Chapter Ten #3
It wasn’t much comfort to hear that, in spite of being a queen, she was still at the mercy of very basic human weaknesses. As if she hadn’t known that already.
A week after Poppy had left, Caius found himself in the dressing room of his apartment. All of the clothes that had been installed for Poppy were still hanging up. He spied the blue dress she’d worn to the polo match and gathered it up, holding it to his face, breathing in her scent.
He wasn’t sure how much time passed but when he caught sight of himself in the mirror, for a second he thought someone else was in the room. He blinked and realised it was himself. In sweats and a creased T-shirt, beard unkempt, hair wild. Eyes wilder.
He hadn’t been sleeping. He’d been having nightmares. All featuring various versions of Poppy looking at him with horror and disdain if he tried to come close to her.
But last night, he’d dreamt of his daughter. Of holding out his arms to her and of her turning away and running to Poppy, crying.
Caius made his way down to the drinks cabinet and poured himself a shot of whiskey, throwing it back. He didn’t need to be Sigmund Freud to interpret that. It was pathetically obvious.
‘Caius?’
Was he hearing things? He turned around and it took a second for him to realise who he was looking at.
‘Cassie?’
His beautiful blonde sister came towards him with concern on her face. ‘Caius, what’s going on? You were supposed to have a meeting with Ares today while we’re in New York and you never showed and we couldn’t contact you.’
She looked around. ‘Where’s Poppy?’
‘I sent her home.’ Caius’s voice was harsh. It had to be, or it would crack under the strain of the emotions in his gut.
Cassie looked at him and took it in. And saw. ‘Oh, Caius, what have you done?’
Ten days, Poppy thought to herself. It had only been ten days and she could barely remember what it had been like to feel…not in pain. Emotional pain. She cursed Caius again. His rejection had made anything she’d experienced with her father look like a walk in the park.
She let the groom help her put the saddle on the horse. She was aware of the young man glancing at her a little fearfully, no doubt put off by her stony expression. She had to force herself to smile at him when he’d finished tacking up the horse.
And then she noticed his eyes flicker to something behind her and widen, and he suddenly melted away. Poppy turned around and everything in her seemed to plummet to the ground—blood, heart, stomach—when she saw who it was.
‘Caius.’ She had to say his name. She wasn’t sure if she was hallucinating. Maybe he’d migrated from her fevered dreams to daytime hallucinations.
‘Poppy.’
His deep voice hit her right in the solar plexus and reverberated like ripples on a pond, igniting nerve-endings. Igniting her anger.
‘Does Stephen know you’re here?’
He nodded. ‘I just saw him.’
And Stephen wasn’t here trying to stop Caius from talking to her. A nugget that had significance but not the kind of significance that Poppy wanted to even think about. She was going to fire Stephen.
‘What do you want, Caius? I told you any discussions would be between our teams.’
‘I want to talk to you…to try to explain…what happened in New York.’
Poppy opened her eyes wide. ‘Nothing happened in New York. I came home and you were getting back to your life.’
Poppy turned to the horse and put her foot in the stirrup.
She prayed she wouldn’t look like some ungainly baby elephant as she swung her leg over the horse’s back, but she managed to get into the saddle without making a spectacle of herself.
And it was satisfying to look down on Caius, who she noticed now was wearing jeans and a loose shirt.
He looked somehow…diminished though. As if the stuffing had been knocked out of him. Some vital spark dulled. She pushed down the urge to ask him if he was OK.
‘I’m going for a ride, Caius. Please see yourself out of the palace.’ She turned the horse to head out of the stableyard and only vaguely heard a curse behind her. She didn’t care. She was shaking now. Shaking with shock and adrenalin and something much more awful. Hope.
She was along the trail when she heard the sound of another horse behind her.
She didn’t turn around. She knew it was him.
They stayed like that for a while, Caius behind her, saying nothing, until they came to a clearing with a small pool.
It was warm. Poppy knew the horses needed to rest and drink water.
She got off her horse and tied it off to a tree. And finally looked at Caius, who was securing his horse.
She faced him, hands on her hips. ‘Why are you following me, Caius?’
‘I’m sorry, Poppy, I never wanted to hurt you.’
Oh, God, he was here because he felt sorry for her. Poppy hitched up her chin. ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Caius. In order to hurt me I’d have to have feelings for you and I couldn’t care less.’ The baby kicked her. Poppy ignored it. The little traitor.
‘Well, that’s good, because you shouldn’t care for me at all, because I have nothing to offer you except myself and that is a man who has avoided having to engage with anything emotional his entire life for fear of becoming his parents.
‘And,’ he went on, ‘for fear of letting anyone close enough to see that underneath all the smoke and mirrors was just an empty existence devoid of any meaning. My coronation day was the worst. I’d never felt like a bigger fraud.’
Poppy’s hands dropped from her hips, anger draining away. ‘Caius…you’re not a fraud.’
He smiled but it was sad. ‘You knew I was a fraud. You called me one, remember?’
But before Poppy could protest that she hadn’t meant it like that, he was saying, ‘But I don’t feel like a fraud when I’m with you. I feel real. Worth something, just from the way you look at me, like you see something no one else ever has…except maybe Cassie. She came to see me in New York.’
