hair when your hair was frizzy and curly. What a difficult thing it was to try your absolute hardest to be the best, to try to be the Queen and not manage it. It was such a vastly different thing than failing at living up to a standard her mother had invented for her that she didn’t even want. One showed her a glimmer of the feeling.
Of feeling like a failure. Of feeling not quite good enough.
The other would be... It would be devastating. To well and truly be rejected by someone she really wanted. Doing something she really wanted to do. Something that mattered.
She had hidden herself away because it was easier.
And this desire to know him... It was deep and real, and it meant she couldn’t hide. Not anymore.
So, she clung to that thing he’d said. To that one honest thing. To the fire burning in his eyes.
That to him, the way he wanted her made him unacceptable.
For that was real, and it was human. It was the man and not the King.
And it was what she was desperate for.
It was, she was certain, the place that she would find the answers to what she desperately needed to know.
And so she stood from her chair, and positioned herself in front of him.
“Is it how you want me now?”
“You’re to be my Queen.”
“Then I’m yours. And you can take me if you want. You can do whatever you like. Because I belong to you.”
“Say that again,” he said, his voice like iron.
“I belong to you.”
He growled, wrapping his arm around her waist and drawing her down onto his lap, she could feel the hardness of his arousal pressing up against her behind.
“You’re mine,” he said, kissing her jawline. “Mine at last. I’ve wanted you... It has been like a sickness. But now you belong to me. And no one else. Do you have any idea how intoxicating it was to discover that no other man had ever touched you? Not just my brother, but none of the men at your University? No one. As if you were waiting for me.”
She turned to him, conviction burning in her breast. “But I imagine I don’t have the same sort of gift. I imagine there have been women. You weren’t simply waiting around for me. So, are you to be mine? As I’m yours?”
His eyes went flat. “I belong to Liri. My first service must be to my country.”
“So I’m to share you with a nation? While I belong solely to you? That doesn’t seem fair.”
“Everything here is mine. You among them. It is as fair as anything.”
“You belong to me,” she said, pressing her forehead to his.
She could never have imagined doing this even weeks ago. Touching Alex like he was a human. Pressing her face to his. So close that she could see the lines at the corners of his eyes, the deep grooves that bracketed his mouth. That she could see the beginnings of his evening beard, dark and heavy on his jaw.
She knew how it felt to be kissed by those firm lips. What it was to feel those whiskers on his face scratching at her skin.
She had been afraid of him. Or rather...wary, because somewhere inside of her she had always known it could be this way. Yes. She had been wary. Desperately so.
And now, it was as if a wall had come down. And she could see him, truly. Challenge him. Touch him.
“You’re mine,” she whispered. “And I don’t care if you believe it. I don’t care if you’ll admit it. You belong to me, Alex. Me. I had your body inside mine, and I don’t care if there have been other women. They weren’t me. I’m the one that tempted you. And you don’t succumb to temptation.”
“Must you believe that?”
“I know it,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper.
“I know it.” She repeated that again.
He growled, cupped the back of her head and brought her in for a kiss, hard and ferocious. He might not admit to being hers, but she could feel it. Every move of his lips over hers, and the slide of his tongue against hers. The way his hands moved over her body. He was trying to claim possession, but he had already done so. It was that she could feel her own possession in the way they touched. In the way he tasted her. For there was a care in the way he handled her that spoke of someone