He shook his head, a sudden flash of disgust curling his lip. “But something changed. I found myself wanting to give to you. And as I did, I realized how much your happiness meant. How much more it meant than my own. How could I be happy when you were so miserable? How could I hold you prisoner and call you mine?”
“But…but… Does my father have anything to do with this…has he?”
“Nothing,” he said, his voice fierce. “I rejected his offer of a partnership after I lost you. It was I who rejected it, not him. Because I couldn’t face having a connection to you without having you.”
“You said you kept in touch.”
His expression turned bleak. “I called sometimes. To see if there had been word of you.”
“You did?”
“I love you,” he said. “I love you more than I love myself, and I don’t think I have ever felt that way. I’m certain I haven’t. I want…I want your happiness so much more than I want my own. So you must promise me, Angelina, that you will be happy. And then I will let you go with a smile.”
Angelina’s breath caught, her hands shaking. “You…love me?”
“Yes,” he said.
She shook her head, tears stinging her eyes. “I…I can’t do what you asked just now. I can’t go and be happy.”
“What do you need?” he asked, his eyes shining. “What do you need and I will give it to you.”
“You,” she whispered, wrapping her arms around his neck and burying her face. “I need you.”
One of his arms curved around her waist and he lowered his head, pressing his forehead against her shoulder. “Why did you wish so badly for things to be different, then?”
“Because you didn’t love me. I wanted your love and knowing I couldn’t have that…that’s why I was sad.”
He raised his head, his eyes meeting hers. “I did love you. I didn’t know what to call it. And I did not love you in the right way. I know with certainty that I’ve loved you since the first moment I saw you. But now I’m ready to love you right.”
“What changed?” she asked.
“I did. I think it’s because of you. No, I know it is. You have changed me. You have humbled me. And I needed it, badly.”
“I love you, Taj. I loved you then. But I couldn’t stand the thought of marrying you just because you wanted to strengthen your nation’s economy. I wanted to be more to you than that.”
“You are,” he said. “Though I could not have said it then. I was foolish.”
“Maybe we both were.”
“Maybe we will be again,” he said.
“But we love each other. And that’s why we’ll stay together.”
“You’ll stay with me then? Be my wife?”
“Yes,” she said, pressing a kiss to his lips, her heart swelling with emotion, tears sliding down her cheeks.
He kissed her deeper, tightening his hold on her.
“I’ll get a procession of camels, right, sugar?” she whispered, nipping his earlobe.
He chuckled. “Nothing is too grand for you.”
“On second thought, I don’t need the camels.”
“You don’t?”
She shook her head, raised her hand and traced a line of moisture on his cheek. “No. I only need you.”
* * *
Turn the page to read the first chapter of The Price of Royal Duty by Penny Jordan, the first full novel in The Santina Crown series….
The Price of Royal Duty
Chapter One
‘Ash.’ Sophia Santina, youngest daughter of the King and Queen of the island of Santina, breathed the name silently to herself, almost reverentially. Just the feel of the nearly silent breath that whispered his name and caressed her throat was enough to raise erotic pinpricks of desire within her flesh. Ash. How the whispering of his name was enough to unleash within her an aching echo of the tumultuous teenage desires he had once aroused in her. The very air was electric with the reckless sensual excitement that wantonly flooded her, even though she had sworn she would not, positively not, allow herself to experience it.
She had known, of course, that he had been invited to her eldest brother’s engagement party here at the castle that was their family home, but knowing that and actually seeing him with that strikingly sensual maleness of his that she remembered so well were two very different things.