A knock on the door interrupts the moment.
“Come in!” the king calls, not looking away from me.
The door to the room opens, and the king’s soldiers come in with dinner.
I begin to get up.
The king’s free hand clamps down on my hip. “Stay here.”
“Every time you exert a little more intimacy, the interest on my end of the bargain goes up,” I say.
“I don’t care.”
And here we are, locking horns once more.
Behind me I can hear the soldiers. They make quick work of setting out our dinner. I wait until their footsteps retreat. Until the door opens and then clicks shut behind them.
Until I’m alone with my monster once more.
I yank my captive hand out of his, along with the tumbler. I down the second glass’s worth of alcohol, then set the empty cup on the table.
Readjusting my hips on the king’s lap, I place my hands on his seatback, caging him in.
A very honest smile spreads across Montes’s lips as I lean in, my hair dangling between us. “Is this what you want from me?” I ask. I’m tired of fighting every inch he takes, and I’m tired of him toying with me.
Now both of his hands grip my outer thighs, holding me in place. “No,” he says.
He closes the last of the distance between our mouths and brushes his against mine. “I want everything you have to give,” he murmurs. “And everything you don’t.”
He’s taken my memories, my mortality, my freedom, even my death. I don’t know how much more there even is to give.
Chapter 16
Serenity
“You’re different,” I say.
I’m sprawled out on my stomach in front of the fireplace in the king’s game room, a now half-empty bottle of what I learned is bourbon and two tumblers sitting in front of me.
We’ve long since finished eating dinner. I don’t mention how odd it is to no longer feel nausea or pain when I eat and drink. I’d gotten so used to both that it’s strange to not have to deal with them.
The king healed me.
Between the initial betrayal that landed me in the Sleeper and his more recent reluctance to wake me, I let myself forget that Montes spent the better part of a century curing me, far longer than most people even live.
I can’t fathom that kind of perseverance. That kind of loyalty.
I watch him as he lights the fire. And I’m not liking where my eyes are landing. It starts with his hands. He has nice hands. Not too thick, not to boney, just … deft. Capable.
My gaze moves up his forearms. Underneath his bronze skin, his muscles ripple.
It doesn’t take long for my attention to move to other parts of him. His dark hair, which is just long enough to have fun with. His corded back, hidden beneath his shirt.
To my utter mortification, he turns then, catching me eyeing him like he was my dinner.
“I know,” he says. “I’ve been telling you this.”
I almost forget what I said in the first place.
That he’s different.
That’s why my emotions can’t seem to land on anger. Every time they’re about to, I learn something that shakes up my entire worldview.
“I don’t trust your word, Montes,” I say. “I trust your actions.”
I watch as he finishes lighting the fire. Who would’ve known a man like the king could do anything so practical?
He straightens, dusting off the last of the bark from his hands and thighs. “And what do you think of my actions?”
My mouth tightens, and that’s answer enough. I haven’t seen him pull any of his usual, horrible stunts where people die and he gets everything he wants.
He heads back over to me and stretches himself at my side. “You’re at a loss for words. How unusual.”
I peer over at him. “I notice you’re still good with them,” I say, ignoring how that intense gaze of his is focused entirely on me. I lounge back on my forearms. “If I didn’t think you were the devil, I’d say you’d be able to seduce even him.”
“You give the oddest compliments,” he says, his eyes pinching happily.
He’s happy. I’m making him happy. And, for that matter, I’m happy.
Oh God.
Of all ironies to exist, we are the worst one.
I grab the bourbon bottle then, fumbling with the cap.
Montes takes it from me and pours a minuscule amount of alcohol into my cup. Really just a sip.
“I see you’re still a control freak,” I say. And now I’m just recovering from the fact that this is happening all over again. I’m getting sucked under, lost in his dark eyes and black heart. It takes so little.
Montes laughs, oblivious to the fact that while he maintains control, I’m losing it. “It just so happens that I actually care about how you’re going to feel tomorrow. Shocking, I know.”
Out of all the thing’s he’s said, I don’t know why that one slips through my defenses.
But it does.
I cover the king’s hand with my own, my fingers skimming across his skin. I’ve wanted to do that little action for a while now. It feels just as good as I knew it would.
Montes stares at the hand touching his.
Slowly, his eyes rise to mine. I see lifetimes and lifetimes of desires in those eyes. They all begin and end with me.
He never stopped loving me. That much is obvious from his expression.
And yet, the same man who stares at me in apparent adoration also shut me away in some desolate corner of this palace for decades and decades.
“When did you forget your feelings for me?” I ask.
His brows pinch, and his eyes grow distant. “When you live without someone for as long I have, love becomes this abstract concept, something you attach to a memory. And when memories are that old, they feel like dreams, and you wonder if any of it was real, or if your mind created it all.”
