Chapter 15 – Sebastian
SEBASTIAN
My day ended like shit. A video call with Samil and his cabinet that interrupted my movie time with the children lasting what felt like forever only for him to push the other people off at the end so he could ask me how things were going with Bellamy.
I didn’t answer him, choosing to reply with my expression alone.
“If you’re not planning on fucking her, no harm in someone else tasting her instead.”
And that made me postal. The idea of someone else tasting the woman I already considered to be mine.
No, I haven’t tasted her. Yes, we’re on a good track of being amicable.
She’s still my nanny and she’s all but stopped flirting with me.
Most importantly, my children are happy.
A word that holds so much power over my heart.
It’s all I ever dreamed for them and feared they’d never have.
“I could call her and ask her out,” he threatened. “She is a young, single woman, is she not? You can talk all the shit you want, but you have no right to keep me from her. Your children, yes. Her, no. If I want to fuck her, I will, and you can’t do anything to stop it.”
I hung up on him then and there.
He’s right. I have no real claim on her.
She is my nanny and technically nothing more.
I cannot keep her from men if she were to want their affection and attention.
But the thought makes me fucking twisted with jealousy.
As in punching a wall in my office, wanting to toss my laptop out the window just to watch it crash jealous.
I can’t have her, but I can’t let him have her either. He can’t. I’ll lose my mind.
At first, when she started flirting with me, I knew what it was. It wasn’t real. It was an act of defiance for forcing her hand here. I assumed she’d be like the others. I’d find her naked in my bed, or she’d try to seduce instead of simply flirt.
But she never did.
She took her job seriously. Put her whole heart into it. And little by little, I started to believe our moments were real. It’s not something I’ve had in my life with anyone else, and day by day, week by week, month by month, not acting on that is breaking me apart.
I’ve been good. So good. I’ve followed our rules, and I went from ignoring her to being superficially pleasant.
Then last night I went after her.
First time in three years I went beyond the palace grounds, and I did it for her. I was afraid she’d leave and not come back. What would happen to us then? I could have sent Javier or even a random attendant to get her, but no.
I went.
I watched her on the tracking app since practically the moment she left the palace as I do every time she goes to see her father.
I don’t know what I was expecting to find.
Her in a bar or meeting up with someone other than her father.
Last night when she didn’t reply to my text and she didn’t go to the bus stop, I panicked.
A sick knot in my stomach I couldn’t untwist.
I told myself I was simply going because I wanted to see her in her element, outside of the palace.
It wasn’t even a lie. I wanted to spy on her from afar where I knew she wouldn’t catch me as she always seems to.
But the cold, hard reality was, I wanted to be alone with her.
And when that happened, I couldn’t help but touch her.
Hold her goddamn hand like a kid because I craved the connection.
Kiss her mouth and pray for a small taste.
I can deny it or brush it off all I want, but I fucking want this woman. I burn with wanting her. I’m consumed by it.
Her flesh. Her taste. Her sounds. Her naked body. I crave every last inch and piece of her. I need her cunt on my lips. On my tongue. On my fingers. On my cock. I want her dazzling smiles and smart mouth and huge brain and big heart and gorgeous eyes and stunning face.
I want it all. All of her.
But with Bellamy comes other things. More than just the physical. Foreign thoughts and feelings and words that wage war within me. Battling for the acknowledgment I refuse to give them. She’s grown into a full-blown obsession. No matter how hard I try to fight it.
Too young. Too forbidden. Too much my nanny. Who cares?!
So Bellamy entering my study looking so fucking pretty it hurts, sitting down and drinking American crass bourbon, ready to unload something on me…this might be a bit more than I can handle right now.
Especially after that call. Especially knowing if it’s not Samil, it will be someone else who comes in and steals her away from me.
“Just tell me what you have to say,” I snap when she still doesn’t answer.
“Your children need to be children and leave this palace.” Then she claps a hand over her mouth. “Shit. I didn’t mean for it to come out that bluntly, but that’s what popped out. You made me nervous!” She polishes off the last of her second drink and sets the crystal tumbler down.
“Pardon?” My eyebrows hit my hairline as a strange combination of fury and surprise sweeps through me.
