Not two separate people living two separate lives in a massive palace, but two souls that had become one.
He might not believe in that, but I did.
And that meant that I had to be the one to fight for it.
He wanted reason, and I didn’t have reason.
But I had love.
Hercules had told me once that he believed in the physical. Well, I would approach him that way. I would give him what he understood before I introduced what he felt he could not. And maybe then those two things would come together for him and create something new.
Something that was only ours.
Something that he could see and touch and feel.
I was afraid.
Like I had been afraid that first time we’d been together down on the beach.
But I was also determined. And I knew what I wanted. I knew who I was.
I could only hope that Hercules would come to understand the same way that I did.
Because if he did...
If he did, then he wouldn’t want to accept less either.
But there was no way for me to know. So I had to step out in faith.
I had to be brave.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Hercules
I HAD DONE my very best to throw myself into the leadership of Pelion. It was difficult when I was obsessed with erotic thoughts about my wife. I knew that she was unhappy. The few times that I had seen her since we had returned from the island, she had been a bit sullen with me. At dinner she had been quiet, and the air had been filled by chatter coming from Lily, and I knew that I had been disengaged with that as well.
But I had to rule. I had to be King. There was no scope for me to be distracted by my family.
My family.
Marissa and Lily were my family.
Such a strange and foreign concept to me.
I couldn’t remember having family dinners when I was growing up. No, I ate in the nursery; my mother was usually away. By the time my sister was born, I was nearly grown.
I didn’t remember saying that we could have family dinners, but one evening Marissa, her mother and Lily showed up and sat at the table. The staff brought dinner to all of us, and so it had continued on every night since.
But even as we had those dinners, and Marissa would respond to the things I said with brightness, I could sense that beneath it she was unhappy.
I didn’t like that, but I didn’t know what else she wanted from me either.
I was the leader of a nation. I had concerns I had to put above all else. Including the two of us.
From everything I’d been told by my staff, Marissa was adapting beautifully to her role as Queen. And yet...
She was different than she had been on our honeymoon.
But then, so was I. Of necessity. I had allowed myself to be distracted by her there. I had broken there. I had shown weakness, and that could not be allowed. If my father had died, and I had not had a soft spot to land in the form of Marissa’s arms, how would it have gone?
Instead, I had splintered, and I had allowed my darkness to pour out, to spill onto my wife, and that was unacceptable.
I knew that.
And so, we would continue to be separate. We would continue to have separate rooms. Until such time as I felt that I had a grip on...everything. From the running of the palace to my emotions.
My emotions. The fact that I had them at all made me feel weak.
I despised it.
Even in the form of rage I was beginning to find them unwieldy.
I disliked it.
It made me wonder if I was closer to my father than I had ever anticipated.
I liked to pretend that I was something else. Something different entirely, but I wondered.
Was there any way to fully escape being like your maker when he had fashioned you in his image? It was not something I knew the answer to, and I feared that only time would tell.
But in the meantime, I would not affect Marissa and Lily.
It was the one good thing I knew I could do. Keep my distance.
I had been spending every night in my office, staying up as late as I possibly could to ensure that I fell into bed in exhaustion that would prevent me from going down the hall and taking Marissa again and again.
She was a temptation that I was finding difficult to resist, and that was yet more reason to resist her.
I couldn’t allow her to have control over me.
I couldn’t allow anyone or anything to have control over me. Not my base desires, not my lust and certainly not my wife.
Those things made for a weak king, and I refused to be weak. Had I not spent my childhood trying to demonstrate my strength? I would not falter now.
My father was wrong. You did not have to be a monster to rule. I would show that until my dying day.
But in order to do that, I had to make sure that I did not falter.
When work didn’t help, I went to the gym. And I exhausted myself there. Tonight, thankfully, I was exhausted without punishing my body, and when the time was past midnight, I finally went to my quarters.
The palace was quiet, dark and empty, the obsidian halls glittering bleakly in the blackness.
It felt all too close to what was going on inside of me.
I pushed the door open to my chambers, and the lights were on.
The flood of brightness was a shock after walking down the long, dark hall.
But not as much of a shock as the sight that greeted me.
Marissa, lying on the bed, completely naked.
She did not look defeated now. She did not look shy or innocent. She was bold. There was nothing on her body, and she reclined across the pillows in a way that emphasized her curves. The glorious plumpness of her breasts, the indent of her waist, the round swell of her hips.
And those nipples... Dusky berry and tight, begging for my attention. That dark thatch of curls between her thighs that I wanted to bury my face in.
I had spent days resisting this very thing, and now I wasn’t certain I had it in me to resist any longer.
“What are you doing here?”
She moved her hand, and the only thing that adorned her body—our ring—glimmered there.
“I missed you,” she said softly.
They were not the words of the siren, and they were not the words that I had expected. They were emotional, spoken with a sweetness that truly stunned me.
“Did you?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said softly.
“You could have simply told me over dinner.”
“I don’t want to talk,” she said.
The words were a male fantasy, and not ones I could quite credit coming out of Marissa’s mouth. Because if there was one thing we had always done, it was talk. Even when passion was hot between us, we always spoke.
“You don’t want to talk?”
“No,” she said, shaking her head, her glossy mane shimmering in the light. “I can talk to anyone. You’re the only man that I can do this with. The only man I’ve ever been with at all. The only man I will ever be with.”
Something twisted hard and low in my stomach. “The only man you’ve ever been with?”
“Did you imagine that I was entertaining lovers these last few years?”
“You would have been forgiven for doing so. You are human, after all. And humans have needs.”
“But you ruined me for everyone else.”
“You see,” I said darkly, “you ruined me for everyone else as well, but that did not stop me from...” I began to remove my shirt, and I questioned my own resolve and strength the entire time. Still, it didn’t prevent me from doing it. “That made it all the worse. It was hollow. The promise of a feast, but when I reached out to take it in hand, it just turned to ash. Bitterness in my mouth. I
t was never what I wanted. Because I had tasted...paradise. I tasted paradise on your skin, Marissa, and then it was gone. I knew what making love could be, and it was never that, not after you.”
“Well, I was just smart enough to know that I didn’t want to substitute.”