had had her first. He didn’t care how many men had had her since. She was his and had been from the beginning. Fate.
Destiny.
He alone survived. He alone remained. How could this destiny be denied? How?
It could not be.
He was the Lion of the Dark Wood, and he would devour that which wandered into his path.
He would devour her.
“Yes,” she said, her voice thin and breathless.
“And you accept that? All for this? All because your body craves mine?” He studied her closely, the crimson stain in her flushed cheeks. “Do you even like me?”
She shook her head. “No. I don’t. But yesterday you made me feel more beautiful than I ever have in my life. I don’t like you. That’s an insipid word. I feel...tormented. My body is not my own. My skin is not mine. It blushes at the memory of you, and becomes sensitive at the thought. Every time my heart beats it’s sore. Because it wants to be with the excitement of the touch of your hands. My lips feel swollen, changed. How can I go on if it isn’t completed? If this is unfinished?”
There would be no finish to this. Not one that either of them would like, not one he was even certain he could live with.
But there was nothing to be done.
There was no turning back.
“You’re walking into the wood, little girl?