Chapter 23
Cate
We dress in silence. The air in the room is heavy with tension and wanting and things still left unsaid.
Callum stills my hands before I can slip into my dress.
He kneels before me, wrapping a sheath around my upper thigh, replacing the dagger I haven’t worn in days with a new one.
His fingers linger, tracing along the sensitive skin.
He places a single kiss on my inner thigh before helping me step into the long cotton dress.
I haven’t laced myself into a corset or donned a feathered headpiece in several days.
So much of my long-worn costume has slipped away since meeting Callum Reid.
If there was any doubt truly left before, it is gone now.
We are Bonded, linked, our lives forever intertwined.
But I still want him to have a choice, if such a thing is even possible.
“I need to say something before we leave.” I don’t look at him as I practically whisper the words, afraid that I will lose all of my nerve if I feel the force of his blue eyes on me.
Callum, his back to me as he buttons his shirt, noticeably stiffens, his shoulders tensing. He takes a second before he turns around. “I don’t blame you, Caterine.”
My speech, my declaration, sits ready on the tip of my tongue, but his unexpected response confuses me. “What?” is all I can manage to utter.
He crosses the room, slowly, narrowing the gap between us. “I don’t blame you if you’ve changed your mind about what you said. Before.” He gestures helplessly to the bed.
“What did I say?”
“You know, the part about standing by my side.” A shadow darkens his eyes. “I understand why you would no longer feel that way and I don’t blame you.”
I step closer to him, reaching for his hand. “Sometimes you say very stupid things, Your Highness.”
His mouth parts in shock, but I don’t let him speak.
“What I was going to say is that I would understand. If you no longer wanted me by your side.” I hold up my hand to stop any sort of protest, but none seems to be forming.
My stomach turns, but I knew this was coming.
It’s why I wanted to be the one to say it, so he wouldn’t have to.
“I know who I am, Callum. And I know who you are going to be.” I lace my fingers through his.
“You are going to be the first elected president of Avon, a man who is going to lead this country to the unity and the equity it so desperately needs. And we both know you can’t do that with me by your side.
” I squeeze his hand and gently release it, as if that can somehow release the hold he has on me.
But he doesn’t let me pull away, tightening his grip. “Are you trying to tell me that you don’t wish to be with me, Cate?”
“It’s not about what I want, Callum. It’s about what’s best for Avon. And what’s best for you.”
He arches a single eyebrow. “I seem to recall you admonishing me for trying to make your decisions for you, my lady.”
I grimace, fighting uselessly against the tie that binds us. “This is different.”
He tugs me closer, wrapping our joined hands behind his back, pressing us together. “Answer the question, my lady. Do you wish to be with me? To be my partner, my friend, and one day, when I have earned it, my wife?”
I choke on the unexpected emotion rising up in my throat. “In a perfect world, of course I would want that.” I attempt to pull away again and this time he lets me go. “But we don’t live in a perfect world.”
“I thought the whole purpose of the Uprising was so that we could make a perfect world.”
“We both know that you will never be elected with me—a Gifted courtesan—by your side.” I refuse to allow shame to heat my cheeks. I am not ashamed of who I am or what I do, but I’m also not na?ve enough to believe that everyone else will feel the same.
“If I cannot be elected for the person I am—and that includes loving the people I love—then I don’t want to be elected at all.” He stops just short of touching me, but the heat of him is everywhere.
“Then your father will have died in vain.”
He sucks in a breath and I know the blow has landed. Callum is a good man, the kind of man who would fight for me. And I know I am not strong enough to continue to resist him.
“So this is it, then? You want me to walk out of those doors and never return?” Hurt and anger lace through his voice, punching me right in the chest.
“This isn’t about what I want, Cal.” I straighten my shoulders. “I will help you with the plan. Against Harold. So we can get my sister back.” The words curdle my stomach, the acid burning up my chest. “And then I will let you go.”
His arm snakes around my waist, pulling me into his embrace. He leans down, his lips skirting the line of my neck before brushing the shell of my ear. “And if I refuse to let you go? If I can’t let you go?”
