Chapter 38
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Ayanna
For a moment after he pulls away, I genuinely don’t know where we are. The music, the reception—all of it blurs to nothing. Like the world took a step back and left only the two of us on this terrace.
Aric Vold just kissed me.
Deliberately and unapologetically.
And the worst part is that I kissed him back.
My lips still hum where his were. My fingers are still curled into the front of his jacket, and I have to make myself uncurl them one at a time, as though that might somehow undo the rest of it.
It won’t. Some lines, once crossed, disappear behind you. There’s no turning back. I knew it the second his hand slid into my hair. I know it now, standing here trying to remember how to breathe like a woman who hasn’t just been thoroughly undone in front of half the criminal aristocracy of Europe.
“You’re speechless. That’s new,” Aric murmurs. He’s infuriatingly calm, as though he didn’t just dismantle the entire fragile architecture of our marriage with his mouth.
I drag my gaze up to his.
That’s a mistake, too. Up close, he’s all the things he’s always been—cold, controlled, those pale eyes steady on me. Except now I can see the strain in it. The control is still there, but something underneath has broken through, something hot and hungry that he can’t quite hide anymore.
“You kissed me,” I say.
A brilliant observation, Ayanna. Truly the sharp mind my tutors promised.
He watches for a fraction before a tiny smirk tugs at the corner of his mouth I just kissed. “I noticed.”
“You said if you kissed me, this would stop being an arrangement.”
“I did.”
“And then you did it anyway.”
“Yes.”
The sheer steadiness of him is almost an insult. I fold my arms across my chest, as if that puts anything at all back where it belongs. “This was a mistake.”
He leans one shoulder against the stone beside me. “Was it?”
“Yes.”
“Why?” He sounds genuinely amused, and he keeps smiling, showing off those perfect dimples.
“Because—” I stutter.
Because I liked it far more than I should have. Because the man I swore I’d never want is standing two feet away looking at me like I’m the only thing on this terrace worth his attention, and I am terrified of how much I wish it were true. None of which I’m going to say.
“Because once you cross a line like that, you can’t pretend it didn’t happen.”
“I have no intention of pretending.” His tone is low, unwavering, and my breath catches.
Because I’m not sure what this kiss means for our marriage.
I only know I want him to kiss me again, and that my body yields to him as though it chose him long before my pride was ready to admit it.
Every wall I’ve spent weeks building crumbles the moment he looks at me.
Somehow, without ever asking permission, Aric Vold has branded himself beneath my skin.
Somehow, I’ve lost the battle for my heart, and the man who won it happens to be one of the most feared men in the world.
Then my gaze drifts past his shoulder toward the reception and my stomach drops.
Chiara.
Several meters away, near the lip of the terrace, a champagne glass forgotten in her hand, her ivory dress shimmering in the light. Not talking to anyone. Just watching… Us.
Of course. Of course, of all people, it would be her.
I look away fast, heat climbing my throat.
Brilliant work, Ayanna. Not only did you kiss your husband but you kissed him at his ex’s wedding. In full view of the bride. Royal conduct of the highest order.
Aric notices the change in my face immediately. “What?”
I tip my head, the smallest fraction, toward the crowd behind him.
He turns back toward Chiara, who’s now drifting toward to Hyun-seok’s side. He looks at them for a long moment, expressionless, only that flawless stillness back in place.
Then his gaze returns to me. “And?”
My eyes widen. “And?”
“Am I supposed to be troubled?” His brow lifts, barely. “I’m not.”
“You just kissed your wife in front of the woman you were supposed to marry.”
“I kissed my wife.” He says it like the rest of the sentence isn’t worth the breath. “I fail to see the problem.”
I stare at him. “Your emotional range is genuinely concerning.”
That makes him chuckle, and God, the sound is as intoxicating as those dimples on the sides of his mouth. “Are you embarrassed?”
My cheeks flush. “No.”
“No?”
“No.”
His gaze moves over my face, slowly, and comes back to my eyes.
“You stopped pretending you don’t want me.” His voice is now stripped of the tease.
“That kiss was…was reflex.”
“Enthusiastic reflex.”
“I was surprised.”
“You didn’t kiss me back like a woman who was surprised.”
I glare at him. He is entirely unbothered by it, which is somehow worse, and he leans in just enough to make the space between us shrink to something dangerous again.
“You know the real problem, Princess?” His mouth quirks with satisfaction. “You enjoyed it.”
My traitorous heart chooses this exact moment to attempt escape. “I did not.”
“You did.”
“You’re insufferable.”
“Yet you married me.”
“I didn’t have a choice.”
And he laughs—actually laughs, low and dark and far too pleased with himself, the sound of it sending my pulse racing.
The infuriating, conceited, devastating man.
I should be appalled by it all. The trouble is, I’m not. And we both know it.
“We should do something about your shoe,” Aric says, once the worst of the heat between us has banked down to something I can almost stand inside.
I glance down at the broken heel dropped on the ground. “I have another pair. In the suite.”
“Then we get them.”
