His Queen by Desert Decree(59)

His dark, tawny gaze had changed, she noticed. It had gone molten. He still held himself still, though she could tell the difference in that, too. It was as if an electrical current ran through him now, charging the air all around him even while his mouth remained in an unsmiling line.

And he looked at her as if she was naked. Stripped. Flesh and bone with nothing left to hide.

“Is it so bad, then?” he asked in a mild sort of tone she didn’t believe at all.

Susannah’s chest was so heavy, and she couldn’t tell if it was the crushing weight of misery or something far more dangerous. She held her belly with one hand as if it was already sticking out. As if the baby might start kicking at any second.

“The Betancur family is a cage,” she told him, or the parquet floor beneath the area rug that stretched out in front of the fireplace, and it cost her to speak so precisely. So matter-of-factly. “I don’t want to live in a cage. There must be options.”

“I am not a cage,” Leonidas said with quiet certainty. “The Betancur name has drawbacks, it is true, and most of them were at that gala tonight. But it is also not a cage. On the contrary. I own enough of the world that it is for all intents and purposes yours now. Literally.”dpg!

“I don’t want the world.” She didn’t realize she’d shot to her feet until she was taking a step toward him, very much as if she thought she might take a swing at him next. As if she’d dare. “I don’t need you. I don’t want you. I want to be free.”

He took her face in his hands, holding her fast, and this close his eyes were a storm. Ink dark with gold like lightning, and she felt the buzz of it. Everywhere.

“This is as close as you’re going to get, little one,” he told her, the sound of that same madness in his gaze, his voice.

And then he claimed her mouth with his.