Chapter Seven
HE DIDN’T FLINCH. He’d laid out exactly the plan he would have wanted. Sex, no-strings, no complications. No promises for either of them to break. It was exactly the sort of involvement he usually sought out.
And it never bothered him.
Perhaps because he was generally the one laying down the rules, giving the ‘no-strings’ line. Hearing it from Astrid…felt weirdly like a punch to the chest. Weird, because he knew it was how it had to be with them.
Something about her cold insistence though reminded him of Carlotta.
Of all the ways she’d refused to let him into her life when he’d still wanted to be there.
Of the way she’d patiently, unemotionally insisted that he was not her child and, therefore, she didn’t care what he did with his spare time, nor how he got to school, or home in the afternoons.
Why should she turn up to his school awards night, even when he’d topped three subjects? He was not her child.
The implication was always one of boundaries and limits. Limits that now, with Astrid, he felt himself paradoxically wanting to test, even when they were the exact limits he would himself choose to set.
Fine.
He was messed up. He knew that. He’d known it for a long time. How could he be anything but, given how his childhood had been? But he was no longer a vulnerable, unwanted little boy. Nor a grieving seventeen-year-old who’d been turned out in the cold, forced to fend for himself.
Javier was a success in his own right and he’d come back to Norvenheim for one reason only. To triumph over Carlotta, and Otto, to right the wrongs of his long ago past.
Even though they’d never find out that he was sleeping with Astrid, he’d know.
He’d know he’d taken something his brother coveted and claimed it as his own.
And he would claim her over and over and over again.
She might think this was just sex but she didn’t yet understand how much sex could stamp your soul.
He would make her want him to the point she never forgot him.
He told himself it would be the ultimate punishment of Otto, but really, it had far more to do with what Javier wanted for himself than he would ever admit…
So he thrust into his queen, aware that he was making a deal with the devil, that this had the potential to burn them both if they weren’t careful. Aware, but not caring. What cause was there for worry when pleasure such as this existed?
* * *
Her text message came through the next morning, only a moment before a knock sounded at the door. He was still reading the words on screen as he paced across the room.
I’m having some things dropped to your place today. Hope you’re home…
With a frown on his face, Javier wrenched the door inwards. The frown turned to a bemused smile, as several delivery men began to shuffle inside, one holding a signature pad towards him to acknowledge receipt.
A large, fresh Christmas tree was the most noticeable. ‘Where would you like it, sir?’
He raised his brows. ‘How the hell should I know?’
‘You are not Javier Diamandi?’
‘I am.’
‘Your name is on the order.’
Of course his name was on the order. Astrid was hardly going to put her own name down with a courier company. ‘By the windows,’ he improvised.
‘Good choice.’ The delivery man nodded his approval as he and a colleague laboured the enormous tree across the room and set about positioning it in a large, weighted brass bucket.
Several other boxes were placed on the ground beside it.
He was moving towards them with curiosity when another text came through.
Don’t open anything until I arrive.
Anticipation fired in his gut. Memories of last night burst through him.
The way they’d made love, twice in her bed and then again on the floor as he’d been dressing to leave.
It had just come over them, like a fever.
Unstoppable, urgent, necessary. Knowing they had limited time together, he supposed, could do that to people.
Or maybe it was the knowledge that it was both forbidden and secret. And for Javier, everything his stepmother and brother would hate, if they were to find out. Which they wouldn’t. But Javier knew. That was, in and of itself, satisfying. He’d won. A secret victory but a victory, nonetheless.
The delivery staff left and Javier spent the rest of the afternoon ignoring the boxes, ignoring Astrid and wondering when she’d arrive.
* * *
She’d enlisted Anja’s more permanent help.
A frank conversation, explaining the situation, had been handled as delicately as possible, given the circumstances.
It had been awkward for both of them. It was highly unusual for Astrid to request her most loyal staff member to aid her in carrying on an illicit affair, but Anja had been delighted by the challenge.
Astrid had provided Anja with Enrique’s details, and from then, the two of them worked in concert to facilitate Astrid’s ability to slip out of the palace and be driven across the capital, to Javier’s home.
