Not mine.
His.
“Because you won’t ever be mine, so I at least wanted to make sure you belonged to someone you wanted, even if it won’t ever be me.”
She leans up, a tear falls from her cheek. “You don’t know that.”
“I know a lot of things.” I wipe the wetness from her cheek and drop my hand. “A lot of things I wish I didn’t.” Fuck, why is this so hard? Why is my heart constantly begging for a break she refuses to give with each tear she sheds and touch she lays on me?
She puts both hands on my chest and shoves me into the mattress. “Don’t be so arrogant to think you know what others need.”
I like her spirit. Always have. Always will. “Okay, so what do I need?”
She’s quiet. Her eyes flicker to the large tattoo on my chest that says Campisi and shows who I am and what I fight for, who I’ll die for. Her included.
Instead of shoving me again, she slowly moves her hands down my shoulders, to my arms, and then my hands. She entwines them in hers. “You need a queen.”
“Do I have one, then?” I’m afraid of the answer. Afraid she might say no when I need her to say yes more than anything. “Do I have a true queen?”
She doesn’t speak. Instead, she squeezes my hands and locks eyes with me, then nods. “You have a queen who will fight by your side the way she was made to be… to rule.”
It’s all I need.
I flip her onto her back and kiss the hell out of her.
She welcomes me against her body.
Without words, she invites me in; without words, she makes me hers over and over again as I thrust hard into her.
“King!” she screams. “Again!”
“What?” I tease. “Didn’t hear that.”
“Please!” She’s a wild mess beneath me, clawing at me. “King, please!”
“Never let it be said”—I fuck her hard—“that the king didn’t know how to please his queen.”
She writhes as I show her exactly what I’ve been wanting to do on a daily basis but was too afraid to claim and acknowledge.
Her.
Us.
Our future.
My hips move in sync with hers, my balls draw up too soon as the sensation of her heat nearly kills me dead in that bed, and then it’s over as she flips me onto my back and rides me, her breasts bouncing rhythmically, her lips parted as she finishes us both off.
It’s actual heaven.
But we all know that the minute you see heaven—you’re going to be tested by hell.
She screams my name again, and I know I’m not so lucky to not face it.
A knock sounds on my door.
Too soon.
We stare at each other as she slowly gets off me, and I know. I just fucking know.
We won’t get four more days.
We’re going home.
And I might be traveling toward my death.
Chapter Thirty-One
“‘Father—Kay—why do you kneel to me? Get up! Oh sir, get up! I cannot bear that you should kneel to me, you who have been my father all these years.’
And when Sir Ector would not, he dropped on to his knees also, to be on a level with the old man again.” —The Sword and the Circle: King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table
Del
It doesn’t take long to get packed. I didn’t ask what Roman had to say, but I know him well enough to know it’s serious. His expression has been hard the entire drive in the SUV back to the Campisi compound, and every few minutes, he says something to King, who decided to ride in the front seat. They both look pale, and King, every few seconds, just looks out the window like he’s searching for answers the universe can’t give him.
He’s on his phone a lot, and each time he looks at the screen, he closes his eyes and hangs his head.
Roman keeps offering commentary, and I’m in this weird predicament of not wanting to leave and not wanting our moments to be over but liking the idea of things possibly going back to normal.
I scoff, right, because it’s so freaking normal to have your husband talking to your bodyguard/boyfriend in the front seat of a hundred thousand dollar SUV driving toward certain death.
“Hey.” Tiffany pats me on the leg hard like she’s a long-lost aunt giving me a Christmas squeeze. “It’s going to be fine.”
“How do you know that?” I ask. “I mean, thanks for the pep talk, but…”
“Damn girl, that so was not my pep talk, my pep talk would be so much more epic than that, more like, you’ve got this even Wonder Woman faced conflict and look at her now, getting to kiss Chris Pine in two full movies, you know how many minutes that is? A lot of damn minutes of kissing. I counted once…”
“Wait, what?” I narrow my eyes. “You literally counted the minutes they kissed.”