“Rachel’s had all kinds of men treat her like trash. Like absolute filth. Like she wasn’t even a human being.” She was crying and yelling and fucking losing her mind. All on Cinaed, who probably didn’t deserve it, but then again, maybe he did. She spooled up again. “And whatever you do, do not fuck her right before telling her she’s the last thing you would ever want in a mate! That’s just fucking messed up and cruel.”
Cinaed cringed and stood helplessly next to the door.
Her breath heaved in and out of her chest, and she still couldn’t get in the fucking car. Her body just absolutely refused to move. And slowly she realized… it was because her body remembered Lucian pressing her up against a wall, but he wasn’t fucking her.
He was making love to her.
His words could lie to her. His haughty looks and tone could tell her more lies. But his body… his body wasn’t lying when it made love to her.
I needed a mate to fulfill my royal obligations.
But it didn’t have to be her. Why bother to rescue her from the super-powerful fae only to spurn her and send her away? If she wasn’t mate material, why not let Zephan keep her? Why not hurl her off a cliff and let her body be lost forever?
Why make love to her one last time?
She stared at the darkened interior of the limo. “He loves me,” she said, speaking out loud to the emptiness of the car. The words came out before she even grasped them in her mind. She slowly turned to face Cinaed.
His eyes were wide.
“He loves me. That’s why he’s sending me away.” It made perfect sense. Perfect, terrible sense.
Cinaed’s face pinched in. “My prince bears the fate of the world on his shoulders.” His voice was hushed and choked. “He endures things that would break most men.”
And that was it. That was truth. She could feel it ringing deep inside her.
“Where is he, Cinaed?”
“My lady?” he asked, bewilderment taking over his expression.
“Where does Lucian go when he’s hurt? Angry. When he’s filled with rage and needs to vent.”
His brows furrowed. “I’m supposed to take you home.”
“Where, Cinaed!”
He swallowed, glanced at the still-open door to the passenger side, and finally said, “His private pool—”
She whirled around and strode back toward the elevator.
“Arabella, no—”
But she didn’t care. She knew exactly where Lucian’s private pool was from her wanderings around his lair, and she knew exactly what she needed to do. The elevator was still on the garage level, so the doors opened right up for her. They closed again before Cinaed could reach her.
The slow climb gave her precious few seconds to think, but no matter. She wasn’t operating in the theater of logical and cool, rational thought. This was entirely, one hundred percent love-driven foolishness. Which was precisely what it needed to be. In fact, that was the only thing that could make it work.
She hurried through Lucian’s lair, her footfalls faster and lighter as she went. When she reached the pool room, with its three-story glass windows and the round clock face at the top, along with the sheer rock walls that comprised half the room, she was only looking for one thing—Lucian.
The water of the pool was boiling and roiling, a turmoil of heat rising to the rumbling surface like an active volcano was brewing underneath.
She waited.
Lucian was a dragon prince with fae blood, but he was also a man.
Eventually, he would have to breathe.
After a long stretch of seconds, he flew up out of the water, golden wings raining a waterfall of pool water down on her head. He burst into the air and soared above her. But then his sleek, golden head whipped her way, and a stream of blue dragonfire drifted away from his mouth. A rumbling roar filled the poolroom as he arced over and dove back down, heading straight for her… but she stood her ground, soaking wet at the edge of the pool.
Lucian landed and shifted at the same time, standing gloriously naked and dripping wet in front of her in human form. His chest was heaving, and his face was livid, but he seemed to be struggling for words to express all his fury.
Which was fine. Because she knew exactly what to say.
“I’m not going anywhere, Lucian Smoke.”