Chapter 29
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Selena
The man’s blood coursed through me, warming my veins, satisfying the hollow ache that had been clawing at me for hours.
I was refreshed, steadier on my feet, my senses sharper.
But Rocco was right. Weariness weighed on me like a second skin, pressing down on my shoulders and settling deep into my bones.
My body was begging for sleep, and I didn’t have the strength to argue with it anymore.
Darius waved his arm in front of a small brick building tucked along the main street—a bed and breakfast with window boxes and a hand-painted sign swinging gently in the night breeze. Warm light glowed behind lace curtains.
Rocco escorted me over, his hand on my lower back.
“We found rooms for all of us,” Darius said.
“Good.” Rocco reached for his pocket. “How much—“
Darius shook his head. “Don’t worry about it.”
I felt Rocco stiffen beside me. It was subtle—a slight squaring of his shoulders—but I caught it. His gaze shifted away from Darius, fixing on some point in the distance. Pride. That old, stubborn, princely pride that he couldn’t quite shed no matter how far he’d fallen.
Darius was still a prince. Still had wealth, status, resources. He could cover a few rooms without blinking. Meanwhile Rocco had spent the last two years flipping burgers and sleeping in apartments that probably didn’t have working heat.
Or at least he had.
The thought snagged in my mind. How much had Angelo paid him to steal the shard?
It had to have been substantial—Angelo didn’t deal in small numbers.
But Rocco had never told me. I’d never asked.
There hadn’t exactly been a quiet moment between the biting, the kidnapping, and the fleeing across an ocean on dragonback.
I filed it away. Another question for another time. Tonight wasn’t about money or pride or the tangled mess of debts between dangerous men.
Tonight was about survival. Sex. And possibly sleep.
Darius handed Rocco a keycard. Rocco took it without a word, his jaw still tight, and led me through the front door of the hotel.
The lobby was small and charming—polished wood floors, antique furniture that looked like it had been there for centuries, lace doilies on every surface. But it was the paintings that stopped me cold.
Vlad the Impaler. Everywhere.
He hung above the fireplace in a gilded frame—dark eyes, sharp features, that iconic mustache.
Another portrait graced the wall beside the staircase, this one depicting him on horseback, sword raised, leading a charge against the Ottoman army.
A glass case near the reception desk held replicas of his armor and a small placard describing his heroic defense of Romania.
A hero. That’s what they called him here. The brave prince who’d defended his homeland against invaders. Who’d impaled his enemies on stakes as a warning. Statues in town squares. His face on postcards and coffee mugs.
If they only knew what he’d really become. What he’d traded his soul for in a blood-soaked castle hidden in the mountains above their heads.
Rocco’s eyes lingered on the largest portrait. I couldn’t read his expression, but I saw his throat work before he turned away.
The hotel was only two stories. Our room was the last one at the end of a narrow hallway, the floorboards creaking beneath our feet with every step. Rocco slid the keycard in, the lock clicked, and he pushed the door open.
Our room was small but clean—a large canopy bed with a lace coverlet dominated the space, and an antique armoire stood against the far wall, its dark wood carved with delicate floral patterns. Under any other circumstances, it might have been romantic.
He was shutting down. I could see it — the walls going back up, the guilt pulling him under. He'd just admitted he felt useless, and now he was retreating into that dark place where he convinced himself he deserved nothing.
I wasn't going to let him go there. Not tonight. Not after everything we'd survived.
I slipped my arms around Rocco’s stiff neck. His body was rigid, that wounded pride radiating off him like heat from a furnace.
“Are you okay?”
“Fine,” he grumbled.
I cocked my eyebrow. “You’re not fooling me, Rocco Palazzo.”
He tried to hold the mask in place, but it crumbled under my gaze the way it always did when I pushed. His shoulders sagged and a heavy sigh escaped him—the kind that carried the weight of two years of self-imposed exile.
“Never thought I would fall so low.” His voice was quiet. Bitter. “A prince who can’t pay for a hotel room.”
I cupped his cheek, turning his face toward mine. Those dark eyes were burning with shame, and it broke something inside me to see it.
“One of these days, you need to forgive yourself and stop punishing yourself.”
