His solar smelled of old books and regret. Lyra stood before his desk, a statue carved from anger.
Alaric circled it, his own control fraying. The rich wool of her gown was the color of dried wine, a stark contrast to the pale column of her throat. She didn’t turn to follow his movement. Her eyes, the color of tempered steel, remained fixed on the tapestry behind his chair—a scene of a historic hunt he’d always found brutal.
“You play a dangerous game, Lyra.”
“You taught me how.” Her voice was cool, precise. She didn’t turn.
He stopped behind her, close enough to feel the warmth radiating from her body, to see the faint tremor where her neck met her shoulder. The scent of her—jasmine and cold night air—cut through the room’s dusty stillness. His hand rose, not to touch her, but to hover. His knuckles were a breath from the intricate weave of her chestnut braids.
Her breath hitched. He heard it. The small, sharp intake.
“Every day.” The words ripped from a raw place behind his ribs. His voice was gravel. “Every single day since.”
She turned then. Her movement was swift, fracturing the statue. Her mask fractured with it, eyes blazing with unshed tears that made the grey shine liquid. She was so close he could see the gold flecks within that storm, could count the faint freckles across the bridge of her nose that her court powder didn’t quite hide.
“Don’t.” The single word was a blade. Her chin tilted up, the defensive gesture he remembered. “You don’t get to say that. You don’t get to have that regret.”
Alaric didn’t step back. His gaze dropped to her mouth. Her lips were pressed into a pale line, but they’d parted for that broken breath. His own hands ached with the memory of her skin. The scar across his right palm throbbed, a phantom echo of the duel he’d fought the week after they’d taken her away.
The silence between them thickened, stretched. Somewhere in the castle, a distant door slammed. The sound didn’t touch them.
A single tear escaped. It traced a path down her cheek, swift and silent, and his control snapped. He didn’t kiss her. He caught the tear with the pad of his thumb, the contact so electric it burned.
Lyra flinched. But she didn’t pull away. Her eyes widened, locked on his. The anger in them flickered, revealing something terrified and horrifically young. Her chest rose and fell in a shallow, rapid rhythm he felt in the air between them.
His thumb still rested against her skin. He could feel the fine bone of her cheek, the heat beneath. Her exhale washed over his wrist, warm and unsteady.
“Why?” she whispered. The word was cracked. All her polished diplomacy, her political armor, gone. “Why did you send me away?”
Alaric’s thumb didn’t move from her cheek. The truth was a stone in his throat. He spoke around it. “Because they told me they would kill you.”
Lyra’s breath stopped. The shallow rhythm vanished. Her steel-grey eyes, wide and liquid, searched his. He saw the calculation firing behind them, the political mind trying to slot this new variable into a decade of hatred.
“Who?” The word was airless.
“The Council of Lords. My father’s old advisors.” He forced his hand to drop, breaking the contact. The skin of his thumb felt branded. He turned from her, not to retreat, but because he couldn’t watch her process the lie he’d lived. He went to the great oak desk, bracing his scarred palms on its polished surface. “You were gathering too much influence. You had the merchants’ loyalty, the southern territories loved you. They saw a threat to the crown’s stability. To my rule.”
“You were the king,” she said to his back. Her voice had regained a sliver of its cool edge, but it trembled. “You could have refused. You could have protected me.”
“I was twenty-five.” He turned his head, looking at her over his shoulder. The late sun caught the silver in his temples, the weary lines at his eyes. “And I was not yet king in any way that mattered. My father’s sickness was a secret. The council held the armies, the treasury, the law. They presented me with a decree of exile, already sealed with the regent’s signet. My signature was a formality. The alternative was a quiet arrest. A tragic accident in the dungeons within a week.”
He faced her fully then. The raw place behind his ribs was open now, bleeding into the space between them. “So I signed it. I sent you away with nothing but the clothes you wore and a guard I paid from my own coffers to ensure you reached the border alive. And I spent the next three years systematically dismantling every one of those old men until their power was ash. By the time my father died, there was no one left to challenge the throne. Or to threaten you.”
Lyra hadn’t moved. A second tear escaped, tracing the same path as the first. She didn’t brush it away. Her elegant posture was rigid, but her hands, hanging at her sides, were clenched so tightly the knuckles were bone-white against the wine-dark velvet of her gown.
“You let me hate you.”
“It was the only armor I could give you,” he said, his voice low. “If you believed I had cast you aside for ambition, for cold duty, then your anger would make you strong. It would make you careful. And it would keep you from doing something infinitely stupid, like trying to return before it was safe.”