He doesn’t offer his arm so much as make it unavoidable, and I take it, because the alternative is limping across a terrace of the most observant people alive, and I have given them quite enough to talk about for one evening.
The suite feels cool and quiet after the noise outside. I sink onto the edge of the low couch and reach for the spare heels packed in tissue at the bottom of my case.
Aric takes them out of my hands.
“Aric—”
“Sit.” He lowers himself in front of me, down onto one knee on the floor, taking my bare foot into his hand, and for a moment, I forget how to breathe.
His head is bent. My gaze follows the dark sweep of his hair, the broad line of his shoulders, the wrecked knuckles I’d watched him try to hide all day—now cradling my ankle as though it were something precious.
He settles the heel against my foot. Threads the strap.
Fastens the buckle with a tenderness that doesn’t belong in hands made for violence.
He does the other one the same way. Unhurried. Methodical. As though buckling his wife’s shoe is nothing more than a task to be completed, not something that is unraveling me one inch at a time.
He rises in one smooth motion and holds out his hand. “Come. We’ve been gone long enough for them to invent something worse than the truth.”
I lay my hand in his and let him pull me up. “Heaven forbid the truth.”
The corner of his mouth moves. Not a smile. The country next to one.
Aric’s hand finds the small of my back the moment we step out, and it stays there the whole way down—warm, broad, openly proprietary in a way it has never been in public before. Like a claim, laid out for the room to read.
And the room reads it. I’m sure of it. I feel the glances that slide off us a half second too late, the conversations that resume a beat too smoothly.
I’m certain that every soul on this terrace knows exactly what happened between us even if they don’t.
But the kiss is on my skin like heat off a stove, and I can’t make myself believe it isn’t on theirs too.
Then I see Marcelina and forget my own embarrassment entirely.
She’s standing with Zahra and Camila near the edge of the dancing, champagne untouched in her hand. Across the terrace, Bobby has his hand on the waist of a woman in red who is not his wife, leaning into her laugh like the rest of the room doesn’t exist—and like his wife isn’t watching.
I feel Aric go alert beside me. His gaze cuts across the floor to Alexei, and Alexei’s comes back. Something passes between them, like they’ve watched this show before and know how it ends.
Marcelina sets her glass down on a passing tray, says something to Zahra, and excuses herself toward the villa.
I look at Aric, and he nods, as though he reads my question with no words needed.
I follow Marcelina. I don’t know her well.
We’ve traded a handful of conversations, a few kindnesses.
But I saw her face just now—the half second before the mask went back on—and I know that face.
Zahra falls into step beside me without a word, and behind us I hear Camila mutter something and follow as well.
The music drops to a muffled pulse the moment the door of the powder room swings shut. Marcelina stands at the long mirror, both hands braced on the counter, looking at her own reflection like she’s checking it’s still holding together.
“I’m fine,” she says, before any of us can speak.
She says it so easily—so smoothly, so completely without a crack—that I almost believe her.
“I’m used to it,” she adds, lighter still, and reaches to fix a strand of hair that doesn’t need fixing.
The door opens again. Camila sweeps in, takes in the scene in a single glance, and leans back against the wall with her arms folded.
“Well,” she drawls, “I was wondering how long it’d take before someone walked out of that.”
“I’m fine.”
“Mm. Yes.” Camila examines her nails. “And I’m a nun.”
Marcelina’s mouth tightens. She draws a slow breath, and for just a second, the composure slips enough for me to see what it costs her.
“You deserve better than that,” I say, tone harsher than intended.
She meets my eyes in the mirror. “Deserving has very little to do with a marriage like mine, Ayanna.” There’s no self-pity in her voice. “You’ll learn. Or you won’t, and you’ll be one of the lucky ones. I hope you’re one of the lucky ones.”
For a moment, my thoughts drift to Aric.
To the bullet he took without hesitation.
To the contract he burned rather than hold over my head.
To the way he stands between me and anyone who’d reach for me, the way he kissed me like a man surfacing for air, the way he just knelt on a marble floor to fix my shoe and made it look like nothing at all.
We didn’t choose each other either. The paper that bound me to him is the twin of whatever paper bound Marcelina to Bobby. Same world. Same bargain. Same impossible odds.
And mine, somehow, against everything I braced for—mine might not be the disaster I was expecting.
I never once let myself think it before tonight…but I might be one of the lucky ones.
“Marcelina.” Camila’s voice has lost its edge. “You don’t have to go back out there smiling.”
“Yes,” Marcelina stresses. “I do.” She pushes herself off the counter and smooths her dress.
When she turns back to us, the mask is flawless again. Only her eyes refuse to play along. They find mine, fierce and unwavering.
“But thank you. All of you.” A faint smile touches her mouth without ever reaching those watchful eyes. “Bobby thinks I don’t notice, or perhaps, that I wouldn’t dare to do anything about it. It’s useful, letting a man believe that.”
She walks out ahead of us, every inch the serene and decorative wife, but I’m left with the distinct, prickling sense that I’ve just badly underestimated her, and that I won’t be the last.