JOAQUIN VARGAS KNEELED to nothing and no one.
But this was about Amalia.
And when it came to Amalia, there were no rules. There was only having her or not having her, and he had tried both. He’d had her without giving all of himself, which had resulted in not having her at all, which was worse.
The one thing he knew was that when all the usual things stopped working, it was time for innovation.
Innovation or surrender.
And he had come up with a thousand crazy schemes to bring her back to him. He could kidnap her. It was frowned upon in polite circles, but what did he care about such things as polite circles. But he still nixed that idea, because he thought Amalia wouldn’t like it.
He was a remarkably wealthy man. He could hire his own army and storm the palace at Ile d’Montagne if it pleased him. But Amalia, again, was unlikely to support such an action.
Joaquin couldn’t risk it.
Because she had left him in London and he had gone cold. Bitter. He had spent the first few days after her departure storming around his home and his office, verbally beheading anyone foolish enough to cross his path.
It had failed to make him feel the least bit better.
And at the strangest moments, he kept thinking of Amalia. Not in the usual ways that haunted his dreams, but in her two exquisite acts of surrender, both of which had completely disarmed him.
Both of them on her knees.
And both times, he had felt the same wonder as he gazed upon her.
Because he would have thought that kneeling down like that was an act so shameful, so subservient, that it should have made her tremble that she did it so gracefully. Beautifully, even. It should have made her seem less, somehow, in his eyes.
Except when she did it, it didn’t seem like surrender.
More like its opposite.
Once that idea had taken hold, Joaquin hadn’t been able to get it out of his mind. Like all his obsessions, save one, he knew that the only way to get rid of it was to immerse himself within it.
He hadn’t known it was even possible to kneel down with no clear idea what might become of it. Even if he commanded them to bend, would his knees obey him?
He was Joaquin Vargas, who obeyed no one. He had built his entire identity on the fact that he alone walked alone. That he alone had always been alone.
That he was so powerful that the whole world ought to genuflect before him and often did, not the other way around.
But at some point, during another sleepless night in a cold and uncomfortable flat spanning three stories in a London that felt empty without one particular ex-princess, he faced the unpleasant, yet inescapable truth.
It was his pride that wanted power.
His heart simply wanted her.
Whatever it took. Whatever she needed.
Joaquin hadn’t expected that he would argue his way into the palace. He hadn’t been sure if they’d even let him into the country. But when they did, he delivered himself to that famous square out front that he’d seen on television too many times to count. Most of those times in the past five years, when he’d pretended not to be watching news reports from Ile d’Montagne, and yet had somehow caught every one.
Just for a glimpse of her.
He’d walked to the gates, ignored the guards, and knelt.
And he had convinced himself on the flight down from England that the moment he took to his knees he would feel better. He would feel whole. He would feel...whatever it was those smug holy people felt when they were finally living out their purpose.
He felt none of those things.
He absolutely hated every second of what could only be seen as groveling.
And Joaquin Vargas did not grovel.
But when the guards told him to move on, he was obliged to tell them that he refused.
“I am here for Amalia Montaigne,” he told them, and let his voice ring out with authority and command. “I do not intend to move until I see her.”
And there’d been no small part of him that was looking forward to the guards’ reaction to that, hoping it would allow him to dust off some of his old street fighting skills. He could think of nothing he wanted more at that moment than to bash a few heads together.
But there were paparazzi around, which he’d anticipated. It was why he’d chosen this specific venue for his little display. It had taken them very little time to identify him, and the next thing he knew cameras were recording his every move—or lack of movement—and he was forced to stay right there, on his knees.
“Joaquin Vargas on his knees?” one of the paparazzi dared laugh at him.
“I take it you have not set eyes on Amalia,” Joaquin replied, and the crowd laughed louder, with a smattering of applause thrown in.
And even as he said that he knew it would end up on front pages. Everywhere.
Some part of him welcomed that. Still, he was considering his options. Kidnap was looking better and better by the moment, especially when a few tourists ignored his death glare and took selfies right in front of him.
But then, finally, the grand front gates to the palace opened, right there before him.
And at last Amalia appeared.
Joaquin was vaguely aware she had not come alone. There were people behind her, possibly royal people, but he didn’t care about them.
Because she was walking toward him, and suddenly, he knew that he could kneel forever. And would, if that was what it took.
“Joaquin,” Amalia said, in that way she always said his name. As if she was counting her blessings each time she found it on her tongue. “Since when do you kneel?”
“Is that what you want?” He was not surprised to find his voice rough. And so he opened up his arms, wide, hiding nothing from her or anyone. “Is that what it will take?”
He saw her look around, as if taking in the crowd. But when she returned her gaze to his, she wasn’t wearing that perfect princess smile any longer. He could see all the emotion in her blue eyes, stamped there for all to see.
It was all right there on her face.
And everything she was, everything inside her, everything Amalia burned so brightly there that he wanted to leap up and hide her from these jackals. From the world. From himself, certainly. He wanted to protect her if she wouldn’t protect herself—
And in case the fact he was on his knees hadn’t indicated to him what was happening here, that certainly did.
But he didn’t have time to reel at that because she moved closer to him anyway, and then he took her hands in his. And then, as if they were all alone on Cap Morat once more, she dropped down to her knees before him.
“Now everyone will do it,” Joaquin said, unable to be anything but sardonic when inside him, he could hardly keep track of that wildfire that surged through him. He wanted to call it lust. Need. Hunger.
