He knew what love could do. To kings and queens. His parents had claimed love, but all it had ever done was destroy. Not just each other. Him. Evelyne. Perhaps some people could wield the weight of love, but not a king.
Nothim.
“Alex.”
Her voice was quiet. Plaintive. “No.” He roughly righted the state of his pants and didn’t dare look at her. They had not discussed…love. Whatever this was, whatever they did… She could not fool herself into that.
“Darling, what’s the matter? I—”
“Enough,” he said harshly. Her words echoed inside him like icy tendrils of something he refused to acknowledge. Love.Darling.Something old and sharp clawed through him. Something he didn’t let take up space in his head. Ever. “Put yourself together and leave. At once.”
“Alex.”
“Goaway, Ines.”
“Why? What iswrong?” she demanded. But she didn’t sound demanding. She sounded soft and worried.
Hehated it. It was exploding inside of him, building and building, and what would he do if she did notleave? Fall apart himself? Impossible. “I said go away.” He swept a hand across his desk, sending anything in its path crashing to the ground.
A terrible loss of control.Shemade him lose control.Shemade him someone else.
His blood is in you, Alex. Always in you. You must always fight it.
He would. No matter what. He would. But if throwing things got her to scurry out of this room, it was worth it.
Ines was shaken, and it wasn’t the sex. That was becoming almost normal. The wildness and the joy that came with it. The way she’d found she could make him lose his famed control. She was almost used to the heady knowledge thatshedid something tohim.
But the aftermath of today was different. There was no triumph. She’d never seen him look so… She didn’t even have words for it. The way he’d dismissed her had not been cold or detached or even cruel. It had reminded her of a wounded animal roaring.
There had been a naked kind of hurt on his face that she neither understood nor knew how to soothe. He’d tossed the contents of his desk at the ground, not at her, but the out-of-character outburst still left her shaken to her core.
She stumbled out of his office, grateful that his assistant’s desk was still empty. Because she was about tocry. Even as her body still ebbed with the echoes of a pleasure too big, too wonderful for even Alex’s horrible reaction to stop.
She had known he wouldn’t reactpositivelyto the idea of love, but she hadn’t anticipated it…hurting him. She couldn’t fathom it. No matter how she tried to make sense of any of that, it didn’t make sense.
She blinked back tears as best she could, but some fell anyway. She’d mostly put herself back together, though she’d left her pantyhose behind. He wouldn’t be pleased about that. But she needed to get to her rooms. Get herself together and figure out…
“Ines?”
Ines stopped in the hall. She hadn’t expected anyone to be in the common living room they sometimes all had tea in together, but apparently Evelyne was in there and had seen her pass the door.
Ines pressed a palm to the wall, squeezing her eyes shut. She breathed in deep, then out. Quickly she wiped the tears from her cheeks then backtracked. She stepped into the room with a smile on her face.
Maybe it was brittle, but it was a smile. Apparently not good enough because Evelyne’s expression quickly morphed into concern.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
Ines nodded, trying to swallow the lump in her throat. “Where’s Gabri?”
“Napping. I’m trying to get some emails dealt with this morning, and it’s horrible. Come. Distract me.” She grinned at Ines.
Ines tried to look cheerful in return, but she knew she failed.
“You look…” Evelyne’s gaze of confusion turned into a wrinkled nose “…rumpled.”
“I—”
“No, that’s okay. Don’t tell me. I donotwant to know.” She waved it away with a laugh. “In the middle of the day, huh? Whatareyou doing to my brother?”
