Tristan’s fingers trail up my arms, his front pressed against my naked back as we lie in his bed. It’s the first time I’ve been in his room, but it’s exactly as I imagined it would be; rich burgundy furniture and black silk sheets. Remnants of his cum sticks to the inside of my thighs, but I’m too exhausted to clean it up, my mind and body waging a war inside of me, collecting the last particles of my energy and grinding it to dust. My ass is raw and my emotions are spread thin. And I still feel unsettled.
But I won’t lie to myself. I can’t kill him, even though I know I should.
Whether that makes me a selfish woman or a weak one, I’m not sure.
Maybe it makes me both.
“What happened to Timothy…” he blurts.
My lungs cramp up tight.
“I didn’t send them there,” he continues. “I expressly forbade them to touch you.”
His words trickle through me and root around in my chest, trying to find a place to settle. I believe him, and that probably makes me the stupidest woman to ever live, but if he feels even a fraction of what I feel for him, then I don’t doubt for a moment he never meant to harm me.
I held a blade to his jugular and still couldn’t follow through.
“My father was my best friend,” I blurt out, rolling on my back until I’m caged between his arms. “He taught me from a young age that just because I was a girl, that didn’t mean I needed to be meek and mild.”
Tristan smirks. “He taught you well.”
I narrow my eyes, swallowing around the sickness that talking about my father causes in the depths of my gut.
“Yeah, well. He was a duke. Did you know that?”
“I did.” He nods, his fingertips tracing along the edge of my hairline.
“He loved our people. So when the funds stopped coming, the businesses shut down, and the people lost their homes… he was sick over it.” I swallow. “He used to hand me bits of money he could scrounge together and warm wool clothes and send me out in the thick of night to take them to people in need.”
“Sounds like a great man.”
“He was.” The knot swells in my throat. “When he died, the grief overwhelmed me, but more than that, I remember drowning in anger.”
“I know that feeling well,” he replies.
“All he wanted was to ask for help.” My teeth clench. “He traveled here to Saxum, and bent the knee, all to beg for your brother to just see us, because for so many years, we’d been brushed aside and forgotten.”
My hand reaches up to cup Tristan’s face, trailing over the raised edges of his scar, feeling the ridges and marred flesh beneath the pads of my fingers. He flinches, but he doesn’t pull away. Instead, he leans into it. I flick my gaze to the tattoo on his chest. The hyena on top of bones with a phrase scrawled underneath. I should have known from that alone. I was so enamored with the words, I didn’t take in the rest.
“Coming here was supposed to be vengeance against those who took him from me.”
I expect to see surprise filter through his eyes, but there isn’t any to be found. Just warmth and understanding. It makes holding on to my anger incredibly difficult, and a bit chips away, falling to the ground and smashing into pieces.
“My cousin brought me in to marry your brother… but you know that already, of course.”
His eyes harden, his grip tightening from where it rests on my waist. “He cannot have you.”
“He never will,” I respond, hesitating before I continue. “I saw you when I followed Sheina and Paul last night to the shadowed lands.”
He nods, again with no surprise lighting across his face. “I know.”
Tears well in my eyes, even though I thought they had long since dried. “I saw you, Tristan.”
“I know,” he repeats, his gaze never leaving mine.
“You have my cousin caged.”
His mouth parts then, blowing out a deep breath, his fingers pausing from where they flick against my skin. “Not anymore, little doe.”
My heart stutters, but it’s slight. “You killed him?”
“Would it help if I said he deserved it?”
Maybe I should be enraged, but I’m not. I barely feel anything at all. Truthfully, I was never close with Xander, only having met him once or twice when I was a child. The relationship between us was built on loyalty to family, but as I imagine Tristan ending his life, I can’t find it in me to care.
Turns out, some things bind thicker than blood.
“What did he do?” I ask.
“Killed my father.” He says it with no hesitation, no inflection in his tone. It’s just stated as fact.
The words tremble against the wall that still sits between us, keeping me from giving in to whatever this is. No matter how badly I may want to.
“And you killed mine.”
His brows draw down, eyes flashing.
My hand cups his face. “So, you see, Tristan, I can’t love you. Because loving you means forgetting him.”
