Chapter Six
CHAPTER SIX
M ILA WASN ’ T SURE that it was a better idea at all.
In fact, she thought a few days later as she quit the palace for the September House, she was fairly certain that she had taken leave of her senses completely. And this time she did not have the excuse that she was off on a journey to experience a different sort of life, as prescribed by her own father.
This time she did not have any excuse at all.
Her mother fussed at her about everything and nothing, the way Alondra always did when one of her flock was leaving her—something Mila had to chant to herself to keep her smile welded to her face and the spirit of empathy in her heart.
“The kingdom has soldiered on through this very same crisis a number of times a year since antiquity,” she reminded the Queen Mother.
Also my mother , she reminded herself, who calls me only my title so she won’t slip up and call me an endearment in front of government officials.
“And we no longer have to send messengers by horse and cart. You can call me. If you must.”
Alondra did not miss her daughter’s faint emphasis on the word must.
By the time Mila sank into the back of the armored SUV that had been prepared for her, she was only too happy to sit back, close her eyes, and start counting the minutes of the drive that would take her to a month of something far closer to freedom than usual. That was as normal as her retreat itself. It wasn’t that Mila didn’t enjoy her life and her role. She did. But she also liked this tradition—the only version of a holiday a queen could have.
She was driven out of the city before the car started making its way around the lakes. One after the next. The car wove a path from lakeshore to rolling field to lake yet again, giving Mila a tour of the country itself.
It looked like a painting. It always had.
She supposed it was down to her to make certain it always would.
The car began to climb once more on the far side of the great valley. They took the steep switch-backed roads until the air grew colder and she could see that snow had already fallen on the highest peaks. Only then did they turn in through a set of unmarked but sturdy gates, then take a slightly less steep zigzag of a drive until they reached the house itself.
It had been built to be a kind of mirror of the palace that stood all the way down on the other end of the valley. It was too far to see with the naked eye, though she’d seen artists’ renderings of the two buildings and the valley many times, as it was considered an iconic representation of Las Sosegadas. But the two royal dwellings couldn’t have been more different.
Where the palace was a collection of spires and turrets, rising high above the kingdom’s capital city like a beacon of prosperity and peace, the September House was more of a brooding affair. It had been built as a hunting cottage, but the word cottage didn’t really apply. It had been expanded over the centuries so that now it was a cluster of different buildings that shouldn’t have gone together at all.
Yet they always seemed to do so beautifully, to her eye.
Mila could feel the tension in her shoulders melt away as they pulled up and stopped before the stairs that led up to the heavy wooden doors.
The house was ready for her. All the lights were blazing against the bite of the cold this high up. She knew that the kitchen would be stocked full and that the staff who lived on the grounds would give her the space she liked. There would be deliveries of perishables twice a week and otherwise, unless she called them in, she would be left to her own devices.
Mila felt the lick of a familiar flame, deep within.
She let the driver carry her bags inside, because he would have been offended if she did not. And then she stood in the warm, welcoming hall that smelled the way it always did—of a hint of cinnamon and something citrusy—and waited until the car disappeared back down the long drive.
The flame within her danced higher.
The house had been built as a place to relax on a grand scale. The library flowed into an atrium, then flowed out onto the terraces that were lovely in warmer weather, then seemed to roll off into the woods. She walked that way, but instead of heading outside she took the turn that would lead her into the rambling kitchen. Then to the old door that led down into the cellars.
The cellars housed some of the kingdom’s finest wines, and many gifted bottles from abroad, but she walked past them. She kept on going down a long, cold corridor carved into the mountain, then down another flight of stairs that a scant few people even knew was there.
It had been hidden, deliberately. It was far off in the back and looked as if it should be little more than a closet. Mila pulled the keys from the pocket of her long skirt that she’d brought with her from the palace—another item she hid away in her private effects. She opened the door that looked like a forgotten closet and switched on the lone light that did little to beat back the shadows gathering there on the spiral stone stair. It looked and felt medieval, and her father had told her—when he’d told her about this family secret in the first place—that there were some arguments to be made that it might, in fact, date from that period.
