I press them flat against my thighs and stare at the closed door and try to make sense of what just happened. He was supposed to take what was offered. He was supposed to claim what the contract promised him. He was supposed to be like every otherman in this world in all their entitled, grabby, unapologetic glory.
Instead, he walked away.
I don't take what isn't given.
The words echo in the quiet room, settling into the spaces between my ribs like something alive.
I don't understand him. I don't understand why he'd refuse what was freely, if emptily, offered. I don't understand what game he's playing or what strategy this serves or what he gains by leaving me untouched on our wedding night.
And I don't understand why, for the first time in my life, I feel something crack open inside me that I thought my father had sealed shut for good.
I press my hand over my chest, over the fracture, like I can hold it closed.
But it's too late.
Something got in.
Killian
The door clicks shut behind me and I stand in the corridor for three full seconds before I move.
Three seconds. That's how long it takes for the image of her to settle. Standing in the centre of that room in a dress that fits her like a punishment, chin lifted, eyes empty, offering herself to me like a document waiting for a signature.
If you want me, you'll have to take me.
I exhale through my nose and walk.
The guest room is at the far end of the corridor. I chose it deliberately when I instructed the staff this morning, close enough to reach her quickly if something went wrong, far enough to make the separation clear. To her. To myself.
I close the door, shrug off my jacket, and drop it over the back of a chair. Loosen my tie. Undo the top button of my shirt. The motions are mechanical, automatic, the same sequence I've performed a thousand times after a long day.
I need to think.
I was prepared for this marriage. I spent three weeks preparing. Gathering information, building a framework, constructing a strategy for how to navigate a political union with a woman I didn't choose and didn't want. I had it mapped out. Respect without attachment. Courtesy without intimacy. A functional partnership that satisfied the council's demandswithout requiring either of us to pretend it was something it wasn't.
And then she opened her own door and stepped out of that car and I felt the ground shift beneath thirty-five years of carefully constructed discipline.
I drag my hand down my face and stare at the far wall.
I didn't expect this. I didn’t expect any of this.
Not her face or the way her features arrange themselves into something severe and striking, all sharp lines and pale skin and dark eyes that see too much and reveal too little. She's not beautiful in the way most people use the word, she's not soft or approachable or warm. She’s something else.
I didn't expect the way she moved. Controlled, yes, but underneath the choreography there's a fluidity she can't quite suppress. The way her fingers closed around the champagne glass she didn't want. The way her eyes tracked the room with the quiet hunger of someone who has survived on information the way other people survive on oxygen. The way she turned to face me in that bedroom with her spine straight and her shoulders back and her entire body braced for impact like a woman walking into a storm she's already accepted she can't outrun.
I didn't expect the anger that bubbles in my gut. The slow building fury that started the moment her father gripped her shoulders at the door and kissed her forehead like a man sealing an envelope, and hasn't stopped burning since.
And I absolutely did not expect the heat.
That's the part I can't reconcile. The part that sits in my chest like an ember I don't know what to do with.
When she lifted her chin and said those words,if you want me, you'll have to take me, every instinct I have fired at once. Not theinstinct to take. The instinct toundo. To peel back the layers of composure and training and damage until I found whatever was underneath. To put my hands on her and find out if the woman beneath the armor was as sharp and alive as the glimpses she let slip tonight suggested.
I wanted to kiss her mouth until the rehearsed words stopped coming and real ones started.
I wanted to feel her shake for a reason that had nothing to do with fear.
The thought sends a jolt of something electric through me, and I stand abruptly, crossing to the window and throwing it open to the cold night air.
