Chapter Two
IT WAS INSANITY. The pulsing, sexual haze that surrounded him was utter insanity. It was a spell, and he had to be strong enough to break it.
She had tested his control and resolve before, but only in the bedroom, only in his own mind. Never with demands. Never with wants of her own.
Nothing like this.
He held her there, a terrifying thrill of power flowing through him. She was in his grip. She was his to do what he wished with. She was such a tiny little thing in stature, but the curves she carefully downplayed in her royal outfits were on plain display in nothing but her underwear.
Ivory skin. Soft. Warmth. Life. Her cheeks were flushed, her breath as ragged as his. Her blue eyes wide, but there was nothing like fear or concern in that gaze. No, it was all want.
Underscored by the fact her hands were carefully undoing the buttons of his perfectly pressed shirt, all the while she looked right back at him.
She was just so warm. She smelled as she always did, some alluring mix of citrus and vanilla. It existed in her skin, deep in her hair, everywhere. Now it wound around him like some opiate haze.
Her hands pushed the shirt open so that his chest and stomach were bared to her. She leaned forward, and his hand in her hair allowed the forward movement. As she pressed an open mouth kiss just over his heart.
Then lower. She undid his belt, the button of his pants, his zipper, and he watched her as if outside himself. She tilted her head up, and he still did not let go of her hair, but he let her continue to move down his body.
She held his gaze the entire time she sank to her knees, even as she wrapped her hand around the base of him, guided the hard, throbbing length of him into her mouth.
He hissed out a breath.
They had never done this. They could not be doing this. This did not beget children, which was the only reason he’d ever been with her in the first place. Heirs. Duty. To be sure, it had always ended up being pleasurable, but not solely for the sake of pleasure.
This was.
Her mouth hot and sweet. Her eyes that vibrant blue that held him in some kind of vise. Her hands on his still-clothed thighs as she took him as deep as her inexperience allowed.
He would come undone in mere seconds if he let her continue such a thing. He would stop this. Here. Now. A lapse in sanity. A momentary weakness.
When King Alexandre was strong.
He pulled her away from him by her hair, the sound she made—a keening kind of moan—arrowing through him, tearing all his determination to ribbons.
He released her hair and pulled her up from her knees and in one swift move deposited her on his desk. He kissed her, deep and rough, wildfire in his veins. Pounding through him so hard he couldn’t hear any more of his thoughts.
He unsnapped the enclosure of her bra and filled his palms with the perfect weight of her breasts. They moaned together this time. The warmth of her skin, so human, so real, so soft. His. His.
The desk was at the perfect height to spread her legs wide, to step in between them, to slowly, torturously rub against where she was wild and ready. Her desire ripe around them as he kissed her deeper and deeper.
There was some distant alarm in his head. His office. His desk. His control tattered on the ground, but he could still pick it up, salvage this mess.
“Alex,” she panted into his mouth. She almost never called him Alex. Not even in the throes of passion. Usually only when she was angry with him.
Now she panted it. Angry? Maybe. But not only angry. His name was as much demand as it was plea.
He thought himself a better man, and it only took his arranged bride to undo all of that.
And then he was inside her, and she moaned, erupting around him in great, clenching waves. Wanton and careless. He’d known he could push her here, and yet he always held himself back.
Wild was the enemy.
But it had won today, because he moved inside her chasing all that wildness.
All that desperation. She moved against him, held on to him, chanted his name in pleading, pleasured glory.
She touched him, and somehow she made him feel like a person—hot-blooded and real—instead of what he had to be: an icon. A statue. An immovable force of good.
She kissed him—her mouth was soft, reverent. Like she might care for him beyond all he had to be.
He had no space for that, even as it wound inside of him like a drug. Even as he stopped holding back from his own crashing orgasm.
The moment was intense. It made him feel like someone else. Like a man. Any man. Not a king. Not the man tasked with undoing his father’s horrid mistakes.
Just a man. The weight of it enough to make him unsteady.
And even in his brain-melted state, he knew unsteady was the enemy.
