Despair washed over his as every word, every insult from the media, from now and fifteen years ago, played back through her mind.
Xander might not leave her now, but one day...
She’d survived losing him once. She couldn’t do it again.
* * *
Xander walked into the palace with a strange, buoyant feeling in his chest. He felt lighter. He felt like he could breathe for the first time in fifteen years. And more than that, this felt like a place he could live. A position he could have.
Because his father, the man who would always claim him as his son, had said that Xander was the man he wanted on the throne.
The truth truly did set you free. Interesting. He wondered if Layna would be amused by his epiphany.
Layna. He needed to see Layna.
He needed to have Layna. With none of his walls between them.
He prowled through the halls and opened her bedroom door. She wasn’t in the suite of rooms that were set aside for her. He walked out and continued on, toward the place she was using as her office.
He found her there, sitting behind a desk, staring off into space. She started when the door hit the wall.
And as soon as he saw her, every thought left his head completely. He’d forgotten why he was there. Where he’d just been. He forgot everything.
He could only stare at her, at her eyes, her high cheekbones. The extra fold by her mouth where her scar tissue was thick, a fold that deepened when she tightened her lips, like she was doing now. At her asymmetrical brows and her neat, feminine hands.
At Layna. All the pieces of her that combined to make the woman that had changed him on every level. That had changed him in a fundamental way he could neither name nor deny.
And he needed her. Needed to be close to her, inside of her, right now. Needed to affirm what he was feeling. To have her brand his body with her touch the way that she had branded his soul.
To brand her body, so that she would feel it, too.
“Layna...” His words evaporated on his tongue. He didn’t know what to say. Or how to say it. He knew how to flirt, knew how to throw practiced lines at women and get them into bed for the night. But he’d never learned how to keep a woman with him for two nights, much less forever.
But he had to try. He had to try.
Because he’d gotten everything today—acceptance, forgiveness. And still things didn’t feel finished.
“Layna,” he began again, “you have been missing from my life every day since I walked away.”
“Xander, what are you talking about?”
He went over to the desk and rounded to her side, hauled her up into his arms and kissed her. Then he kissed her cheeks, the damaged corner of her mouth, the winkled line of skin that ran along the bridge of her nose.
He pressed his forehead against hers. “I’ve been wandering in the desert for fifteen years. I have had no home. No one to call a friend. And I was okay with that because I didn’t want anyone to get near me. I came back here, it was supposed to be the promised land, so to speak, and I didn’t feel anything. I didn’t feel home. Until I saw you.”
“Xander, please...don’t do that, I don’t need it.”
“I need to tell you.”
“How did your meeting with your father go?”
“That isn’t what I need to talk about.”
“It’s what I need to hear about,” she said.
Layna tried to calm the wild beating of her heart, tried to do something to quell the panic that was racing through her. She didn’t know what to do with this. With his words, his ferocity and sincerity, with such strength that it burrowed beneath her defenses and started pulling them down. Left her feeling raw and exposed. Reminded her of how it had been to lose it all, all of her control, all of her beauty, in front of hundreds of people.
To care so much and have it all torn away...
Zombie Princess. Does he make love to you in the dark?
She closed her eyes and kissed him. She didn’t want to hear him speak anymore. She couldn’t hear more, not now. She could do this. They could kiss. They could make love. They could get married and live together and have children, and rule Kyonos.
So long as she could keep pieces of herself hidden, so that if the world ever fell down around her again, she wouldn’t be left with nothing.
But she had to keep him from saying things like that. He could touch her skin, but she couldn’t let him keep on touching her heart.
She couldn’t risk it.
“Layna,” he growled, kissing her deeper, longer.
It was working. He was focusing on her body now, his hands roaming over her curves. This was what she needed. This overwhelming tide of physical sensation that only he could make her feel.
Because it blocked out the other feelings. The ones that surrounded her heart and pushed at the walls. The ones that she’d made to protect herself.