Page 22 of Vows to a King
For so long, he’d been alone, whether in personal life or business, and had done as he pleased.
It had been Jemima who had assembled his own team and the palace teams together, sketching out a daily and weekly agenda for him with the aggression and authority of a clever military general. Then she had instituted several checks and balances to protect his time, cutting off everyone’s access to him but for the most important matters.
Despite her attempts, the crown council had already brought up several pending issues that awaited his decision, some of them truly critical. The matters betrayed the truth of her words about Adamos being distracted in the last few months.
It was only with her insider knowledge and pertinent but exhaustive information on those issues that he had been able to make a decision. Neither had he hidden the fact that she had enabled him to make it. He wanted the crown council and Thalassos to know that she was his partner.
The fact that she was so much more equipped—better than anyone else to rule Thalassos—hadn’t stopped her from attending to his needs first, from the most trivial to the important. She seemed to possess some kind of sensor that told her of not only his moods but also how to handle him. Despite the fact that he had pushed her away when she’d made the mistake of trying to understand him.
The woman confounded him, in more than one way. She rejected the one real offer he had made for their future and then made herself indispensable to him. He had thought her a partner, but now he was left to wonder whether she didn’t trust that they could make this work or if she was still her father’s pawn, her actions dictated by his cunning motives.
Shooting to his feet in frustration, Adonis stared down at the summary notes of the trade agreement renewal with their neighboring country that he’d been reading for the last two hours without a word sinking in.
Frustration rattled through him at his inability to parse the simplest of legalese. All he had to show for the two hours was a pounding headache behind his right eye that reminded him how ill-fitted he was for this role.
Something he spied in the depths of King Aristos’s exact blue eyes. In a cruel twist of fate, his father kept calling him by his brother’s name when Adonis visited him every night. Why he insisted on putting himself through the torment, he didn’t know. But a part of him wanted his father to know that the son he had never wanted, the boy he’d shamed and ignored and neglected with such casual cruelty, was about to be crowned King.
Once, it would have been Adonis’s wildest dream to have the right to rule Thalassos, to continue the legacy of the Vasilikos dynasty in service to it. But now that the hour was upon him, he…wasn’t sure he was equipped for it.
A part of him, he thought, would forever remain that child who didn’t quite belong anywhere.
Giving in to one vice, he was pouring himself fine Thalassan wine into a cut crystal glass when he sensedherpresence.
Comfort and desire prickled through him instantly, and he felt annoyance at how easily she was sinking under his skin.
Jemima Nasar, it seemed, was a creature of habit, for she visited him every night since she had installed him here. Even though they spent several hours together going about their duties together during the interminable day. And every night, her approach was wary and calculated, as if he were a barely restrained predator that somehow happened to be her responsibility.
He sipped the wine and walked around the serene fountain at the center of the courtyard. Its water cascaded gently over smooth stones, flowing into a shallow reflecting pool. Lily pads floated on the surface of the pool, their delicate flowers adding a burst of color, along with koi fish darting below.
“Was adding the pool to this courtyard your idea?” he said. There was something extremely arousing about the efficiency and expediency with which the woman was stitching herself into his life.
He saw her startled reflection in the pool and smiled to himself. Today, she was dressed in a peach-toned silk dress. The severe cut did wonders for her hourglass figure. While it didn’t bare any skin—which he would have preferred infinitely, despite his pettiness that he wouldn’t touch her—it was a huge improvement on the dark, somber colors she wore to mourn his brother.
This was her Let’s-Try-to-Pacify-the-Devil-Prince outfit, he knew.
Giddy anticipation swirled through him at the thought of her clad in a towel or a robe, shuffling through her wardrobe, wondering how far she should venture in dressing to please him. Not that she would admit to it.
A chunky emerald necklace—one of his engagement presents to her—glinted at her throat, almost like a collar. He loved that idea even more. Although the fact that she would be outraged at the idea of being collared by someone like him only added to his perverse satisfaction.
“Why…do you ask that?” she said, straightening her stance, as if readying for battle.
“You’re already an expert at managing me and my moods, Princess. Installing some kind of serenity pool in the hopes of calming me, or even better taming me, though, seems a little naive of you. What I have seen of you so far suggests eminent practicality.”
She scrunched her little button nose at that. So she didn’t like being called practical, did she? “I wish I could claim the credit for the idea but it goes to the architect who designed the courtyard.” She walked around the pool in the opposite direction from him, but slowly heading toward him. He had a feeling she was bracing herself for the collision. “Although, yes, the Queen insisted that I give him my input. Studying interior design and architecture was one of my dreams from a different life.”
The wistfulness she buried under the casual words tugged at him. What else had she dreamed of and given up on because of her father’s greed for power?
In the two weeks since he’d returned, he’d not seen her resentful of her duties even for a moment. While she might not have wanted the crown, the woman was a born queen—something his father had recognized and obtained for his golden son.
“I’m sure Thalassos has benefited from your lost dreams,” he added, more to provoke her than anything else.
Her laughter boomed in the cavernous courtyard, as majestic and real as the peaks of the snow-laden hills he could see in the distance. It swept through him like a river, charging up every cell into primal desire. “If only you could employ a pinch of that diplomacy with the crown council, Your Highness.”
“I’m not interested in seducing the crown council,” he said. “I’m sure my tastes run too scandalous for them even if I could get them to bend over.”
Pink bloomed on her cheeks and he drank it up like it was nectar. Pursing her lips in that way he was coming to recognize as her wrestling herself under control, she made a tsking sound. “Beware, Prince. Say such things and I might think them true.”
“About the pool, Princess?” he said, annoyed by her refusal to accept the pull between them.
