‘But she wasn’t?’
‘No.’ She had stopped sugar-coating her experience with Viveca and her mother a long time ago. ‘For the first year it didn’t matter, because I was so shocked by my grief. I hadn’t expected it. I thought... I thought that because I knew what it had felt like to not have my mother there, I...’ She shrugged, even now chasing a breath because grief had filled her lungs. She desperately wished to comfort the utterly devastated child she’d been. ‘But it shook me. And by the time I began to come back to the world around me everything had changed and they made it very clear that they didn’t want me there,’ she said simply.
Her home had become a place where every meal was painful and endured in silence from fear of making her stepmother even more frustrated with her or incurring the wrath of her stepsister. Where around every corner was absence and loss and reminders that her father was no longer there. Where every second felt as if she was a stranger and unwelcome in her own home. Was it any wonder that she had held on to the friendship Freya had offered with both hands and never let go? Any wonder that the Palace had been the truest home she’d had in years? A home that she was now about to leave.
‘You will always have a place here,’ he said, and he was looking at her the way he’d first looked at her, when they’d met in the maze, and she wanted so much to believe him. To believe that what they’d shared the other night hadn’t ruined everything.
Aleksander watched as Henna made her way to the bathroom, leaving a sense of sadness behind that seemed to fill the cabin. He couldn’t imagine what it would be like to not feel safe in your place in the world. For him, he had been told over and over and over again until it was as sure as breathing,You will be King. His place in the world had always been, and would always be, a solid, certain thing. And he wasn’t naïve about the fact that in taking this new job Henna was about to leave her sense of security behind...but he hated to think that she might have taken the role because she felt unwanted.
Unwanted.
The word teased and taunted. He didn’t think that he’d ever wanted someone more. Ever. Mentally he was desperate to hold her to him, to pull her in and never let go, and emotionally he wanted her as far away as humanly possible. Because if he let her in...what would he let out?
The way Henna had described her grief, the shock, the numbness—heknewthat feeling. Heknewthat pain. He’d never spoken about the loss of his unborn child, not even with his father, who had known of the pregnancy all along. Kristine had moved before he’d even had a chance to talk to her. To ask her if...if...
He clenched his jaw, fighting the questions that built in his mind, the anger, the hurt, the fear. The fear that it had been his fault from the very beginning, that it was his fault that he’d brought that pain down upon them and that Kristine had been forced into the most horrendous decision anyone could ever make. Emotion welled to the surface of his heart, drawing pinpricks of sweat across his spine and neck as he battled with the intensity of it.
His hands fisted on the armrests of the chair, knuckles white, fingers bruised red, until Henna’s palm swept across the back of his hand and gently prised his fist open, because how could he hold on to such tension beneath such gentleness? He looked down to where she crouched beside his seat, her eyes not on his, but where she swept circles across his hands, her head bowed, and this time, rather than arousal, pure and simple, something complex wrapped around them, as warm as it was hot, as calming as it was urgent, as lasting as it was fleeting. In that moment Aleksander knew that, whatever it was, it was unique to her. Only to her. Only ever to her.
Apparently satisfied that he was no longer under the same ferocious hold of anger, she smoothed his now relaxed palm one last time and returned to her seat, turning her head into the crook of the cushion and closing her eyes.
‘There’s a bed,’ he said, choosing to ignore what had passed between them.
‘It’syourbed, Your Majesty,’ she replied, the title drawing a line between them that he was both angered by and thankful for.
He turned back to the laptop and stared at emails he couldn’t see while he wrangled with the feelings that Henna brought to the surface and then swept away beneath her touch.
Twenty minutes later, Aleksander heard the slide of Henna’s hair against the leather of the seat and tried to ignore it, but she had been restless in her sleep and every time she moved it drew his attention. The stubborn woman had refused to be comfortable and that it was fracturing his concentration was unacceptable.
The air steward had noticed and was about to approach to wake Henna, but Aleksander threw up a hand to ward him off. Henna had gone above and beyond in the last few days. As the staff member withdrew, Aleksander rubbed the tiredness from his eyes and stood, deciding that what he was about to do made practical sense and nothing more.
