“What are you doing?” I ask, alarmed.

“Taking a bath,” he says, stepping in. “My wife thinks it’s good to conserve water. I’m supporting the cause.” By joining me. This man is slippery.

“You can uncover yourself,” he adds. “Your nudity doesn’t offend me.”

My gaze slits.

He settles against the opposite side of the tub, stretching his legs out until they brush mine, and he drapes his arms along the rim. It’s a good thing the basin is large enough to comfortably fit two people. Even so, he’s still crowding me.

Is this what married couples do? Step on each other’s toes until the notion of privacy is entirely done away with? I can’t escape this man.

I uncover myself and lean back against the tub, all too aware of our nakedness.

Montes settles that heavy gaze of his on me, and he wears his acquisitive look. This isn’t just a bath if he has it his way.

He picks up my foot and begins to rub it.

“Montes—” I try to jerk my foot from his grip.

“I’m helping you relax, nire bihotza.”

“I will kick you.”

He sets my foot back down and returns to staring at me.

“I have a question for you,” I say.

He raises his eyebrows. “She has an interest in her husband? Who would’ve thought?”

“‘She’ is sitting across from you and ‘she’ would appreciate it if you stopped referring to her in the third person.”

His mouth curves into a smirk. “No death threats for me this morning? I’m disappointed.”

“If you don’t stop referring to me in the third person, I’ll drown you in this puddle—as you so eloquently put it.”

“There’s my girl.”

“I’m not your girl.”

He leans back in the tub. “Don’t you have a question for me?”

I work my jaw, annoyed he’s caught me in a web of my own making. “Why are there no women in your government?”

“There are.”

“You know what I mean.”

“You mean my inner circle of advisors and officers? There were once women. They ended up being too soft for the job.”

“That’s your reasoning? Fuck you, Montes, and all your sexist ideals.”

“They’re not ideals. The women couldn’t stomach it.”

And the one woman that—according to him—apparently can has stomach cancer. I’m not going to peer at that one too closely.

“Had you ever considered the fact that maybe what you saw as weakness was instead compassion?”

“What, are you a champion now for women’s rights?” he says. “Odd since you seem to clash with most of them.”

In fact, I got along quite well with the women I lived with. It’s just the ones here that I can’t stand.

“I clash with most people. That has nothing to do with it.”

He pushes away from his end of the bathtub and moves towards mine. He’s eating up the final space between us, and there’s nowhere for me to go.

Montes looms over me, his glistening torso close enough to touch. That dark hair of his hangs near his eyes as he looks down at me. Just when I think he’s going to make a move, he reaches up and shuts off the water.

It goes to show you how captivated by this man I am that I don’t notice until now that the water level is past my shoulder.

Montes is hovering over me, his knees on either side of mine. The crook of his index finger dampens my chin as he tilts my face up. “We can hire more women. Is that all you wanted to talk about?”

“No—”

He cuts me off with a kiss, his hand moving from my chin to my cheek. His other one finds my hip and grips it tightly.

It hits me then. He wants me, badly; he’s practically quaking with the need. I can taste it in his kiss, I can feel it in the pressure of his grip.

The entire time since my memories returned, Montes hasn’t pushed sex on me. He takes many things, but not this. It’s the barest glimmer of a conscience.

And here I was disappointed in him for it. I need to shed this shyness.

So I give in.

I let myself slide my fingers through his mussed hair and kiss away the droplets of water that drip onto our lips. Our mouths open and I taste this taboo that’s forced his way into my world.

He’s poison and radiation and he’s seeping into my bloodstream, tainting me from the inside out. I’ll never be free of him.

And God, he tastes just like me.

Montes moves between my legs and I help him angle my pelvis up to meet his. If he hadn’t known before that I was willing, now he does.

The last of his restraint falls away.

I gasp into his mouth as he fills me. This is our world, this starved, desolate place. Both of us want things we don’t know how to attain. So we seek solace in each other.

Our eyes lock as Montes draws away and pistons back into me. His hands are on my breasts and in my hair. I get the impression that he wants to be everywhere all at once. It’s not enough to taste me and move inside me.

My hands glide down his backside, leaving watery trails in their wake, and I pull him closer. My hair floats about us, curling about Montes like it never had a problem with him in the first place.

Finally his restless hands find my face, and they cup it. We stare at each other while he moves in and out of me. My heart pounds as I fall into his eyes. We stay like that until the king’s hot water turns tepid once more.

And for once the two of us make love instead of war.

CHAPTER 14

Serenity

ALL PRODUCTIVE GOVERNMENTS have schedules and patterns. Reliable systems put in place to chart out the ruling of a country—or, in this case, the world. The king’s is no different. So despite the early morning festivities, we both get ready for work.

We dress—me in black jeans and boots, the closest thing to combat gear I now own—and the king in a pressed suit.

Since the bath, we’ve both been keenly aware of each other. I don’t think either of us is prone to softer emotions, but what happened less than an hour ago hasn’t happened before.

We’ve had sex, yes, but we’ve never fallen into each other the way we just did. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Marriage—and sex—I’d agreed to. But not love.

I hadn’t even thought I’d be vulnerable to falling for the king. I’d only ever meant to bide my time until I could thrust a dagger into his heart or a bullet into his brain.