34. Adina

34

ADINA

F or a few breathless seconds, I feared I'd broken him. The blankness in his eyes, the tremor in his fingers, had I done what even seeing me murdered couldn't accomplish? Had I messed that badly with his mind?

"Jack..." I was about to say more—beg for forgiveness, probably, because I'd done all I could under the circumstances already—but he surprised me by standing up so fast he knocked his chair over, staggering around the table to me, and falling on his knees.

His broad, warm hands framed my face under the veil, cupping my cheeks, my real ones, through the layer of holographic illusion. He stared straight into my eyes, his own filled with glorious understanding, and then he tore the veils off his face and mine and kissed me.

It was our first kiss, and it was incredible.

His lips were so soft, his mouth minty and enticing. I wondered if I still tasted like peachle when he tilted my face just so and slipped his tongue inside of me.

Oh God, how had we never done this earlier?

Why had we never done this earlier?

He was so good at it, encompassing me, filling me, making me faint with desire just from a kiss!

When he pulled away, I objected with a whine, but then he said—"Adina?" He said it softly like he was afraid to break it if he handled my name too roughly. "Is it really you?"

"Yes," I whispered, my heart pounding. "It's me."

"But I thought that he killed you..."

"An illusion," I replied, my voice trembling. "A hologram. Just like my disguise."

"But no holograms are that good."

"Jeffry's was."

James's fingers spasmed against my face, sliding down until they gripped my shoulders. "What did he do to you?"

"He wanted to use me to break into the Vault," I spoke quickly, knowing we'd have little time. I had no idea what the language model was pretending we were saying right now, but the fact that we'd just kissed passionately on camera would surely provoke a response from someone soon. "It's real. It's in the mountains, a day's drive outside of Londabad. He wanted me to find something for him there—a genie."

"A genie?" James looked like he was barely hearing me.

I got it. I was pretty overwhelmed, too, but I needed him to understand this. "Yes. There's a lot of ancient tech in the Vault. When I escaped, I took some of it with me and used it to return to you, to set myself up as a princess so I could get your attention. I couldn't think of any other way to get into the palace without breaking in, and that wouldn't have ended well for either of us."

"It's really you, then?"

Laughing, I covered his hands with mine. "It's really me, James. I promise. I'm not a ghost. I didn't die. I came back to you." I lowered my voice. "And I'll never leave you again, not if I can help it."

There were a lot of obstacles still in the way of us being together, but now that he knew that I was alive, we could overcome them.

He kissed me again, this time tenderly. "All my dreams, all my prayers answered," he whispered against my lips. "You can't imagine how much I've missed you. How painful it's been to have to go on while I thought you were dead, and I never even told you what you meant to me, what you mean to me. I?—"

"I know," I murmured, taking the initiative and pressing my kiss to his hungry mouth. "It's all right now. We're together again."

We shared kiss after kiss, getting lost in each other's tastes, the warmth of our bodies pressed together, and the sheer sense of rightness we felt from being so close, closer than we had gotten even when we were just Adina and Jack, not Princess Aramar and Prince James. Now we were remade, both of us in a different place in our lives but somehow closer to each other than ever.

"We'd better stop," I finally said, my lips deliciously sore, "or we're going to utterly scandalize whoever is watching this for your parents."

James chuckled, the sound vibrating through me. "I'm surprised we haven't already been interrupted. You say you've got some sort of tech concealing what we say?"

"I've got more than that." I wanted to tell him—was ready to tell him, mouth open and everything, when suddenly there was a rapid knocking on the door.

"James? Aramar?" It was the queen. "Is everything all right?"

"We are fine, Mother," he called out.

After we'd hastily put our veils back on, James gave Ravana the signal to undo the locks and let her in. She entered in a rush, her hair half-up, half-down, eyes stuck somewhere between frantic and fragilely hopeful. I could tell that her jaw had dropped behind her golden veil.

"My darling," she said, speaking to James but looking at me. "Whatever is going on in here?"

"Nothing untoward, Mother," he said as though he hadn't just been kissing the breath out of me a moment ago. "Princess Aramar and I are simply getting to know each other better." He stood up. "Is there something I can help you with?"

"Yes," she said absently, still staring at me. "Yes, you can—your father, go to your father, he needs to speak with you."

"All right," he said evenly.

I was worried that James was about to get interrogated to within an inch of his life by his father, but looking at him now, I believed he was more than up to the challenge.

He looked settled in a way he hadn't been just moments ago. He looked like a man in control of his own life, his destiny. He looked like a man who, having had his heart's desire met, was prepared to fight for the rest of what he wanted.

He looked so damn sexy. And then he looked at me, and I basically melted into the chair. "I'll be back soon," he promised with a grin. "I'd love to pick up our conversation where we left off when I get back."

"I'll be here," I promised him.

He left his suite with purpose in his step, only pausing to kiss his mother on the cheek.