Chapter Nine #2
And when that same expression returned, spikier, lustier than before, she fought to contain the thrill of it. The warm air coming off the hot spring duelling with the cooler air at her back, making her nipples pucker as she slotted the bikini top into place.
Valenti was waiting, half submerged in the water when she was finished. Silently, he held out his hand. She took it. And stepped into pure heaven.
The sensation of the water, like warm silk, enveloped her from neck to toe when she went in deeper.
‘Oh my God, it feels incredible,’ she whispered.
‘Hmm.’ Valenti didn’t let go of her right away but drew her deeper into the pool. ‘There’s a natural ledge right here. Come.’
She trailed him, watched him perch on the submerged ledge, then her heart missing several beats, let him tug her closer and position her in front of him before drawing her down between his spread thighs.
With their height difference, Valenti’s upper chest and shoulders were above the waterline, while she was gloriously submerged up to her neck.
For several minutes, they remained in peaceful silence, the tension slowly draining away.
Or it could’ve been the melting sensation of the naturally heated water permeating her whole being.
Whatever it was, she found herself relaxing into the solid column of Valenti’s body, a small but deep sigh escaping her when his arms came around her and his lips brushed over the shell of her ear.
Ever-present need pounded through her, but Lotte curiously realised that right in this moment, she preferred to have his arms around her, all the problems held at bay. For as long as she could.
Even the faintest twinge of the lost opportunity to capture this magic place on camera came and went with very little regret.
‘I suppose you wish you’d brought the camera?’ he rasped, uncannily reading her mind.
She shook her head. ‘No, I don’t. Some things are worth keeping sacrosanct. This place is one of them.’
‘Hmm,’ he hummed again but with a deeper octave that made her tilt her head to glance up at him, but she couldn’t quite decipher the emotions moving through his eyes, only the ferocity of it.
Her heartbeat revving, she dragged her gaze away, striving for composure and asking the first question she could think of. ‘Why did you buy this place?’
Even in the dwindling light, she saw his eyes shadow. A shaft of now familiar dejection spasmed across his face, right before he broke her stare to settle his gaze on the water.
‘I needed to get away from everything after the incident. My father…’ He grimaced with a head shake.
‘He was determined to find ways to “cure” my…what did you call it? My self-imposed Greek tragedy of guilt? Which in his book mostly meant getting back on the horse immediately.’ He paused for a heavy beat.
‘But I realised it was better for everyone if I removed myself from circulation and civilisation for a while. I was angry, you see. And also it felt especially cruel to see a life that held so much potential cut short. Harder still when…’ His lips thinned, physically stopping his words.
‘When what?’ she pushed gently.
Hard emotion twitched across his face, followed by harsher laughter. ‘When that life was similar to what mine could’ve been.’
‘I don’t…understand.’
A tic flitted across his jaw, his tension so heightened she expected to see smoke smouldering out of him. ‘My ambition before I entered the army was to go into medicine.’
She inhaled sharply. ‘You wanted to be a doctor?’
He nodded once. Gravely.
‘Who…what happened?’
His lip twisted sardonically. ‘A combination of good fortune and bad timing working against me.’
‘I don’t understand,’ she repeated, completely lost. She’d thought she knew everything there was to find readily online about Prince Valenti Domene.
And she’d discovered that having information readily available to devour about a certain subject led to a kind of obsession.
Nowhere had she learned of Valenti’s ambition for medicine.
Not when he’d been so wildly successful at the profession he currently held.
And yet, looking at him now, she could easily see him in a white coat, stalking down the pristine corridors of the world’s most revered medical institutions, leaving interns and colleagues at once terrified of him and sighing with jealousy over his brilliance.
His chest rose and fell in a heavy exhale.
‘My father decreed that all young men should serve a term in the military before they turned twenty-one. The good fortune was that Teo and I were able to build a better relationship with Azar where things had been fraught before through no fault of our own. I think that was my father’s ultimate plan.
The bad timing was that it shattered my plans for medical school. ’
She shook her head. ‘Why would it if the service was one term?’
A brief self-deprecating smile without humour withered away beneath the weight of recollection. ‘I turned out to be too good at certain…skills in the army. Skills my father and his palace councillors decided would be better honed and utilized to serve the kingdom.’