“Your Majesty. Sebastian. Seb.” She tosses her hands up. “Whatever I am permitted to call you, your children need more than what they currently have, and by currently have, I mean being confined to the palace walls.”
“What the fuck do you know about it?”
“I know that they need more.”
I bolt forward, my elbows digging into my thighs, and I pin her with a stare that makes grown men shrivel. “What makes you think you have any right to tell me what my children need? Do you not understand why I keep them in this palace?”
“Yes. I know why you do that.”
“Then what are you asking of me?” I’m at my end. Is she for real with this?
She stands. “Phaedra has a lot of anxiety. Sabrina seeks attention by acting out. She hides under your desk to be closer to you and cried tonight because all she wants is to go to an autumn festival. Zayer has to be held at all times, and if he’s not with someone else, he gets scared and cries.”
I stand too, opening my mouth only to close it again because I was that close to flying off the handle at her.
I pace and run my hands through my hair as I try to calm my raging temper.
And when I think I have it back under control, I turn on her, practically growling with how close to the edge I am.
“Desta was taken from us. Brea has spent her life in a house somewhere I’m not allowed to visit because my mother feels we’re too much of a risk to her.
My father was murdered. My wife’s helicopter went down right in front of us.
And that’s just my immediate family. There are books written on the tragedies that have befallen the generations of my bloodline. These are my children!” I boom.
“I’m trying to help them be children!” she screams back.
“And I’m trying to keep them alive! They’re safe here.” I grip my hair by the roots, my pulse racing. “This palace is the only place I know they’re safe because I’ve made it a goddamn fortress. Cameras and guards everywhere.”
She doesn’t know I have her breaking the bust on video. I’ve watched it I don’t even know how many times. The way she gazed up at the painting…
“It’s a prison of gilded walls!”
My fists clench, her words like knives as they pierce my heart.
“Shit,” she hisses, wiping at her face. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say that,” she apologizes, her voice lowering, her tone calming. Then suddenly she’s before me, staring up into my eyes, the shadows from the fire dancing across her fair skin. “Might I suggest a compromise?”
“No.”
She rolls her eyes at me, propping her hands on her hips. “Sebastian, stop being a dick for two seconds, and listen to me.”
“A dick?” My jaw tics.
“Yes. Does that not translate?” A sigh. “Please, I’m growing flustered again and that’s not helping anything. Shouting at each other isn’t helping because I’m saying stuff without a filter.”
That’s because we get under each other’s skin within seconds when we stop pretending to be polite.
“I’m not being a dick. I’m being a father to my children. You’re the one overstepping. You’re the nanny. Not their mother.”
Hurt flashes across her face as a flush races up her cheeks.
She looks away from me, out into the room, taking several deep, calming breaths in through her nose.
“For someone so mannered you can be so impossibly mean. Don’t you think I don’t know that?
You’ve reminded me that I’m nothing more than the nanny time and time again. ”
“Then shut your fucking impertinent mouth and know your role.”
Her eyes snap back to mine, dripping vitriol. “You’re a bastard.”
“No kidding. That’s not new. Why do you think I’m like this?” I grip her upper arms, holding her so she’s forced to see me. “I can’t lose my children, Bellamy. I’ve lost practically everything in my life but my country and my children, and I will not risk them!”
She swallows thickly, her hands planting on my chest, over my raging heart. “Your wife died before your eyes on your summer palace grounds. Your little sister was taken and your father was murdered in your family’s palace in the east. No place is safe.”
“Thanks for that reminder. Like I needed you to tell me that? This is the best I’ve got.”
Her hand presses in on me. “Sebastian, please listen to me. I realize I’m not saying this well.
What I meant by that was that life happens to us all no matter where you are or how well you protect yourself.
That does not make you cursed. Yes, you’ve lost more than most have.
But that also doesn’t mean you will lose more. ”
“Do you know that for sure?”
“No. Of course not. Nothing in this world is for sure.”
My face dips down, getting right up in hers. “I cannot. Lose. My children.”
“I can’t either.” Her voice catches. “I can’t, Your Majesty. That’s not what I’m trying to do here. I love them. This palace is my home. It is my heart.” She swallows thickly and licks her lips. “You are my home.”