“For what?”
His eyes crinkled at the sides as he smiled. “For allowing me the honor of tasting you.”
I knew my flushed skin only got darker, because his words sounded so much more provocative than he probably meant them to be.
He winked at me.
Well, maybe he had meant them just as provocatively as they’d sounded. The scoundrel.
“Would I be completely unladylike if I said it was my pleasure?” I asked him.
He chuckled. “I would consider it the highest compliment.”
We stared at one another in what I could only describe as awed silence. Our eyes ran over each other’s faces, and his hands continued to pet me—my face, my back, and my sides. He was stirring up desire in me like a man stoking a fire. I should have told him to stop, seven hells, we needed to stop, and yet I could not get my lips to cooperate with my brain. How was I going to go back to treating him like just a random castle guard? How could I ever return to the way things had been?
“Allete.” My name rolled off his tongue so smoothly, and I found that I loved the sound of it. “I need you to know, I did not come in here with the intentions of seducing you.”
Torben sounded truly worried that I would think such a thing about him.
“I know that,” I assured him. “I would have never thought that.”
“I was worried about you,” he confessed. “After what that horse’s arse had done, I needed to see for myself that you were okay.”
“Only I wasn’t,” I said pathetically. I gritted my teeth as I thought back to how I’d crumbled under the weight of what had happened and what was to come.
“No, love, you weren’t.” He leaned forward and pressed his lips to my forehead and, for the first time in my life, I felt cherished. “But that’s why I’m here. To make sure that you will be okay.”
My brow drew together as I looked up at him. “What do you mean? You speak as though you knew me before we met.”
He shook his head. “I didn’t know you, but I knew of you and knew that you would be important to me.”
I was not sure how to interpret his words. I felt as though there was some hidden meaning behind them. There was something he wasn’t telling me.
“I’m not going to be okay if I have to marry that man,” I said, trying not to think too hard about the meaning of his words. “I thought I could do it. I thought I could just grit my teeth and do what I needed to do for my kingdom.” I looked down at my hands that were now clenching the sheet. The tears that had fled were threatening to once again flood my face. “But I can’t. Torben, I can’t be with Cathal. He’ll kill me, or I’ll kill me.”
A deep growl rushed from Torben as he grabbed my shoulders. “Never say such things,” he bit out. “You will never take your own life, and I will do everything I can to ensure that you do not marry him.”
“How?” The word was out before I had time to think. I knew I shouldn’t dare hope, but I couldn’t help myself. Could Torben really keep me from having to marry Cathal? It wasn’t possible. But the steel in his eyes said otherwise. How could he do such a thing? He was a guard in my father’s castle. How on earth could he prevent my marriage to a foreign king?
“I am still working out the details,” he said as he stood and backed away from the bed. I felt cold at his sudden retreat and fought my urge to reach out and snatch him back to my side.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m looking for your sleep garments,” he said as he glanced around the room.
I motioned toward the wardrobe directly behind him. “There should be a gown in there.”
He smiled at me. “As much as I love the idea of you naked, I fear it could be damning to your reputation if someone were to come in.”
I chuckled. “Yes, it would be quite damning.”
Torben searched through the wardrobe until he found a gown and then walked over to hand it to me. He turned and kept his back to me as I dropped the sheet and slipped the gown over my head. I tugged it down my body until it fell to the floor, and then I resumed my seat on my bed.
“All right, I’m decent.”
He turned and looked at me, his eyes starting at the top of my head and traveling down until he reached my bare feet. “No, love, I’m afraid you are far too tempting to qualify as decent.”
I smiled at him. He was so handsome. And so not mine. Why was life so unfair? I would renounce my right as a princess in a heartbeat if it meant I could be with Torben and didn’t have to marry Cathal. I would give up all the luxury just to have my happiness and safety and the possibility of real actual love.
“Thank you, Torben, for caring for me,” I said after several heartbeats of silence.
“It is not a hardship, Allete.” His eyes burned with an intensity that held me in place. I didn’t want to move for fear that he would look away. For some reason, that was the last thing I wanted him to do.
“Actually, caring for another person is always a hardship. It is in our nature to care for ourselves first,” I told him.
“Sometimes, yes. But then, sometimes, we come across a person who means more to us than ourselves. Sometimes we do anything for that person. Then there is no hardship.”
I watched as Allete’s eyes flickered with surprise at my words. I knew she did not intend to be insulting, but it made me want to laugh that she assumed I would not be capable of any sort of deep thought. As a lowly guard, in comparison to her station, it would make sense for me to be uneducated and simple. But she didn’t know that I wasn’t just a guard. Nor was I just a warrior of my clan. I was the son of an Oracle, and my mother had no intention of allowing me to remain ignorant.
“How do you know when you have found such a person?” she asked.
My lips turned up in a small smile. I retook my seat next to her on the bed and brushed some errant hair away from her face. “You know because they are all you can think about. Even when you know they should not be on your mind, they are still there. You know because everything becomes second to their wellbeing, safety, and happiness.”
“What if they cannot be yours? What if it’s just not possible?” Her eyes were swirling with questions as she stared up at me. Her shoulders were tense, and I could tell that she wanted me to simply walk away. Allete wanted me to make this easy on her. I wished I could do that, but even if she wasn’t the woman in the prophecy, I would not be able to walk away from her. At some point, between the moment I first laid eyes on her and the moment we now shared, the moment where she sat staring at me with such need, I had realized that my life would never be complete without her.