King's Ransom (Man on a Mission 2)
Memories of Dirk and Sabrina came back to Juliana as she stood there. Good memories and painful ones. Remembering with a pang of guilt how she’d been envious of her friends and the love they shared. Not that she’d wanted to take anything away from them; she’d just wanted what they had. Now she did...but now they didn’t. Now Bree’s dead and Dirk might not survive. She would carry that grief...and guilt...for a long time.
* * *
Later that night Juliana lay cradled in Andre’s arms in her bedroom. Her little house in the gated community in the Los Angeles foothills—not far from the DeWinters’ home—had been her solitary haven for years, and she’d made this bedroom and the large attached master bathroom with its whirlpool tub a place of refuge from the world. No man had ever been here with her...until Andre.
As they lay together in the aftermath of loving, they both realized they’d suffered for nothing. Nothing except the determination of a dead king and a covetous prince to keep them apart. Now they both knew they had remained faithful, not just to each other, but to their love. Forever and a day.
Andre’s arms tightened around her. “It occurs to me I have never asked you, Juliana.”
She nuzzled his shoulder dreamily. “Asked me what?”
“To marry me.” She caught her breath, and he heard it. “Why did you not tell me I was still too arrogant, little one? Why did you not tell me I should not assume your consent when I placed that ring on your finger?” He laughed softly. “You should not let me be too sure of you, Juliana. Did no one ever tell you that?”
She chuckled and snuggled closer. “I didn’t dare say no to you,” she teased. “Not after you threatened I would have no other lover than you from that moment on. I was terrified.” She kissed him as she said it, so he’d know she didn’t really mean it.
He was silent for a moment. “I did not mean to make that threat. I swore to myself I would wait for you to come to me, and then I would know you loved me enough to take on the arduous job of being my wife. Being my queen.” He sighed. “It will not be easy, little one. But then, I think you know something about the life I lead because in many ways you have led the same life. Very little privacy, and what little I have I guard fiercely. Beyond that, there will be times I must put duty to Zakhar above my love for you, as I have done before. Zakhar...but no other woman.”
“I know.” Her voice was little more than a whisper in the darkness.
“Most of the sacrifices will be yours. Your country. Your freedom. Your friends. Not that you will never see them again, but your royal duties will have to take precedence. Zakhar will have to become your first priority.”
“No,” she told him firmly. “Not my first priority. You will be that. Always. Then our children. Zakhar will have to take third place.”
He lay very still beneath her. “You cannot know how I have longed to see you with our child,” he said, obviously deeply moved by her assumption they would have children together. He shifted her so he could place a large hand on her stomach and caress her there. Tenderly. “That day on the set...seeing you as Eleonora about to give birth, I wanted that to be our child in your womb. And that night I realized I had been lying to myself thinking I could ever let you leave. I cannot.”
His voice was harsh in the darkness. “I am no gentleman, little one. Know that. Believe it. I would have killed Niko in an instant merely for threatening you. Merely for putting the look of terror in your eyes I saw when I entered your bedroom.”
“But you didn’t kill him,” she reminded him softly.
“Only at your request.” He breathed sharply. “There is a savage side of me you have not seen until now. The civilized man the world sees is merely a veneer. Can you still love me knowing the truth? Knowing I am no gentleman?” He didn’t give her a chance to respond before adding in a pain-racked voice it hurt her to hear, “The other day I told you I can deny you nothing, but that was a lie. There is one thing I can deny you—only one. Your freedom. Can you live with me knowing that now you are mine again I will never let you go?”
“Don’t let me go,” she whispered to him, soothing him with a gentle caress. “I know you’re not a gentleman, but I don’t care. Just love me, and don’t ever let me go.”
Epilogue
With all the pomp and circumstance for which the fairy-tale kingdom was justly famous, Zakhar celebrated the royal wedding on the first day of December. The bride’s distinguished father—the former US Ambassador—was there to lead her down the aisle. The groom’s best man was his cousin Zax. And Princess Mara was the matron of honor—the word matron taking nearly everyone in Zakhar by surprise, since almost no one knew she had married the previous January. But her plebeian husband—a tall, handsome man who squired her everywhere with an unmistakably protective air—soon became a crowd favorite because of his obvious devotion to her.