‘Well...yes.’ It seemed a strange question to ask, especially given how young she’d been when they’d married. ‘I was only sixteen when you married me.’
‘But you’re twenty-one now, correct?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you haven’t been seeing anyone?’
Inara blinked, the thought so foreign to her she didn’t take it in at first. The idea that she would even look at anyone else was inconceivable.
‘No,’ she said, astonished at the question. ‘Why would I?’
He didn’t answer. He glanced away, a line between his black brows making it clear he was thinking hard about something.
She didn’t understand what was going on. She wasn’t sure what was supposed to happen after sex, but it couldn’t be questions about her virginity, with him frowning and not even looking at her? There had been romantic movies... She’d watched as the couple had held each other and kissed after sex, or had deep and meaningful conversations. It hadn’t been...this.
Perhaps trying to seduce him had been a mistake. Perhaps she’d done it wrong, because she often got things wrong, or so her mother used to tell her.
You’re so naive. You think you know what you’re doing and you don’t. You have no idea...
The need to get away, to put some distance between them, gripped her and she struggled to sit up, pushing at the hard plane of his chest.
‘Don’t,’ he murmured, his arms tightening.
‘Why?’ Her heartbeat had picked up speed again, the chill winding through her intensifying. It hurt to be here in his arms, to feel as if she’d made a mistake, a terrible mistake. ‘Let me go, Cassius.’
‘No.’ His arms held her captive and when he looked down at her she could see heat still in his eyes, glowing like embers. ‘Be still.’
‘Why?’ She shoved at him again. ‘What do you want from me? If I’m just another woman to you—’
‘What do you mean just another woman?’
She took a breath, her heartbeat thudding hard in her ears. He was frowning ferociously at her as if she’d said something hugely offensive. ‘Well, clearly I’ve done something you didn’t like, because you went all cold and distant. I don’t know what your other lovers—’
‘I don’t have any other lovers,’ he interrupted flatly. ‘There’s just you, Inara.’
No, that couldn’t be right. He was the King. He could have any woman he wanted, and he must have wanted quite a few. His reputation as a lover had been widespread and notorious, and she’d assumed that he would have carried on in the same vein.
But...apparently not.
‘What?’ She stared at him in shock. ‘What do you mean, just me?’
An expression she didn’t understand flickered over his face. Then it vanished and the same calm mask he always wore descended once more.
‘I mean exactly what I said.’ His voice was very level. ‘I haven’t had a lover in three years.’
Inara’s shock deepened. If he hadn’t had a lover in three years then that meant...well...that he’d been celibate. Which for an ex-playboy was unthinkable.
His calm mask rippled—the mask of a king...she could see that now—then settled. ‘Yes, you might well look at me like that. A faithful husband isn’t exactly what you expected of me, is it?’
There didn’t seem to be any bitterness in his tone yet she caught echoes of it all the same. She didn’t understand. She hadn’t asked for a faithful husband—she hadn’t been thinking of sex at sixteen, and he’d been adamant he wasn’t going to touch her. That he wasn’t going to tell her what to do or demand things of her. It was only a legal marriage, he’d said. A signature on a piece of paper, nothing more.
And, even when she’d begun to realise that her feelings for him were not those she should have for the kindly uncle he’d told her to think of him as, she hadn’t given one single thought to all the women he seduced and spent time with.
You put him on a pedestal and kept him there.
The thought was unexpected, and all the more so because as soon as it had occurred to her she knew it was true. She had put him on a pedestal. She hadn’t thought of him as an uncle, but she hadn’t thought of him as a man either. He’d been a handsome, charming playboy prince, and then a distant, almost mythical king.
Except he wasn’t that prince any longer and, as she’d just found out, he wasn’t solely a king either. He was a man too. A human being. A person she knew nothing about.