“I have faith that you will put the needs of this country before your own needs.” I try to turn away from his mouth but instead find myself turning in, leaning into his embrace.
“What about your needs, my lady?” His mouth moves to the line of my jaw. He kisses my cheeks, the corner of my mouth, tracing the same path I dotted along his skin only hours earlier.
“My needs do not matter,” I mumble, letting my own lips linger on the unshaven skin of his neck. He still smells the same, an intoxicating mix of woodsy sage.
“They do to me.” He doesn’t give me a chance to respond, his lips pressing to mine with soft urgency.
“I spent four days without you, Caterine, and I spent most of them not wondering about the fate of this country or grieving the loss of my father. I spent them wondering about you. Worrying about you. Longing for you. I will not let the opinions of ignorant people keep me from the woman I love.”
My breath stills in my chest, and I blink rapidly to clear the wetness from my eyes before I allow myself to meet his gaze. There is nothing in the depths of the blue other than truth and love. “You know I love you as well, Callum Reid, which is why I won’t let you give up everything for me.”
He smiles and places another soft kiss on my aching lips. “And you know me well enough by now to know that I’m not going to let you give up on this, give up on us.”
I close my eyes, sinking into him as his lips press to my forehead.
I tuck myself deeper into his embrace, burying my face in his chest. His arms wrap around me, the strength and the warmth buoying me, deluding me into entertaining the possibility that there could ever be an us, that were it not for the Bond, he would still choose me. Choose us.
“You can’t get rid of me so easily, my lady.” His lips find mine again and this kiss is neither soft nor sweet. It’s possessive and searching and it burns me from the inside out. Callum kisses me as if this is his last chance to convince me, as if he needs to prove the strength of his love.
It fills me up and empties me out and all I can do is lean in for more. I need more of him. All of him. Everything he is willing to give me.
My hands fumble with the belt at his waist, but my fingers eventually work the buckle before moving on to the button of his pants. He grips the long skirt of my dress, tugging and pulling until it’s up around my waist.
I find the edge of the bed, his cock in my hand.
He pushes into me, hard and quick, and I know I can never truly give him up.
Can never live without this feeling, this feeling of being whole.
Of being cherished and treasured and loved.
Even though this coupling is rough, the way he looks at me, the way he strokes my cheek and kisses my forehead is nothing short of tender.
He loves me. And I love him.
And whatever happens next, the two of us are inextricably linked.
“You are mine, Lady Caterine.” The declaration rumbles out of him like a growl.
I feel that tightening tension low in my core, his words and his thrusts a heady combination. “Say that again,” I gasp.
“You are mine. And I am yours.”
His lips crush down on mine, a bruising kiss that sparks a wave of pleasure that rolls through me. His mouth swallows my cries and he grunts his own release seconds later, the two of us falling off the cliff and tumbling into each other’s arms.
—
We lean over the edge of the balcony and it becomes immediately clear why there are no guards stationed here: One would have to be an idiot to attempt scaling it, and even more of an idiot to try to make it down.
“I’ll go first.” Callum swings himself up and over the edge, his grip on the metal railing so tight it turns his knuckles white.
“I don’t think I can do this,” I whisper as I watch him start his descent.
He pauses when there’s just enough space for me to make my own way over the balcony. “I’m not going to let you fall, Caterine.” I hesitate for another long minute before he looks up, his eyes soft. “Think of your sister, my lady.”
It’s the exact right thing to say—maybe the only thing to say—to convince me. I swing a leg over the edge, the cold metal digging into my fingers.
“Don’t look down,” Callum advises. “Just listen to the sound of my voice.”
I let him guide me, platitudes and encouragement buoying me as I steadily climb down the metal railing, latching on to the wooden trellis attached to the side of the building, and finally landing on the ground.
“I knew you could do it.” Callum places a single kiss on the top of my head before taking my hand in his and pulling me into a run.
Callum leads me to a dingy-looking building on the edge of the river.
Everything is dull and muted, except for the smell, a cross between days-old trash and water-soaked sewage.
It seeps in everywhere, buried deep in the yellow-tinged walls of the small apartment where Callum’s uncle Alex and his sister Dom wait for us.