Chapter Thirteen #2
Which is how he ends up with the group for the majority of the evening, and it’s Tefi who ends up winning his attentions, and I try not to feel nervous when she elects to leave with him.
Though, I do end up sending a security detail to follow them.
I figure it’s a very normal thing for people to hook up with strangers, but I have every right to feel responsible for how this goes, given that I’m the one that allowed him to join the group.
Which means I can send my security detail out with them.
We all leave the club bedraggled and tipsy at two in the morning, and I fall into bed and wake up when my phone buzzes ferociously. It’s only six, and I feel vile. My head is pounding.
“Hello?”
It’s Zuri.
“Oh God, girl. You’re in trouble.”
“Why?” I sit up, and I try to think around my pounding head, and my dry mouth.
“Your picture with that dude got put all over the internet. And people are acting like you were hooking up with him.”
“What? But Tefi left with him.”
“Yes. Careful editing on the part of the people who posted the photos. They just put up pictures of you talking with him and bringing him to the group. And of course you’ve been identified as the Queen of Alabria, out cheating on your old husband.”
“I wouldn’t… I… I would never.”
“I know that, but it’s all viral now and everything.”
“God. Lucian is going to see this.”
“Yeah. So I would do some damage control with him if I were you. I mean, everyone is cheering you on, and praising you for being out living your life, but then the other issue is it’s now widespread knowledge that you’re going to university.”
People did know, but it didn’t matter before. Because there was no narrative. I open up my phone and google myself, and find the story faster than I would like. The emancipation of the Queen of Alabria. Like I’m the prisoner. Except I was. And… Why is this so…complicated?
Because a lot of the things that they say about him are true.
But they don’t know him. And they don’t understand.
They’re also diminishing me, the role that I played in our marriage.
The way that I chose him. How much I want him.
It’s all turned into this thing about him manipulating me, taking advantage of the power differential, but of course says nothing about how I stepped in and chose to marry him instead of my sister.
And of course they act like he installed me at university as a place to keep me, ignoring that I got myself in, and he wanted me to go because he… cared what I wanted.
It makes me hate everyone.
I try calling Lucian, but he doesn’t answer his phone.
So I spend the day texting him, and he doesn’t respond to me.
I’m worried, worried that my marriage is over.
Worried that this breach is something that we are never going to be able to come back from.
Doesn’t he know me well enough to know that I would never cheat on him?
And anyway, I thought he didn’t care about his reputation. But now suddenly my dragon is what? Pouting in his cave because people think that I cheated?
That’s not fair. If he’s upset about it, he certainly has a right to be. I’m not happy about story either, but I didn’t do anything wrong. I didn’t do anything wrong, and he’s not communicating with me.
I call him five more times; he doesn’t answer.
And I spend the next several days at school being a celebrity in a way that I’ve never wanted to be.
Deeply regrettably, this has also opened me up to men thinking that I’m an easy target, and so I’m also fending off advances left and right, which I can certainly say has never happened to me before.
“I hear you’re up for a good time,” some random bloke says to me in a common area, and I finally lose it.
“I’m married! And I’m not sleeping with some random when I have a king with a castle back at home.”
Where are my online stalkers when I have a tantrum like that in public? Certainly not posting anything that goes viral.
My friends tried to cheer me up through the entire thing. My mother and sister video call me with deep concern. And I tell them that nothing actually happened. But of course the one person I actually want to speak to does nothing to get in touch with me.
I sit alone in my room, feeling… I don’t even know what. Is it heartbreak? Can it possibly be when no declarations of feelings have been shared by anyone? I’m deeply wounded by the entire thing. But most of all, by Lucian’s silence.
This is just like every man every woman in my family has lo—
Oh, it hurts.
I care for him so much more than I wanted to. I didn’t protect myself, and now I’m broken.
It feels like a betrayal. It feels like a real lack of trust in me. That he would let us be broken over this.
I start to worry about him so much that my grades suffer.
Which infuriates me. Because being here isn’t supposed to be about him.