He rolled his shoulders before crossing the cabin and allowed himself one stolen minute just to look. Henna was about as watchful as he, so rarely had he got the chance to take her in. She really was exquisite. Beneath her fringe, long lashes swept downwards from her eyelids, curling and dark. Her skin was slightly flushed, but the thick dark brown ropes of her hair, shot through with gold, framed cheekbones that were gentle but defined, as if everything in her was balanced between soft and strength, and he marvelled at it.
Her head turned again and her legs shifted. She clearly wasn’t comfortable in that seat. He bent, slipping his hands to her back and beneath her legs, and gently pulled her into his arms. Instinctively she curled into his chest, her head resting against his shoulder as he turned towards the bedroom at the back of the plane. Of all the emotions he’d fought in the last few days, this was the most at peace he’d felt.
Right. It feels right.
Ignoring his inner thoughts, he carefully manoeuvred them into the bedroom and gently placed her down on the covers. Her body relaxed into the soft mattress, pinning his arms beneath her and bringing her chest to chest with him, the warm scent of her rising to tease his senses and beckon him over the line he’d placed between them. Shifting in his arms, her head turned towards his, their lips but a breath apart, and his heart leapt in his chest, pulse pounding like a drumbeat, impossible to ignore, urgent, needful and strong. Henna’s eyes drifted open and he watched as the flare of surprise and desire obliterated the hazel ring to black. The sight of her reaction to him had need thickening his throat, a weight in his blood, hardening his arousal, and tension straining his muscles and just when he would have taken her lips in his she turned her head to the side, away from him.
A fist grabbed his gut and squeezed. He didn’t have that right. He had refused her and now expected a kiss? He was a bastard and forced himself to see, toknow, the hurt that she tried to hide. He closed his eyes and turned to go, but a hand sneaked out to grasp his wrist.
‘You’re tired and need to sleep too.’
‘Henna, I—’
‘Just sleep,’ came her reply as she turned her head back to the pillow and closed her eyes.
Unable to deny her command, unable to fight the connection between them that had revealed itself, he toed off his shoes and, without breaking the hold she had on his wrist, lay down beside her, his body mirroring the curve of her back. There were mere inches between them, but Aleksander’s last thought before being pulled into a deep sleep was that it might as well have been miles.
Henna stood by the window—another floor-to-ceiling reveal, but the view couldn’t have been more different. Bright neon colours flashed and danced across skyscrapers which were mirrored in the sea below, bisected by the three bridges that connected Macau peninsula to Taipa and Coloane. From the seemingly impossible height of the hotel, Macau lay beyond her like a scattering of sequins on silk, the slightest ripple drawing her gaze to new and startlingly bright colours exploding across the cityscape. Her gaze feasted upon the sight, working so very hard to ignore the dress that Aleksander had procured for her.
She’d awoken on the plane’s bed alone, but the warmth of the sheets beside her told her he’d only just risen. And she wondered if that was how it would always be between them now, her just a step behind, following in his footsteps. The thought had stung the backs of her eyes, before she’d pulled herself together and returned to the cabin, where the air steward had placed another Earl Grey tea beside her seat.
Typing away, Aleksander had barely spared her a glance as he’d informed her of the suite he’d booked for her and the clothing he’d arranged to be provided for her. Of all the things that had happened between them, it had been that which had angered Henna the most. She was well versed in last-minute change of plans, arranging clothing for Freya or Marit, suitable for any occasion, no matter where they were in the world. She was more than capable of providing for herself. So when she’d first seen the covered dress hanging on the back of the bedroom door, she had refused to look at it for at least twenty minutes. Until curiosity got the better of her and when she did...
Her heart had pounded.Was this how he saw her?Showered, and silky from the frangipani-scented body mousse that had left her skin feeling supple and smooth and worthy of the midnight-coloured creation, she stared at the dress, a boldness creeping over her skin and into her heart.
She held the spaghetti straps wide and slipped into the dress, sliding it up over her sensitive skin. The audaciously deep vee cut into the silk covering her chest took her breath away, the skirts parting high on her thigh as she walked closer to the mirror to inspect her reflection, and she drew her hand to her lips in shock. She turned, her entire back exposed but for the thin X of silk straps that held the dress in place, the blue silk gathering at the base of her spine scandalously.