Chapter Nine #2
“You should go and get changed,” he said.
“I’m fine.”
“You are not fine. You’re going to catch your death.” She was in a wet wedding dress. It really was quite ridiculous. The fabric was ruined, sodden. Just like everything else.
“I don’t have anything with me.”
“Foolish woman. You think that I took you without making preparation for you? Do you think that I planned to fling you into the sea without providing you with warm clothes?”
He got up and went to the sideboard, took out a bottle of whiskey and poured himself some. “You cannot have any. Therefore, you will have to warm yourself by getting dressed.”
She stood, her hands trembling. “All right. I will.”
She tried to keep her head held high, tried to hang on to some semblance of pride.
She didn’t like that he was giving orders and that she was obeying them, but this was an order that she really quite wanted to obey.
All things considered. She was freezing.
She went into the bedroom at the back of the plane, and opened a closet in there.
Turbulence rocked her and the hangers just slightly, and she cursed that she tripped over the wet, sodden dress.
Then she dug through all the clothes, found a pair of sweats and elected to go with those. She had no one and nothing to impress after all.
It was such a funny thing. She had treasured, obsessed over, and loved Andrei for so many years. And yet he had seen her in sweats, pajamas and now nothing. He knew her better than anyone. And now he hated her.
It was an extremely brutal reality that she found herself living in.
She stripped the dress off, her skin clammy, and tossed it into the bathroom that was next to the bedroom. Then she slipped on the sweatpants, the sweatshirt.
And as she was doing so, she had the full realization of what had happened today.
Of what Andrei had done. He had jumped off a cliff into the water with the two of them. He had taken her across the ocean to another island.
He was afraid of the water, even if he would never have said it that way. But he had violated his own rules about the sea, had taken her in the cabin downstairs so that he could be with her, and then had engineered this rescue that should’ve gone against everything he’d designed his life around.
The rescue itself violated his life’s work. And he had done it anyway.
It made her feel sick with guilt. Regret.
But then… He would’ve kidnapped her today even if she weren’t pregnant. He didn’t know about the baby.
She didn’t know whether that made her feel a strange sense of joy, or rage. He hadn’t put the country first. He hadn’t…
He had put her first.
Or just him.
But knowing that he wanted her that much was a strange sort of intoxicating elixir she had never known had the potential to be quite so powerful.
She came out of the bedroom, and he was getting dressed. He was wearing only a pair of black pants, and just as she came out, he pulled a white T-shirt on over his muscles.
How could he be so familiar to her, but so novel all at the same time? How could he be the man that she had known for most of her life, and also a stranger? The object of her fantasies, but also a fantasy fulfilled, and one pushed even farther out of reach.
She knew him well enough to know that his fury was not something to take lightly. Knew him well enough to know that this was not a small slight in his eyes.
He would make her pay for this. Possibly for years to come. He had made it so that Onyx couldn’t save her, and while she knew that for Andrei, protecting her was paramount, she also knew that she was his now.
Whatever that meant.
“We both had the same idea,” she said, trying to force a smile.
“Don’t,” he said. “Don’t speak to me like nothing has changed.”
“I made the decision that I made,” she said. “It was the only one that I could think to make at the time. But you planned to undermine my decision all along. So I’m not certain that you have the right to be quite this angry at me.”
“You would deny me my child.”
The words were like a knife. He was singular in his feeling on that, and he wasn’t going to shift.
She couldn’t blame him. The truth was, staring at that through his dark, outraged eyes, she saw the flaw in her decision.
Immediately. She couldn’t justify it. But she wanted to.
She wanted him to believe the best of her, even now.
It was such a strange, hollow sensation, this need to cling to the choice she’d made while also feeling that her choice had been a cowardly one.
One that she would’ve regretted. One she regretted now.
“We will land soon,” he said. “We’re not going far away.”
“But how do you expect we’re going to hide?”
“Because we’re going back to Romania. To my father’s house.”
“Your father’s house? Don’t you think that it’s certain that we’ll be found in that case?”
“No. Nobody knew about the estate. The whereabouts of the property of the Ardelean Crime Family are very secretive. My father told me this when I was a boy. Then I have known ever since.”
“You… Crime family?”
“Yes. My father was fleeing persecution of his own making, Princess. My father was not a good man. But, that has its uses for me now. I wanted to be different than him. I didn’t wish to treat a woman like a position.
I did not wish to put the needs of myself above the needs of a nation.
And yet, now I find that I feel differently.
Because your wishes have no place here. And nothing matters but that I get what I want.
And what I want is you. I would have taken you to be my wife.
But now I’m happy to keep you as a prisoner.
You are used to seeing me in your brother’s kingdom.
But in my home, no other man sits on the throne. There, I am your king.”