A Royal Wedding(65)

“I cannot follow this conversation,” he replied, his tone silky, his attention on her lush mouth. “I am a bully if I do not listen to you, and a whipped puppy if I do?”

She did not answer him. She only gazed at him for a long moment, her full mouth soft, her eyes big. Adel could feel the tension between them, the kick and the spark. He could see the truth of it reflected in the way she caught her breath, the way her body swayed toward his as if of its own volition.

Mine, he thought, deep inside. Like a perfect note played on a traditional balalaika, low and true.

“You said you loved me.” She said it so matter-of-factly, yet he could still hear the question. The uncertainty.

“I do.” And then he could not help but touch her, reaching across the space he did not want between them to hold her soft cheek in his hand. She shivered slightly, and then leaned into it, like a cat. “And I suspect you must feel the same, or you would not be here. You would have gone on to America. You would not have returned.”

“It seems I cannot stay away,” she said softly.

“Nor should you,” he said. “You are the Queen, Lara. You are my wife. This is your home.”

Lara blew out a breath, as a shadow moved over her face. “I do not want what my parents had,” she said, her silver-blue eyes so serious it made Adel ache. “I refuse to do to this child what was done to me. Or to you. I refuse.”

“Stay with me, Princess,” he said softly, raising his other hand to hold her face between them, looking deep into her eyes, into their future. “We will make the world whatever we wish it to be, together.”

Once again, Lara stood out on the terrace high in the mountains and looked out over the Alakkulian Valley. It sparkled in the bright morning light, the chill of the coming autumn already moving in from the higher elevations, bringing a sharper kind of light and a certain crispness to the air. She pulled her thick robe tighter over her torso and snuggled into it, flexing her toes against the cold stones beneath her.

She felt … alive. More alive than she had ever felt before.

Because she had chosen, finally. For the first time since Adel had appeared before her in that far-off parking lot, as if conjured out of the June afternoon, she had decided.

She had sat in that anonymous hotel room for what seemed like weeks, unable to process both what had happened and her own reaction to it. She’d wanted to die. She’d felt as if part of her had, as every moment stretched out and seemed to last forever, all of them resoundingly, painfully empty of Adel. She had not understood how she could yearn for him so much, hunger for him. How his absence could feel like a missing limb. How she could want him near her as much for the calm, quiet steadiness of his presence as for the desire he could stir in her with a single glance.

But then she’d realized that this time, it was up to her. He had let her go. His doing so had shocked her, but it had also freed her, as she’d wanted.

And once she was free, and could choose to be anywhere, Lara had realized that there was only once place on earth that called to her. Only one place on earth she could feel like herself anymore.

How had that happened? When had it happened? How had she put all of her past aside without even noticing it? Because while every word she’d thrown at him in that hotel room had been true, the truth was, there was no point being free, or strong, or alive, without him. None of that held any appeal.

She heard the French doors open behind her. She smiled slightly. They had hardly slept—reaching for each other again and again in the night. Re-learning each other. Revelling in her return, and renouncing their separation in the most intimate way possible. She leaned back into the warm, solid wall of his chest as he moved behind her, marveling at the way her body readied itself for his touch. Her knees felt weak. Her core melted. She even felt heat behind her eyes.

He was hers. He loved her.

Standing in his arms, looking out at the beautiful country of her birth, Lara realized that finally, finally, she’d found the home she’d been looking for all of her life.

She turned to look at him. That hard face. That uncompromising mouth. That tough, warrior’s body. And all of it hers, forever.

Because she’d been given the choice—a real choice this time—and she’d chosen him.

“I love you,” she whispered, though it felt like a shout, a howl, that could be heard from mountain to mountain across the great valley. His mouth curved.

“So you have showed me,” he said quietly. He let his hand trace a path down her body, slipping it inside her robe to her abdomen, where he placed it over the child they’d made. The child they would raise together, in this country they would rule.