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Two weeks later, life began to feel like normal.
Too damn normal.
Making the coffee in his gut turn rogue on him in an instant.
Dammit.
He had been enjoying such a perfect morning. Tahreuse Mountain coffee. Fresh croissants and fruit. An ocean breeze filled with tropical flowers and orange blossoms. Best of all: a bird’s-eye view of the photo press circus taking place down on the beach, with Evrest and Camellia at center stage. Yes. Definitely the best part. The world was going insane, for the second time this month, over the Arcadian royals—only this time, it wasn’t Brooke, him, and their daring escape from the terrorists. It was King Evrest and his fiancé, back from the dead.
He couldn’t have been happier. Giving back the crown to Ev had been like lifting a grand piano off his back. He could return to the business of keeping the kingdom’s military at the alert and ready—and trained up on the newest “miracle software”, a generous gift from Colton Worldwide.
But with the ease of that burden, another worsened by the day. Sometimes, it felt, by the minute.
With Ev and Camellia back in Sancti, and Brooke’s doctors well pleased about her physical recovery, the next event on the timeline was inevitable.
He braced himself for the moment she would bring it up.
Or maybe she simply would not. Maybe he would return to the suite at the end of one day to find her things gone, and a Dear Samsyn note on the desk.
He pitched the rest of his coffee into a potted plant. Tore the crescent in half and hurled it to the gulls.
At least someone around here was pleased about all this.
The slider opened. His gut roiled even more as his wife emerged, stretching her arms…pressing the perfect globes of her breasts against the satin of her robe. “Mmmm,” she murmured dreamily. “Good mornin’.”
“It is now.” He snarled it against her lips before she leaned in fully, giving him a kiss that tasted of toothpaste and sunshine. Before she could straighten, he circled an arm around her waist, yanking her back down. She squealed—for a second—then simply relaxed against him, cuddling in with kittenish trust.
“I love it when you do this,” he murmured into her hair.
“Do…what?”
“Let the fighter go. Just rest in me. Trust in me.”
“Well, I do. Fully. I hope you know that, Syn.”
“Enough to do it for a while longer?”
Only then did her body tense. She pushed back enough to meet his gaze straight on. “What are you talking about? What’s up, big guy?”
He heard her questioning lilt but barely comprehended the words. It was so effortless to just get lost in her…to see all the facets of this incredible woman, from their first electric touch on the airport tarmac, to the ball of radiance she was in his arms now…to the brilliant mystery of what she would become, as a leader, as a lover, as a warrior, as an Arcadian…
As his.
He turned the thought into resolve. Then into action.
From beneath his chair, he withdrew a wrapped package. The wrapping paper was ornate, in the Cimarron crimson and gold, with an intricately tied bow on top. Biting his lip in order to keep his hand still, he slipped it onto her lap.
“Syn? What the hell?”
He shrugged. “Call it a belated wedding gift.”
“Wedding g—” She shot him a teary glare. “But I didn’t get you anything…”
“Oh, woman.” He pushed back her robe enough to expose one beautiful thigh—still marked by the straps of the fucking swing she’d agreed to let him try last night. “The answer to that is very evident.”
She giggled. “Horny dragon.”
“Something like that.” He dutifully righted the satin then nodded at the present. “Open it.”
She fingered the lavish bow. “I almost don’t want to.” She took a turn at the lip biting thing, not doing any favors for his newly awakened cock. “Did you wrap this?”
“If I say yes, can we play with the swing again today?”
She tossed a mock glower. “If you lie, I’ll know it.”
She was right. Their ability to read each other had sharpened to shocking accuracy over these weeks—a good thing most times, a bad thing when all he could think of was getting her back in that swing, naked and spread and wet for him…
“It was Mishella,” he admitted. “She is quite the talented multitasker.”
“She’s been my freaking life saver.” She began to tug at the ribbon, scowling as the bow turned to limp strands. “I keep wondering if she’d like life in Tahreuse—or what she’d take as a bribe to like it. Hey,”—she palmed the sudden clench of his jaw—“what’s wrong?”
He sharply jerked his head. “Just open the fucking box.”
The minutes went by like slow motion as she took her time peeling back the wrapping, lifting the tissue inside the box…
To pull out another box.
A music box.
Painted with pink flowers. With a ballerina inside the lid, twirling on a delicate stand to the tinkling strains of Für Elise.
“Syn.”
She looked at the little dancer. Back up at him.
Tears erupted from her soft gray eyes. Flowed down her proud cheeks. Pooled against her silky lips. “I…I had one of these…”
“Back at home,” he whispered. “I know.” He pulled in a shaking breath, nearly in time with hers. Lifted a hand to her face, and thumbed at the wetness on her cheeks. “I wanted you to have one like it here…hoping you would call this home.”
“This?” Beethoven’s tune continued through her tense pause, taunting him with its happiness. “You mean…this this? As in…here? With you?”
He swallowed hard. Searched for the words he was supposed to know…the proper, princely ways of telling her what he wanted—no, needed—to have with her. But her tears wrecked him. Her beauty destroyed him.
Her love had transformed him.
Fuck it.
He grabbed the back of her head. Pulled her in, kissing her hard and deep and fully, sucking her tongue in, bruising her lips, giving her his passion…showing her the farthest reaches of his heart.
“Astremé. I cannot call this a home without you anymore. I cannot call this a life without you anymore.” He grinded his forehead against hers, breathing her in, taking up her air in return. “I love you, Brooke. I think I have loved you since the moment I first touched you. And now, I will not let you go.”
She screwed the propriety too. Honked loudly as sobs shook her little frame. “I love you too. I always have, Syn. I always will.”
This time, she pulled on him for a crushing kiss. And he let her.
When they dragged apart, he pushed the hair off her face. Returned her sweet smile with a determined one of his own. “Marry me, Brooke.”
She gave him a watery giggle. “Excuse me?”
“The real way,” he insisted. “The real way. In the chapel, here at the Palais. With a reverante and a choir, and you wearing a dress like meringue, and me biting my fucking nails, and—”
“Yes,” she blurted, tossing back her head with it. “Yes, yes, yes!” But then she lowered her head—with a minx’s gleam in her eyes. “The answer is yes—with one condition.”
He moved the music box to the breakfast table in order to clutch her closer. “Anything, Princess Brooke.”
Her lips lifted, soft and seductive. As the morning sun filtered through the palms, glistening along the tracks of her happy tears, he was hard-pressed to recall ever seeing anything more beautiful in his life. Or knowing any joy more complete.
Finally, she murmured, “We get to try the swing again.”
His blood raced. His cock surged. “That is the condition?”
“Hmmm, yes. With a…little twist.”
He arched a brow. “How…little?”
She laughed before responding, “I get to be on top. Setting the pace…playing with you…commanding you.” Her laugh dissipated. Her mouth grew somber. Her eyes did too, lowering to gaze straight into him. “It means your complete trust, big guy…but it also means you’ll get taken to heaven.”
As he returned her gaze, he already knew his reply. It was the answer fate demanded of him six years ago, when this little star had flown out of the sky and into his life—then ordered from him again when they’d slipped rings onto each other’s fingers. It was the answer his astremé had known even before him, believing in it even when he did not—believing in them—then trusting, with all the force of her amazing spirit, his heart would see it someday, and also know.
And then would open.
And then would answer.
As he did now.
“I am all yours, my princess of starlight. Lead the way.”
*