But those were shallow words to describe what he felt.
They were also the least important part.
“I don’t need you to humble yourself for me,” Amalia whispered fiercely. “That’s not who you are.”
“I find nothing humbling in this,” he told her, and was surprised to discover he meant that. “There is no weakness in surrender. You taught me that.”
Amalia studied his face as if she’d never seen it before. “You know that I love you. But I love you, Joaquin. It’s uncivilized. Unpredictable. Untamable. I don’t need you to surrender anything. I don’t want it.”
“You shall have it all the same.” He switched their hands, so that his were on the outside. He tugged her closer, so he could get her face close to his. The way he liked it.
“Don’t do this,” Amalia whispered. “It isn’t fair. If you knew how hard it was to leave you—”
“But you made it look so easy, cariño. Every time.”
Her eyes flashed. “It broke my heart. More every time. I doubt there is anything left. And if you think that you can—”
“Amalia,” he interrupted her. “Cariño. I love you.”
Amalia’s eyes, the color of the sea, went blank. Her perfect lips fell open.
“I love you,” Joaquin said again, with all the ruthlessness and tenacity that made him who he was. He could hear the murmurs all around them, and I love you floating on the breeze as it was repeated and repeated. Good, he thought. Because this was different from long ago, when he had murmured endearments in bed and then shouted out his I love you in outrage during that parting scene. This was better. “I love only you. I will never love anything or anyone but you. Not because you left me and so it is the only thing I can use as a weapon. Not as if loving you sometime in the past and losing you anyway is any kind of virtue. I suspect it makes me a damned fool three times over.”
“Never,” she whispered.
But he couldn’t stop now. He bent his head to hers. “You make me imagine that this world is fair. That the life I have led and the things I have survived are the price I must pay to deserve you. And I believe that. I do. I would willingly pay them all over again.”
And this time, his name sounded like a sob. That soft, small noise he hadn’t thought he’d get to hear again. He wanted to hoard them all.
“I will not be satisfied with a summer when you were twenty,” he told her. “A few months five years later. Or not nearly enough weeks in a rainy London summer.”
He lifted one hand to tug a tendril of her long black hair between his thumb and forefinger, then tucked the raw silk behind one ear. “I want them all. And I want all of you. No compartments. No rules. I want your body, but you know that. And Amalia, it isn’t enough. I want your heart. I want your dreams. I want your hopes, your wishes, your mad ideas. I want to take your life and entwine it with my own, so that we are as close to one as two people can become.”
“I want all of that,” she whispered, and only then did he realize that her eyes had welled up with tears, and they were making tracks down her face. “You have no idea how much. But Joaquin, you don’t want babies. And I want a family that no one can switch up on me. I want...” She took a deep breath. “I want everything, Joaquin. But you don’t.”
And a few months ago he would have agreed. Now he knew better.
He leaned his forehead against hers. “For you, my Amalia, I have learned how to be a man. You have taught me what it is to be human, and for that sin, I’ve broken your heart and blamed you for it. And still you kneel before me with tears in your eyes. Still you want me.”
“In my whole life,” she told him softly, so softly, when he knew he didn’t deserve her softness, “I have wanted only you. The moment I was free of the palace, even if that wasn’t what I had planned, I ran to you. I will always run to you.”
“You will not have to,” he vowed. “Because I will be right there beside you.”
Her eyes overflowed again and this time he wiped away her tears.
“For you, I will become a husband,” he vowed to her, there on his knees in the full light of day. “And a father. And you know who I am, Amalia. The gutters of Bilbao could not contain me. I have never accepted a single boundary that was ever drawn for me. Anything and everything I dreamed, I made real. And there is only one woman on this earth that I would ever consider marrying. Only one woman who I, on some level, must want to bear my child. For I have never been so careless. I never will be again.”
Amalia was crying openly now, but this was not the red eyes in the pool in Singapore. He knew she might feel many things, but she was not sad. She was not a ghost. She was right here, in his arms, where she belonged.
“This must be a dream,” she whispered. “I’ve had this dream.”
“If it is indeed a dream,” came another voice, “I’m very surprised to discover that I’m in it.”
Joaquin glanced to the side and saw another black-haired, blue-eyed woman before him, though she could not hold a candle to Amalia. No matter the dangerous-looking man at her side.
Next to them stood Queen Esme in all her glory, and he anticipated that she would look at him as if he was something stuck to her shoe. But instead, the Queen nodded her head, as if bestowing her blessing, and even smiled.
And when he looked back to Amalia, she looked as full of wonder as she ever had that first summer. She looked bright and wild, the way she should.
“Marry me,” he demanded, because he could do nothing else. “Live with me, Amalia, and let us spend every moment we have together fully alive.”
“Not merely existing,” she whispered.
“Never,” Joaquin promised. “Not as long as we draw breath.”
And he waited there, on his knees before a palace, while the only princess he had ever loved gazed back at him.
He would wait forever.
And then, a smile breaking across her face, Amalia threw herself fully into his arms. Then she looped her arms around his neck, and kissed him.
As if, together, they’d written themselves a brand-new fairy tale. The one about a man like a wolf and the perfect princess who’d tamed him by not taming him at all, but loving him as he was, no matter how he snarled.
And then, together, they’d won.
Because there was only one way a story like that could ever be won.
With true love...and forever not far behind.
Joaquin couldn’t wait.