At least she’d had eight years of freedom. She had just never pictured trading one cage for another.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
ALARICHEARDHERbefore she walked into the kitchen. The soft padding of her footsteps on the wood floor, a gentle melody as she hummed a song. The domestic sounds calmed the heightened state of awareness he’d been in since last night.
Last night when he’d almost taken his wife for the second time in a very inappropriate place that could have caused a disaster.
What was wrong with him? He’d always conducted his previous affairs with the utmost care—faraway cities, upscale hotels that catered to elite clientele and operated with the highest discretion. His previous lovers had been enjoyable. But with Clara...once he’d tasted her, felt the delicious heat of her body and seen her come alive for him, she had become a drug he couldn’t get enough of.
Worry slithered into his thoughts, the same worry that had been steadily growing ever since that night. If he was willing to risk everything he’d worked so hard for, everything the people of his country deserved, for a moment of passion, was he fit to lead? Or was he too much like Daxon at his core to be a good representative of the Linnaean people? He’d prided himself on his ability to remain in control. But perhaps it was because he hadn’t been faced with the right kind of temptation until now.
A temptation he had married and was expecting a child with. It wasn’t Clara’s fault that he behaved like that around her. But it was something he needed to regain control of. Fast. Avoiding Clara would only work for so long. They were married. The news would come out in time. Time to take control of the narrative.
Clara rounded the corner, her eyes focused on a book. Her blond hair had been gathered into a loose bun on top of her head, long strands already falling out to grace the back of her neck and frame her delicate face. Beneath an ivory cardigan she wore pale pink lounge pants and a matching top that clung to the curves of her breasts. Her nipples were pebbled beneath the thin material. His entire body tightened.
Stay focused.
Clara’s head suddenly snapped up and her eyes widened as she took in Alaric standing by the kitchen sink.
“What are you doing here?”
“Good morning to you, too.”
Her cheeks darkened to a rosy color. “Sorry. Um, good morning. Everything all right?”
“Yes. Why wouldn’t it be?”
“It’s just... I haven’t seen you down here for breakfast since we arrived. I wasn’t sure if someone saw...” Her blush deepened. “That is, if something made its way into the news...”
“No.” He waved her worry aside. “Nothing like that. Can I get you something to eat?”
She blinked in surprise. “Um... I can get it myself.”
“Clara, you’re my wife. You’re pregnant. And I’ve left you alone for three days on our honeymoon. I’m making you breakfast.”
At last, she nodded.
“That would be nice. Tea and toast, please.”
He arched a brow. “Aren’t you supposed to be eating for two?”
She grimaced. “Hard to do when I wake up every morning feeling like I’ve just gotten off a boat in a thunderstorm. I’ll eat more later.”
He wanted to push, but judging by the queasy look on her face when she glanced at his half-eaten bagel covered in a liberal amount of cream cheese and piled with smoked salmon and cucumber, pushing would result in a very unpleasant morning.
He moved around the kitchen, the silence broken by the occasional clink of the teacup or the whisper as Clara turned a page in her book. It was, he realized with some surprise, a pleasant silence, one he didn’t feel the need to fill with inane chatter. The last time he’d taken a lover to dinner—over two years ago—she hadn’t stopped talking, from the time he’d picked her up at her hotel in Paris until he’d dropped her off after a theater performance. She’d coyly invited him up to her room, but he hadn’t been able to muster even the faintest desire to join her in her bed.
He hadn’t been with anyone since. Truthfully, even though he’d told himself it was his upcoming marriage to Celestine that had led to his streak of celibacy, he’d grown tired of the brief flings, the businesslike arrangement of his sexual encounters, the lack of a connection beyond mutual physical pleasure. Pleasure that had dulled over the years, each encounter bleeding into the next.
There had been, too, a dull throb that had grown into an ache with each rendezvous. He’d always held a part of himself back from his previous lovers, knowing nothing would come of their time together. Perhaps that was why he’d sought out the women he had: emotionally distant, independently wealthy, few mutual interests that would spark something beyond a pleasantly shared meal and good sex.
There hadn’t been a single woman he’d been with over the years who would be like Clara was now: content to spend a few minutes in silence reading as he made her breakfast.
This was more what he had envisioned when he had proposed to Clara, this satisfying coexistence.
He set a plate with lightly buttered toast and a teacup in front of her.
“Thank you,” she said with a smile as if he’d just given her a diamond bracelet.