Chapter 11: The Rule She Broke

Rowena's POV

The lock clicked, and the whole room got smaller.

I had asked him to stay. I hadn't meant this.

That was a lie, and we both knew it.

He stood with his back to the door and his hands at his sides.

"I made a rule," he said. His voice was low and rough. "I'd like you to hear me say that I'm trying."

"I heard you. You said the Crown doesn't take wives."

"It doesn't."

"Then don't take one."

I crossed the carpet until I was close enough to feel the heat coming off him.

"Take me," I said. "I'm not anyone's wife. I haven't been for three years."

"Rowena."

"It's your rule, Your Majesty. Break it."

His eyes went black and gold.

He caught my face in both hands and kissed me.

It was not careful. It was two weeks of careful, let go all at once.

His mouth was hot and hard.

I made a sound against his lips that I had never made for anyone.

I got my hands into his shirt and pulled.

He lifted me by the backs of my thighs and carried me to the desk.

Papers went sliding to the floor. The brown folder went with them.

He set me down on the edge and stood between my knees.

He kissed my jaw, and the soft place under my ear.

"Tell me to stop," he said against my skin.

"Don't you dare."

He laughed, a short, startled breath, and then he stopped laughing, because my hand was on the front of his trousers.

He was hard.

He was thick and hot against my palm, and he shuddered all the way through.

"God," he said. "Rowena."

"Say it again."

"Rowena."

I'd had my name said to me in a dozen tones in that house, and none of them were like this one.

He undid my blouse one button at a time, and his hands weren't steady.

He pushed it off my shoulders and looked at me.

"I'm going to want to look for a week," he said.

"Then look fast."

He bent his head and took my breast in his mouth through the thin cotton of my bra.

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