His Majesty's Forbidden Temptat - Maisey Yates Page 0,37

leaned into him, into this.

She could feel his heart thundering beneath her palm.

“Ours is a matter of passion, don’t you agree?”

Not the heart. His heart, which she could feel even now.

“What does that have to do with the royal marriage?”

“There are certain things that are unacceptable to me,” he said. “Certain things I will never be able to reconcile. I could never condone infidelity, not in a marriage. Though I considered making the arrangement. Once.” That last part was spoken softly, deadly. And the way his dark eyes settled on her made her feel...

“Me?”

“I wanted you when you were his. And I could’ve taken you. I could have.” There was an intensity to his tone that echoed inside her. In her soul.

She knew that it was true. For he was the future King, to Dionysus’s future Prince, and Alexius’s authority would always be superior. And she...she would have been unable to resist the temptation. She knew that now. For all the simmering fire inside her when she looked at him wasn’t hate and it never had been.

In her innocence, she’d thought that discomfort had to be anger. But no. It was desire. Desire for a man she knew she couldn’t have. And what would have happened if he’d made it known he wanted her?

The same thing that was happening between them now, and there was no use denying it.

“I was tempted,” he said. “But fate...had other ideas. And I’m not the man I was then.”

The little bubble of hope that had welled up inside of her fizzled out. It didn’t die, because she was much more resilient than that. If she were so fragile that mere words could kill every ounce of hope inside of her she would have lost it, all of it, long ago. At the hands of her mother. Who had been nothing but scathing about her and her accomplishments ever.

Alexius didn’t love her. He didn’t care for her. If he could have justified sex without marriage he would have done so.

But he couldn’t.

So here she was. Not subject to the whims of fate, but to his medieval code of honor.

And as small as it seemed, in this moment, the worst part of all was that her mother would win, her mother would get what she had always wanted. Her daughter as Queen. But under the worst circumstances possible. Her mother, who wasn’t even here. Who Tinley hadn’t seen in years. Because her father had died, the King had died, Dionysus had died. Every link her mother had to power in Liri was gone, and so she had just... Well, she’d gone off and made another life. A better one.

For Tinley, enough on her own wasn’t enough.

And now, by default, she would become the thing that her mother had always wanted.

She wanted to reject it. She wanted to turn away from it. She didn’t want to give her mother the satisfaction.

But she also didn’t...

She didn’t want to live for her mother. Or against her.

She wanted Alex, but she couldn’t explain what that meant or why.

It wasn’t just sex, but a threat that seemed to bond them together, deeper than she could explain even to herself.

She searched his dark gaze, looking to see if she might find something she recognized there. Something she felt echoing inside of her own chest.

She saw nothing but darkness.

Like standing on the edge of the wood.

“You know, usually a man asks the woman if she wants to marry him,” she said softly.

“That implies you have a choice.”

“I could leave. You act like I’m more afraid of having nothing than of all this. And that isn’t necessarily true.”

“And will you leave? You’re right. I would not stop you. I would not imprison you. Walk out the door. Tell everyone here that you will not be my Queen.”

“No,” Tinley said. “I will be your Queen.”

Something shivered inside of her. It terrified her. Unto her soul.

“I’m glad we could come to an agreement.”

“Good. Think of it as an agreement. Because you should understand that I do have a choice. I had a choice when I went to you yesterday. It was my choice to stay there. It was my choice to take a step toward you, rather than run away. Just as this is my choice now. Don’t mistake me, Alex. I’m not afraid of being left with nothing. There are things far worse in the world.”

Like trying and failing. Wanting to live up to the standards of another person, only to find that it was