A Baby to Bind His Bride

As if they were naked again. As if he was braced above her and thrusting deep inside her—

That was what bothered her most about this extra and intense time with him.

She didn’t hate him. She wasn’t disgusted with him or even disinterested. On the contrary, she continued to find her husband entirely too fascinating by half. And every time he touched her, it set off the same chain reaction. Sometimes he took her elbow as they walked down a hall or through a press gauntlet. Sometimes he helped her in or out of the car, his hand so strong around hers she imagined he could use it to lift her straight off the ground if he chose. Sometimes he touched the small of her back as they entered the room, as if he was guiding her before him. It didn’t matter what he did, how utterly innocuous it was—gestures knit together by old-world manners and inbred politeness, meaningless in their way.

And yet every single time his body touched hers, Susannah…ignited.

She felt it at the point of contact first, like a burst of bright light. Then it rolled through her, making her breasts feel heavy and aflame at once. Making the blood in her veins feel sluggish. And then all of that heavy ache and thick sweetness spiraled around and around, sinking down through her until it pooled deep in her belly. Low and hot and maddening, there between her legs.

She comforted herself with the knowledge that no matter what, Leonidas had no idea what he did to her. He couldn’t. Of course he couldn’t, because she went to such lengths to hide it. And soon she would be far away from him and only she would ever know the true depths of her own weakness.

But as the brilliant lights of central Paris danced over his bent head from beyond the car windows, as he held her hand between his and she felt as bright as the ancient city shimmering in the rain all around her, there was a shuddering part of her that wondered if any of that was strictly the truth.

Maybe he did know. Maybe he knew exactly what he did to her, just as he’d known exactly how to touch her back in that compound…

Not that she cared, because he was pressing his big, clever fingers into her palm.

“What are you doing?” she managed to ask, and assured herself he’d think the catch in her voice was from her headache, not him.

“I was taught that massaging pressure points eases headaches,” Leonidas said with gruff certainty. More to her hand than her, she thought, dispassionate and distant, like a doctor. But then he glanced up to catch her gaze, a little smile flirting with his mesmerizingly hard mouth, and her heart slammed at her.

It took her a few moments to collect herself long enough to recognize that he was right. That the pain in her temples was receding.

“Your family obviously taught you more useful things than mine ever did,” she said without thinking. “My mother believes in suffering, as she’d be the first to tell you.”

“My father was a mean old bastard who relished the pain of others.” Leonidas’s voice was matter-of-fact. He exchanged one hand for the other, pressing down into her palm and alleviating the pain almost instantly when he did. “Particularly mine, as he told me every time he beat me bloody, which he did with great relish and regularity until I got too big at sixteen, at which point, he switched to psychological warfare. And you’ve met my mother. The only sort of pain Apollonia Betancur knows how to relieve comes back every morning-after when the night’s intoxicants wear off.”

Susannah was very still, and not only because he was still holding her hand with his. But because of that searing, dark undercurrent in his voice that told her exactly what it must have been like to be born a Betancur. And not just any Betancur, ushered into a life of privilege from the first breath, but the heir to the whole of the Betancur kingdom whether he liked it or not.

Of course they’d beaten it into him. How else would these people do anything? She already knew they were monsters.

But she also knew her husband well enough by now to know that he would hate it if she expressed anything like sympathy for the childhood he’d survived, somehow.

“I was glad they sent me away to that school when I was small,” Susannah said softly. So softly he could ignore it if he wanted and better yet, she could pretend she wasn’t saying it out loud at all. “For all that it was lonely, I think it was better than having to live with them.”

But he didn’t ignore her. “I wish they’d sent me away more than they did, but you see, there were a great many expectations of the next Betancur and none of them could be beaten into me while I was elsewhere.”

Leonidas was no longer smiling when he let go of her hand and Susannah knew better, somehow, than to reach back over and touch him again the way everything in her wanted to do—and not with a meaningless little gesture. He looked carved from rock, as impossible as a distant mountain, and she wanted to…comfort him, somehow. Care for him. Do something to dispel the dark grip that seemed to squeeze tight around the both of them.