In retrospect, I shouldn’t have let it happen. I had no business getting involved with someone like you.’
‘Someone like me?’ she repeated, the words deceptively soft when inside her cells were screeching with indignation. ‘But it was fine to sleep with someone like me?’
‘You misunderstand my meaning,’ he said with a shake of his head. ‘And that is my fault.’
‘So what is your meaning?’
He spoke slowly, carefully, as though she might not comprehend. ‘I wanted you the minute I saw you, Frankie, but I knew it could never be more than that weekend. I believe I was upfront about that; I apologise if you expected more from me.’ He went to move closer but she bristled, and he stilled. ‘There are expectations upon me, expectations as to who I will marry, and you are not the kind of bride I would ever be able to choose.’
She spluttered her interruption. ‘I didn’t want to marry you! I just wanted the courtesy of a goodbye from the man I lost my virginity to. When you crept out of that hotel suite, did you stop to think about what I would think?’
She had the very slight satisfaction of seeing something like remorse briefly glance across his stony features. ‘I had to leave. I’m sorry if that hurt you—’
‘Hurt me?’ She glared at him and shook her head. It had damned near killed her, but she wasn’t going to tell him that. ‘What hurts is your stupidity! Your lack of decency and moral fibre.’
He jerked his face as though she’d slapped him, but she didn’t stop.
‘You were my first lover.’ She lowered her voice. ‘Sleeping with you meant something to me! And you just left.’
‘What would you have had me do, Frankie? Stay and cook you breakfast? Break it to you over scrambled eggs and salmon that I was going to go back to Tolmirós to forget all about you?’
Her stare was withering. ‘Only you haven’t forgotten me, have you?’
She held her breath, waiting for him to answer, her lips parted.
‘No,’ he agreed finally. ‘But I left because I knew I needed to. I left because I knew what was expected of me.’ He expelled a harsh breath, then another, slowly regaining control of himself. ‘I didn’t come here to upset you, Frankie. I’ll go away again.’
And at that, true, dark anger beat in her breast because it simply underscored their power imbalance. He’d come to her and so she was seeing him again, and he’d touched her as though desire was still a current in the room—it was all on his terms. All his timeline, his power, his control. He thought he could leave when it suited him and have that be the end of it.
Well, damn him, he had no right! ‘Did you even think about the consequences of that night, Matt? Did you so much as give even a second thought to whether or not I would be able to walk away from what we shared as easily as you did?’
FOR THE BRIEFEST of moments he misunderstood. Surely, he’d misunderstood.
As the heir to the throne of Tolmirós, Matthias had never taken any risks with sex. That weekend had been no different. He’d employed protective measures. He’d been careful, as always.
‘I knew there would be no consequences,’ he said, shrugging, as though his heart hadn’t skidded to a dramatic halt seconds earlier. ‘And I truly believed a clean break would be better for you.’
And for himself. He hadn’t trusted his willpower to so much as call her, to explain who he was and his reasons for needing to disappear from her life.
‘How did you know that?’
His frown was infinitesimal. ‘Are you saying there was a consequence?’
‘A consequence?’ she repeated with an arched brow. But her fingers were shaking, a small gesture but one he noted with growing attention. ‘Why are we speaking in euphemisms? Ask what you really mean.’
She spoke to him in a way no one in his life had ever dared, and it was thrilling and dangerous and his whole body resonated with a need to argue with her, just like this. Passions were stirring inside him but he shoved them aside, focusing everything on whatever the hell she was trying to say.
‘You are the one who is insinuating there was a complication from our night together.’
‘I’m telling you your arrogant presumption that you took sufficient measures to protect me from the ramifications of our sleeping together is wrong.’
He narrowed his eyes and her words sprayed around them like fine blades, slicing through the artwork on the walls.
‘Are you saying you fell pregnant?’ he demanded, his ears screeching with the sound of frantically racing blood. The world stood still; time stopped.
For a moment he imagined that—his child, growing in her belly—and his chest swelled with pride and his heart soared, but pain was right behind, because surely it wasn’t possible. His forehead broke out in perspiration at the very idea of his baby. He knew it was inevitable and necessary, but he still needed time to brace himself for that reality—for the idea of another person who shared his blood, a person who could be taken from him at any time.
Rejection was in every line of his body. ‘We were careful. I was careful. I took precautions, as I always do.’
‘Charming!’ She crossed her arms over her chest. ‘Tell me more about the other women you’ve had sex with, please.’
He ground his teeth together. He hadn’t meant that, and yet it was true. Sexual responsibility was ingrained in Matthias. Anyone in his position would take that seriously.
‘What the hell are you saying?’ he demanded, all the command his position conferred upon him in those words.
She sucked in a deep breath as though she was steadying herself. ‘Fine. Yes. I fell pregnant.’ Her words hit him right in the solar plexus, each with the speed and strength of a thousand bullets.
‘What?’ For the first time in his life, Matthias was utterly lost for words.
When his family had died and a nation in mourning had looked to him, a fifteen-year-old who’d lost his parents and brother, who’d been trapped in a car with them as life had left their bodies, he had known what was expected of him. He’d received the news and wrapped his grief into a small compartment for indulgence at a later date, and he’d shown himself to be strong and reliable: a perfect king-in-waiting.
She lifted her fingertips to the side of her head, rubbing her temples, and fixed him with her ocean-green stare. Her anguish was unmistakable.
‘I found out about a month after you left.’
His world was a place that made no sense. There were sharp edges everywhere, and nothing fitted together. ‘You were pregnant?’
She pulled a face. ‘I just said that.’
His
