No. He couldn’t throw himself into this. He couldn’t lose himself.
He couldn’t.
He wouldn’t deny them this. Wouldn’t deny their desire for one another, but it would never be more than that.
It was a good thing.
Because he would never be a father like his own. A father who chose to hurt his son in service to power. A father who would choose wealth above all else, including the safety of his family.
It could never only be the two of them. It would always be the weight of her crown—a weight she had chosen. And the weight of his past.
No amount of desire could overcome it.
He had surrendered to her here. Solidified his own weakness.
He pushed her away from him, his blood raging. “This cannot happen.”
“Andrei…we can’t…”
There was something wild inside him, a need to push her away he couldn’t articulate or fully understand. He wanted her gone, away from him. He didn’t want her testing him, he didn’t want to face his own weakness.
His own vulnerability.
“This is nothing but part of a plan for you,” he growled, the lie on his tongue tasting like acid. “Carefully plotted to make your legacy, your life, look better. Get out.”
She stumbled off the bed, naked, beautiful.
Wounded.
She was the promise of something he wanted. Something he’d always desperately wanted.
But it would never be his.
“We will marry tomorrow,” he said, his grip on his control slipping. “And we will kiss at the altar. But I will not touch you again.”
Chapter Sixteen
HER BROTHER TOOKher arm just outside the church. It was an echo of her aborted wedding two months ago, and it was painful now to think of how different things might have been if…
And Andrei had the power to destroy her. He always had.
He had nearly done it last night. Her attempt at finding a way to make things easier. To make them better.
Because you still haven’t told him the truth.
You haven’t told yourself the truth.
What she felt for him was so big that it had always felt like the right thing to run away from it. It had always felt safer and better to turn toward duty, rather than surrendering to what she felt for him.
And now it was too late. Because the fire between them had turned into something uncontrollable, unbearable, kerosene on a little match when she had decided to marry Lucian after being with him.
He had sacrificed everything for her. To be with her. He had given up on his duty. He had embraced the thing inside himself that scared him the most, and she hadn’t. She hadn’t offered him anything.
She had chosen duty over the desire that existed between them, but not because it wasn’t strong for her, but because she was afraid of it.
Scared enough that the idea of marrying a man she didn’t love, a man who was potentially cruel, a man who was potentially a murderer, seemed less frightening than submitting herself to a future loving Andrei. Needing Andrei.
Because when you needed people, they died.
