Chapter 22
It was useless, and Lorelei knew it even as she cast aside all the restraints that had bound her.
She would never have this beautiful, kind, strong, and honorable man to keep by her side forever. That had always been an impossible dream—she’d known it even as she’d indulged herself by abducting him—but she hadn’t been able to resist the doomed attempt.
Tomorrow, the Tournament of Leaves would finish. After that, whether they won or lost, she’d promised to return Gerard to the mortal realm. And then …
Then, Lorelei would have to watch him willingly walk back into the heart of the Serafin Empire, away from her and along a path that led only to ruin and death.
She knew exactly how Emperor Otto II would react to his Imperial authority being questioned by a dangerously popular member of his private council. He’d already shown his hand to the world with his first Imperial high priest’s arrest.
For better or worse, Gerard de Moireul had always followed the god of both war and justice and respected the gravity of the law. His emperor felt no such personal restraints.
So, no, tonight couldn’t be the start of anything real and true—but it was still Lorelei’s last chance. So it wasn’t so much that she threw herself at him as that she finally stopped holding herself back.
When she landed on his lap and his arms closed around her, the relief felt overwhelming.
His strong legs were a sturdier throne than any she had ever ruled from; her palms molded around his big shoulders as if they’d belonged there from the beginning.
Perhaps they always had, after all. Goddess knew, she’d been drawn towards him like a lodestone from the very first night they’d met—and that need was clearly mutual.
The delicious proof was pressing up against her core, driving her wild, while his lips sought hers with unhidden hunger.
Thank Sylvana she’d chosen this dress with its skirts made of daringly mobile strips!
The petticoat underneath was scandalously short; it slipped easily up her thighs, allowing her to wrap her legs around his waist like a vine binding itself around an oak tree, making him utterly hers …
for this one night. Gerard’s heartbeat hammered against her chest, all of his usual impenetrable calm vanished, as their lips met and breath mingled.
She didn’t only want to ravish this man—she needed to meld herself into him until she’d embedded her scent into his skin and he would remember her with every breath he took, no matter how far apart their destinies took them.
Sylvana knew, she would never be able to forget this moment; it was only fair that he share that poisoned blessing.
She didn’t even notice the cool wetness sliding down her own cheeks until she tasted sudden salt in their kiss.
“Lorelei.” Gerard drew back, breathing hard, and brought his hands up to cradle her face for a too-keen inspection.
His thumbs swept out, calluses rubbing with delicious friction against her skin, and brushed away her tears with a care that threatened to shatter her completely.
“Oh, don’t worry about those,” she said lightly. “They’re nothing! Completely meaningless. Just ignore them, for my sake.”
She tried to lean forward, to reclaim his lips and make him forget, but he held her in place, his grip gentle but implacable.
“Lorelei.” His voice was pained, but his lips quirked into a small, rueful smile.
“We truly do not have to do this. I swear to you, none of my commitments will change if you don’t want—”
“Oh, yes, we do!” she said fiercely, and grabbed hold of his uniform jacket before he could escape. “I’ve been waiting seven years for this moment. If you’re going to be cruel and tease me now, after everything we’ve been through—!”
“You are weeping,” he reminded her. “Something is clearly wrong.”
“What absolute rubbish.” Lorelei lifted her chin and sneered up at him. “Darling, I always weep at times like this. That’s simply the way I am.”
“And that, my darling, is a flat-out lie.” His voice was a deep rumble that vibrated through her, with a tenderness that made her frantic. “You never willingly let anyone catch any glimpse of vulnerability.”
She narrowed her eyes dangerously. “I believe you’re thinking of yourself now, General.”
“No, I’m thinking of both of us.” He shook his head slowly, never breaking her gaze. “Haven’t you noticed yet? We’re two of a kind.”
Her lower lip wobbled horrifyingly at the truth of his words; she sucked in a bracing breath and shook her head right back at him.
“Careful!” she said and attempted a scornful laugh.
“If anyone ever heard the famously noble Golden Beacon compare himself to the most notoriously immoral queen on the continent, whatever would they think?”
“Regardless of what anyone may think, you’re not immoral,” he said calmly, “and I am finished with self-delusion and fencing around the truth. I’m in love with you, Lorelei.”
