He lifted his hands and cupped her face between them. ‘Guinevere…little lioness…it cannot be just about me. You need happiness in your life too. Youdeserveit.’
* * *
Guinevere looked up into his beautiful face, her arms tight around his narrow waist. There was anguish there, and something fierce and hot and bright.
Her king. Her enemy. Her husband.
The man she loved without limit and without reservation.
She’d known that the minute he’d walked away from her, leaving her standing alone in the ballroom. After telling her that he couldn’t give her what she deserved and that she’d be better off if she’d never met him.
But she’d told him the truth—that she’d still have been hiding in the walls if he hadn’t come along and shown her the courage that had always been there inside her.
And as he’d walked away from her she’d known she couldn’t let him. That he needed to learn a lesson too, and one that only she could teach him.
A lesson about the love she knew lay in his heart. The love for his parents that had translated into a driving need to make their deaths matter. The love for his country and for his people that had kept him on the path to the crown.
This king was made of love. And it wasn’t a distraction. And loving his country didn’t mean he couldn’t love her.
Not that she needed him to love her, she’d decided as his tall form disappeared in the crowded ballroom. It didn’t matter in the end. Because what she wanted was his happiness, and that was all that mattered to her. He had no one. His parents were gone, he had no siblings, no friends. He was an island, in splendid isolation, and she was his only bridge.
He might decide to divorce her and he probably would—‘for her own good’. But she didn’t care if he did. She wasn’t going to leave him. She couldn’t leave him. And she’d rather be trapped inside the walls of the palace with him than be free to go wherever she wanted, because his happiness was her happiness and there was no freedom without him.
So she’d gone after him, to tell him that she wouldn’t be leaving him, and had found him on the balcony alone, a look of despair on his face.
He’d muttered something about divorce, but she’d ignored that, showing him, then telling him, that she wasn’t going to leave.
Her heart felt barbed and sharp, but the pain wasn’t as bad as when she’d stood in the ballroom, because she’d made a decision. It hurt now, though, with his warm palms against her cheek, his expression fierce, silver eyes blazing as he told her she deserved happiness.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I do. And luckily I already have it here with you.’
‘Guinevere…’
‘You make me happy, my king. And you don’t need to do anything more and you don’t need to be anything else. Just you, as you are.’
‘Two hours a day,’ he said roughly. ‘You wanted more than two hours.’
She tightened her arms around him, holding him fast. ‘If you can only give me two hours, then I will be happy with that.’ Her eyes prickled with the force of her emotions. ‘I will never be happy without you, Tiberius. Don’t you understand that?’
The look on his face intensified, and the silver flames in his eyes burned impossibly bright, and for a long time he just looked down at her. Then he said, his voice hot and deep, ‘You told me that love isn’t something that’s finite and I think you’re right. I’ve been afraid that I can’t love you and my country at the same time, but I think I’ve been doing so for the past two weeks.’
A hot wash of shock went through her, her painful heart igniting into flame. ‘You…love me?’
Tiberius smiled, natural and brilliant, like the sun coming out. ‘Yes, little lioness. I love you.’ Then he bent his head and kissed her, his mouth hot and demanding, and when he came up for air, he growled, ‘Two hours, my queen. I demand two hours of your time every day. Two hours for the rest of my life.’
‘Two hours? My king, I will give you eternity.’
And she did.
EPILOGUE
‘There,’ Tiberius said,adjusting the telescope. ‘Can you see Venus? It’s very bright.’
Standing beside him under the orange trees, on the grass of the orchard, his lioness peered through the high-powered telescope Tiberius had brought with him.
‘Oh, yes!’ she exclaimed in wonder. ‘You’re right. It’s amazingly bright.’
It was their little ritual—to come out here at night once a month, to look at the stars and remind themselves of the whole beautiful universe that they were only tiny parts of.