It hurts to hear what he has to say, and yet, I understand, and that’s the worst of all.
“Why didn’t you just let me die?” He hadn’t woken me, after all.
“I am over a hundred and fifty years old, and in all that time only a single woman has been able to move me.” He looks over at me then. “You are mine. I would never let you die.”
I should be horrified by the statement. Instead I feel the tempest of this man’s love for me. It survived a century apart, it survived Montes himself, a man who shouldn’t even be capable of something like love.
The king lifts himself up from where he lays and he leans over me, forcing me to swivel to face him until I’ve rolled onto my back.
And then he’s there, his presence enveloping me.
I can see his intent in every line of his body, the firelight dancing along his skin.
It’s happening all over again. This. Us.
It feels old and new all at once. Montes’s intensity will always make me feel like intimacy is something I’m experiencing for the first time, and yet my body now knows his, as does my heart.
He dips his head, his hair trickling my cheeks. The moment those lips touch mine will be the moment of no return.
If I do this, I have to accept that my heart’s going to get broken all over again. Because I can’t become the king’s lover once more without handing him my heart. And this time when Montes shatters my trust, I will be the fool who let it happen.
I’m making peace with that. The world is bigger than me and my heart, it’s bigger than my life and the king’s. It always has been.
“I’m going to trust you,” I say softly, his mouth a hairsbreadth away from mine. “Even though you don’t deserve it.”
His intense face stares down at me. He presses a hand to my cheek. And then
he kisses me.
Ash and fire, blood and death—it’s all wrapped up into a single stroke of his lips. Both of us are burning, burning. This is heaven and hell.
His body lowers until it’s pressed flush against my own. All the while, his mouth moves against mine. He savors everything about me, every scar, every wicked deed, everything remotely good. And I do the same.
He’s not wholly evil. I’ve always known this about him, and yet it’s a sweet lullaby to believe that he is.
My breathing picks up as he begins to run his hands up and down my sides.
Montes begins to move against me. My fingers find the edges of his shirt, and I’m yanking it up even as we continue to kiss.
He helps me out of it, and then it’s his turn. His hand moves between us, unbuttoning the top of my fatigues.
Our movements become rushed at that point, our old, tormented souls desperate for each other.
Once we are both free of clothing, Montes settles himself between my legs. He bends his head down and kisses the skin between my breasts.
All those years ago, had I ever imagined people could be this way? That men were good for more than just friendship and fighting?
Montes’s fingers slide into my hair, and he tilts my head to gaze down at me.
My broken, broken monster. I run my fingers down his cheek. He’s just as beautiful as ever, but beneath his skin are the horrors of a century and a half of life. And not just any life, a tyrant king’s life.
He turns his head to kiss my palm.
I know all about broken things. I came from a broken house, and a broken land full of broken people. I have a broken soul and a broken heart. This man doesn’t know it, but all his cracks align with mine.
Montes shifts his hips, and I angle mine to meet his, and then he’s entering me.
Bliss. I begin to close my eyes at the sensation of it.
“Look at me,” he says.
My eyelids open, and I gaze up at the king as the two of us come together for the first time in over a century. It feels like it’s just been days to me. I’m sure, to Montes, it feels like lifetimes.
We stay joined, unmoving, for several long seconds. I can feel his heartbeat pounding against my skin, he’s so close to me.
“I imagined this moment countless times,” he admits. “Feeling you around me again.” He slides out slowly, then thrusts back in. “It never did you justice.”
His lips brush my cheekbone. “You are better than any dream I had of us.”
And we are worse than any of our nightmares. This conundrum we have.
It should never have been this way. The two of us have done so many unforgivable things. But at the end of the day, we are two wrongs that, together, make something right.
Chapter 17
Serenity
I blink my eyes open. Early morning sunlight streams in to the king’s rooms.
I can’t immediately figure out how I got here. Last night was a blur once we started drinking. I remember what I did with the king well enough for heat to spread to my cheeks. It’s what happened after that’s hard to remember.
At some point last night, after we’d dozed off, our bodies twined around each other, Montes had woken me up. After feeding me water and some nondescript pill, he led us back to our room.
I shift slightly, and the moment I do so, I feel coarse fabric rub against my skin. I finger the edge of the shirt I wear. It falls to my thighs.
Not mine.
I wear the king’s shirt. I must’ve walked through the palace last night in it. I scrub a hand over my face and muffle a groan. That’s not one of my prouder moments.
Whatever he gave me, it must’ve countered the alcohol because I feel decent. Not great, but decent.
I lay in bed staring out at the room, trying fruitlessly to fall back asleep.
Time and memory are a strange thing. The room I spent my wedding night in, as well as every piece of furniture inside it, are long gone. And yet, I swear it’s as though no time has passed.