Oh, goddess, no, I can’t bear this. “Don’t—!” Lorelei began.
But he was already continuing like the inexorable force he always had been on every battlefield in his life. “I have loved you for years, I think, though I was too cowardly to admit it to myself until now.”
Was he, of all people, calling himself a coward? Lorelei was ready to wrench herself free and flee into the night … if only the warmth of his palms around her face didn’t feel so meltingly addictive, as if she’d finally found a home where she entirely belonged.
Her pulse thumped frantically at her throat, like a bird battering at its cage, and her attempt at laughter sounded half-strangled. “Goodness, such high drama, and I haven’t even removed any of my clothing yet! Are you always so sentimental with your lovers before they’ve satisfied you?”
“I wouldn’t know,” he said simply. “I haven’t had any lovers until you.”
Oh, Sylvana. Is this meant to be torture? Of course Lorelei had known he was rumored to be chaste. But to have it confirmed—to have this gorgeous miracle of a man offered up to be all hers, if only…!
She was so wrapped up in the shock of his revelation that he slipped his next words like a dagger through all of her guards. “Are you always so unwilling to accept real love when it’s offered to you?”
“Argh!” Lorelei let out a muffled scream, squeezing her eyes shut against him and every impossible temptation that he offered. “This isn’t real love. You know it can’t be. You, of all people—”
“I know I haven’t been able to get you out of my mind or my heart for seven years,” he said as easily as if he were relating a perfectly ordinary, everyday fact and not tossing an incendiary device into her life and future.
“I know that no one in my life has ever gotten under my skin the way you do.”
“Like a stinging insect?” She opened her eyes to roll them pointedly at him.
“Like a soulmate.”
The sincerity in his amber gaze made her bones feel as if they were melting, braced muscles and pride only barely holding her upright and her voice rising in panic. “What would you know of soulmates? You’ve never even had a single lover before me!”
“And you’ve had plenty,” he said calmly. “But tell me, Lorelei, did you care for any of them as strongly as you do for me now? When you look back on all of them, did any of them feel like such a perfect match?”
Lorelei lifted her chin into her haughtiest expression and did not respond.
His smile was slow and glorious, and she couldn’t wrench her eyes away as it lit up his face. “Lorelei, we fit. You feel that, too, don’t you?”
She pressed her lips tightly together, but he nodded anyway. “That’s what has you so afraid now.”
“Damn you,” Lorelei gritted out, “I told you before—I am not afraid of anything.” Green shoots pierced the silken floor around them, thrusting upwards with aggressively sprouting leafy vines to wrap themselves tightly around Gerard and Lorelei’s entangled figures, locking them in place together.
Supported and cradled by her own creation, Lorelei glared mutinously at her nemesis, who looked infuriatingly unaffected by their new cage of vegetation.
“You see? There is literally nothing you can do to hurt me!”
“One day,” he murmured, “you’ll allow yourself to believe I never would—because I love you, too.”
Wait—“too”? Panic flipped Lorelei’s center of gravity, leaving her breathless. “I did not—! I never said—!”
“It’s all right,” Gerard said patiently. “You don’t need to say the words. I know you love me, Lorelei. That’s why you kidnapped me in the first place.”
“Ugh!” He was impossible. He was the most stubborn and enraging man she’d ever met. Without a doubt, he would be her undoing. But when she tugged upwards against his grip with a desperate, wordless moan, he let her move, his strong hands sliding down to her waist to pull her even closer.
Giving up on debating her way to victory, she sealed her lips to his and rubbed herself against him, instead, to claim it by different means. No more talking. No more perilous, life-disrupting words could be allowed to escape into the too-seductive warmth and privacy of this tent.
From now on, she simply wouldn’t let him speak.
But it was impossible to miss the message he was sending her with every movement that he made.
She might be keeping his lips safely occupied, but the slow, warm stroking of his thumbs around her waist was a terrifying statement of care in itself.
Wriggling within the constricting cradle of vines that surrounded them, she reached between their tangled bodies to yank his troublesome hands up and place them firmly on her breasts, determined to get this intimate encounter back on track, just like any other act she’d shared with other lovers across the years …