Her laugh was a shattered thing, brittle and sharp. It held no humor. “It worked.”
Alaric took a single step toward her. Then another. He stopped an arm’s length away, close enough to see the pulse hammering at the base of her throat. “I know.”
Her gaze dropped to his mouth, then flicked back to his eyes. The gold flecks in the grey seemed to burn. The terror he’d seen earlier was still there, but it was mixing with something else, something that stripped the air from the room. Her chest rose with a deeper, unsteady breath.
His own body responded, a flush of heat that had nothing to do with the sun-warmed solar. A tight, aching pull low in his gut. His hands flexed at his sides, the old scar a thin white line across his palm.
Lyra’s hand came up. Not to strike him. She pressed her fingertips to the center of his chest, over the rich embroidery of his tunic. The contact was light, but it landed like a brand. She could surely feel the frantic rhythm of his heart beneath.
“Every day,” she whispered, echoing his earlier confession, but the blade was gone from the words. Now they were just a truth, raw and shared.
Alaric covered her hand with his own, pinning it against his chest. His other hand came up to cradle the side of her face, his thumb brushing the wet trail on her cheek. Her eyes fluttered closed for a second, a surrender so profound it made his knees weak.
When she opened them, the distance was gone. The political rival, the icy countess, was gone. In her place was the girl he’d loved, and the woman whose anger had forged her into something devastating. Her lips parted.
He didn’t kiss her. He held them there, on the threshold, the ache in the space between their mouths a living thing. Her breath mingled with his, warm and sweet. The scent of jasmine and night air wrapped around him, familiar and utterly new.
Her fingers curled against his tunic, clutching the fabric. A silent plea. A decision.
He closed the distance.
The kiss wasn't gentle. It was a collision—a decade of silence and rage and regret crashing into the heat of her mouth. His hand slid from her cheek into the intricate braids at the back of her skull, holding her still as he claimed the breath she’d been holding. She made a sound against his lips, part gasp, part sob, and then her hands were on him, not pushing away but pulling him closer, fisting in the embroidered silk of his tunic until he felt the strain at the seams.
Her mouth was soft, unbearably soft, and tasted of salt and the faint, sharp wine from the earlier council. Alaric’s other arm banded around her waist, crushing the wine-dark velvet of her gown, lifting her onto the balls of her feet to meet his height. The controlled king was gone. In his place was a man starving, and she was the feast. He licked into her mouth, and she opened for him with a shudder that went straight through his core.
Lyra’s fingers left his tunic to spear into his hair, dislodging the simple silver circlet he wore. It hit the polished floor with a dull, metallic ring that echoed in the sun-drenched silence. She didn’t seem to notice. She was kissing him back with a ferocity that matched his own, her teeth scraping his lower lip, her tongue tangling with his in a battle that had nothing to do with winning and everything to do with consumption.
He walked her back until the edge of the great oak desk met her hips. Parchment crackled, a forgotten goblet tipped, spilling dregs of wine across a tax report. Alaric broke the kiss only to trail his mouth along her jaw, down the column of her throat, finding the frantic pulse there and sealing his lips over it. She gasped, her head falling back, baring more of her neck to him. The elegant, severe braids were coming undone under his fingers.
“Alaric.” His name was a ragged plea on her lips, stripped of title, stripped of armor. Her hands slid down his chest, over the rapid beat of his heart, to the leather belt at his waist. Her fingers fumbled with the clasp.
He caught her wrists, stilling them. Not stopping her, but holding them there, against the hard evidence of his need straining against his trousers. He looked down at her, his storm-grey eyes dark with a hunger that mirrored the ache in his gut. Her steel-grey eyes were wide, pupils blown, her lips swollen and glistening. A single chestnut strand had escaped its binding and clung to her damp temple.
“Look at me,” he said, his voice rough as broken stone.
She did. Her chest rose and fell against his, the tight bodice of her gown straining with each breath. The cold countess was utterly gone. In her place was a woman trembling on a precipice, her gaze holding his with a vulnerability that made his throat tight.
He brought her captured hands up, pressing a kiss to the inside of each wrist. He felt her pulse thrum against his lips, a wild, trapped bird. “Is this what you want?”
Her answer was to twist her wrists free only to frame his face, her thumbs brushing the silver at his temples. “It’s all I’ve wanted,” she whispered, the truth raw and stark in the honeyed light. “Even when I hated you. Especially then.”