My head tilts to the side. It’s not just the room that’s the same. Déjà vu sweeps over me as I stare at the king’s muscular back, not for the first time reveling in his masculine beauty.
A duplicate memory assaults my mind. That first morning I had looked over at the king, the light streaming in just like it is now.
It’s all the same, and yet it’s not.
I reach out and run my hand over his olive skin. That freckle of his is gone, the one I noticed the first time I woke up next to him. I wonder what injury got that one, that tiny freckle that brought me to this man at the beginning of it all. All signs of his mortality have been wiped away by the Sleeper.
He stirs beneath my hand.
I hadn’t meant to wake him. I don’t want him to wake. Not yet.
But what I want has little to do with the situation. He rolls over.
His eyes meet mine, and a lazy smile spreads across his face as he draws me to him.
He nuzzles my nose. “I dreamed of you and then I woke, and I realized it wasn’t a dream after all.” His words are sleep-roughened.
His voice, his touch, his expression … I’m remembering last night vividly.
The king must be too, because I see a flare of heat enter his features, and then he rolls us so that I’m on my back and he’s covering me.
Almost immediately, my breathing picks up. The girl in me is embarrassed by it. I try to sit up, but Montes’s hand presses against my sternum, pushing me back down as he begins to kiss between my breasts.
It doesn’t end there.
The kisses continue, and he’s dipping down, down …
He spreads my thighs apart. I’m about to push him away, when his lips press against my core.
My breath escapes me all at once.
He groans. “Nire bihotza, you taste the same as I remember.”
Suddenly, I’m not so keen on pushing him away. And my embarrassment … It’s still there, but it’s taken a backseat to the more immediate sensations.
Montes wraps his arms under the backs of my thighs, pulling me even closer. His mouth is everywhere, and he’s still just as good at this as I remember.
A small cry slips from me. I feel the breath of his husky laughter.
I’m climbing, climbing—and then it halts.
Montes releases my thighs, his body moving up mine. I don’t have time to be disappointed; I feel the press of him against me as he slides in.
We stare at each other, twin points in the universe. I think I mean more to him than even I realize. He won’t speak his thoughts, not a man like this, one who rarely lets himself get vulnerable. But I see them nonetheless, gleaming in the back of his eyes.
He captures my mouth, and I taste myself on his lips. It’s wrong and it’s right, it’s dirty, it’s pure—the king makes all my carefully crafted dichotomies disappear.
He pulls my hips close, deepening each stroke—
Oh God.
I break off the kiss. “Birth control,” I rasp.
Birth control.
We forgot last night.
The king freezes, though he’s practically trembling in an effort to hold back. We both are.
Montes leans his head against mine. “I have none.”
None.
I think about what that means, how that changes my own plans. It doesn’t—not really.
But shit, to do this knowingly …
“You are my wife,” Montes says. “This is how it’s meant to be—how it was always meant to be.”
Neither of us has moved.
“I can’t,” I whisper quietly, divulging this weakness of mine. It might’ve been a century since he lost his child, but it’s still fresh in my mind.
&nbs
p; Montes searches my eyes, and something like realization, or wonder, subtly changes his expression. I can only imagine the strangeness of the situation from his perspective—his long lost wife’s mind still lives in a past he’s nearly forgotten.
“You don’t want to carry our child, or you don’t want to lose another one?” he asks.
My throat works. I look away.
I am no longer fearful of having the king’s child.
I’m fearful for it.
Montes must see it in my expression, my mannerisms.
He lets go of one of my hips, relaxing his hold so that he can tilt my jaw until I meet his gaze.
“Nire bihotza.”
Those two words carry a world of meaning. It’s a strange mixture of love, and hope, and all other sorts of beautifully heart-wrenching emotions. “This time would not be like the last,” he says, and I can tell he means it.
“It can’t be.” My voice breaks as I speak.
It really can’t be. I am becoming Montes, paranoid of losing everything that I love. Because I’ve lost so much.
His hand brushes my hair back. “It won’t be.”
I draw in a shuddering breath and shake off somberness that comes with remembering.
And then I’m the one that pulls him to me, pushing this forward.
I’ve always wanted my pound of flesh, and now I’m taking it.
Chapter 18
Serenity
We’re back in the Great Room, the king’s mad walls hidden once more by large screens. And once more the space is filled with military officers. I intend to get to know each one, eventually. For now I have to hope that Montes’s subjects respect him a whole lot more than the ones that filled his conference room a century ago.
In addition to the U-shaped table that takes over much of the space, there’s now a smaller one that faces it, where the king and I sit.
I spend the first several hours of the day listening to officers discuss updates on the war and strategies they’re implementing.