CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“You were quiet tonight at dinner with my parents. Is everything okay?”
Reigna turned to the sound of Jasiri’s voice, puzzled by the concern she heard there.
They were standing at the back of the palace, on the veranda to be exact, a few steps away from the garden path they’d taken to walk toward his parents’ private rooms in the palace.
“Is that actually concern I hear in your voice, Jasiri?”
“Reigna, don’t start.”
She shook her head, then narrowed her gaze into such tiny slits she could barely see all of him in full view.
“Oh, I’m not only about to start, I’m about to finish too.” She stepped closer to him. “I’m sorry, but after I sleep with a man and he instantly tells me he regrets it the moment it’s over, I tend to feel a little less chatty than usual. Excuse the hell out of me.”
He let a soft sigh slip past his lips and pointed to a cement bench at the foot of the veranda. Still annoyed with him, she paused as she contemplated whether to grant his request.
“Please, Reigna, just hear me out.”
She nodded and sat next to him, waiting to hear what he could possibly have to say to her after last night.
“I didn’t say I regretted what happened between us.” She opened her mouth to refute him, but he held up his hand silencing her. “I said it shouldn’t have happened.”
“I fail to see the distinction.”
“Reigna,” he began slowly, as if he was searching for the right words to say. It was rare for Jasiri to struggle with expressing his thoughts, and seeing him do so made her settle, giving him the chance to continue.
“I don’t regret what happened between us in that shower, Reigna. I just know that it has the potential to complicate things in a way I can’t afford right now.”
He kept his gaze forward, never once allowing himself to lock eyes with her. It was as if he needed the separation between them for some reason she couldn’t fully understand yet.
“While I may still harbor resentment for the way you publicly humiliated me when you rejected my proposal, I do not wish to mislead you, Reigna. Nothing should’ve happened between us without me clarifying that nothing beyond the physical could ever happen between us. It’s not what I want, and it’s certainly not what I need right now.”
When he finally looked at her, the seriousness in his gaze and the sharp angles of his face expressed how sincere he was in this moment. He truly believed what he was saying. The only proper response Reigna could come up with was to laugh right in his face.
Right there in front of him, she dissolved into giggles that she couldn’t stop. Leaving him to sit there watching her in disbelief as his brows rose.
“I fail to see what’s so funny about this situation, Reigna.”
“Of course you wouldn’t get it, Your Highness.”
She intentionally addressed him with a bit of sneer in her voice, and she knew it had landed exactly as she’d intended when the muscle in his jaw ticked.
“Jasiri,” she began as her laughter died down, “you have a very essential role here on this island. Please don’t confuse your importance here to your importance to everything else in the world.”
She stood and stepped in front of his sitting form to make sure he understood everything she was saying.
“We had good sex. That in no way indicates that I’m looking for anything more than another orgasm from you. I don’t want a do-over as far as our relationship is concerned. Or are you so stuck on yourself that it never occurred to you that after being dropped into a situation I’m wholly unprepared for that it might do me some good to let go with someone familiar for a few moments?”
She couldn’t tell if it was her tone or what she’d said to him that had his pupils shrunken down into pinpoints and she didn’t care. The absolute nerve of him to think good sex with him would make her lose all common sense. The fact that it had in the past wasn’t the point. She was different now. They were different now, and she had no intention of letting this man anywhere near her heart again.
“Unless I tell you otherwise, please assume that its strictly physical between us. That is, if I ever decide I want someone so arrogant inside me again.”
She stepped calmly away from him, making sure he understood how unbothered she was.
If you’re so unbothered, why did his regret upset you so much?
She ignored the nagging voice in her head and walked into the garden where there were tall pillars of greenery suffused with flowers of varying shades of purple with hints of gold. She was beginning to notice that purple was a theme. First his and his parents’ royal rings and now the gardens. To keep up the charade that she was unaffected by this entire conversation, she decided to focus on the color scheme instead of the unexplainable disappointment his words had stirred in her.
“Is purple and gold your national color scheme or something?”
He stopped, raising a brow to let her know he knew exactly what she was doing. She didn’t care. She would never admit that his not wanting her had wounded her in some way.
“Purple is considered the color of royalty. But yes, purple trimmed in majestic gold is our national color, our brand if you will. Everything from our flag to our coat of arms is fashioned in those colors. When the monarch dies, we mix it with a rich ebony to symbolize the loss.”
She walked over to a pillar, fingers delicately tracing a purple petal. Its softness and its vibrant hue were calming. Unfortunately, her nerves were so loud in her head, she wasn’t sure the island possessed enough purple or flowers to get her to chill the hell out.
She anticipated his heat before she heard him step closer. No matter the physical distance, Jasiri’s heat always seemed to channel to her whenever they were orbiting each other. It was both reassuring and unnerving and she wasn’t sure she’d ever get used to it or if she ever wanted it to stop.
“Well played, Your Highness.” His words rattled her, but she stood firm, refusing to allow him that knowledge.
“You’ve taken me from concern over your feelings to wanting to prove to you why our bodies coming together can never be just physical for either of us.”
She kept her back to him, too afraid that whatever she saw in the depths of his eyes at this moment would be too much to handle in her unsettled state. She wanted him to prove just that. But admitting that would be the first missed step in her downfall.
She finally found the courage to turn around and look up to him. The moon framed his solid form in a celestial glow. His features were relaxed, something she couldn’t quite understand considering the twisted ball of tension her body was at the moment.
Then the corner of his mouth hitched into a knowing grin, and heat quickly burned inside of her.
He closed the space between them, slowly resting his large palm against her face, letting his thumb gently caress the skin on her cheek.
“You, Reigna Devereaux, are turning into the very queen I’d hoped you’d be when I proposed to you two years ago. Your determination to forge your own fate while caring to make a difference made me secure in my decision to ask you to be my wife. I knew that with you as its queen, Nyeusi would only prosper.”
He’d never told her why he’d proposed to her. She knew it was because he loved her. Love and connection had never been an issue for them. A complicated man like Jasiri, however, would never make such an important decision based solely on how he felt about her.
Hearing him say this now, it unraveled that knot in her chest that her worry had tied.
“Why are you telling me this now, Jasiri? We’re long past this. You just told me things couldn’t get personal between us.”
“Yes, but somehow things always manage to be personal between us even when I don’t want them to be.” He whispered those words to her as his fingers lowered to her neck before he burrowed them in her braids. “I thought we were past this too.”
Her parted scalp tingled with the awareness of him. Her senses ignited at his touch, filling her with the remembrance of what it was like to give herself over completely to this man’s ministrations.
“But seeing you throw yourself into this drama and watching you show more care for my country and its people than my uncle, who has lived here all his life, it’s doing something to me, Reigna. Something I don’t want, and yet it’s something I can’t seem to control or ignore. It’s damn inconvenient if you ask me.”
Her tongue swiped against the dry flesh of her bottom lip, trying hard to remember how to speak as she did.
She pressed her hands to his chest, leaning into his warmth, to his demanding presence that seemed to surround her.
“What do you intend to do about it? According to you, last night was supposed to be a one and done. I’d think touching me this way would be strictly forbidden.”
His eyes flickered with amber flames of desire as he stared back at her. Without fear or hesitation, his hard gaze bore down on her, and he said, “Didn’t you hear I’m about to become king? That means I can veto or reverse any previously made edicts whenever I want, without explanation.”