But it had been put to great use in the last century’s great wars.
Mila followed the cold stair down and around until she got to the heavy iron door at the bottom. She fit a second key into the lock there, and threw the dead bolt. Then she pushed back the other bolts with her hands, and slowly, carefully, opened the heavy door.
And then smiled.
Because he was there, right where she’d told him to be.
Better yet, he was lounging against the wall of the tunnel that wound down for a mile or two and came out in an abandoned tomb in the nearby village. And even here, in the faint light from that single far-off bulb, Caius looked...
Perfect , Mila thought.
Rakish and beautiful and his gaze met hers, bright and hot, and warmed through with that particular spell work that was only his.
That same gleaming dragon deep within her stirred, and its tail seemed to snake through her, sending sensation spinning into every last cell.
“I feel like a spy,” he told her, with that grin that suggested he quite liked that idea.
“You are now in possession of state secrets,” she told him. “Use your power wisely.”
“I think you know I always do.”
And they were both smiling too much, Mila thought. She actually felt giddy and that could only be dangerous, because she couldn’t pretend it was something to do with the pent-up air down here.
It was her. It was him.
It was the fact that he had suggested he join her here and she had immediately figured out how he could.
And here he was.
Giddy barely covered it.
Mila tried to cover up her reaction by motioning for him to come in. He did, with his usual nonchalance and nothing but a bag slung over one shoulder. She started fussing around with the bolts and the locks again, before she realized that all she’d done was leave them both crowded on top of each other.
At the bottom of a spiral stone stair.
With only the faintest little bit of light.
She cleared her throat. “The tunnels were built a very long time ago,” she told him as if this was a tour of the September House that he had signed up for, the way tourists could do at the palace. “They have been used in any number of wars and minor skirmishes, as you can imagine. It is never a bad idea be difficult to find when people are calling for your head, or for a revolution, or are looking for simple and effective way to occupy a country.”
“I always thought of the kingdom as somehow above the whims of war or invading armies,” Caius said.
“We would like to be,” she replied. “The tunnels help. So do the mountains.”
And she was afraid, suddenly, that he would be able to hear her heart pounding in her chest if she stayed still any longer. Mila turned abruptly, as if she had never had a lesson in comportment in her life, headed back up the stairs. Sprinted back the stairs, more like.
She cautioned herself to slow down, but she felt as if she was some kind of mythological creature, granted a wish. All she had to do was lead Caius up from the underworld.
Mila wanted to glance back, but she didn’t dare. Everyone knew what happened if she did.
Back in the main part of the house, she found herself buffeted by the strangest feelings. And it took her some while to realize that she felt...out of place. As if she didn’t quite know what to do with herself.
The moment she identified that sensation, she very nearly laughed. Because she couldn’t recall feeling like that in a long, long time.
And the last time she had, she had been setting out on the adventure that would lead her to him.
“Well,” she said, all formal and stiff after she’d led him on a small sort of tour. And felt as if her skin was seven sizes too small on her body while he seemed only to become more boneless with every step. “I don’t know what your intention was when you suggested this—”
“Yes, you did,” Caius replied.
They had made it to the low-slung, relaxed living area, all soft, aged leather and a fireplace stocked with wood, ready to light.
He tossed his bag on one of the sofas, and then turned toward her with a look of intent.
And everything in her flashed into a white-hot coil of need. Desire.
That dragon testing its gleam, stretching out inside her.
“We can’t possibly just leap —” she began, almost desperately, though she didn’t step away. She didn’t move a single inch.
“We can.” He stopped before her, his bright eyes alight. “Take the leap, Mila. Let’s see if we can find our wings again.”