And so it was that, as dusk wrapped itself around the charming, ancient city with its white stone buildings and sludgy black river running through its heart, Astrid felt a beat of excitement and exhilaration for the first time in a long time.
The sense she was doing something just for herself was a powerful drug.
She knew it wouldn’t last. It couldn’t. This was a temporary aberration and they both knew that.
Astrid would resume the threads of her real life, after Christmas.
But this one year, she was going to give herself the gift of doing just what she wanted.
Before duty and sacrifice called. Before she had to take a step into the rest of her life, marry some suitable husband and have the requisite children.
Before she had to go through the trauma of having a family.
For a moment, her joy was tarnished by the thought of that.
By the sense that she would somehow replace her parents and brother, and in doing so, might even forget them.
She preferred everything as it was now—with her heart locked away, in a sort of cryo-storage, always belonging to a time that was long gone.
To people who were no longer here to love her back.
To love again would be to open her heart and reduce the capacity she held for her lost family.
It would be to devalue their memories. The whole kingdom had moved on—they were but a distant part of the past. It was only Astrid who carried them inside of her, who had to continue to make space for them, no matter what. Space she could never give to another.
She fidgeted with her fingers, mentally releasing those thoughts for the moment. She knew they’d be back to torment her—usually in the middle of the night, when the darkness was richest and the pain most cutting.
For now, she was going to relax into this and just enjoy the ride.
Be happy. Happiness was not something Astrid allowed herself to feel and, just this once, she was going to allow herself to do so knowing she was safe.
They both knew what was going on and, after Christmas, he’d disappear from her life just as quickly as he’d arrived into it.
* * *
‘It’s not quite as big as I’d imagined,’ she murmured, when she stepped into his living space and admired the large, bushy pine.
The fragrance of the forest had infiltrated the space, so it already felt much more festive.
With Christmas Eve being the following night, the thought of Javier not having a single decoration had been too much to bear. ‘Though it will do.’
He arched a brow at her, his expression hard to read.
Had she overstepped by sending a tree? She’d wanted him to remember his heritage.
She couldn’t say why, exactly, but she had the sense that he was denying himself something important, by acting as though Christmas didn’t exist. Or maybe it was just that it meant so much to Astrid, it was hard to think of him not sharing that sentiment. Not understanding.
‘And you’ve been such a good boy,’ she cooed with a wink, walking towards him, heart in her throat despite the cool tone to her words. ‘You haven’t even peeked at those boxes.’
‘I had instructions.’
‘And yet, you don’t strike me as someone who usually follows the rules.’
He arched a brow as she put a hand on his chest, the solid thumping of his heart doing nothing for her nervous system. ‘What makes you say that?’
She laughed. ‘Hmm. Your general demeanour? Everything about you?’
His lips twisted with the hint of a smile.
‘Am I wrong?’
He caught her wrist, his fingers wrapping around it so she knew he must surely feel the frantic rushing of her pulse, just beneath her skin. Her eyes flared when they met his and desire slammed into her.
‘No, Your Majesty. You’re not wrong.’
She could hardly even remember what she’d asked him.
Anticipation was a twisting, throbbing knot in her belly, reminding her of the river that cut through the city, of the powerful tides that moved it.
It was a storied part of the city, an intrinsic link to their Viking past. Astrid had always felt proud, when she looked out on it and imagined that same river coursing through the blood in her veins.
She was of this place, its people, its history and traditions, and she always would be.
But with Javier, she was also simply Astrid.
‘Some rules are better when broken.’
‘Pretty much the opposite of my philosophy,’ she murmured, impressed one part of her brain was able to maintain the conversation.
‘In what way?’
‘I’m obliged to be obedient,’ she said, wondering at the way his eyes flared and his body tensed. ‘It’s a part of my role. I do as I’m told.’
‘Always?’
‘You’re probably the first thing I’ve done for myself since I was a girl.’
One corner of his lip twisted in response to that.
‘You might develop a taste for breaking the rules.’