Page 25 of Reclaiming His Ruined Princess
He didn’t care to ask himself why not.
“I think it might have been easier to defy a government,” Amalia said in that same quiet, yet intense way. “A nameless, faceless body. But in my case, we were just talking about my mother. The only mother I had—and the only parent I had left. I had no wish to disappoint her.”
He pulled his hand away from hers then, and moved back far enough that the rain could fall between them once more. And wondered what that must be like. To have a mother, or any parent, who cared that he existed—and who might therefore be disappointed in him. He couldn’t make the notion take form inside him.
And he blamed her for that, too. “You can make all the excuses you want. I loved you and you left. Not exactly kindly. You can hardly be surprised that things are not the same now, all these years later.”
“I’m not surprised at all.”
Her shoulders straightened, that little tell of hers that told him she was slipping on that princess mantle once more, and he wanted to hate that. He wanted it to be evidence against her. But instead, he found he admired it—given how many titans of industry trembled before him, it was an enduring surprise that one tiny ex-princess seemed entirely unaffected.
Maybe notentirelyunaffected, he revised in the next breath, when he took a closer look at the goose bumps running down her arms.
“I was only surprised that, having made it so clear how much you disdained me, you chose not only to come and greet me here on the island, but to stay,” she was saying. “Then to clear the island of any other guests so we could reenact some of the best parts of our initial summer. If this is your revenge, Joaquin, it seems far too sweet.”
He regarded her for much too long, and not for the first time, wondered how he had gotten himself into this situation. With this woman who could tie him into knots—and did, seemingly with precious little effort. When he was no pedigreed playboy like the titled fools Queen Esme had considered worthy of her daughter. He was Joaquin Vargas. He had faced down more so-called monsters this year than most people encountered in a lifetime. It was a sport. Sometimes he took a meeting for the express purpose of showing the self-aggrandizing heads of widely feted corporations how little he cared what they thought of him.
He had always been good at claiming the power in any situation.
And he had a flash of clarity then, slicing through the rain and deep into him. That was the trouble here. He kept confusing the issue. He kept letting her think he cared, and deeply. That was what she thought this intensity was.
Really, Joaquin should have anticipated that.
“How many lovers have you taken since that summer?” he asked her, almost idly.
And tamped down, hard, on the instant howling thing inside him that did not wish to know the answer to that question.
Amalia laughed. “Will you be sharing the number of your lovers in return?”
“I cannot possibly count that high,” he replied coolly.
And she didn’t flinch. Not exactly. Still, something changed, and in its wake, she looked rueful. “I knew that, of course. It’s a funny thing, that love you claim you felt for me, isn’t it, Joaquin? Because to the casual observer, it would appear that you expressed it by sleeping with every available woman in Europe. Be still my heart.”
“But you never claimed to be in love,” he reminded her, and his temper was a dangerous thing just then. It took every scrap of willpower he had to keep it within him. To make sure it didn’t break those chains he kept wrapped tight around it. Because he shouldn’t have had the faintest shred of temper in the first place. She had never told him that she loved him. No one had ever told him they loved him. He was the only fool who had uttered those words. “So I can only assume you slept with twice as many.”
“My only lover was my duty to crown and country,” Amalia replied, her blue eyes glinting in the rain. “Everything that happened here that summer was out of character in every way. An extraordinary departure from my actual life.”
“And yet here you are again,” he murmured. “When surely you should have headed straight home to your true motherland. Cornfields, as I understand it. As far as the eye can see.”
He had never seen a cornfield. Yet Joaquin felt certain that the faint hint of derision he used when discussing them was warranted.
Amalia’s blue gaze gleamed. “The only thing I know about Kansas is that it has tornadoes. The occasional witch. And farms that end up with ruby slippers, though I’ve never figured out what they do with all that magic afterward.”
He didn’t want to dwell on Hollywood nonsense. “All of this makes sense,” he said instead. “You still place a virgin’s importance on sex.”
And he had meant that to insult her. But that didn’t mean he liked it when the insult clearly landed.
When she looked as if he’d delivered an actual blow.
“In time, it will pass,” he assured her, and he shouldn’t have disliked his own words so much. Surely he should have exulted in telling her these truths. In setting her straight. “The more lovers you have, the more you will come to understand that sex is nothing more than a physical release.”
She swallowed, hard. He watched her throat move. “And this is your revenge, then. Sexual exposure therapy.”
He didn’t mean to move closer to her again, then realized he’d done just that. This time he took her shoulders in his hands and drew her up on her toes.
Revenge, he reminded himself.This is meant to be revenge.
“I will do whatever it takes to conquer this,” he growled at her. “I will not allow you to haunt me. We will stay here, you and I, until you cannot take it anymore and leave. Or until I feel as much when I touch you as I do in any random handshake.”