His jaw flexed beneath my palm. “How do you propose I do that? My family hates me. I can’t even flip burgers.” A hollow laugh escaped him. “I went from a palace to a grease trap, Selena. And I couldn’t even hold onto that.”
The rawness in his voice made my chest ache. This man—this stubborn, infuriating, beautiful man—had been drowning in guilt for so long he’d forgotten what it felt like to breathe.
I was done watching him drown.
“Let me show you what I know.” I held his gaze as I gripped the hem of his shirt and lifted it over his head. He didn’t resist. His eyes darkened, the shame flickering into something else as I pressed my palms flat against his bare chest and pushed him backward toward the bed.
His knees hit the edge and he sat. I stood over him, my fingers threading into his hair, tilting his face up to mine.
“I know that you crossed an ocean to save a baby you’d never met. I know that you stood between me and a demon without flinching.” I leaned down, my lips brushing his. “I know that a man who can’t forgive himself for hurting someone he loves isn’t evil. He’s good. So good it’s destroying him.”
His hands found my hips, his fingers pressing into me like I was the only solid thing in a world that kept shifting beneath his feet.
“Now stop talking,” I whispered against his mouth, “and let me remind you what you’re worth.”
I gently pushed him onto his back, his body yielding against the floral comforter.
Mine. After two years of longing, after demons and stolen shards and running for our lives—he was mine. Not because of a blood bond or a fate decree. Because he’d chosen me. Finally, irrevocably chosen me.
I kissed his full lips, tasting mint, then traced a path down the warm column of his throat where I could feel his pulse quickening beneath my mouth.
I explored his chest with deliberate kisses, my tongue finding the salt of his skin, lingering over the hard plane of muscle.
Every inch of him felt like a gift I hadn’t been allowed to unwrap until now.
I wanted to memorize him—the way his breath hitched when my lips found the scar along his ribs, the way his stomach tensed under my mouth, the way his fingers threaded into my hair like he was afraid I’d stop.
“Selena,” he whispered.
His fingers threaded through my hair, strong yet tender against my scalp.
This time was different. Before, we’d been desperate—all hunger and need and two years of denial crashing down at once.
This was slower. Deliberate. And terrifying, because slow meant I could feel everything.
Including the fear that lived in the quiet spaces between heartbeats—the whisper that said he could still change his mind.
That I could wake up tomorrow and find the walls back in place, the prince retreating behind his guilt, leaving me alone with a bond that only I honored.
I pushed that fear down and kept going.
His voice caught in his throat as I unbuttoned his jeans, the metal button cool against my fingertips.
I tugged down the worn denim and cotton beneath, revealing inch by inch until his cock sprang free—thick, veined, and flushed dark pink against the flat plane of his abdomen.
The sight of him undid me. I’d imagined this more times than I’d ever admit—alone in my bed, aching for a man who didn’t want me.
But no fantasy had ever come close to the reality of Rocco Palazzo laid bare beneath me, his breath ragged, his body responding to my touch like I was the only woman in the world.
I traced the ridge with my tongue, tasting salt and musk. Rocco hissed between clenched teeth, his hips rising involuntarily off the mattress.
Power. That’s what this was. Not the kind that came from magic or bloodlines—the kind that came from knowing I could make this man, this stubborn, guarded, broken prince, come apart with nothing but my mouth. After two years of feeling invisible to him, that was intoxicating.
I took him deep into the wet heat of my mouth, hollowing my cheeks as I sucked, feeling him pulse against my tongue. My fingers found the tender weight of his balls, rolling them gently between my fingertips as his breathing grew ragged above me.
Every sound he made—every groan, every ragged breath, every whispered curse—fed something starving inside me.
This was what I’d wanted for so long. Not just his body, but his surrender.
The man who’d kept me at arm’s length for two years was trembling beneath me, vulnerable in a way he’d never allowed himself to be.
And I was the one he’d trusted enough to let in.
The muscles in his thighs tensed beneath my palms as I took him deeper, feeling him against my tongue.
His breathing changed—short, desperate, as if any minute he’d shatter into a million pieces.
I wanted him to feel how much he meant to me in this wordless confession.
When he arched again, his fingers tangled in my hair, tugging just enough to make my scalp tingle as warmth flooded my mouth, salt-bitter and intimate.