He removed himself from her, blinking back into reality even as his body still pumped in sluggish pleasure.
His office. His day. He did not have time for this. He’d be late. For all the tower of things that must be done.
God knew he hadn’t even locked the door. What if someone had come in and seen him in such an animalistic state? It would have been a disaster in a million different ways.
And she dared to sit on his desk, naked and mussed from him, looking…sated. Smiling. It stoked a fury in him that he knew was the tainted blood of his father. But he would not ever cross a line into violence, into fury.
That did not mean he had it in him to be kind. “I hope you’re happy.”
Ines was happy. Oh, it wouldn’t last, considering he was about to ruin it all, but that had been…
Glorious. Wondrous. Altering.
Except it hadn’t altered him. Well, for a moment it had, but now they were back to stone cold King Alexandre. Maybe with a little more panic, but he was reining it in, even as she sat on his desk—naked—still trying to catch her breath.
But now, in a stark kind of clarity, she understood why she’d believed he could never return her feelings for him.
He always saw to her pleasure during their appointments, and she knew he found some of his own.
But it was always…a kind of detachment. He never caused her pain, was always gentle and attentive, and obviously came to his own…
conclusion. Or there would be no expectation of a baby, after all.
But never this wild, fiery thing. Never this loss of control. Never seeing who he was underneath all those brick walls he built for himself.
But now?
She reached out to touch him, and he sidestepped away from her hand. He bent over, picked up her discarded clothes and handed them to her.
She didn’t take them at first.
“We didn’t even lock the door, Ines.”
He sounded so disgusted. She thought she should feel some kind of shame as he did, but she could not find any inside of her. Perhaps when the aftershocks of it all wore off, but she rather thought it was hardly the end of the world to get caught up with one’s spouse.
She took the clothes. “I do not know that anyone would be all that shocked that a man and his wife might share a morning appointment.” She slid off the desk and began to pull her clothes back on—because the door was still unlocked.
“Perhaps they would not be shocked, but people have phones, Ines. Would you be quite so casual if pictures of your naked body were sold to tabloids around the world?”
Ines blinked, his words like a bucket of cold water. She shivered against them. “Perhaps not,” she managed to say. “But it seems you are reaching for the worst-possible scenario.”
“Yes, that is my job. My duty.”
She sighed. She knew he felt that way, but she did not know how he lived under the weight of that.
She kept trying to save him from the weight of that, but he never listened to her.
Never considered her. Not when it came to them as people.
“It does not always have to be about duty. Not always.” She stepped forward, wanting to reach out and touch him, knowing he would only avoid it again.
“Sometimes it could be about us, if you’d let it. ”
He made a dismissive sort of noise. “I am going to be late for my meeting with the French diplomat. A meeting I cannot afford to be late for. You must leave at once.”
He did not look at her. A million feelings crashed around in her chest. She even gave half a thought to causing another scene. Be the storm. Be in charge.
But for the moment she was a bit too bruised. She wanted to retreat, and wasn’t this whole thing about getting what she wanted?
So she followed the impulse. She left his office saying nothing else. She tidied herself up and met with all her appointments that day, but neither her heart nor her head were truly in it.
They were both back in his office, reliving that moment over and over in her head.
She wanted it to mean something. She wanted it to mean everything. She even fantasized about it.
If she pressed for the annulment, would there be a repeat performance?
Or would he relent and give her what she didn’t want but thought she probably needed?
She was too terrified of the second option, but she did not know how to continue like this. She wanted to be a person, not only a queen. A human being, not only a statue.
He wanted the opposite. Whether he should or not did not matter, because it was what he wanted.
Almost a year of being his dutiful wife had not changed anything for him. Her goodness had not suddenly made him any different. Even that unexpected loss of control and blazing passion had not changed anything for him.
She had realized sometime in the past few weeks it never would, and today only confirmed that. So how should she proceed? How could she save herself from the relentless weight of wanting to be a mother? Wanting him to love her—knowing he never would?
