ASMUCHASshe had wanted this, as many times as she had imagined it, only to just once again curse him for being stubborn and foolish, Rita could taste the edge of panic in Jag’s kiss and knew that this was not the way.
He had been so infuriating, and yet it had also all been so obviously fear.
She understood it. She felt it, too.
This wasn’t what they had planned.
If making love in the moonlight had not made it clear to him that things had changed past the point of insisting they remain the same, then this certainly had.
She imagined it was hard for a man as powerful as he was to accept things not going according to plan.
But the unexpected could be good. It could have a silver lining.
They were not and would not be in love—Rita could accept that with only a mild tightness in her chest—but they cared about each other, and now they were going to have a baby. They could still be a family. They had to be, because there was no other family she had to offer to their child.
But she knew better than to present it that way to Jag.
She didn’t know how she knew it, but she had sensed it the moment Jag was hers again. Just as she realized that in this moment, the lead was hers to take.
Fortunately, she was no longer new to all of it—not the palace, not the man and not the passion that flared between them—and she knew exactly what she wanted.
Bringing her hands up to cup his jaw, rather than explore the broad planes of his chest that virtually begged her to grab hold and climb on up, she gently took the reins of their kiss and told him in a different way.
And only when his own hands reached for her body, their gentle and smooth exploration tempting her to hand things back over and let him ravish her, did she take their kiss deeper.
For the second time in her life she kissed the same man, and just like the first, the experience of it threatened to carry her away.
But she wasn’t going to just let them go where the wind took them.
He had given up on something tonight. His plans had collapsed, and their futures had changed.
But if the future was not what they had thought it would be, Rita could at least show him the silver lining.
They were the silver lining. This was.
They didn’t have to profess love in order to build a good life together. They’d both learned the hard way the meaning of unconditional love. They could both give that to their child without having it for each other.
And they could give each other companionship and conversation and, after long last, family.
She could be happy with that if he could. Happier even than she might have been two years from now, had the terms of their original deal come to fruition.
Trailing her hands down along his jawline and neck, over his shoulders, she followed the lines of his arms all the way down to interlace her fingers with his before softly breaking the kiss.
“Come with me,” she whispered, her voice only slightly uncertain until he nodded.
He hadn’t wanted a family, but as she’d lived in his childhood home, she had realized that in many ways, he no longer recalled what family was.
And so tonight, she took him to the baths.
Rafida had told her he’d spent so much time in them as a boy that they’d joked he was half merman.
Since she’d been in Hayat, he had not even visited them once. The memories of his mother, she realized now, were too strong there. And how could she not be? The baths were as much her art as cars were Rita’s.
Upon realizing their destination, a rapid-fire series of emotions crossed Jag’s face. Joy, pain and something more complicated came and went almost as soon as Rita had identified them.
Feeling as if their roles from the night of the debut had reversed, she squeezed his hand in the doorway, telling him without words that she believed he could do this—not just go into the baths, but be a father and not lose himself to the process.
Though his spine remained as upright as ever and the embers of his eyes burned as strong, she had never seen him so unmoored. A voice inside told her that she had the capacity to be his anchor if she dared.