It’s supposed to be about me. He isn’t speaking to me, so why can’t I just not think of him?
I’m living my dream, and I’m worried about this man that’s only been in my life for a few months.
To the point that he’s all I can think about.
To the point that his silence feels more imposing than his presence ever has.
And it feels like another thing he’s forced upon me. And I am over it.
Which is why, at the end of term, after my final exams, when I see a large silhouette standing in front of my room, I am confused.
My heart leaps up into my throat, and I feel certain that it can only be one person.
But that one person hasn’t even returned a single text of mine, so how can he be here in person?
Why would he be?
It doesn’t even seem possible. I’m hallucinating. That’s how badly I want to see him.
“Lucian?”
He turns, and everything inside of me combusts. He’s here. He came to see me. He came—
His expression looks grave. What if he’s here to end our marriage?
I’m not going to let them do that. I’m not going to let them say that. I fling myself across the space, and throw my arms around him. “You came for me.”
Slowly, he wraps his arms around my waist. “You’re happy to see me?”
I pull away from him. “You idiot. I’ve been calling you. Texting you. Trying to make sure that you’re not angry with me.”
“I’m not angry with you. I wanted to give you space.”
“Space? I didn’t ask you for space. When a person calls you and texts you, generally they’re asking for connection.”
“I thought perhaps you needed a chance to explore certain things.”
“Lucian. Do you mean…? Did you think that I hooked up with that man?”
“No,” he says, his voice raw grit, like it’s being pulled through his teeth. “I didn’t. I didn’t because I know how wrong the press gets it all the time. But it did make me think that perhaps you were wanting the chance to do something else. The article did have a point. I am older than you and—”
“I have no interest in boys. I have no interest in anyone who isn’t you.”
“Perhaps you only think that.”
“No. I was a twenty-two-year-old virgin not because I could’ve never found a man to take my virginity, but because I never found one who interested me. You know, men are notoriously not particular about who they sleep with.”
“You are gorgeous,” he says. “You can have any man you desire. I’m not trying to say that you couldn’t. But I am saying that things are different here, and you have more opportunity.”
“I don’t want the opportunity. Next time, pick up the phone. Don’t make decisions for me.”
He looks raw, and angry. He looks desperate. His shoulders sag, and for the first time, I see Lucian defeated. “I stayed away as long as I could. I couldn’t manage it anymore.”
“Thank God.”
Then he kisses me, roughly. And I open up the door to my apartment, closing it and locking it behind us. I think of all the times, all the ways in which he has reduced me to a creature filled with nothing more than want and need. And I want the same for him. I don’t want him to have control.
Because that’s the real problem with the way all of this played out.
He had the control. He was the one who chose not to contact me.
As much as he saw that as giving me something, it speaks to his ability to stay away from me when I can’t stay away from him.
I want him to feel the way that I do. I want him to feel desperate, reduced.
I don’t want him to have all this power.
The media’s wrong about where the power lies.
It’s not in him being older. It’s not in him being a king. It’s in his ability to withhold himself.
I think of all the times he’s given me three orgasms to his one. All the times that he’s turned our intimacy into my own sexual torture.
It’s wonderful, glorious. And yet at the same time, he is the master of it.
I want to be the master. I want to be the one in charge of everything we are.
Of all this heat and glory.
I want him naked, in front of me while I remain fully clothed.
“Sit down,” I say. It’s an order, and I’m not certain that King Lucian has ever obeyed an order in his life. But he does so, pours his large frame into the wingback chair that sits by the fireplace. “Take your clothes off,” I say.
“You are in no position—”
“Yes, I am,” I say. “I am the queen. And I demand that you make amends for the way that you’ve treated me. I feel extremely ill used. And I want to see my husband naked. Because of course I haven’t slept with anyone else. Haven’t kissed them, haven’t touched them. Have you, my king?”
“Of course not,” he growls.
“Then you must be as desperate as I am.”
“I need you,” he says, and for the first time I see a spark of frayed control.
“If you’re desperate, then show me. Take your clothes off.”