Then Caius simply pulled her into his arms, lifting her high above him so he could slide her back down the length of his body.
Mila’s mind went blank with delight, though it seemed as if her mouth still wanted to form words. As if there was an argument waiting, there on her tongue.
But her body knew exactly what to do.
She wrapped herself around him as he slid her down the length of his torso. And so by the time he settled her, his hands gripping her bottom and her legs around his hips, she could no longer tell who was kissing who.
It felt too good. It was a catastrophe .
A cataclysmic eruption of everything she had put on hold, everything she had tried to forget, everything that had always been there, waiting.
And this was no kiss stolen on the balcony where anyone might happen along.
Mila knew that both of them were fully aware that no one was going to interrupt them here.
That for the first time since she’d looked up and seen that he’d walked back into her life with that same smile on his face, they were well and truly on their own.
And this was what that meant. What that had always meant.
That blazing fire. The dragon’s mighty roar.
And the sheer, impossible joy of it.
She dug her hands into his hair and found herself rocking against him, to make it better. To make it worse.
And also because she couldn’t stop.
He didn’t wait another moment. Caius toppled them both down onto the nearest couch, and then everything seemed to implode even more.
One implosion after the next, as if they might die like this, wrapped up in each other—and Mila wasn’t sure she’d mind.
He pressed her down into the embrace of the sofa, and she bloomed beneath him. Had she worn this particular airy skirt in the hopes that it would go this way? Had she known that it would be like this—that his hands would be on her thighs, smoothing their way up to the V where her thighs met, so he could stroke his way into her softness while his tongue did the same dance with hers?
Maybe she’d only dreamed it, for years, but now it was real.
Neither one of them spoke. Because this was the same wildfire that had always consumed them, only this time, it was... more.
More intense. More demanding.
More dangerous, Mila managed to think, but that didn’t stop her.
Her hands were beneath his shirt, finding their way to those muscles of his. She was alternately clinging onto him or digging into him, depending on what he was doing with first one long finger, then two.
And the thing about Caius is that he knew exactly what he was doing.
He threw her over the cliff too easily and she found her wings there, laughing as she shook and shattered.
That he moved over her, reaching down between them to free himself, before thrusting his way home.
For a moment, then, there was only this.
The sheer, impossible glory of it.
He filled her completely. It had been so long.
They were locked together, their gazes, their bodies. It was as if there was no telling where one of them ended and the other began.
She clenched around him, unable to stop herself, and felt him as he shivered in response.
And then that shiver seemed to roll through her, so that suddenly she was shattering apart all over again, but he stayed where he was, hot and hard and still so deep inside of her.
She slid her hands around the front of his chest, still tucked there under his shirt, and for a long, long while, there was only shaking apart. Shaking back to life.
Shaking and shaking and shaking.
When she opened her eyes again his magical gaze, like nothing short of spell work, was all she could see.
“I want to see you.” She swallowed, hard. “I’m still protected. But I want to see you, Caius.”
She had never been more grateful that she had taken her sister’s advice and gone on birth control when they were still teenagers.
I don’t... Mila had blushed. I mean, I haven’t...
It isn’t about what you’re doing or not doing , Carliz had said. It’s about setting a precedent so that no one but you ever knows if you need it or not.
Mila made a mental note to send her sister a gift.
Caius blew out a breath. He rested his forehead against hers, holding himself there for one breath. Another.
Then he withdrew, and that felt like grief all over again. It rolled through her too much like a sob.
But he was only shrugging out of his shirt. He wore some kind of chain around his neck but he pulled that off too, crossing over to his bag and tossing it all there, followed by the rest of his clothes. Mila followed suit, and he crossed back to her he made a very low, very male sound of appreciation that she was naked, too.
Then he rolled her with him as he lay back down, so that she ended up between the back of the sofa and the glorious wall of his body.
She thought he would say something then. But there was no curve in the corner of his mouth. His eyes were like magic, and they were all she could see, still.
