He was trying to frighten her, and she was trying to prove that she was strong enough to stay.
He needed to believe that there was poison in his veins. He needed to believe that something was broken irrevocably, because he was trying to protect himself. And now he was trying to prove that he was stronger than this thing between them, but she knew better.
She was stronger.
Because she had made her choice.
He gazed down at her, his blue eyes visible even in the darkness.
“My husband is far away from me,” she said, touching his face. “And I miss him.”
The growl that reverberated through his body was feral. Unlike anything she had ever heard. And that was when she found herself being laid down on the ground, cold and wet; he didn’t care, and neither did she.
He tore at her dress, and she tore at his clothes, until his cock was free, until he thrust inside of her. There was no game beingplayed. There was no tally being kept of who was satisfying who, and who had the upper hand.
It was a mutual claiming.
A mutual race toward either heaven or hell—which, it was difficult to divine.
He claimed her, over and over again, and she gave him back as good as he gave. Thrust for thrust. Until she cried out his name in time with the first rumble of thunder that rolled through the air.
And he clutched her hips and came, silent in defiance of the magnitude of it all.
“I love you,” she whispered, touching his face. The rain poured down, droplets sliding through the creases by his eyes, nature shedding tears for him that he could not shed for himself.
“I love you,” she said again. “I’m staying. I’m choosing to stay with you. It’s not going to be two years. It’s going to be forever.”
He pulled away from her, snarling like a wounded beast. “No,” he said.
“Yes,” she responded. “You need me. You need me, and I need you. And I want to see this through.”
“You need to leave, Fernanda.”
He pulled away from her and stood up, and she clambered to her own feet, brushing at the wet spot on the back of her dress, shaking, trembling still from the aftermath of the pleasure that had been followed up by so much pain.
“That isn’t how life works when you share it with another person, Ragnar. You are not my king. You are my husband.”
“And it was only meant to be temporary.”
“Bullshit. When you ran that horse across the Isle of Skye and stole me from the convent you didn’t intend for any of this to be temporary. I asked for it to be, and now I have changed my mind.”
“And I haven’t changed mine. In fact, I aim to give you your choice, Fernanda. You will take my plane, and it will fly you anywhere in the world. Anywhere you wish to go. But you cannot stay here.”
“What about your…your diplomacy?” she spat.
“I don’t care about it. I don’t care about this game. I don’t care about anything except being the king I need to be, and I cannot do it with you here.”
“You’re scared. You are so afraid of your feelings.”
“And maybe you would be too,” he roared. “Maybe you would be too if the center of your feelings contained an image of your mother’s dead body on the floor. A realization that your father is a monster. I knew love. And it betrayed me, brutally. I will never love again.”
“Then I’m sorry for you,” she said. “Because when I fell in love with you I found my strength for the first time. I could have left, Ragnar. At any time. And I could’ve decided to keep to our original agreement, but I have decided that loving, and living, and feeling all of this pain is worth something.”
“If you ever have to look into the sightless, lifeless eyes of your own mother, then you can speak to me about pain. If you know what it is to grow up with nothing and no one, and more comfortable with the floor for a bed than a mattress, then you can speak to me of pain. You are a spoiled, selfish princess, Fernanda, and you not getting to go to whichever party you fancy, or marry whichever man you find handsome, is not actually the struggle that you think it is.”
A few weeks ago that would have hurt her. Maybe even shamed her. But she was not going to let this frightened fool of a man hurt her. She wasn’t going to let him minimize what she had learned. What she knew now.
“I don’t know the exact pain that you’ve gone through. But I know what it means to be lonely. I am sorry. I am so sorry thatyou were hurt the way that you were hurt, and I want to help you. And if you won’t let me help you, just let me love you.”
