A Royal Wedding(63)

“You do not understand,” he said, gritting out the words, because he did not like the picture she painted—and yet, given the option, he would do it all over again in exactly the same way. If he knew that, why should it eat at him? “I had no choice in these things, but that has nothing to do with what is between us now. What was always between us, even when we were young.”

“There is nothing between us.” Her voice was flat, her eyes unreadable. Like a stranger’s. “It was the madness of summer, nothing more. I gave you what you wanted. Now it’s your turn to return the favor.”

“What is it you want?” he asked, although he knew what she would say, and she did not disappoint him. She was so cold, and yet that dark anger shone in her silver-blue eyes and hinted at the turmoil beneath, the fire he knew burned within her.

“My freedom,” she cried at him.

“Perhaps that can be arranged,” he said, then prowled closer to her, noting the way her pulse jumped in her throat, and she swallowed—nervously, he thought. He moved even closer, making her tilt her head back to keep looking him in the eye. “But I have one question about this freedom of yours.”

“What?” It was as close to a growl as he’d heard come from her lips, and under other circumstances he might have found it amusing. But not tonight. Not here. Not when his whole life hung in the balance.

“What of the child?” he asked.

Lara felt herself pale, and thought she might have swayed on her feet—but then temper took over. She shook off the urge to collapse into some kind of decorative swoon, and glared at him.

“That doctor had no business telling you something private!” she hissed. “So much for confidentiality!”

“He is the royal physician,” Adel snapped. “Last I checked, he serves at my pleasure. Of course he told me—especially after I tore the palace apart trying to find out where and why you’d gone. How could you think to keep your condition from me?”

“How could you think I would tell you?” she threw at him, hearing the wildness in her own voice. The years of baggage. “So you could have one more bargaining chip to hold over my head?”

A muscle worked in his jaw. His gray eyes seemed to chill, and then turned to some kind of steel. Lara shivered, but she could not understand herself. Why should some reckless part of her want to comfort him? Even now? What was the matter with her?

“So this, then, is what you think of me,” he said in that low voice, and she realized, perhaps for the first time, that he was not as in control as he appeared. That the clenched jaw and deliberately controlled voice were smoke screens. That he was as furious as she’d ever seen him.

“It is nothing more than the truth,” she said, bravely, because the understanding that he was not the cold, controlled creature she’d imagined made her tremble deep inside. It changed everything, she thought—and yet, could change nothing. She could not let it.

“This is who I am to you,” he continued. “After all that has passed between us.”

“You mean sex,” she threw at him, heedless of the danger. Her temper—fused tightly to a growing feeling of despair— threatened to swamp her completely. “Threats and compulsion and sex—that is all that has ever passed between us!”

“I love you.” The words were like a slap—thrown down, harsh and abrupt, to lie between them. There was an expression she did not understand in his dark eyes, and a rush of joy she refused to acknowledge in her own heart.

“That is a lie.” Her throat hurt, as if too much lodged there that she could not bear to say.

“I have loved you from the start,” he said with a certain dignity, a quiet insistence. “From the first moment I saw you, when you were little more than a girl. I have loved you my whole life. Nothing has changed that. Nothing could.”

Oh, how her treacherous heart yearned to believe him! But she knew him—more than she wanted to, and better than she should. She knew his ruthlessness, his focus. In bed and in his pursuit of whatever else he wanted. Look at how quickly he had turned her from defiance to purring contentment in his arms! Look at the way her body warmed for him even now!

“You will say anything,” she said, appalled to hear the catch in her voice, but unable to stop it, much less the hot tears that followed. “Do anything. Do you think I don’t know that? You told me so yourself. This is who you are. The man who cannot compromise. The man who is not modern.”