And suddenly everything felt sacred.
Caius smoothed a hand over her face, this thumb moving over her lips. Then he pulled her over the length of his body as he turned on his back, settling her astride him.
And then, with his hands at her hips to encourage her, to command her, they both seemed to hold their breath at the same time she braced herself against his torso and angled her body to take the full, thick length of him deep inside her once again.
“ My Majesty,” he growled.
Then Mila tipped back her head, arched her back, and lost herself in the rhythm he had taught her five years ago.
It was the same dance, but it felt like new.
They were the same people, but five years’ difference had changed everything. And nothing. And somewhere in the tension between those two things, there was this .
The way she rocked against him, half blind with need and pleasure and spinning out on the sheer beauty of the heat they made together. On her softness and his hardness. On all the ways they fit so well, so perfectly.
Just like five years ago, he met her as she moved, until the dragon was in flight and everything was fire.
“You had better hurry, my queen,” he told her as the fires built. “You’re running out of time.”
Mila laughed at that, throwing back the hair he’d taken down with his greedy hands. She moved faster, wilder. And then, finding his gaze and holding it, she reached down between them and found the center of her own need.
And she hurtled herself toward that edge.
But he was there with her as she leaped—
And then it was nothing but a soaring, sweet flight with fireworks all around, comets and shooting stars.
Until she floated back down to earth and caught herself right where she wanted to be, with her face tucked into the crook of his neck.
Just like coming home , she thought.
Or maybe she said it out loud, because there was an echoing rumble in his chest.
But there was no point worrying about that now.
She drifted off to sleep, in a way she knew she hadn’t done since Noemí had walked into that room in California and curtseyed to the new queen. She slept the way a monarch never could, because she knew that with his arms around her, he would protect her from whatever came. That she could trust him to take care of her.
And as she drifted there, half awake and half asleep, she knew too well how dangerous it was to think these things. How they had led her to marry him in the first place, which was the cause of all this trouble.
But it didn’t feel like trouble today.
It felt like lifetimes later when she stirred and found that he had disentangled them, but still lay there with her, his gaze on the ceiling. She took stock, finding tiny little remnants of sensation like undercurrents, running beneath her skin. There was the endless list of things she ought to have been worried about—but this was the September House. Unless and until there was a pressing matter of state to deal with, she did not have to worry about anything.
That was the whole point.
So she propped up her chin on her hands and looked at him, at those impossibly artistic lines of his beautiful face.
“So,” she said.
She could feel laughter move in him though the only sign of it on his face was the shift in his gaze, that dark amber lightning. “So,” he agreed.
There were too many things she wanted to ask him. But all of them were huge. Weighty and impossible when she had the feeling that this thing between them, just now, was like spun glass. It would be easy enough to hurl it to the floor and watch it shatter into shards too small to ever put back together. Too easy.
Alternatively, she could go the other way and blow the glass into shapes and colors, just to see. Just to make something different.
Or possibly because you can’t face the truth , a voice inside her scolded.
But she accepted that.
“Where did you go?” Mila asked instead. “After California?”
It was a risky proposition. She knew that before he slid a gaze her way, one brow lifted. As if to ask, Do you really dare?
But she gazed right back at him, steadily.
And he could have been the one to take that little bit of glass and throw it against the wall, but he didn’t. “I needed a project,” he said. “Something to lose myself in.”
She did him the courtesy of not asking what he meant. Because looking back, she supposed that that’s what she’d had, too. The project of becoming the Queen . Of morning her father. Of planning her coronation. Of turning herself into the sovereign.
There had been no time to think about what might have been.
Or perhaps it was more accurate to say that every time she had thought about it, she had chastised herself for losing focus.
And despite all of those other things to focus on, it had still been so hard she was sometimes surprised she’d survived it. Though she didn’t like to think about that.