‘Cassie?’
He nodded. ‘She knows…how it was for us. She knew I’d done something to push you away because it’s hard for us to believe that we can find the kind of happiness we never experienced.’
Poppy swallowed. He was saying a lot but it still didn’t mean… ‘Why are you here, Caius?’
‘Because there’s nowhere else I want to be,’ he said simply.
‘Even before we had the scare with the baby, I knew I was fighting a losing battle trying to keep a lid on my emotions. You tried to talk to me about a future, that night…the night of the event, and I pretended I didn’t know what you were talking about, but of course I did, but I couldn’t even give such a suggestion air, because I would have had to admit I wanted more too, and I wasn’t ready to do that… ’
His mouth thinned in self-disgust. ‘So I made love to you…any excuse to avoid opening up, and I wanted you so much… I was trying to fool myself that the sex was divorced from my emotions but of course it wasn’t…but then you—’ Caius stopped talking, going pale.
Poppy’s insides twisted. ‘Caius, you know it wasn’t the sex.’
He swallowed visibly. ‘Maybe I’ll fully believe that one day but—’
Poppy put up her hand. ‘Stop, right there.’ She walked towards Caius, stopping a couple of feet away. ‘You have to stop blaming yourself for something that had nothing to do with us having sex, or how much we want each other.’
Caius’s eyes widened. ‘You just said how much we want each other.’
‘I never stopped wanting you, Caius. I felt crazy that day at the polo, I wanted you so badly. But you could barely touch me.’
He shook his head. ‘I never stopped wanting you, Poppy. I will never stop wanting you. But it scares me, the depth of desire I feel, like it’ll be destructive.’
‘How can something that feels so good be destructive?’
‘Because the only passion I ever saw was dark, possessive, jealous and ruinous.’
‘That wasn’t passion, Caius, that was two broken people hurting each other.’
‘I think I know that… It’s just taken me a while to understand it because I never had to think about it before, until I met you and suddenly I was wanting and feeling so much and…terrified to let it out. I didn’t know how to handle it.’
Poppy said, ‘I’m scared too, Caius, scared of rejection and of everyone around me ignoring me and not seeing me because I’m not worth anything.’
‘I see you, Poppy, and you are worth everything.’
Somehow, without even knowing they’d moved, Poppy was in Caius’s arms, their gazes locked onto one another.
He said, ‘I’m so sorry for pushing you away…for being such a coward that I had to reject you.’
‘You’re not a coward. You are worth so much, Caius. You are good and full of integrity and you make me feel like I can do anything.’
He smiled and tucked a wayward hair behind her ear. ‘You can, you’re magnificent.’
Feeling dreamy, Poppy said, ‘You still haven’t told me why you’re here.’
‘Because I wanted to tell you that I don’t want a year, or five years, I want a lifetime.
I want to be your consort, your husband, your lover, and I want to try and be a father to our daughter even though I haven’t a clue what to do.
I just knew it would kill me if I was some sort of stranger to her.
I want to fight to prove I’m worthy of you, and her. ’
Poppy lifted his hand and kissed it and looked up at him. ‘You will be an amazing father—you’ve already been a father to your sister but you don’t even recognise it.’
She went on, ‘There’s just one thing missing.’
‘What?’ Caius looked a little frantic.
‘Do you love me, Caius?’
An intensity suffused his face, his eyes blindingly blue.
‘Poppy, what I feel for you doesn’t even come close to any definition of love I’ve ever heard.
You consume me. I want you. I need you. I don’t ever want to take my eyes off you…
and the idea that we’ve created something, someone, that’s an extension of you… ’
Caius put a shaking hand to his chest. ‘I feel so full, I don’t know where to put it. If that’s love, then, yes… I love you.’
It was all she needed to hear. Poppy mentally rehired Stephen and reached up, winding her arms tight around Caius’s neck, her belly pressed against him.
Her vision was blurry. ‘Oh, Caius, you don’t have to put it anywhere except let it out, share it with me…
I love you so much.’ She said shakily, ‘I thought you were gone, back to your life…’
He shuddered in her arms. ‘No way, that was such an empty existence. Do you really mean it, Poppy? You love me?’
She nodded. ‘More than anything. Now will you please make love to me before I explode because I’ve missed you so much?’
Caius looked worried and Poppy said, ‘Caius Mansur, if you don’t kiss me and make love to me right here, right now, I’ll have you deported.’
He smiled. ‘I guess if we’re gentle it’ll be OK.’
Poppy pressed her mouth to his and he kissed her back, she pulled away and started to strip off, desperate to feel Caius where she needed him most, pulling him down onto the ground and opening her body to him.
There was no foreplay, Caius joined his body to hers and all talk of being gentle went out the window as the fire rose up around them and consumed them both, leaving them in a state of shattered bliss just minutes later.
Caius came up on one elbow and looked down at the woman he adored more than his own life.
She looked drowsy and sated and pink and so beautiful.
And she was his, and he was hers. And when she looked at him now and saw right into him, he felt peace.
He would never hide again. He knew that he might never be worthy of her but he would do his damnedest to fight to be. For the rest of their lives.