Chapter 42: In His Arms

Hecate POV

The door opened without a knock.

I felt him before I saw him. The shift in the air. The way the candles flickered as if caught in a sudden breeze. The familiar weight of his presence pressing against my senses like a hand against my chest.

Maddox stood in the doorway, his gaze moving from my face to Ysabella's arms wrapped around me, then back to my face. His expression was unreadable. His hair was still damp from a bath, and the scent of soap and something deeper, something wilder, drifted toward me. The pendant hung against his chest, the vial of blood catching the candlelight.

"Am I interrupting?" he asked.

Ysabella pulled back slowly, her hands lingering on my shoulders for a moment before she stepped away. She looked at me, then at the king, and something passed across her face. Understanding, perhaps. Or warning.

"I will go be with my little girl," Ysabella said, her voice soft. "I do not want to be apart from her ever again."

She nodded to the king and slipped past him out the door, closing it behind her with a quiet click.

The studio fell silent.

Maddox did not move from the doorway. He stood there, still slightly damp, his dark hair clinging to his forehead. His chest rose and fell beneath his loose shirt.

"It seems she has grown to love you," he said.

I turned back to my worktable, reaching for a jar of dried lavender. My hands needed something to do. Anything to keep from reaching for him.

"I saved her daughter's life. Of course she will be grateful forever."

"That is not what I meant."

I did not answer. I measured out the lavender, poured it into the mortar, began to grind. The rhythmic scrape of stone on stone filled the silence.

Maddox crossed the room.

I felt him behind me before I saw him, his warmth at my back, his scent wrapping around me like smoke. He did not touch me. Not yet. But he was close enough that I could feel the heat radiating from his body, could hear the soft rhythm of his breathing.

"I owe you an apology," he said. "For Odette. What she said in the courtyard. She should not have spoken to you that way."

I kept grinding. "She is the queen. She has every right to question her husband's whereabouts."

"She has no right to speak to you with disrespect."

I set down the pestle and turned to face him. He was closer than I expected. Close enough that I had to tilt my head back to meet his eyes.

"She is not wrong, Maddox. She is your wife. I am no one. I should not be alone with you like this. I should not have ridden into the forest with you. I should not have"

"She is wrong." His voice was low, insistent. "You are not no one. You have never been no one. Not to me."

My heart stumbled. "You do not know what you are saying."

"I know exactly what I am saying." He reached out and touched my chin, his fingers gentle but firm, tilting my face up toward his. His thumb brushed across my lower lip, and I forgot how to breathe. "I know that I cannot stop thinking about you. I know that when I am not near you, I feel like I am drowning. I know that when we fought together in that forest, I have never felt more alive."

"Maddox."

"What is this between us, Hecate?" His eyes searched mine, golden and burning. "Tell me it is not just me. Tell me you feel it too."

I should have denied it. I should have pushed him away. I should have reminded him of his wife, his crown, his duty.

But I was tired of being strong. I was tired of wearing masks. I was tired of pretending that the mate bond did not sing in my veins every time he looked at me.

"This is dangerous," I whispered.

"I do not care."

And then he kissed me.

His mouth was warm and certain, and I melted into him before I could think better of it. My hands found his shoulders, his chest, the damp hair at the nape of his neck. He pulled me closer, his arm wrapping around my waist, his other hand tangling in my hair.

The kiss deepened. Slower than before. More deliberate. He was not rushing this time. He was savoring.

I let him.

He walked me backward, away from the worktable, away from the jars and the vials and the mortars. His lips never left mine. His hands never stopped moving, tracing the curve of my spine, the dip of my waist, the swell of my hip.

My bedchamber was only a few steps away. He did not ask permission. He simply guided me through the doorway and lowered me onto the mattress, his body covering mine.

Tonight he was not in a hurry.

He pulled back just enough to look at me, his golden eyes traveling over my face, my neck, the collar of my robes. His fingers found the laces and began to undo them, slowly, one by one.

"I want to see you," he said. "All of you."

I let him.

The robes fell away, pooling around my hips. His breath caught when he saw the runes that covered my skin, dark and intricate, trailing from my collarbone down to my ribs, curling around my arms like vines.

He had seen them before, that night in the studio when he had walked in on me working. He had traced them with his fingers, asked about their secret. I had told him they were protection runes, wards against harm.

But tonight, he looked at them differently.

"I remember these," he said, his voice low. "The night I kissed you for the first time. The night I ran away like a coward."

"You were not a coward."

"I was." His fingers traced the rune on my shoulder, following the lines down to my chest. "I was afraid of what I felt. Afraid of betraying a memory. Afraid of you."

"And now?"

He leaned down and pressed his lips to the rune on my collarbone. "Now I am afraid of losing you."

I gasped.

His mouth moved lower, following the trail of runes down my sternum, across my ribs, along the curve of my waist. Each kiss was slow, deliberate, reverent. He was learning me. Memorizing me. Committing every line of ink and skin to memory.

I ran my fingers through his damp hair, tugging gently, pulling him back up to my face.

"You are not going to lose me," I whispered.

He looked into my eyes, his golden gaze burning. "Promise me."

"I promise."

He kissed me again, deeper this time, and whatever hesitation had lingered between us dissolved. There was no rush. No desperation. Only the slow, steady rhythm of two people who had finally stopped fighting.

He undressed me completely, and I undressed him. His scars were familiar now, the map of his suffering etched into his skin. I traced them with my fingers, with my lips, with my tongue. He shuddered beneath my touch.

When he joined his body to mine, it was slow. Deep. Intimate.

He looked into my eyes the entire time. Not the eyes of a king, not the eyes of a beast. Just a man. Just Maddox. Looking at me as if I were the only woman in the world.

We moved together in the candlelight, unhurried, our breaths mingling, our hearts pounding in unison. The mate bond blazed between us, brighter than it had been in years, and I felt him through it. His desire. His wonder. His longing for something he could not name.

When we reached the peak, it was together, our bodies shuddering, our hands clasped, our foreheads pressed together.

He did not pull away.

He stayed inside me, his weight warm and welcome, his breathing slowly returning to normal. His hand found mine and held it.

Neither of us spoke.

There was nothing to say that the bond had not already said.

Eventually, he shifted to the side, pulling me with him so that my back rested against his chest. His arm draped over my waist, his nose buried in my hair. The candles burned low. The fire crackled in the hearth.

I felt his body relax, his breathing deepen. Sleep was claiming him.

And I let it.

I let myself sink into the warmth of his embrace, into the steady beat of his heart against my back, into the quiet certainty that whatever came next, whatever secrets still lay between us, this moment was real.

We slept tangled together, without needing to say much. Just feel. Just be.

Just belong to each other, for a few stolen hours, in the dark.