“I started a production company,” he said, with a self-deprecating sort of laugh. She remembered him sitting in the firelight on that long hike, talking about his childhood and how his parents had never been there for him, but that there had always been the cinema. There had always been movies to watch and characters to depend on instead. “Such companies are thick on the ground in Hollywood and most of them fail. Usually because of the enormous ego of the person whose vanity is funding the project in the first place. I could easily have taken that route, with my rather robust ego. But I chose instead to have an ego about the projects, not me.”
“That is the only way,” Mila agreed. “Vanity is a mirror. True confidence is a path forward.”
“Indeed.” She had forgotten the way he liked to run his fingers through her hair, letting the silken strands dance over his palm. “The company still exists. We are small, but so far, have a not-unimpressive track record.” Another self-deprecating sound. “It is something to do.”
It would have been easy to laugh at that, and the way he said it encouraged that, clearly.
But Mila didn’t. She studied him instead. “You’re proud of what you’ve done. You should be. It’s not a small thing when you make a dream come true, Caius.”
His expression was wry. “It is not a big thing either, not when one is encumbered with a portfolio like mine.”
“Don’t worry,” she said, smiling at him. “I won’t tell anyone that secretly, deep down, the famously jaded Caius Candriano cares deeply about the things he makes.”
And she was surprised, then, when he shifted, moving to sit up. And she had a moment of something like dizziness that they were sitting there, disheveled and undressed, and she didn’t have to worry about how it would look should someone stumble in.
About what she would do or how she would explain this away.
Something seemed to clutch at her, but she didn’t know what it was. She pushed it aside, because Caius had his elbows on his knees and was shoving his hair back from his brow with both hands.
“This is the part I try to forget,” he said in a low voice. “I don’t want you to understand me, Mila. Not when that understanding doesn’t go anywhere. Not when it’s like throwing stones at the moon.”
She sighed, and that clutching thing inside her intensified. “Do we have to do this now?”
But he didn’t answer her. He raked a hand through his hair instead, and the laugh he let out twisted in her, too sharp. Too hard.
“I made the films for you.” When she didn’t respond to that, or not with words, anyway, he turned so he could look at her. “You must know that, surely. I made them all for you. Love stories, writ large. Like love letters I did not dare send to your palace.”
He gazed at her. And she shook her head, slowly.
Then again. “I didn’t know,” she told him. When he looked incredulous, she lifted her hands. “I do not watch as many television shows or films as other people do. I hate to stumble over some or other representation of myself, or royalty in general. I prefer books.”
And for a moment, she thought he might explode. She’d seen his temper before—always a bright flare followed by instant regret. As if he bubbled over sometimes, could not contain it, and then wished that he had.
But then, she thought the next moment, that was a different version of him.
This version looked at her with a sad curve of that sensual mouth of his and a kind of bleakness in his gaze. “That sounds about right. I am nothing if not predictable. Forever tilting at windmills when you have no use for wind, or mills, or down-market knights of any kind.”
She moved closer to him so she could take his face in her hands. She pressed her lips to that space between his brows. To one eyelid, then the next. She pressed kisses everywhere her lips could touch, from temple to chin to that corner of his mouth where that mocking little curve lived. She kissed him over and over, until she felt the tension in his big, rangy body ease.
And when she pulled back, there was something sweet there between them. Something new.
“What I can give you,” she told him quietly, solemnly, “is September. Will you take it?”
And she knew he would. They were twined together again, tangled up tight. She knew he wasn’t going to storm back out of those tunnels. Not today.
Because they were nothing if not trapped here together.
Maybe she wanted him to admit to it.
“I will take it,” he said, as if they were making vows again. “But Mila, I warn you, that will not be the only thing I take.”
And she chose, then, to misunderstand him. She made her smile go sultry. And then she licked at his mouth, kissing him deep.
Chasing that dragon once again.
“Challenge accepted,” she whispered, and then she wrapped herself around him once more, and set them both into flight.