I’ve been good.Sogood. I’ve followed our rules, and I went from ignoring her to being superficially pleasant.
Then last night I went after her.
First time in three years I went beyond the palace grounds, and I did it for her. I was afraid she’d leave and not come back. What would happen to us then? I could have sent Javier or even a random attendant to get her, but no.
I went.
I watched her on the tracking app since practically the moment she left the palace as I do every time she goes to see her father. I don’t know what I was expecting to find. Her in a bar or meeting up with someone other than her father. Last night when she didn’t reply to my text and she didn’t go to the bus stop, I panicked. A sick knot in my stomach I couldn’t untwist.
I told myself I was simply going because I wanted to see herin her element, outside of the palace. It wasn’t even a lie. I wanted to spy on her from afar where I knew she wouldn’t catch me as she always seems to. But the cold, hard reality was, I wanted to be alone with her. And when that happened, I couldn’t help but touch her. Hold her goddamn hand like a kid because I craved the connection. Kiss her mouth and pray for a small taste.
I can deny it or brush it off all I want, but I fucking want this woman. I burn with wanting her. I’m consumed by it.
Her flesh. Her taste. Her sounds. Her naked body. I crave every last inch and piece of her. I need her cunt on my lips. On my tongue. On my fingers. On my cock. I want her dazzling smiles and smart mouth and huge brain and big heart and gorgeous eyes and stunning face.
I want it all. All of her.
But with Bellamy comes other things. More than just the physical. Foreign thoughts and feelings and words that wage war within me. Battling for the acknowledgment I refuse to give them. She’s grown into a full-blown obsession. No matter how hard I try to fight it.
Too young. Too forbidden. Too much my nanny. Who cares?!
So Bellamy entering my study looking so fucking pretty it hurts, sitting down and drinking American crass bourbon, ready to unload something on me…this might be a bit more than I can handle right now.
Especially after that call. Especially knowing if it’s not Samil, it will be someone else who comes in and steals her away from me.
“Just tell me what you have to say,” I snap when she still doesn’t answer.
“Your children need to be children and leave this palace.” Then she claps a hand over her mouth. “Shit. I didn’t mean forit to come out that bluntly, but that’s what popped out. You made me nervous!” She polishes off the last of her second drink and sets the crystal tumbler down.
“Pardon?” My eyebrows hit my hairline as a strange combination of fury and surprise sweeps through me.
“Your Majesty. Sebastian. Seb.” She tosses her hands up. “Whatever I am permitted to call you, your children need more than what they currently have, and bycurrently have, I mean being confined to the palace walls.”
“What the fuck do you know about it?”
“I know that they need more.”
I bolt forward, my elbows digging into my thighs, and I pin her with a stare that makes grown men shrivel. “What makes you think you have any right to tell me what my children need? Do you not understand why I keep them in this palace?”
“Yes. I know why you do that.”
“Then what are you asking of me?” I’m at my end. Is she for real with this?
She stands. “Phaedra has a lot of anxiety. Sabrina seeks attention by acting out. She hides under your desk to be closer to you and cried tonight because all she wants is to go to an autumn festival. Zayer has to be held at all times, and if he’s not with someone else, he gets scared and cries.”
I stand too, opening my mouth only to close it again because I was that close to flying off the handle at her. I pace and run my hands through my hair as I try to calm my raging temper. And when I think I have it back under control, I turn on her, practically growling with how close to the edge I am.
“Desta was taken from us. Brea has spent her life in a house somewhere I’m not allowed to visit because my mother feels we’re too much of a risk to her. My father was murdered. My wife’s helicopter went down right in front of us. And that’s just my immediate family. There are books written on the tragediesthat have befallen the generations of my bloodline. These are my children!” I boom.
“I’m trying to help thembechildren!” she screams back.
“And I’m trying to keep them alive! They’re safe here.” I grip my hair by the roots, my pulse racing. “This palace is the only place I know they’re safe because I’ve made it a goddamn fortress. Cameras and guards everywhere.”
She doesn’t know I have her breaking the bust on video. I’ve watched it I don’t even know how many times. The way she gazed up at the painting…
“It’s a prison of gilded walls!”
My fists clench, her words like knives as they pierce my heart.
