How to Catch a Queen (Runaway Royals #1) - Alyssa Cole Page 0,45

somehow having disrespected the great and mighty king?”

“You don’t want me to answer that,” he said. He didn’t want to answer, was more accurate. Because what he would have done was what he was already doing—realizing how foolish he’d been to ignore her for so long and regretting that he’d started to pay attention too late.

“I do,” she pressed. “I think I deserve that at least. You barely acknowledged my presence until a week ago. I’ve spent months alone here, pretending everything was all right while wishing I would open this door and you’d be on the other side. But when it happens in real life, you’re here to use me or accuse me. Of course. Every fantasy I’ve ever had becomes a monkey paw wish in this kingdom.”

They were standing very close together and neither backed off. He looked down at her, his gaze taking in all the smooth skin exposed by the pajamas he’d focused on before. The flex of her biceps and calves. The arches of her feet—she stood on the balls of them, as if not willing to give him more height over her than was absolutely necessary.

And in her anger, she’d admitted something.

“Have you—do you . . . You wished I would come to your door? Before now?” he asked, instead of answering her question.

“I wished you’d do more than come to my door.” She admitted this with barely concealed anger, and by Omakuumi and Amageez both, her frustration was as sexy as it was unexpected. “You’re my husband. And for some reason, despite everything that’s happened so far, I still want you to act like it.”

The intensity in her gaze was something he felt on his skin—in his bones. Her anger was still there, but it had been joined by desire, like two edges of a ceremonial spearhead poised to pierce him through. He wanted to be pierced, to feel after months in his lonely shroud of grief and years building iron walls around any expectation of connection.

It’s only been a week, he thought, but that wasn’t true. This pull between them had been there from the moment he’d seen her, and it grew in him now as he looked down into her face.

“Wife,” he said. “I don’t know how to act like it. I don’t know what a husband is supposed to do but ignore you. You might have noticed this.”

There. That was an answer, of sorts. It was something that he should have been ashamed to admit but he was so tired of pretending, even in the queen’s wing where no one would report back on his weakness.

She raised her brows and studied him like he was one of her spreadsheets. “Is this some kind of joke? How do you not . . . know?”

Sanyu glowered at her—she hadn’t accepted his apology and now spoke to him like he was a fool.

“Is it common knowledge?” he retorted. “I’m sure you have the numbers on average divorce rates of various nations in that brain of yours, so you know that it’s not.”

She nodded. “Okay, true, but your father had many wives, didn’t he? Having wives was his thing. Surely somewhere along the way you observed—”

“My father is my role model in many ways, but not in how to treat a wife,” he countered darkly. “I’ve already lowered myself by admitting a lack of knowledge. You say you don’t want love, and don’t need affection, but yet you want something. Explain to me what husbandly behavior you had in mind when you imagined me coming to your door. Now.”

She smiled, a gentle curve of her lips that was somehow both welcome and warning at once. “There’s nothing low about asking for help. I like explaining things to you. You might have noticed this.”

Sanyu’s heart was beating quickly, but not with the sickening feeling that usually came with his not-fear. In fact, not-fear was the last thing on his mind—his head was only filled with the desire he’d tried to ignore since he first laid eyes on this woman, that he fought every time he saw her, that he’d punished her for by ignoring her instead of giving in to what he’d been taught was weakness.

“And to explain succinctly, I was horny,” she said. “When I imagined you showing up at my door, you helped me deal with said horniness. It’s the husbandly thing to do.”

Sanyu swore he could feel the warmth radiating from her. Was she blushing, even as she looked him boldly in