Mild shock shivered through her. ‘So you didn’t choose to become a security expert rather than a doctor? Your career was chosen for you?’
A heavy beat passed. ‘No I did not. And yes. I was charged with protecting my family and the kingdom. A noble calling as was impressed on me. And generally risk-free…until it wasn’t.’
‘And then you had to watch Helga—’ She winced when a wave of bleakness swept over his face. Had they been in the cabin, Lotte was sure this was the moment he’d have shoved his hands into his pockets and prowled across the room.
‘She was extremely passionate about her career. We would talk for hours about the wonders of medicine. She reawakened my dreams and desires to be a surgeon. So much so… I toyed with rejecting my duty. She was adamant that I pursue it. Hell, she even threatened to take it up with my father. But after her death, after I failed to save her…’ He shook his head.
‘You thought you would fail at reaching for your dream too?’ she rasped.
The tight clench of his jaw said everything.
‘Valenti—’
‘Save your pity,’ he bit out, a flash of formidable power in his eyes. ‘It’s quite unnecessary. When I’m not being tested by my defiant ward, I find I quite enjoy my position in life. I’ve made a success of the hand I was dealt.’
She knew his reminder of his guardianship was deliberate. A distancing mechanism. But her insides withered all the same, even as her heart ached for everything he’d lost.
‘Well for what it’s worth, I don’t pity you. I’m just…’ Heartbroken for you.
Wisely, she kept those words to herself, almost relieved when he continued to speak.
‘As to your initial question, I came here because I also had a new responsibility, one I was determined not to shirk.’
She glanced up sharply and got pinned by his gaze. ‘You mean me?’
He nodded. ‘I bought this place because it allowed me to do both.’
Lotte looked around them, seeing the place with new eyes. Sympathetic eyes. Touched, even. ‘You came here to heal…’ she whispered.
‘And to be near you,’ he finished, then jerked a chin at the opposite horizon from the cabin.
‘Twenty-three miles that way was your boarding school. That first year, I checked on you twice a week every semester, not because you were in danger. Just because… I thought that was what she would’ve wanted.
’ His mouth twisted. ‘I was forced to make a sizeable donation to the headmaster for the privilege since it wasn’t strictly permitted. ’
She gasped as something heavy and intensely soul-shaking moved through her. Lotte felt like she couldn’t breathe through the force of it. Through this new lens he was focusing on a subject she’d believed she’d known—and loathed—for years.
To learn the depths of his guardianship… ‘Valenti…’
His nostrils flared, probably in rejection of the shaken awe in her voice. She didn’t much care. She’d revealed so very much of her emotions to him these endless and exposing days. What was one more?
Especially when that one more was a revelation that set all her beliefs, challenges and accusations on their head?
He hadn’t entirely forgotten her like she’d alleged.
He’d had the chance to go anywhere in the world to heal.
Chosen to perform his guardianship from afar from the onset, an easy feat with a man of his wealth and stature.
And while he’d done that later, when duty and family had no doubt reclaimed him, he’d chosen this place with her in mind.
A decision that couldn’t have been easy, with the very earth and sky reminders of the ordeal he’d just been through.
And yet he’d done it.
The pure, almost sacrosanct emotion amplified, consuming her, changing her from the inside out.
It awed and terrified in equal measure. And because she had no outlet for it other than through the man directly responsible for it, she spun in the water, bracing her knees on either side of his thighs as she cupped his magnificent jaw in her hands.
As she looked into eyes shadowed with memories and ghosts she yearned to help him free but might never succeed.
The thought threatened to rip sobs from her very soul, so she hurried to speak, to distract her heart from the weighty reasons why easing Valenti Domene’s pain was so imperative for her. Why this man who’d let her believe she was an afterthought should be her first thought.
But maybe she now, after these trying and revealing days spent under his roof, had some inkling why he’d been avoiding her.
Maybe it wasn’t because he didn’t care. Maybe it was because like everything in his grand life, guilt had assumed unreasonable proportions.
If that was the case, wasn’t it right that she do her part to alleviate it?
‘You are—’
‘No. Lotte…’ It was part gruff warning, part perplexed.