He shouldn’t. It was impossible. It was crazy.
It was also true, and he wanted truth with the princess.
With Ari.
He gathered his courage and said quietly, “I love you. I know that’s inappropriate because you’re the princess, and I’m—”
She covered his mouth with hers, and everything disappeared except the way she tasted and the incredible heat of her lips moving against his. He pulled her closer, desperate to erase any sliver of air between them. She wrapped her arms around the back of his neck and kissed him like he was the answer to every craving she’d ever had.
When she pulled back, he gazed at her face—at the flush of pink on her golden skin and the disheveled tendrils of hair escaping her braid. At the vulnerable look in her dark eyes.
“Sebastian?”
“Yes?”
“I love you too.”
He closed his eyes and pressed his forehead to hers. He was still horrified. Still grieving. So was she.
But they weren’t facing any of it alone.
He’d told her the truth. She knew who he was and what he’d done, and she was still by his side. He drew in a deep, easy breath and kissed her again as the crashing, churning panic that had driven him into her arms subsided into something Sebastian hadn’t experienced in years.
Peace.
FORTY-SIX
KISSING ARI WAS like following a map to the places inside himself that he’d given up on ever finding. It was peace and comfort and fire that warmed him in the best possible way. The stifling walls of the cage fell away, the stone beneath his knees disappeared, and all that existed was Ari. The way she leaned into him. The curve of her hips beneath his hands. The little breaths that caught in her throat as she pulled him closer.
“Is it strange to feel happy and sad and angry all at the same time?” she murmured against his lips. Whatever he would’ve answered was lost as she kissed him again.
When he finally broke the kiss, the walls of the cage closed in on him again, and he realized he was kneeling with his back to the door.
A door his father could reenter at any moment.
His scars tingled, and he glanced at the closed door before looking back at Ari again.
Ari caught his expression and said, “Jacob is making a copy of the list of next week’s debtors. He’ll be in the villa for a little while.”
“Why is he doing that?” He ran his fingers over her cheek and brushed tendrils of her thick hair behind her ear, even while panic began coiling inside him.
She was still a prisoner. He was still bound by his contract to do unspeakable things.
And his father—the man responsible for so much of Sebastian’s pain, misery, and fear—could return at any moment.
Maybe he could just ignore his father like he’d done that morning.
His father was as likely to accept that as he was likely to let Ari go. Sebastian had two choices—he could leave the villa and escape the coming confrontation, or he could stay by Ari’s side and face the man who’d haunted Sebastian’s nightmares all his life.
“He’s copying the list because I convinced him that Teague was going to leave someone in charge of Kosim Thalas while he expanded his business, and that if Jacob wanted the job instead of you, he needed to collect on next week’s debts, among other things. I traded the information for a privy bucket and some toast, but really I traded it so I could have time to look over the copy of Teague’s contract that I stole.” Her voice was matter-of-fact, but there was something dark beneath it—anger and grief that he hadn’t heard from her before.
He shook his head, half in admiration and half in disbelief, and tried to pretend he could keep the panic at bay. “Is there anything you can’t talk your way out of?”
“The chain around my ankle.” She turned her head to look at the hook embedded into the wall behind her, and Sebastian sucked in a breath at the gouges in the tender skin on the side of her neck. Bruises the size of fingertips were gathering beneath her skin in purple and blue. It looked like someone with large hands had tried to strangle her.
Those bruises hadn’t been there this morning.
The rage he kept deep within him flared.
She turned back to him. “Time to talk about my new plan. I could kiss you all afternoon, but that isn’t going to stop Teague, and I think I know how to— Why are you looking at me like that?”
His heart thudded against his chest, and it took everything he had to speak calmly. “What happened to your neck?”
She held his gaze for a long moment, and he knew the truth before she said, “Jacob wanted to make sure I knew he was in charge.”
His jaw clenched hard enough to hurt. “Jacob.”
She nodded and then wrapped a hand around his arm. He looked down and realized he’d clenched his hands into fists.
“Jacob just works for Teague. If we stop Teague, we stop Jacob. We stop everything.”
“Why do you call him Jacob?” he asked as the rage slithered from his belly and lit his chest on fire.
The taint of his father’s cruelty had touched her. Left marks on her. Just like it had left marks on his mother. On his brother. On him.
Her eyes were fierce. “Because I’m not going to give him the honor of calling him your father. He’s an abusive, violent monster—anyone who could hurt a child is—and he has nothing to do with the loyal, kind, protective, selfless person you became. He’s Jacob, my babysitter, and as soon as we’re finished with Teague, he’s finished too.”
“Is that so?” His father spoke from the doorway.
Instantly, Sebastian was on his feet, standing between his father and the princess. The rage that had lit a fire in his chest crashed against the surge of panic that hit at the expression in his father’s eyes.
Sebastian knew that look.
The whip was coming.
“Wish I could say I’m surprised to hear you planning treachery, but you were always weak like your brother.” His father reached for the whip and paced toward Sebastian like a cat circling its prey.
“Don’t you dare speak of my brother.” Sebastian’s voice shook. His scars burned as he rolled to the balls of his feet.
His father’s eyes narrowed into mean, angry slits, and he cracked the whip. It snapped through the air dangerously close to Sebastian’s face, but he didn’t flinch.
This time, Sebastian wasn’t running. This time, he wasn’t going to balk at discovering just how like his father he really was.
This time his father was the one who should be running.
“Your brother warned one of Teague’s debtors in time for him to skip town before we could collect his children to be sold as payment on his defaulted loan. Parrish deserved what he—”
“He deserved to be beaten to death by his own father?” Sebastian’s voice rose, and the fire in his chest spilled into his veins, chasing the panic into the corner of his mind.