“There you are wrong.” Still, he turned and she fell into step with him, the two of them wandering further down the shadowy pathway through the trees. This gallery felt familiar to him, but his simple pleasure at being with Francesca outweighed any pain that might want to ring in his ears. Her hand was warm in his, her body close, and every statue, bench and tree beckoned to him as welcome shelter.
A commotion at the festival end of the park sounded again, someone shouting, and Fran tugged him deeper into the shadows. “I think there’s a fountain here,” she said. “Oh! It’s beautiful.”
He pulled his attention from the other end of the street to the wide concrete apron that abutted the cobblestones, and let his gaze travel up. It was a beautiful fountain, a depiction of Poseidon with mermaids bursting up around him in a spray of water. From their outstretched hands streams of water fell, and Fran leaned forward, trying to catch some of the spray with her fingers. “I don’t have a coin or I’d toss it in for luck.”
He lifted his brows as she glanced back to him. “And what would you wish for?”
“If I could have anything?” Her face seemed suddenly wistful, and Ryker quieted as she gazed at him. “It’s not fair of me, and it’s not possible, but I wish this night wouldn’t end.” She glanced back to the sparkling fountain, and the park beyond, lit with yet more fairy lights. “That’s selfish, I know.”
“Selfish,” he murmured. He reached for her and she let him take her hand and pull her deeper into the city park. It was quieter here, though the place didn’t have an abandoned feeling. More that it was holding its breath, waiting for the sun to rise.
When she didn’t say anything more, he squeezed her fingers. “Selfish how?”
“I’ve had you to myself all day—for a couple of days really—but you’ve got things to do. Friends. Your family.”
He snorted. “A family I cannot remember.” Nevertheless, something about this park felt familiar, as the whole city felt familiar, calling to him with a siren song of his own history. It seemed so much closer to the surface here, but he didn’t want his past, now. He wanted his present, this moment with Francesca.
“You will though.” She shook her head, as if she could hear the melancholy in her voice. “And you should. You’ve an entire life waiting for you around the corner.”
Despite her words striking a definite chord of rightness within him, Ryker didn’t want to hear this. He tightened his grip on her hand and she glanced up to him as he slowed to a stop. “You cannot say goodbye to me, Francesca,” he murmured. “You’ve barely said hello.”
Her smile was so gentle, it seemed as if it held the grace of angels. But what he felt for this woman wasn’t angelic.
“I’m not saying goodbye,” Francesca said. But a new sense of wrongness settled over him, and he stared down at her.
“Then why do you hesitate?” he said. “Do you not want me to kiss you—like this?” he leaned down and brushed his lips against hers, and her breath caught. “Or is it you prefer like this?”
He lifted her against him then, and there was no way she could miss the hardening of his body as he fit it against hers. Her soft groan deep in her throat egged him on, and he plundered her mouth, kissing her lips, her jaw, then back to her mouth again, slipping his tongue past her parted lips and tasting her, exploring her. He wanted to be inside her, and the lone thing stopping that was the fact that they weren’t alone in the park, not perfectly alone. Not the kind of alone he’d need for what he’d want to do with this woman, the two of them entwined together so tightly that it would be impossible to tell where one would end and the other begin.
Francesca slid down his body as he pulled away, but he didn’t let her go. He liked the way she stared at him, her eyes wide and confused by what had happened between them, as if it wasn’t something she could predict in her carefully ordered life.
He didn’t want her careful or ordered, however. He wanted her to be his.
“Where should we go?” he rumbled, and before she could answer he lifted a finger to her lips. “Not tonight. Not in the city. But where should you and I go—together? If you could picture any place in the world, where would you like to visit with me?”
“Ha, well that’s easy enough.” Her face transformed in the shadows, seeming to be lit from within. He knew what her answer would be before she said it: Paris.
She still managed to surprise him, though.
“I know it sounds ridiculous, but—when I was a little girl, my dad had this cheap little statue of the Eiffel Tower. It was the funniest-looking thing, and when I found out some people in Paris built it for a fair—I mean, a World’s Fair but still, essentially an overgrown fair—but then they kept it because it became a national symbol, I thought that was the most incredible thing. That people could build something as a novelty that would become a symbol for love and travel the world over. It made me think that no matter who we are, or how we start out, we can become something different—something meaningful.” She glanced away, a blush crawling up her cheeks.
“So I wanted to go to Paris. That’s a big reason why I took this trip with my friends. And I love my friends, don’t get me wrong. But one of the stops on our itinerary was Paris—we’d be there for three whole days, and Lauren promised me that she’d put us up in a hotel that had a view of the Eiffel Tower. That we could visit and go to the top, no matter how long the lines were.” She shook her head, glancing down the long park toward the brighter lights at the far end. “I still have that silly little Eiffel Tower somewhere. It’s one of the few things I kept, but I couldn’t throw it away.”
Ryker sensed her restlessness, so he let her tug out of his embrace, then followed as she pulled him along the walkway, away from the celebration and toward the bold lights in the distance. “Will you go to Paris then?”
She laughed. “Honestly, I don’t know. Maybe not this trip after all, but one day. I’ve heard it’s beautiful, though it has the problems any big city does.” She sent him a sideways glance. “Can you remember now, if you’ve been?”
Ryker lifted his gaze up past the treetops as they walked, taking in the starlit sky. “I can,” he said. “I don’t know when or how, but I’m certain that I’ve been there, and that those memories aren’t bad ones either, but simply waiting for the right time to come out.” He squeezed her hand. “I feel good about them, though. I think Paris was a good place for me. That I was happy there.”
“I think you probably were too,” she said softly.
They walked to the end of the park, and when they finally cleared the last of the trees, Ryker saw why there had been so many lights. A building soared above the city streets, walled and gated but lit brightly enough to seem like full day. And to either side of the gates was the symbol he’d come to know so well. The royal seal.
His heart started hammering in his chest for no reason, and he regarded Francesca with a frown. “Why have you brought me here?” he asked. “I thought we agreed—not tonight.”
“Because it’s time that you saw it,” she said, pointing up to the royal palace. “This…well, this is your home.”
13