He kissed her again, slower now, a deep, searching communion that dissolved the last of the space between them. His hands went to the laces at the back of her gown, his scarred fingers—the ones that had signed her exile—working with a swift, desperate efficiency born of years imagining this. The velvet parted. He pushed the heavy fabric from her shoulders, letting it pool at her waist, baring the thin linen shift beneath. The neckline was damp, a darker patch of fabric clinging to the swell of her breast. The scent of her—jasmine and pure, heated skin—wrapped around him, pulling a groan from deep in his chest.
He bent his head, his mouth finding that damp spot through the linen, his tongue tracing the hardened peak beneath. Lyra cried out, her fingers locking in his hair, holding him to her. Her hips arched off the desk, pressing against the rigid length of him. The ache was a live wire, a blinding need that narrowed the world to this room, this woman, this single point of contact.
Somewhere beyond the solar, the castle bell began to toll the hour. A deep, sonorous sound that spoke of duty, of time, of a kingdom waiting.
The tolling bell was a distant, irrelevant rhythm. Alaric’s mouth left the damp linen, his hands finding the hem of her shift. He didn’t ask. He gathered the thin fabric in his fists and pulled it up, over her hips, her ribs, breaking their kiss only to drag it over her head and let it fall, a pale ghost joining the velvet pool at their feet.
She was bare to the waist, the honeyed light painting her skin in gold and shadow. The sight stole the air from his lungs. The gentle curves he remembered had refined into elegant, taut lines, the swell of her breasts fuller, tipped with tight, flushed peaks. A faint, silvery scar curved along her lower rib—a story he didn’t know. His gaze tracked it, his thumb following the path a breath later. She flinched, not from pain, but from the exposure.
“Alaric.” His name was a whisper, a shield.
He answered by lowering his head and taking one pebbled peak into his mouth. No barrier. Just heat, and salt, and her. The sound she made was pure rupture, a choked cry that vibrated against his tongue. Her back arched off the desk, her hands flying back to his hair, holding him there as he laved and suckled, learning the new weight of her, the perfect fit of his mouth to her flesh.
His own need was a brutal ache, his cock straining against the confines of his trousers, a persistent, throbbing pressure against her hip. He ground against her once, a helpless, grinding motion, and felt her answering shudder. Her legs parted, bracketing his hips, the damp heat of her seeping through the layers of fabric between them. The evidence of her arousal was a tangible truth, a scent of musk and salt that made his head swim.
He switched to her other breast, giving it the same devastating attention, his hand coming up to cradle and knead the one he’d just left. Her breathing was ragged, broken by soft, pleading gasps. The intricate braids were fully ruined now, chestnut waves cascading over his forearms, smelling of jasmine and summer wind.
He lifted his head, his lips glistening. Her steel-grey eyes were glazed, unfocused, her lips parted on panting breaths. He watched her, memorizing the flush that spread from her chest to her throat, the way her nipples stood tight and dark from his mouth. “Look at you,” he murmured, his voice raw. “Gods, Lyra.”
Her hands slid from his hair, down the column of his neck, to the laces of his tunic. Her fingers, usually so deft and sure, trembled. “This. Off.” It was a command, stripped of diplomacy, born of pure need.
He straightened, his own hands moving to obey. He tore at the laces, the fine silk parting with a series of sharp, soft pops. He shrugged the heavy tunic off, letting it fall to the floor beside her gown. The cool air of the solar hit his bare chest, but it was nothing against the heat of her gaze roaming over him. Her eyes traced the map of old scars, the tense lines of his abdomen, the dark trail of hair that disappeared into his trousers.
She reached for him, her palm flattening against the center of his chest, over the frantic beat of his heart. Her touch was fire. She slid her hand lower, over the tense plane of his stomach, her fingers tracing the defined ridges. When they reached the top of his trousers, they hesitated, hovering just above the obvious, straining bulge.
He caught her wrist again, not to stop her, but to feel the wild pulse there against his fingers. He brought her hand to his mouth, pressed a hot, open-mouthed kiss to her palm. “You are sure.” It wasn’t a question. It was a final thread of control, the last thing he owed her.
Lyra’s answer was to twist her hand free and cup him through the leather and linen. Her touch was firm, exploring the hard, thick length of him. His hips jerked forward, a sharp, involuntary thrust into her hand. A groan was torn from him, deep and ragged. Her eyes held his, wide and dark, watching him unravel. “I have never been more sure of anything,” she said, and her fingers found the buckle of his belt.