“Apprehended.” His voice was flat. “Jaiveer and team reached him before the security boats did.”
She understood what “before the security boats did” meant.
She felt relieved and didn't ask anything further.
A slow exhale left him. His hand slid gently into her hair, his thumb brushing her temple.
“I thought I would lose you,” he said.
“I'm not leaving,” she said.
She had said it before. The first time, when she had broken into his bedroom to seduce him. Then, in his studio, surrounded by twenty-two years of paintings. Standing in front of him after he told her to go to London. Each time she had meant it.
She meant it now more than all the other times combined.
His hand stilled against her hair.
“Good,” he said. “Because I am not built to survive a world without you.”
Her breath caught.
“I would punish every person responsible,” he added, in the same even tone. “And then I would follow behind you.”
He said it the way he said everything that was simply true. Without decoration. Without softening.
She understood, in that moment, that this was how he loved. Completely. Without a word for it until now.
Her fingers tightened around his wrist.
“I can't live without you either,” she said. “I love you.”
He closed his eyes.
He absorbed it the way she had learned he absorbed everything that mattered—slowly, carefully, as though he needed a moment to make it real before he could respond to it.
When he opened his eyes, the fear was gone from them.
She didn't have a name for what replaced it. She didn't need one.
He bent carefully and kissed her. It was soft and unhurried as though savoring her.
When he pulled back, his voice was steady again, but different.
“Promise you'll never leave,” he said.
She looked at him. At the stubble and the red eyes and the creased shirt and the hand still trembling slightly against her hair.
“You are stuck with me forever, maharaja,” she said.
His thumb moved once against her temple.
And for the first time since she had known him, Bharat wasn't looking at her as though he expected her to leave.
At last, the maharaja who had spent twenty-two years waiting had finally allowed himself to believe she would stay.
EPILOGUE
Six months later…
