Page 16 of King's Heir of Hate

It was the unerring accuracy that made her so dangerous, Tadeo thought. Against his will. He’d had five months as a brand-new king to consider precisely how he appeared to others—meaning, mostly, his subjects. His father had been stern, but fair.

Tadeo’s team had carefully suggested that perhaps he could…unbend.

So, naturally, the one person alive who had ever seen him lose control—and more than once—thought he was a robot.

“This is how our marriage will work,” he told her, stern himself this time. “You have often commented on the fact you felt I made all the decisions for us whether you agreed with them or not.”

“Ihavecommented on that,” she agreed. “Because you have made all the decisions, whether I agreed with them or not. You knew that I would never back out of a betrothal that meant so much to my father. He still considers it his greatest achievement, aside from marrying my mother.” Her dark eyes seemed to see too far into him. “You have shamelessly exploited the emotions you claim to find so distasteful. Is that what we’re talking about? Finally?”

Tadeo ignored that aside about her family. Or tried to ignore it, anyway. It was another blow that struck too close to home. It felt a little tooright. Was he really that shameless?

But he already knew the answer. Of course he was. He would have done anything to present the correct image of himself to his father and the world, and he had. He couldn’t regret that now.

He cleared his throat. “Little as I hate to admit it, you’re not wrong that pretending for all these years that this chemistry does not exist was always destined to end in an explosion. This explosion has now had consequences.”

“I’m making a list now,” she told him. “It will be of all the things you call our child in advance that if I hear you call them when they’re here will not end well. Just so you know.”

“Our lives are now irrevocably altered,” he told her, and he could hear how stern and uncompromising he sounded.

Not that Esme seemed to care one bit.

“We can alter them however we see fit,” she tossed back at him. Carelessly, he thought. “I know that you like to play these games of yours, where you pretend that your life is perfect, and make it look that way. But it’s really not necessary. Maybe the gift you can give your kingdom is showing them that a divorce can be healthy.” She shrugged. “Sometimes two people aren’t meant to be together, particularly when their marriage takes place in the pressure cooker of a palace. There’s nothing wrong with it. It’s not shameful. I wish you could see that.”

“Divorce with a child is unacceptable,” he told her at once, and did not care to examine the tug deep inside him at that. As if his body rejected the very idea. “But I will also never tolerate the things my father did in his marriage.”

If he’d slapped her, he doubted she would have reacted more strongly. Esme sat up straighter, her body jerking slightly, as if she really had sustained a blow. He could see color flood her cheeks.

And he didn’t understand how he could feel both satisfied by that and disgusted with himself.

“Are you accusing me of something?” she asked, and for the first time in a long while, perhaps since Boston, she did not sound calm at all.

“You are clearly a woman who is ruled by her basic needs,” he said. “Are you not? You always seem to be at such pains to show me that you are.”

Esme shot to her feet and Tadeo thought, not for the first time, that this would all be so much easier if he wasn’t soaffectedby her. Like she was in hisbloodstream.

It was worse now. He knew that her curves were lusher and that he had done that. That washisbaby she was carrying.Hisbaby that was changing the shape of her.

Even thinking about this made him outrageously hard.

There were many things that were blurry about the night of his father’s funeral, but not the way he’d lost himself deep inside Esme. Again and again, tearing them both apart, letting himself enjoy the one indulgence he denied himself above all others.

“Will you be requiring a paternity test, then?” Esme asked sharply, her gaze dark and furious and, if he wasn’t mistaken, curt. “By all means. Call in a parade of doctors. Knock yourself out and make this all about data. Maybe then you can process it.”

He refused to give her the satisfaction of seeing that land. “Going forward, you will have to choose,” he told her, coldly. “We are going to alter the rules of this relationship. You will, of course, take up the mantle of your responsibilities once more.”

“Of course. I feel naked without my mantle, don’t you?”

Tadeo decided that was simply a bid to get him to imagine her naked, which was not difficult. Or unusual. Only now he had to imagine this new, succulentlyripeversion of her and he felt himself very nearly break out in a sweat as he fought to think of anything but that.

Literally anything else.

Esme shook her head at him as if she was disappointed in him. “If you want to insult me, Tadeo, you should probably start with things that are actually possible. A slip in perfection on my part is not one of them.”

He was letting her distract him, and that was another thing that needed to end. This would be a new start for them. This would, he was certain, solve a great many of their issues and make all of thistensiondissipate.

In truth, he thought it was a brilliant solution. He expected she would not—but he thought she’d come around.

“In private, you can either run your mouth or you can work it out in my bed,” he told her starkly, and had the satisfaction of watching her mouth drop open. It was worth the wait, he thought. “You will no longer live at the manor house. You will be installed in the queen’s compartments here in the palace that adjoin my own. If you cannot control your mouth, that is your choice. You will sleep in your own room. If you can manage to keep your jabs and witticisms and little veiled attacks—always delivered so archly and sosweetly—to yourself, like a good girl, we will work off some of this friction together.”