Page 34 of Vows to a King
“You do know that producing a child does not require a bed, don’t you?”
She gasped. “Of course, I know that…” She closed her mouth and opened it again. “I simply refuse to be thrown about like a child’s toy by your stunts.”
“My stunts?” he said, even as understanding began to dawn.
“You might call it a tribute to your brother, and Thalassos might foolishly rejoice in seeing their new king splash about in the sky, making a spectacle of his anger, of his pain, and even of its promised golden future.” Eyes bright with unshed tears, an inferno of emotions crossing her face, his wife looked like the very volcano that had made Thalassos rich with fertile soil that could nurture and grow the wildest of weeds. And that was how he had always felt amidst the carefully manicured garden that was his family—a wild, robust weed that wasn’t of use to anyone.
“But I will not take part in your self-destruction, Your Majesty. I did not find it moving at all.”
As if to mock her defiant assertion, her tears fell one by one, onto smooth, round cheeks.
Adonis decided he didn’t like the sight of her tears at all. No, he actively hated them and he vowed to be rid of them, as much as possible.
This whole…caring about someone else and accommodating his actions toward that end felt…both strange and alluring to him, like a new challenge. Even, a purpose.
It terrified him, this purpose, as much as it lured him. After all, he was a man who thrived on pushing his body to its extreme limits. And now, a part of him wanted to try it with his heart, even as his head blared warnings. Wanted to grab everything that stood before him with both hands and full heart, even as the young boy inside him raged in protest, begging to protect himself from that pain again.
In the end, the pull she had on him won out, at least for the moment. After all, he had treated her horribly on what should have been a special day.
Covering the distance between them, he wiped her tears with his knuckles and sensed the great volcano of tension she held inside. The fact that she had sought solace in that little boy’s body made his chest tight. As if she had known that she couldn’t get it from him.
Acting on an impulse that he didn’t understand or was ready for, he pressed his mouth to her temple. The scent of sweet vanilla filled his nostrils, his lungs, and all the cold, far-off reaches of his body, replacing the chill he had felt earlier with silken warmth.
He wrapped his arms around her and instantly, she fell into him, her silent, hiccupping sobs bathing him. “Jemima…” He didn’t even care that her name sounded like an entreaty on his lips. “I did not do it to cause you pain. I do it to ease mine.” Even speaking the words was cathartic, but then, he had never verbalized the urge to scream at what destiny had landed him into. Of how hard it was to fight such brutal cruelty. “I was in a rage and when one of those rages takes me, the only way to wrestle control over myself is to challenge the upper edges of what my body can do, to drown myself deep into the adrenaline released by an act of tremendous risk. When the fear and the excitement and the gratitude from it floods me, I’m centered again. I am also unused to thinking that someone would worry over me so.”
Hands on his chest, she pushed at him so suddenly that he nearly stumbled to the floor. Only the fact that she was small and he was all muscle stopped him from landing on his ass. A sight he was sure his fierce queen would have thoroughly enjoyed.
Her tears were gone and the anger was back. “I did not think the Devil Prince Adonis Vasilikos could suffer from self-pity and victimizing himself. How dare you say that no one would worry about you, Adonis? Your mother loves you,” she said. “And your foolishly impressed subjects love you. Even the stubborn, relentlessly proper staff at this damned palace have begun to love you. To risk so much in a fit of anger…you should be ashamed of yourself. I refuse to tie myself, my future, my children to a man who thinks so little of his life.”
“It might look risky to you, but I was in control the entire time,” Adonis said, surprised by the fact that he was offering an explanation at all. Untried as he was in relationships, her concern stole under his skin like a small worm digging its way in. “I have made billions out of what I do in the form of outrageous, spine-tingling, death-defying stunts, Princess. However reckless I feel, I’d never risk my life in such a wasteful way. Not when the Queen risked so much to raise me as her own.”
The roiling confusion in her eyes didn’t abate as she muttered to herself. “I can’t compete with that kind of excitement. A flesh and blood woman would have been better.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” he said, anger edging into his own words now. “I do not expect you to somehow provide me with that kind of adrenaline.” Even as he said it, a new kind of anticipation thrummed through his veins. “Unless you’re offering to try?” he said, grabbing her hips.
Her tearstained eyes rose to his and her throat worked. Another thing he was beginning to adore about his new queen—she did not back down from a challenge, just like him.
“What are you suggesting? If I do something for you…” She licked her lower lip and he suppressed a groan. “Will you stay away from such risky stunts in the future?”
“Why does it bother you so?” he said, clasping her shoulders, genuinely curious. “If you want, I can have my team prepare a report that shows you the risk statistics of every stunt I have ever done. It is as much a part of me as the hills are a part of Thalassos.”
Something softened in her eyes but she pushed back out of his hold and walked around him, her steps both halting and urgent. “When my father decreed that I should somehow persuade you into this marriage, I did so with the least amount of hope. And yet, with each minute that I talked with you, each endless hour we pored over those trade documents, each time you gave me credit for every small thing I did, you gave me hope, Adonis, when I didn’t have any in so many years. Hope for a good relationship. Hope for a loving father for my children, forourchildren. I even dared hope that you might take on an active role in my brother’s life, for I have seen the kindness in you. Then you treat me like a dummy, a stand-in, at the wedding ceremony.”
“Jemima—”
“I could still forgive the last, knowing how hard this…day must have been for you. Knowing what I know now. But I don’t know if I can forgive you for snatching away that hope by taking these risks.”
Anguish swirled in her eyes. “It’s the cruelest thing you could ever do to me and if you touch me, if you kiss me, if you give me a baby,” she said, a bitter laugh falling from her lips, “I cannot keep myself separate from you. I cannot remain my own. And then if something happened to you and I was back under my father’s thumb…” that the idea terrified her was clear from her expression, “I won’t have the strength to look after the innocents around me. All these years of bracing myself for the next calamity and you’ve already rendered me weak.”
He felt as if she had pushed him into a burning building. He had the memory to supply the fear that came with it. His breath tightened like a vise in his throat, and with only one step toward her, there could be salvation or utter destruction. “Love was not a part of our agreement, Princess,” he said, filling his words with cold steel.
“I’m not talking about falling in love with you. Even I am not that foolish. But I could still get attached to you, to this relationship, to the father of my children. And I can’t bear it if…”
It was exactly what he had hoped she’d feel for him, manipulative bastard that he was. That she could actually see facets of his true nature…only made her words sweeter.
Her honesty demanded he give her something in return. “And if I promise to give this matter serious thought? You have to understand,” he said, clasping her cheek, “that these…actions have been a part of me for so long. I do not know what I am without them, Jemima. But I see that my life now has much more value than it ever had before, whatever my father’s ramblings.”
“Is that a vow you’re making me?” she said, her eyes so bright that they gleamed like precious jewels. “That you will consider it?” she added, as if she knew that he would offer up that correction.