If he would not give her the annulment, what then?
A knock sounded at her bedroom door where she sat at the mirror getting ready for dinner. Before she could respond, it opened, and Alexandre stood there. He did not cross the threshold.
“Evelyne has had the baby.”
For a moment, the words couldn’t arrange themselves in a way that made sense. His sister. Baby. The baby.
Her nephew had been born. Ines knew she should feel elation, but for a moment there was only a sharp stab of pain at the idea that she could not seem to find love and a future for herself. “Oh.”
“She would like us to come meet him.”
Ines gathered herself. There were some things that no matter how she was feeling, no matter how much she wanted to change them, she still had to put on a queen’s mask and face. This was one of those things.
Not because it was business, but because regardless of what went on between her and Alexandre, her nephew had been born.
Will he be my nephew if Alexandre allows an annulment?
That thought ached. But she shook it away because no matter what Evelyne was her friend. They would remain friends.
She rose. “Yes, of course.”
She crossed the room, but Alex did not move. He stood in her doorway, a disapproving, concrete mountain.
But he hadn’t been that in his office this morning. Certainly not when she’d lowered herself to her knees and—
“Before we go down to her room, I would like you to know I’ve given your request the necessary consideration.” He stood there, stiff and formal, hands clasped behind his back. He appeared to be looking at her, but he was not truly meeting her gaze.
She studied his dark eyes, fascinated by this slight change. This slight sign of…cowardice.
“An annulment is unlikely, though not fully out of the question. This delicate situation will require time and thought and careful planning,” he said, his voice toneless.
“I do not wish to use my nephew’s birth as a distraction for anything so…
distasteful. Since it will take some time, and you no doubt do not wish to remain in the palace, I will arrange somewhere for you to live. Out of the way. Private.”
Her mouth dropped open. She had not expected him to simply sign off on an annulment. She had definitely expected refusal. But this was…
“You’re…sending me away?”
“Not immediately. You will stay put until we know…” He glanced down at her stomach.
As he so often had in the past year. They never said words like not pregnant or no baby.
It was all code words and glances at the parts of her body that seemed honor-bound to betray her while offering no medical answers for why.
Stay put. He wanted her to stay put. But if she was not pregnant in a few weeks, as would no doubt be the case considering the past eleven months, he would send her into exile. While he and he alone worked out the details.
She forced herself to breathe normally as she began to see spots. Perhaps it was rage. Perhaps it was a rage stroke. She wasn’t quite certain. But he turned on a heel and walked away.
To see Evelyne. To meet the baby.
And she would stay put, while he adjusted everything to suit himself.
No. No, she couldn’t allow that. The certainty of that was like a tsunami of purpose, but an argument would be pointless. He was the king.
So she said nothing. She followed him to Evelyne and Gabriel’s wing and tried very hard to force a believable smile for the pair as they entered the bedroom.
Evelyne was in bed, a bundle in her arms. Gabriel’s hip rested on the edge of the bed, looking down at both his wife and the baby.
Ines did not look at Alex. She stayed on one side of the bed, while he went to the other.
Ines looked at the baby. Just the tiniest thing. His eyes closed, his round face relaxed and content. It brought a wave of love and envy. Joy and pain. She blinked back some tears, looked up at Evelyne.
Luckily her sister-in-law’s eyes were on her son, so she would not see the tears in Ines’s own eyes. She just looked exhaustedly at peace.
Ines felt the love and joy she so wanted to experience. She felt a wave of love for this little bundle who was her nephew.
Or not, depending on how Alexandre worked things out. Details he got to choose. Instead of doing the sane thing and agreeing to return to their appointment schedule, he was going to send her away.
No. No, he didn’t get to do that. He didn’t get to decide. If anything made it clear it was this new life—a life that brought Evelyne and Gabriel so much joy in the moment. She wanted that.
If Alexandre wouldn’t give that to her, she would not be his pawn, his tool, his anything. She would not be sent away. She would not live her life at his whim.
She was the storm.
For the first time in her life, she was going to decide.