“You understand duty, necessity, ownership,” I continued, talking over her protestations.“You understand the danger of refusing.And like most noble women, you laid back, submitted, and endured.Sometimes you even considered taking a lover on the side to offer you the intimacy that your legal bedmate refused to give you.”
“What does any of this have to do with—?”
“What do you think I do?”
Alaina stopped.She stopped touching me.She stopped speaking.She just stopped.
I hated the silence, but I could not fill it.My heart thudded like I had been running.My back ached from the stiffness.And I didn’t want to say anything else to Alaina.
I bowed my head and regretted my honesty.Alaina was my only company, and she was good company, keeping me from dwelling too long on my impossible situation.But even to her, though we called each other friends, I was but another amusement.Like I was to the tsarina.But, unlike the tsarina, if Alaina lost interest in me, I would lose everything all over again.
“I hate having serious conversations with you,” I confessed at long last.“They always become too serious.You’re going to grow bored of me.”
“I wouldn’t.”
“Not yet.”
“I don’t know that I ever could be,” she said.“I enjoy tormenting you too much.Which is why I am insisting on sleeping beside you.”
“A torment indeed.”
“Kaylay?”She reached out and touched my arm.“I don’t want to sleep on a floor.”
“Then don’t.You have a bed.”
“It is cold and lonely, and you will not join me in it.”
“It is not right that I should.”
“It is my bed,” she said, “and I am your social superior.I get to determine what is right or not.And I declare that it is right.”
I didn’t answer.
“I don’t want sex,” she said.“I want affection.I wantyouraffection.”
She released her hold on my arm and sought out my face.When she found it, she placed both hands on my cheeks and bent my head down.Her lips pressed to my brow.
“I don’t know about the ladies in the wonder tales,” she whispered, “but I can appreciate the magic in my life.”
That almost set me to weeping again.
“Come to bed with me.Please.”She stood and found my hand, tugging me up with her.
This time, I was helpless to resist.I stood and followed.The warmth from the connection of our hands radiated through me.I would have followed her anywhere to maintain it.She released my hand only when we reached the head of her bed.
Sense returned with the breakage of connection.I took a step backward.“I can’t.”
“Kaylay!”
“I will defile you.”
There it was, the other unspoken truth I did not wish to commit to words.I would lower her.I would ruin her.And I didn’t want to do it even at her request.She would never know that I had been Mikhail, but her rejection at the ball left a lasting mark.Even now, wearing a form so different from my last and bearing another name, I still feared making her ridiculous.A princess and a monster.Wasn’t that ridiculous?
“The tsarina keeps you as a lover.If it does not defile her—”
“The tsarina defiles herself beyond any measure I may.”
Alaina sought my hand, took one, then took the other.She led me back to the bed.
