“It would hurt them.”
“Yes.”
This honesty was rare for him, she knew. And as gifts went, a small one she would take. An intimacy that somehow felt deeper than what they’d shared with their bodies. Though perhaps one had led to the other. Stripped barriers away that might otherwise have stood.
“Why don’t you tell them?”
He paused for a long moment. “There are some things you don’t want to burden other people with.”
“I see.” She looked at him and recognized at that moment the weight he carried. It was not unlike hers. Not so different. “You can burden me. For I do not love you either. You do not love me. That is simple, eh? We help each other.”
“You’ve been through enough.”
“Yes. Just enough to be strong. To be strong enough that even when you hurt me it does not hurt so much.”
She found that she liked much better being trusted to take the strength of his darkness, the strength of his need, than being told she was too weak when she had endured so much and had stayed standing. When she had endured the kinds of things that would have reduced lesser people to rubble.
She would rather stand here with him. Her body buzzing, throbbing, feeling fragile and strong all at once. Like the thinnest of unbreakable glass.
“Let us go,” he said, offering her his arm.
“You’re going to leave me alone tonight, aren’t you? You’re not going to listen.”
“You were a virgin,” he said, his voice rough. “Surely even you can see that you might need a little bit of time to recover.”
She would have laughed if she hadn’t felt so fragile. Something as big as a laugh might make her crumble. “Life has never given me a moment to recover.”
“Then consider it the first sensitive thing life has done for you.”
“Eh.” She waved her hand. “Nobody wants a sensitive penis, Maximus. One prefers them hard.”
“You talk a big game for a woman who has seen precisely one.”
“A good one, I think.”
“Annick...”
She saw this moment then, for what it was. He was acting as if she was the innocent, the one who needed protection.
But for whatever reason, it was her soldier who needed this. Who needed this distance.
“Fine. I will let you play the part of gentleman tonight. But only because you need to. I do not need you to. But if you need to feel good, if you need to feel redeemed for what you have done to me, then I allow it. But tomorrow...tomorrow is my coronation. And you must stand up with me. And then tomorrow night... I will be a Queen. And don’t you think then I might be strong enough for you?”
“Remember what this is.”
She lifted a shoulder. “There is no name for what this is. You cannot play the part of a more experienced man. Not now. Not with this. We are both virgins in this, I think.”
She walked on ahead of him, and she knew that her hair might look mussed, that she might not look the perfectly put together warrior woman she had looked when she had first gone into the ballroom tonight. But she felt stronger. Somehow, now, she felt that the armor was underneath her skin, rather than just draped over her body in red fabric.
And there was something to be said for that.
For laying claim to at least one of the mysteries in the universe.
Yes, there was something to be said for that as well.
And even if she still felt raw, and a little bit vulnerable, she also felt strong.
And she would happily take that and lay claim to it.