“Little doe—”
“Nicknames and sweet words won’t change the truth, okay?” My bottom lip quivers, my sutured-up heart tearing at the seams. I slide from under his grasp and push up on his bed until I’m sitting, slapping my hands down on the mattress. “What else do you want from me? What else can I give? You have taken everything from me, and yet you want my heart too?”
He pounces, his body looming over me, his aura pressing in and his face dark and drawn. “Yes,” he says. “Yes. I want it all. I want everything. I demand it.”
“Well, too bad,” I spit, shoving at his chest.
He grips my wrists before I can move them away and pulls me into him. I kick out, my feet hitting the bone of his shin until he sucks in a hiss, and I flail, trying to break free from his grasp. Chuckling, he tugs me close, rolling us until I’m pinned beneath him, his body weight keeping me flush to the bed. His legs tangle around mine, and his hands push into my arms as he presses them above my head.
It’s a precarious position, and one that has heat spreading through my core and pulsing in my center, whether I want it to or not.
“You are mine, Sara.” He punctuates his words with a sharp thrust of his hips. “And if I have to sink my cock inside of you every morning and spank your ass until it’s bruised every night just so you feel me with every step, that’s what I’ll do.”
I scoff. “Please. You don’t own me.”
He grins. “Now who’s the liar, ma petite menteuse?” He thrusts himself against me again, and my traitorous legs fall open, giving him more room.
Leaning down, he sucks my bottom lip into his mouth, kissing me with teeth and tongue and spit. It’s sloppy. Messy. Everything that I crave, but nothing I can have.
“I’ve killed many men,” he whispers against me. “And I remember the face of every single one, soaking their image into my brain as they pray to me for absolution.”
“You have a complex,” I sneer.
“Sara, I didn’t kill your father.”
I stop fighting against his hold, growing slack in his arms, confusion racing through me as my brows draw down. “No, you did. My uncle told me it was you, he—”
“Wants to take the crown,” he cuts in.
I’d love to deny it, and for the next few moments, that’s what I do. I search every single crevice of my memory, trying to drag up something that proves his innocence. That proves he would never. He was so convincing in his plight for me to kill the rebel king, and if even that wasn’t genuine, then I wonder if I really have known him at all.
My uncle has been like a second father to me. But he’s also been the one in my ear at every turn, fanning the flames of my fire and directing them on where to go. Was everything manipulation for his end goal?
“You were their scapegoat, little doe. The one who would take the fall for the murders of the monarch and blaze the path for them to steal the crown.”
My chest cramps. “What?” I shake my head, disbelief pouring like icy rain through my body.
His fingers press against my lips, brushing over them in a soft caress. “You know I don’t wish to hurt you.”
“No, they wouldn’t,” I say again. “He wouldn’t, I’m his family.”
Even as I say the words, the truth sinks into my bones, making them ache, and I know.
I am such a foolish woman.
Sympathy coasts through his eyes. “I’ll be your family now, little doe.”
My chest feels heavy, and my soul feels worn, but there’s also a sense of relief that lifts a burden from my shoulders, the chains tying me to the Beatreaux name breaking away and smashing as they fall to the ground.
“Swear it,” I plead. “Swear to me, on your father’s grave, that you speak the truth.”
He cups my cheek. “I swear it on my father’s grave, Sara. I will only ever tell you the truth.”
My gaze moves back to his, my heart swelling as I stare into his perfect face. “Did you mean it when you said you loved me?” I ask.
He sighs, moving my arm from above my head and resting it over his racing heart. “I’ve only ever wanted one thing in my entire life. The throne. I’ve been plotting and planning for so long, I can’t remember what life was like before. And I’m so close, Sara. So close to victory.”
My stomach tightens.
“But you…” He licks his lips. “You could burn down the entire kingdom until it’s nothing but charred rubble, and I would crawl over the embers with glee, so long as I could worship at your feet.”
My insides quake from the magnitude of his words.
“If that’s love, then yes, I love you.” He lifts a shoulder. “I can’t feel anything but loving you.”
I bite back the emotion that’s stampeding through my chest, lifting my hand to push the stray hair off his forehead. My breathing stutters, and I know that with my next words, everything will change. “I love you too.”
His eyes darken, and his cock pulses against my center.
“And it would be such a shame not to see you wear the crown.”
