Then he spat, “Really.”

Oh man.

“Uh…” I mumbled, liking this, hating this (mainly because I wasn’t giving it up to him as I should as his wife and the woman who loved him), being thrilled by it and feeling massive guilt at the same time.

I hit wall and slid to the side, hitting corner and sliding down a new wall as he stopped and slowly turned his big body to keep facing me.

“My Circe told me it was important to her…” he leaned in and his eyes narrowed, “crucial,” he hissed, “that I use my body on no one but her. So I have used my body on no one but her.”

Oh… man.

My heart stopped beating fast and started thumping faster.

“Lahn –” I whispered.

“But she withholds from me.”

Oh shit.

When I’d cleared him, I came away from the wall and started to back toward the door.

Lahn came at me again. “She withholds her xaxsah. She withholds her golden honey. She withholds her claws. She withholds her spirit. And, since she bore my children, she withholds even her time.”

“Uh…” I mumbled again.

I hit door and didn’t even get close to finding the knob. Lahn moved fast, I was up, across the room and on my back in the bed, Lahn on top of me. I was winded, his face was in my face and he was beyond furious, he was seriously f**king pissed, him and the brutal, golden spirit that was shining in his eyes.

And he was something else. Something I didn’t get. Something I couldn’t read. Something that didn’t belong in his eyes. It was wrong there.

Cataclysmically wrong.

“I will not take you by force for I know you will use it as well as reason never to forgive me and now I know it to be true, from the name your father called me, that you never will.”

“Lahn –” I whispered again as what I saw in his eyes, held by his spirit, started to dawn.

He talked over me. “But you should know before I leave you to be my queen only for our people, my wife only to be mother to Tunahn and Isis and I let you go, that I suffered for my mistake, I suffered for it greatly when I found you left me.”

My heart thumped harder just as my belly melted.

Yes, I knew what that was in his eyes.

Defeat.

Oh God.

I had to stop this. Now.

“Honey –” I tried speaking softly, using an endearment he liked as I gently put my hands on him but I failed to break through.

“I spent five months agonizing that I had lost you forever, haunted in sleep and in wake with the vision of your spirit fading to nothing in your eyes, knowing I’d crushed it to death and I’d forced you to escape me. Me, your king, your warrior, your Lahn, yours, in the end being no better than Dortak.”

Oh God.

“Lahn –” I started as my body softened under his and my arms wrapped around him.

“And knowing with every day that passed when you didn’t return to me, you were never going to find your way back to me. And despairing as each day moved into the next with no word from Karrim that I wouldn’t find a way to bring you home.”

I slid my hands to his front and up to curl them light around his neck. “Baby, listen to –”

“My golden doe, gone. My child with her. Never to see her heavy with my seed, never to look upon my warrior or golden daughter, never again to feel her body at sleep in our bed next to mine.”

“Lahn, seriously, honey, please listen –”

“Then Karrim finds a witch to bring you home to me, we give her trunks of gold only for you to come back broken.”

God! He needed to shut the f**k up so I could f**king talk!

“Lahn!” I snapped urgently, my fingers digging into his neck but I still didn’t break through.

“And I did that, I broke you and the only hint you gift me with that there is a possibility my golden goddess lives on somewhere inside is when you found the strength to deliver upon me our children.”

Jeez, when my man got on a tangent, there was no shutting him the f**k up!

“Lahn, damn it –!” I shouted in his face but it was like I didn’t make a noise as he kept talking over me.

“But still, you remain lost, never to come back to me.”

And that was it. I’d had enough.

And to communicate that, with a mighty heave, I planted my feet in the bed, arched my back and shoved his shoulders, pushing him to his back but going with him so I was straddling his hips, my fingers curled into his shoulders, my torso pressed to his and my face an inch away.

“Will you… shut… up?” I yelled, his mouth closed and he scowled up at me. “Jeez!” I cried, looking over his head before I looked back at him. “The drama. God!”

“Circe –” he growled but I snapped, “Quiet, Lahn, I’m talking now.”

He closed his mouth and scowled again.

I glared.

Then I spoke. “You upset me, broke my heart, okay, I think you get that. That’s coming through loud and clear, big guy. You hurt me. But seriously, I mean, the shit I was telling you, it was whacked. Totally unbelievable. So I get that too. But I’m an idiot and I lead with my heart and do stupid shit all the freaking time. And I got so upset because I loved you so much it hurt so badly, what you said, that I did it again. I acted before I thought. I followed my heart, which hurt, and I did something really freaking stupid. So, okay, Pop calls you an ass**le because he knows things didn’t start too great but… clue in, Lahn. He left me here. He knows I love you and he wants me to be happy. Yeesh!” I sat up, tipped my head back and looked at the ceiling. “For someone as unbelievably clev –”

I didn’t finish because I was on my back and my body was jolted violently because my sarong was yanked clean off.

Oh man.

I focused on his heated eyes just in time for my undies to be torn away… yep, torn away, my body jerking again as they went.

Oh man.

“Lahn,” I breathed as he rolled on top of me, I was already turned on because I suddenly found myself na**d under my king’s fantastic, heavy, warm body and from the hot look in his eyes.

His big hands trailed swiftly down the backs of my thighs then they yanked up. “You forgive me,” he growled.

“Uh… yeah, awhile ago. I’m just a –”

I didn’t finish because his mouth took mine in a searing kiss, a wet one, a deep one, a long one and a very, very hot one.

Oh yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

He tore his mouth from mine and I finished my sentence on a dazed, breathless, “Dork.”