Page 42 of Back to Claim His Crown
To her surprise, he half laughed.
‘I will not ruin the last of your afterglow,’ he said. ‘I’m very glad you have an afterglow.’
She kept her face covered, still unwilling to see his face as she asked, ‘Do you?’
‘I’m pretty sure those astronauts up in the international space station can see my afterglow.’
She lowered her arm and looked at his gorgeous smile and her tension melted all over again. ‘Through the stone walls and everything?’
‘Absolutely. I don’t have any regrets about this, Zara. Notever.’ He gazed at her and his chest rose and fell that bit quicker again. ‘You’re amazing. That was amazing.’
Lucian watched her skin flush more enchantingly than ever. She swallowed hard and turned her gaze up towards the beautiful ceiling of the throne room.
‘It’s a beautiful palace,’ she said eventually.
‘Yes.’
‘You missed it?’
‘More than I realised.’ He ached to be worthy of it. And, for this fleeting moment, worthy of her. In this one impossible moment he wanted everything.
She’d just seen him—held him—at his most animal. When instinct had overridden reason and the desire of the flesh had won. They’d assuaged that relentless ache and he could never regret it. Mind blown. Body broken. Yet he felt energised in an altogether new way. It was wonderful.
If she was lying about being on birth control—and he truly didn’t think she was—then she might get pregnant. And, heaven help him, in this moment he didn’t care. He, who’d vowed not to have children for years, would demand she marry him. She wouldn’t be able to say no, and part of him would bepleased. Here was the horrible truth. He was greedy. A selfish monster who would not let her go. Who took what he wanted—uncaring of the impact of his actions on anyone else. He was as spoiled as his poisonous cousin and arrogant with it. Because he knew that was not what she wanted.
She wanted to renounce her title. She didn’t want pomp and pageantry—she didn’t want to live the kind of life he would have as King. She knew too well it came with peril. She’d only entertained the idea of marrying Anders because she’d thought it was her only way of escaping her home. But she had another option now. So he couldn’t coerce her into something different.
He couldn’t bear to think of those moments when he’d thought she’d been hurt. He couldn’t relive it. Couldn’t stand to analyse why it had almost destroyed him. Maybe it was just that he was overtired. But he couldn’t resist running his hand down her arm, needing to touch her while he could.
She turned her head towards him. ‘I can’t believe you’ve never done that before,’ she said softly. ‘I can’t believeI’venever done that before.’ She smiled a little sadly. ‘We’ve been missing out.’
‘We have.’ His whole body ached to have her again.
An impish look lit her eyes. ‘So whendidyou learn how to please a woman?’
He chuckled. ‘I might have fooled around back when I was a senior at school.’
‘Before you disappeared.’
‘Yes. But I’d not quite got to have the full experience.’
She caressed his jaw and a smug look entered her eyes. ‘I’m glad.’
He leaned into the soft touch—a balm he knew he couldn’t indulge in for long. ‘You’re right to say no to marrying me,’ he muttered. ‘I’m not good enough for you, Zara.’
‘Why do you say that?’
He kept silent for a few more moments, but in the end he was so tired and felt so accepted by her that the miserable truth simply came out.
‘I meant it when I told you I was selfish. I truly am and that’s what drives me to do better now. My mother was dying of cancer and I chose to go away on holiday instead of spending time with her. Instead of easing her burden I made it much worse.’
Zara’s beautiful eyes widened. ‘Lucian—’
‘Listen.’ Now he’d started he needed her to understand everything. He needed her to want to walk away from him because he wasn’t entirely sure he could let her go now. ‘My father died in a car accident when I was four. My mother buried her heart with him. She devoted her life to her country and to me. She was loving and generous. That’s why she opened up the palace to Anders and Garth.’
‘She was kind.’
‘And loyal like no one else. She would have done anything for us. I had the opposite upbringing to you, Zara—I had full prince privileges. Almost everything I wanted, I got. I’d been away at boarding school—clueless about the burden of the Crown and wrapped up in my own late teen life. I was looking forward to starting my degree. I thought I had the world at my feet.
