Obsession (Royally Hot 3)

And, if I were perfectly honest with myself, I was thrilled that part hadn’t changed. His anger drew me to him and it always had.

Holding my hand tightly and possessively, he led me back through the camellia garden, littered with fallen petals, and around to a disused door. Or what I thought was a disused door. But when he opened it, the hinges didn’t squeak, nor was there any dust or dirt on the worn stone threshold.

I saw, in fact, that it was a secret entrance, all his own. Hand in hand, with me following behind because the passage was so narrow, we passed through a dark stairway that smelled richly of moss and rain. From there, we emerged into a narrow hallway. I had never been to this part of the castle before, and it took me a moment to realize where we were. We were on Maksim’s side of the castle, and he was leading me directly to his chambers. My heart somersaulted in my chest. I’d never been there, never been anywhere near. But I had yearned to do so for so long.

I’d never risked coming down here before. Brave and a little bit reckless though I might be, I wasn’t stupid. It was such forbidden territory that it still felt that way now. Perhaps because I was so tired, I flashed back to our kiss in the forest, and the way he’d turned on me after that. I couldn’t bear for the same to happen now. I couldn’t bear it if all of this turned out to be some wicked joke.

He felt my slight resistance as he led me toward the big solid door of his bed chamber. He stopped and turned to face me, his strong jaw highlighted by the flickering flames from one of the nearby torches mounted on the walls. I swallowed hard, looking up at him.

“Tell me,” he said.

I knew better than to put him off or pretend it was nothing. He’d see right through that at once.

“Please don’t turn on me again. Please don’t make me feel foolish, the way you did when you first kissed me.”

He stepped into me, pushing me up against the stone wall, running his thumb over my cheek.

“I had to do it then. I had to make you hate me, for your safety and mine. You had to get away from me, Anika, before I did something truly foolish. But I’ll never fucking do it again. I will never turn away from you. And you will never turn away from me. I promise.”

I ran my fingertips over the close-cropped hair at the base of his neck. He tilted his head into my touch, closing his eyes, and kissed my palm as if to seal his promise.

All the layers of protection I’d kept between us were now gone. He had made me more vulnerable than I’d ever been, and was about to make me more vulnerable still. I was overjoyed and terrified all at once. I rose up on my tiptoes and wrapped my arms around him.

“My heart is yours to break,” I whispered.

“Never,” he said. In one smooth gesture, he scooped me off the ground and carried me down the hallway. We stopped at a big oak door, where he held me briefly with one arm to unlock it, and then kicked it open carrying me over the threshold in his massive arms.

His quarters were not at all as I imagined them. He carried me across the front room, which was arranged as a luxurious living space before a low-burning fire. Oxblood leather chairs and rough but fine wood tables sat on top of a deep-blue rug. He set me down there, in front of the fire, and I looked up to see a rack of antlers mounted over the fireplace. I counted the points and then counted them again. Seventeen. I knew those antlers. They were from one of my bucks.

I turned to him, my mouth falling open in surprise. “You said…”

He smiled again, smug this time. Smug and cocky. “That the taxidermist lost them. I know.” He ran his tongue over his teeth. “I should probably apologize. I’ve told you a lot of bullshit just to keep my secret safe. No more, though.” He took his cloak from my shoulders, and flung it over the sofa arm. “No more bullshit ever again.”

Glancing around the room, I saw all manner of things that told me that if I had been feeling things for him, he’d been feeling things for me a whole lot longer. On the mantel rested a pearl earring that I had lost long ago, on top of a lace handkerchief on which I had embroidered my own initials. I traced my finger over the A and the Z, both of which had errors in the embroidery. “My mother told me to donate this one to the alms house.”